SOMA: Carsten Höller in Berlin

On the quest for another world, Carsten Höller follows in the Hamburger Bahnhof the origin of Soma, a mythical libation of the Indo-Germanic Vedas from the 2nd millennium BC. Soma brought the Vedas enlightenment and access to the divine sphere and was highly praised in their hymns. The herbal ingredient of this libation has not been passed on without a doubt, but from a botanic, ethnologic and etymologic view there is evidence that it could have been the fly agarics.
Based on these circumstances Carsten Höller develops a scenario between laboratory and vision, alleged objectivity and increased subjectivity.
Before the eyes of the observers unfolds an expansive “living picture”, a symmetrical experimental field, which is divided in two parts along its center line and which compares the ordinary world with the realm of Soma in a double-image experiment. This is an experiment, that find its completion in the imagination of the observer and whose evaluation is subject to your power of observation. On a mushroom like platform in midst of the arrangement resides a bed, where guests will have the opportunity to spend a night at the museum and to dive into the world of Soma.

Carsten Höller SOMA
5. November 2010 - 6. Februar 2011
Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin
Invalidenstr. 50–51,
D – 10557 Berlin

Massive Change: a manifesto for the future of global design

Design has emerged as one of the world’s most powerful forces. It has placed us at the beginning of a new, unprecedented period of human possibility, where all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected.
In order to understand and harness these emerging forces, there is an urgent need to articulate precisely what we are doing to ourselves and to our world. This is the ambition of Massive Change.
Massive Change is a celebration of our global capacities but also a cautious look at our limitations. It encompasses the utopian and dystopian possibilities of this emerging world, in which even nature is no longer outside the reach of our manipulation.
For many of us, design is invisible. We live in a world that is so thoroughly configured by human effort that design has become second nature, ever-present, inevitable, taken for granted.
And yet, the power of design to transform and affect every aspect of daily life is gaining widespread public awareness.
No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes. Engineered as an international discursive project, Massive Change: The Future of Global Design, will map the new capacity, power and promise of design.
Massive Change explores paradigm-shifting events, ideas, and people, investigating the capacities and ethical dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation, urbanism, warfare, health, living, energy, markets, materials, the image and information. We need to evolve a global society that has the capacity to direct and control the emerging forces in order to achieve the most positive outcome. We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do anything what will we do?
The best way to express the capacities of our modern world is through its fullest range of media. To date, Massive Change has taken on the form of a traveling exhibition, a book, a series of formal and informal public events, a radio program, an online forum, and this blog. Since the exhibition’s opening in October 2004, several school boards have expressed interest in incorporating the project’s ideas into educational curriculums.

Susan Philipsz wins the 2010 Turner Prize for Contemporary Art

The Scottish artist is the first person to win the £25,000 award for a sound installation.
Lowlands is a recording of Philipsz singing 16th century laments which she then plays in unusual locations, including supermarket aisles and a series of bridges over the Clyde in Glasgow.
The Turner Prize, which was set up in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under the age of 50 and is "intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art".

Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Cosa fa la mia anima mentre sto lavorando?, 2003. Foto Roberto Marossi, Milano

"Dal Partenone al panettone": Francesco Bonami hits again with his new publication

Jeff Koons vs Benvenuto Cellini

Edward Hopper vs Richard Prince

Gian Lorenzo Bernini vs Maurizio Cattelan

Bonami is a strange character, he has not a claer job; in his website he defines himself as a curator, writer, activist, optimist and casinist.
During his lectures he always says something that makes someone angry and certainly also his last book will have the same effect on many readers.
It is a sort of journey in art history, from ancient Egypt to the contemporary, through 130 couple of images in wich Bonami hazards the most unusual connections between ancient and modern works of art.
He dares comparing the "Cristo Morto" by Mantegna with a picture of the Che, the "Giudizio Universale" by Michelangelo with the Pollock paintings and a Bernini sculpture with a Cattelan piece.
There is no doubt that also this publication will make talk about itself.

Lecture with Kazuyo Sejima, Anton Garcìa-Abril and Christian Kerez at the Venice Biennale

Sejima speaking about her last projects

from left to right: interviewer Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Christian Kerez(ETH/SIA Architekt), Anton Garcìa-Abril(Ensamble Studio), Kazuyo Sejima(SANAA), Paolo Baratta(Biennale president)

the space of Teatro delle Tese

archistar calling

Dre Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas, the Dutch duo who paints favelas

In 2006, the Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas en Dre Urhahn conceived the idea of creating community-driven art interventions in Brazil. Named ‘Favela Painting’, their first efforts yielded two murals which were painted in Vila Cruzeiro, Rio's most notorious slum. The first mural is entitled ‘boy with kite’ and has a surface of 150 m2. The second mural proved to be more challenging, with a surface of 2000 m2. Painted on a staircase in the heart of Vila Cruzeiro, it depicts a flowing river with Koi Carp fishes in the style of a Japanese tattoo, designed together with Rob Admiraal. The artworks for the murals are painted in collaboration with the local youth. Training and paying them as painters, learning them the tricks of the trade and empowering them by contributing to the development of the artwork. These projects received worldwide press coverage and have become points of pride both within the community and throughout Rio.
Using a grassroots-based bottom-up approach has proven to be a key factor in the success and final results. In order to generate support and approval for their activities, the artists always make the favela their home. By spending their time within the local community, they’re able to connect to their surroundings more easily, winning the hearts and minds of people. In their point of view, the inhabitants of the favela are a legitimate part of the city, but not seen that way from the outside. Using these beliefs, they work with the locals to paint the artworks, literally helping them changing the face of their community. Over the years, inhabitants of the favela’s have become aware of this method, and are actively requesting their favela to be turned into an artwork. As one woman from Vila Cruzeiro put it: ‘I’ve never been to a museum in my life, and now I’m living in one’.
Favela Painting is supported by the Firmeza Foundation in the creation of striking artworks in unexpected places. It collaborates with the local community to use art and color as a tool to inspire, create beauty, combat prejudice and attract attention. The Foundation facilitates the worldwide realisation of art interventions, and looks after their maintenance. It also develops relevant spin-off projects in the areas of education, socio-economic / social support and development of local people involved in the projects.



As of March 2010, Favela Painting has established a collaboration with AkzoNobel’s decorative paint division. Based on their mission of “adding colour to people’s lives”, AkzoNobel intends to participate in an inspiring and meaningful manner in local communities in the countries in which it operates. The objective of the cooperation between both parties is to realise worldwide, large scale “community driven” works of art. Works of art that make a colourful difference in the lives of individuals, groups, communities and cities. Works of art that have the potential of inspiring others elsewhere, that leave an indelible impression and can work as a catalyst in the processes of social renewal and change.

visit http://www.favelapainting.com/ for more info

BAC! Festival internacional de arte contemporáneo de Barcelona

After completing its first decade, the change that the Barcelona Art Contemporary Festival had been predicting has arrived. An innovative change, as perceptible as it is intangible, BAC! Enters the 4thdimension: TIME.
In a period in which different artistic, scientific, philosophical and technological disciplines interact freely, finding, creating and dissociating as part of an uncontrollable ritual dance, TIME is introduced as a brush that captivates an increasing number of art lovers, both emissaries and receivers.
TIME, divine mystery and mortal fear par excellence, becomes an active part in the world of perceptions, multiplying the artistic experience through incalculable visual impacts which choreograph a lasting sensation. Audiovisuals enter the artistic sphere with a sweeping momentum.
Gone are its difficult beginnings, when a few pioneers knocked themselves out creating a vanguard of moving images that was hardly taken into account. Only after this ordeal, a collective consciousness arises, having digested this evolution and, not even the most conservative can any longer contain the overwhelming expansion of one of the most contemporary means of expression.
A means which is not only able to sublimate all the senses, but also adds a dimension of vital importance that demands our attention: TIME. Professional artists and enthusiastic amateurs investigate this new set of brushes and paints, relying on technology without prejudice and bravely accepting today's challenges.
The latest BAC! presents the special relationship of art with the space-time binomial, promoting the infinite, simultaneously occurring combinations of the multidimensional nature of such work : Timebased Art.
A complexity that is expressed in the human experience as such, and through the interaction of all these forces creates the ethereal dimension, TIME. With the visitors’ interaction and their own space and time, the show will provide the approach to the binomial with infinite permutations.
The fourth dimension is defined as a simultaneous, massive, metaphorical, and deeply intertwined with life experience. It is a dimension that contains movement, the object of numerous art historical investigations and the axis of art movements and disciplines as important as cubism, futurism, kinetic art, comics, film and, of course, video art. Within this historic and universal fascination with exploring the space-time continuum, BAC! takes revisits the invited country context, presented in previous editions. Japan will be the guest country in this next edition, selected for its innovative artistic proposals and researches.
Within this framework, BAC! Begins the new decade inviting us to explore notions of space and time using today's most advanced artistic technologies, allowing to discover virtuous talents working with the genres that intrinsically employ TIME in the palette. Respecting the broadly open conceptual line that characterizes BAC!'s previous editions, this year, the proposal is even more emphatic, with a quest to reflect together on the different ways in which the time dimension itself affects human existence. Time does not stop or repeat itself, it is intrinsically linked to change. Welcome to the art of the fourth dimension.

Santa Monica headquarter at Rambla,7

Koolhaas, the architect who best interprets contemporary time

Loretta Lux at GalleriaCarlaSozzani

the typical "casa di ringhiera" building in Corso Como 10 that hosts the gallery


How do we imagine the children who inhabit fairy tales – and the children who listened to those tales?
Nowadays, we have lost the time to read these stories anymore or hear them read to us.
Our world – visual, fast and intuitive – has been replaced with television, dvd’s and thousands of cartoons.
These children however are still in our memory; in our daydreams; in the ambiance of the magic of early 20th century movie making and in treasured family portrait albums.
These are Loretta Lux’ children.
Loretta Lux uses the magic of contemporary photographic techniques to transform one image into another.
Having studied painting before taking up photography, Loretta Lux’s careful analysis of classic portrait painting has inspired the balance between a clearly fixed portrait composition and the application of cutting edge photographic technology.
Contemporary children pose for her photos, dressed as though coming from the past and placed in backgrounds so calm and peaceful that the lack of movement gradually becomes alienating. Loretta Lux is a master at creating this undercurrent of disturbing emotions while observing such calm. Her children become the children of Grimm’s fairy tales, not truly innocent. Totally present as they watch. As flickers of subtle cruelty move across their pretty faces and big eyes, they watch impassively as the world and our future opens before them.

on show at GalleriaCarlaSozzani, Corso Como 10 (Milan)
from 10th September to 31st October 2010
Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 10.30 am – 7.30 pm
Wednesday, Thursday 10.30 am – 9.00 pm
Monday, 3.30 pm – 7.30 pm

Milan is growing up...

the new Porta Nuova complex from the "10 Corso Como" rooftop

construction yard of the new Cesar Pelli tower in the Porta Nuova complex

covered square in the new Regione Lombardia headquarters designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

Fuck you! The giant middle finger made by Cattelan will not be removed from Milan

the mocking sculpture made by Maurizio Cattelan in front of the stock exchange in Milan should have been removed on October 25th. However after a telephone conversation between the artist, who was in New York, and the Mayor of Milan Letizia Moratti, it was chosen to keep the masterpiece there at least until Christmas. Cattelan welcomed the decision with surprise and said that was a sign of how Milan is a really avangarde city.

John Baldessari presents: "The Giacometti Variation"

John Baldessari and sketches for two mannequins

row of Giacometti mannequins revisited and disguised by Baldessari inside the industrial space of the Prada foundation

particular one of the installations inspired by Giovanna D'Arco

photographer Manuela Pavesi

Miuccia Prada

architect Cino Zucchi

the incredible slide made by artist Carsten Holler connecting Miuccia Prada’s office to the car park inside the Prada headquarter in Milan

Milan_Californian artist John Baldessari has designed a totally new project for the Prada Foundation, entitled "The Giacometti Variations." It consists in a series of massive figures, about 4.5 meters high, inspired by the imagery of the Swiss sculptor, who will be dressed and accessorized with items and clothes, designed by himself, to form a hypothetical parade.

"I’ve always wanted to do tall paintings and sculptures. I suspect it’s because I am quite tall. I’ve had little opportunity since most galleries have wall heights that mirror the wall heights of collector’s homes. A few years ago, I was invited to show in Haus Der Kunst, Munich. Since the entrance hall is extremely tall, I began thinking about tall work I could do there to capture the space. One of my ideas was the idea that I have proposed to the Prada Foundation. My plan is to elongate standing Giacometti sculptures and clothe them with garments. To extend an extreme existing idea to it’s logical conclusion has been a working method for me. Giacometti figures are the most skinny and emaciated sculpture that exist. Why not push that further? Also there currently is a blurring of art and fashion. Furthermore it is au courant, almost de rigueur that fashion model be extremely tall and thin. Why not fuse the two- art and fashion since that idea is in our zeitgeist? I’m sure I was also inspired by the Degas Ballerina sculptures clothed with real tutus. The finished work would be the row of columns (at the foundation building)
alternating with clothed attenuated pseudo Giacometti figures. Is this parody? I’m not sure. I hate categories and definitions- I certainly am borrowing. Isn’t this what artists do? Doesn’t art arise from art? What I am doing is furthering an idea- that is the requirement of any good art.”
John Baldessari, December ’09

The exhibition is at Fondazione Prada in via Antonio Fogazzaro 36 (Milan) from 29th october to 31st december 2010

Is There Art on YouTube? Guggenheim Wants to Find Out

On October 21, the top videos selected by the YouTube Play jury were revealed and celebrated at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The videos, which can be viewed on youtube.com/play, will be presented at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice on October 22–24, 2010. They comprise the ultimate YouTube playlist: a selection of the most unique, innovative, groundbreaking video work being created and distributed online during the past two years.

"La gemella diversa" by Lucio Schiavon

"Togliamo il ponte della libertà! Confonde le idee." Anonimo







"La gemella diversa", the title of the show dedicated to the relationship beetwen the Venice's Islands and the mainland, Mestre and Marghera; the author is a young illustrator Lucio Schiavon that tell anxieties, expectations, wonders to us; the historic and problematic double life of Venice.

The exhibition is at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Palazzetto Tito (Venice) from 22nd october to 24th november 2010

The multimedial side of architecture

The LightLine of Gotham from seeper on Vimeo.

The Japanese Popstars Feat. Green Velvet - Let Go

The Japanese Popstars Feat. Green Velvet - Let Go from David Wilson Creative on Vimeo.

Venice Suite by Peter Blake

Sir Peter Blake, known to many as the father of British Pop Art, has created twenty new prints, entitled The Venice Suite, inspired by his recent experiences in the Italian city.
Depicting an imagined, fairytale vision of the city, the prints draw from a host of source material and were inspired by the artist’s 2007 visit to the Venice Art Biennnale. Blake’s trademark collage style incorporates images culled from postcards, photographs and second-hand books, including details from familiar old masters alongside illustrations from vintage children’s books.
The prints reveal fantastical scenes of the city against backgrounds of blues, greys, greens and muted yellows, evoking the magical atmosphere of a place enshrouded in myth and romance and imbued with Blake’s wonderfully surreal sensibility.

The exhibition is at GalleriaMichelaRizzo in Palazzo Palumbo Fossati (Venice) from 9th october to 31st december 2010

Tate Modern| Current Exhibitions | The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei

Tate Modern| Current Exhibitions | The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei

Peter Zumthor to design next Serpentine Pavilion

Zumthor to design next Serpentine Pavilion | News | Building Design

What are we speaking of when we talk about a work of art?

Venice_lecture with Angela Vettese in Palazzo Grassi on the "Dance Floor" installation by the Polish artist Piotr Uklański