Ocula Conversation Bani Abidi: ‘What you see in my films is what I know’ A group of voices accompanies me in the exhibition. They are singing words I cannot comprehend, yet the warm tunes are familiar: folk songs, love songs, songs of longing. There are letters, too. They speak of the quotidian details of a soldier's life: the hardness of the war, sending money to the family, and longing for familiar landscapes, food,...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
David Kordansky Gallery was established in 2003 with the desire both to discover and to engage with the vastly diverse group of artists living and working in Los Angeles. One of the primary ideas quickly became utilising the gallery not merely to showcase individual artists, but also to realise the dialogue, both implicit and explicit, between them. It is through a direct connection with our artists that we have discovered a wider international community, as well as the dynamic cross-pollination of ideas that takes place between Los Angeles and other global centres.
The gallery has quickly grown from primarily focusing on emerging art to an internationally recognised program featuring artists who have exhibited in acclaimed museums and galleries worldwide. The program increasingly includes artists from different generations, so that a variety of historical lineages can enter into conversation with one another.
David Kordansky Gallery currently operates a 20,000 square foot facility in Mid-City Los Angeles. Opened in September 2014, this new location encompasses two adjacent and equally sized gallery spaces, through which the gallery maintains an ambitious and expanding program of solo, group, and historical exhibitions.
Ocula Photolog Frieze London 2019 3 October 2019 'Frieze London brings together more than 160 galleries from 36 countries, representing the fair's most international edition since its launch. Introducing new curators and sections showcasing performance, emerging artists and the contemporary significance of complex art genealogies and colonial legacies, Frieze London creates an exceptional moment...
Ocula Report 16th Istanbul Biennial Collapses Culture-Nature Divide 20 Sep 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula At the opening of the 16th Istanbul Biennial, The Seventh Continent (14 September–10 November 2019), curator Nicolas Bourriaud began his introduction with a clip from Werner Herzog's 1982 movie Fitzcarraldo, the story of a man who moves a steamship up a hill in the process of fulfilling a fantasy to build an opera house in the Amazon jungle. The...
Ocula Conversation Tala Madani: 'I don't make a conscious decision to subvert the gaze' Tehran-born, Los Angeles-based artist Tala Madani's paintings and animations fluctuate between comic strip, political satire, and abstraction in their depictions of human figures in their most primal states. Her paintings are characterised by thick and unfinished brushstrokes, which enable an immediacy as they lay bare absurd power systems in...
Ocula Report Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House 5 Jul 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House in London (12 June–15 September 2019) surveys more than half a century of black creativity in Britain and beyond across the fields of art, film, photography, music, design, fashion, and literature.Curated by Zak Ové, works by approximately 100 intergenerational black...
Related Press SAM GILLIAM with Tom McGlynn The Brooklyn Rail : 5 September 2019 At its very core, the intrinsic value of art—which can be disruptive, unpredictable, and at the very least challenging—has tremendous transformative and healing incentives. Whether it occurs at the first encounter or over time, the implications for the viewer, be they formal or emotional, are simultaneously simple and complex, generous...
Related Press Invasion of the Styrofoam monster: the sculpture startling shoppers in Wakefield The Guardian : 19 July 2019 She has commanded the rooftop of New York's Metropolitan Museum, and has exported her distressed sculptures around the world, but only now is the UK waking up to the work of Huma Bhabha. It's not the first time she has been late to the party. 'It took me a long time to get any recognition at all,' says the artist, who was into her 40s before she...
Related Press Betty Woodman: the ceramic artist with a painter’s touch Wallpaper* : 10 July 2019 What do I do now?' the late Betty Woodman – who passed away last year – wondered, at 75, when her 2006 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art had closed.
Related Press Huma Bhabha at Institute of Contemporary Art Art in America : 1 June 2019 A cast bronze sculpture of a commanding figure enthroned like an Egyptian pharaoh greeted visitors to Huma Bhabha's midcareer survey, They Live. The figure's body—originally modeled in chicken wire, polystyrene foam packing blocks, and wood—had a damaged, incomplete look to it, while the bronze gave it an aura of enduring power.
Related Video & Audio An Inside Look at Jonas Wood’s Studio Sotheby's : 26 April 2019 In this video, step into the studio of artist Jonas Wood as he reflects on his move to Los Angeles, the importance of the Hammer Museum and his unique approach to creating art. Jonas Wood and his wife, artist and studio mate Shio Kusaka, have donated their works Shio Butterfly Still Life and (Line 65) to be offered as highlights of Artists for the...
Related Video & Audio Huma Bhabha's Monumental Bronze | The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston ICA Boston : 8 April 2019 See how artist Huma Bhabha created the monumental and surprising bronze sculpture Benaam, on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston March 23 – May 27, 2019, and featured on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018. Benaam is part of the exhibition Huma Bhabha: They Live, the largest survey of the artist's work to date.
Related Video & Audio Huma Bhabha’s "We Come in Peace," Contemporary Art | Met Exhibitions The Met : 17 April 2018 In this video, artist Huma Bhabha and curator Shanay Jhaveri discuss her sculpture We Come in Peace, the 2018 site-specific installation for The Met's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, the sixth in a series of commissions for the outdoor space. Bhabha's work addresses themes of colonialism, war, displacement, and memories of place. Using found...
Related Video & Audio Torbjørn Rødland: A Different Type of Sensibility Louisiana Channel : 5 February 2018 'Of course, this is shallow material, but can I find something of value there?' Meet the Norwegian photographer Torbjørn Rødland, whose photos transcend and defamiliarise their seemingly ordinary motifs.
