around galleries in October

'Mathematical Nature Painting Nested' (2008) by Keith Tyson (img via guardian.co.uk)

Keith Tyson at Parasol Unit (until 11 November)

Eduardo Paolozzi at Raven Row (until 1 November)

John Baldessari at Tate Modern (until 11 January 2010)

Miroslaw Balka at Tate Modern

‘How It Is’ by Miroslaw Balka, Tate Modern

‘How It Is’ by Miroslaw Balka, Tate Modern

‘How It Is’ by Miroslaw Balka, Tate Modern

‘How It Is’ by Miroslaw Balka, Tate Modern

Simple, terrifying, cold, and beautiful. Miroslaw Balka’s work ‘How It Is’ at Tate Modern hits hard without being overtly provocative. More of this kind of art, please.

Art Container [13]

Johanna Billing video installation (via artscouncil.org.uk)

Autumn is upon us, the wind is turning chilly and days become shorter and shorter. Summer exhibitions are closing down and London gets ready for the Turner Prize, Frieze, Zoo, etc. Some shows have been quite underwhelming, but it’s not the case of Johanna Billing’s exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, which I stumbled upon and loved from start to end. The Swedish artist has the ability to elevate small events to poetic visions through her videos that feature light-hearted songs that will stick to your memory. Johanna Billing: ‘I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm’ closes on September 13, try not to miss it!

upcoming exhibitions [September]

A massive wave of interesting art exhibitions is about to hit London. The Rothko show at Tate Modern will definitely be a blockbuster (from 26 September), and Francis Bacon at Tate Britain (from 11 September) will attract flocks of visitors too (this year’s Turner Prize contenders are on show as well). Moving from Southbank to Kensington, the Serpentine will open an exhibition of new works by German master Gerhard Richeter on 23 September, and in North London the Estorick Collection will host Cut&Paste: Photomontage 1920-50 from September 24 (the Estorick is worth a trip to Highbury, it’s such a nice space, and the shows are usually pretty good). It’s enough to make me giddy, but the list goes on: Dryden Goodwin at the Photographer’s Gallery (26 September-16 November); Wallace Berman at Camden Arts Centre (26 September-23 November); Robin Rhode at the Hayward (23 September-7 December); Design Cities at the Design Museum (5 September-4 January 2009).

last week|this week

[A Silver Mt Zion, photo by Mark Slutsky, via pitchforkmedia.com]

In terms of music last week was great, seeing A Silver Mt Zion at Scala was a real treat. Two straight hours of music and the occasional comments of Efrim Menuck on the Olympic torch in London and all. They started off with 1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound, track 13 of their new album (the preceding 12 tracks being a few seconds short sounds) 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, and hypnotised the audience (mainly) with new songs. Personal highlight was BlindBlindBlind, also from their last album.

The exhibition I saw last week: Cranach the Elder at the Royal Academy (until 8 June). Thank god there were two different ticket queues for Cranach and the Russian collections, otherwise I would have been there for half an hour or more. The exhibition is on the top level, which means that it can get quite crowded as the spaces aren’t very big. Well it was crowded, but, worst of all, it was full of visitors equipped with evil audio-guides. Standing in line and waiting to see a painting I wondered why people can’t appreciate what’s hanging on the walls without pretending to know everything about it. There are large panels (and large print is available too) with information, context etc., do people need more? Most of them end up listening without actually looking. End of rant. The show is good, many paintings and works on paper on loan from important foreign collections and the always interesting portraits of Martin Luther, old school propaganda.

This week I have tickets for two gigs, Phosphorescent at Borderline and Low playing at the Union Chapel. I’m quite excited for both: I saw Phosphorescent opening for Akron/Family at Cargo a few months ago and liked his voice and songs (as my friend M would say, ‘he’s very Will Oldham, right?’) and now that I’ve been listening to Pride for a bit I’ll probably like his set even more; well, and Low in a church, who can beat that? Art-wise: courtesy of my friend P I have tickets for the Chinese design exhibition at the V&A, I’ll come back here to report on that.

3 exhibitions and 1/2

One and two: both at the Hayward Gallery (possibly my favorite gallery in London), the retrospective on Russian photographer Alexander Rodchenko and the group exhibition Laughing in a foreign language are diametrically (and dramatically) different. But this is good. The only downside (for the ones that wish to visit just one of the two) is that there is a cumulative ticket, so you’ll have to see the contemporary show even if you intended to see only Rodchenko. Personally, I was glad to visit both, and did laugh going through the ground and first floor galleries. Before heading to the Hayward I read some pretty harsh reviews on Laughing in a different…, but I thought 80% of the works were quite good. The display includes works by Nedko Solakov (best in the show), David Shrigley (a whole wall dedicated to his drawings!), Barthélémy Toguo, Doug Fishbone and Ugo Rondinone. It would be interesting to make a survey on how people react to certain pieces on show, if being foreign (in Britain) influences their perception. Apart from a couple of pieces I couldn’t see anything that would justify the shocked reactions of journalists from Time Out and Daily Telegraph. The Rodchenko display is very traditional, but interesting all the same and definitely worth seeing. Although I’m not an expert, some photographs (modern re-prints) seemed a bit poor quality. What I liked best was a wall of magazine covers designed around Rodchenko’s pictures.

[imgs via southbankcentre.co.uk]

Three: Peter Doig at Tate Britain. I liked it immensely. No, I’m not writing anything new, Doig is one of the best artists around. He could be a Russian expressionist (early Kandinsky) or a French post-impressionist (Gauguin, and not only because of his recent move to Trinidad). Anyway a must-see.

[imgs via tate.org.uk]

1/2: Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art at Barbican. The mission of this exhibition is ‘to interpret and understand contemporary art’, but I’m not so sure about the outcome. It’s a bit of everything thrown in together, definitely not helpful if one wants to understand contemporary art. I really liked the work Cultural Ties (1979) by American artist Jeffrey Vallance. That’s about it.