This autumn, the Bank Austria Kunstforum is presenting the first ever comprehensive Frida Kahlo retrospective in Austria.  Frida Kahlo is a global icon artist, an identification figure of Mexican culture and the forerunner of the feminist movement.  Kahlo’s art is intertwined with the truth in her life. Her paintings and drawings were not only the mirror of her life history, but also marked by physical and mental affliction she suffered from her whole life and the injuries caused by a horrific bus accident.

In the early thirties her paintings show the first tendencies towards surrealism; an approach which produced complex compositions springing out of her inner life.  In her 1940′s self-portraits expression, we see the “authoritarian eye”: Frida takes the stage like a saint “worthy of adulation”; her dominant aura is inescapable.

The exhibition Frida Kahlo contains around 60 paintings, 20 objects and 80 works on paper. These are combined with a selection of photographic documents, compiled by Frida’s great-niece Cristina Kahlo.  Most of Kahlo’s artistic legacy is in Mexico and the USA.  Due to the lack of Kahlo’s European collections, and the sparsity of exhibition projects in Europe, this show is a sensation for Vienna.  The exhibition is being held in cooperation with the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The exhibition curators in Vienna are Ingried Brugger, Florian Steininger and Helga Prignitz-Poda.

Statement Concerning Change

Frida Kahlo has a pioneer role for so many generations of female artists, she paved the way for crucial positions in feminist art, especially in context with bodyart and performance. Her physical and psychological suffer was depicted in such a direct, violent and surreal way, especially in the painting “unos cuantos piquetitos!” from 1935.  Diego Rivera’s betray with Frida’s younger sister Cristina is transformed in a violent bodilly agitation, in the brutal murder of Frida Kahlo: blood is smeared everywhere, also on the frame, so to pretend the real character of this action.

Florian Steininger, Exhibition Curator in Vienna

Nelly Duff presents Jessica Albarn, their first print together sees a meeting of Jessica’s fine line drawing with a hidden geometry (gloss varnish that shines under direct light).

She completed a series of portraits, which include the likes of Banksy, which was published in Marmalade Magazine, Brian Haw the peace protestor and the singer Alison Goldfrapp. But her real obsession is insects, Spiders and drawing out the beauty in all creatures. Dead or Alive!

Jessica is interested in the psychological dramas we project onto these creatures, their symbolism and the emotional tension that is held in the image.

She has exhibited in the UK and published a book of her drawings with Cederteg Publishing. She has collaborated internationally, recently with Helmut Lang for their new collection to be launched early next year. There is more to Jessica than meets the eye but that’s for us to know and you to find out!

CONCERNING CHANGE

Fine Art as enviro-activism – Can it help get the message over?

Jessica Albarn’s hair-line drawing of the endangered bubble-bee addresses the fragile state of the bee population and how mankind depends on the insect for food pollination.  The limited edition print combines Albarn’s eloquent drawing of a bee with the ancient symbol of “man’s end” and a hidden glossy layer of geometrical honeycomb shapes.  The combination of nature, symbolism, and science underpins Albarn’s interest in the fundamental circle of life we have with these creatures, on first glance it maybe not be obvious to see the emotional tension that is held in the image.  We are being encouraged to become a nation of bee keepers rather than bee swatters…

In addition to drawing the beauty in all living creatures, Albarn completed a series of portraits, which include the likes of Banksy, which was published in Marmalade Magazine, Brian Haw the peace protestor and the singer Alison Goldfrapp.

She has exhibited in the UK and collaborated internationally, publishing a book of her drawings with Cederteg Publishing and collaborating with Helmut Lang for their spring 09 collection. Later this year she publishes her first children’s book with Simply Read Books, ‘The Boy in the Oak’.  (Written by Kristina Best)

Event Info:

jessica albarn

The Birds and the Bees…..and the Butterflies!

8th April 2010

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

http://www.nellyduff.com/index.php?/art/artists/jessica_albarn

Laurel Terlesky has been practicing as a professional visual artist for more than ten years after completing her BFA degree, majoring in visual art (painting) from the University of Victoria. She creates canvases that are largely abstract in style built around an awareness of the human form and kinetic movement. Themes that have developed a language in her work are electricity & power, sustainable energy practices, spirituality, and the human body as it relates to the environment. Her paintings also challenge our awareness of space by illustrating optical, illusionary space or from flattening space by creating depth with solid colour placement. She currently resides in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada and has exhibited her work in Whistler, Squamish, Victoria, Vancouver, Montreal and San Francisco.

Laurel recently spent a month at an international artist residency in Barcelona, Spain working on future projects.

CONCERNING CHANGE

I am fascinated and intrigued by how we use our natural resources and how they affect our social structures. As a global community I see people coming together to foster new ideas about how to lessen our impact on our fragile planet. I am excited by the limitless possibilities we are embarking upon to change our lifestyle and communication. In my art I use a pop culture expression to illustrate a dialogue around how closely we are connected to our impact on our environment.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

laurelterlesky.ca

In the studio at The Museum of Arts and Design as a curious visitor takes note of the process, NYC 2009.

Charles McGill is an African-American artist who lives in Harlem. He also plays golf, a game that is still, notwithstanding the ascendancy of Tiger Woods, popularly thought of as an economically advantaged white man’s sport. As an artist, he slyly conflates these different aspects of his identity.

Under the auspices of a fictive label, ”Club Negro,” he has issued a line of satiric mock-commodities for black golfers. For example, a commercial-style display promoting new, Africanized golf balls titled ”The Hard to Swallow Suite” offers brands like the ”New Spook” (”If you can’t beat them, scare them,” reads the ad copy on the shelf) and the ”Malcom X” (”Guaranteed to improve your game by any means necessary”).

Elsewhere, Mr. McGill presents various decorative objects for the clubhouse. A glass-doored rack contains rows of balls inscribed by hand with disclaimers like ”I was never on Soul Train” or ”I can’t jump.” A wooden plaque displays a golf club festooned with dreadlocks; another is entirely papered by reproductions of old photographs depicting lynchings.

The collision Mr. McGill craftily sets up between incongruous worlds — the one traditionally overprivileged and effete, the other disenfranchised and funky — is at once funny and sobering. New York Times – Ken Johnson

CONCERNING CHANGE

As with most sustained bodies or work, the golf-inspired theme happened quite by accident. The subject matter began showing up in my work after I picked up the game – it really was as simple as that. I saw the action of playing golf as creative, like “drawing” and composing space on the earth within a predetermined picture plane.

Each hole was its own framed piece of art. Only I felt like I was a part of the composition – inside the picture. There was a history of marks and directions that I could draw from memory later on in the studio. So I began experimenting with these memories by drawing aerial views of golf holes I imagined.

Shortly afterwards I began using golf objects as metaphors for a larger discussion of racism and identity. While I explored my own fascination with golf, I started to merge this passion with a more conceptual understanding of found object, the recycling of obscure Internet imagery, the Internet as “palette”, ethnicity, identity and socio-political dialogue.

Over the last decade I began seeing the golf bag as “found canvas”, as metaphor, as vessel and as the human form; I saw its potential as both object and subject.

Using the process of collage and “found digital imagery” I changed the identity of the bag while maintaining (or in some cases, re-establishing) its relationship to race and social differences. In the end, I want to create an object that is at first beautiful then thought provoking.

The two quintessential pieces from this body of work are, Arthur Negro I & II. Both are photo realistic, life-sized self-portraits. They represent my defining answer to the notion of Black Art, hence the name Arthur Negro.

CONTRIBUTING TO CHANGE

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artnegro.com