Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
GALERIE GMURZYNSKA is an international art gallery with locations in Zurich, Zug and St. Moritz, Switzerland, that specializes in modern and contemporary art as well as Russian avant-garde.
The gallery was founded in 1965 in Cologne, Germany by Antonina Gmurzynska. From the beginning, the gallery was interested in organising exhibitions that had a documentary character both through the choice of themes and through its publications.
In 1996 Mathias Rastorfer became a partner of both extensions of the gallery, having been with it since 1991 when he left his position as Associate Director at Pace Gallery in New York. Under his influence and in addition to the gallery’s traditional repertoire, the work of contemporary artists such as Donald Judd, Louise Nevelson and Yves Klein amongst others, were incorporated. Ten years later the gallery opened its third branch in St. Moritz at Via Serlas, in 2003.
Forty years after its establishment, Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer relocated the gallery from Cologne to its new flagship location in Zurich’s Paradeplatz in 2005. The building that currently houses the gallery dates back to 1857 and it is the same building in which the Dada movement was founded in 1917. The first exhibition in Zurich was a solo exhibition by Alexander Calder entitled, The Modernist, that was thoroughly endorsed by the Calder Foundation, who described it is as, 'rare to experience a presentation of this quality outside of a museum'. As with each exhibition at the gallery the show featured a fully illustrated catalogue with important essays.
Galerie Gmurzynska continues to present unique exhibitions that are both historically well researched and scientifically documented. It also continues to work with leading art historians as well as collaborating with museums on exhibitions and for the enlargement of their permanent collections. Additionally, it currently participates in several art fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze Masters in London, Salon in New York and Art Basel, Switzerland. In the past it has taken part in FIAC, Abu Dhabi and PAD New York.
Both Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer were awarded the Chevalier des Art et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. Krystyna Gmurzynska was the first foreigner to receive the merit for special achievements by Michael Shvydkoy, the Russian Minister of Culture, recognising her 'important contribution to scientific research, and for the organisation of exhibitions in the field of Russian art of the 20th century.'
ChristoThe Museum of Modern Art Wrapped, 1968 Pencil, paint and two photographs by Ferdinand Boesch, mounted on board
ChristoFour Store Fronts Corner, 1964-65 (Parts IV, III, II and I), 1964–1965 Galvanized metal, clear and coloured Plexiglas, Masonite, aluminium, fabric, and electric light
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Miami Beach 2018 6 December 2018 'This year, over 200 of the world's leading international Modern and contemporary art galleries display artworks by over 4,000 artists, including paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, film, video, and digital art.' –Art Basel in Miami Beach (6–9 December 2018).
Ocula Photolog FIAC Paris 2018 19 October 2018 'For the 2018 selection, held in Paris from 18 to 21 October, FIAC brought together 195 galleries from 27 countries in the nave and exhibition rooms of the Grand Palais. The fair presented the finest examples of artistic creation since the turn of the twentieth century; modern masters through to the latest trends, notably represented in the...
Ocula Report A Journey That Wasn’t at The Broad, Los Angeles 29 Sep 2018 : Jareh Das for Ocula A Journey That Wasn't showcases 55 artworks from the permanent collection of The Broad in Los Angeles, some of which are on view for the first time (30 June 2018–10 February 2019). Located in the museum's first-floor galleries and curated by Ed Schad and Sarah Loyer (both curators at The Broad), the show explores how artists have dealt with...
Ocula Photolog Art Basel 2018 15 June 2018 'The anchor of Art Basel's show is its Galleries sector. Art Basel 2018 edition welcomes 16 galleries that join the fair for the first time, further rejuvenating the show and giving younger galleries the opportunity to present their program alongside today's leading established galleries.' –Art Basel (14–17 June 2018).
Related Press Yves Klein artworks electrify Blenheim Palace’s baroque interiors Wallpaper* : 23 July 2018 He’s a household name yet ‘most people do not know anything about Yves Klein’, says Daniel Moquay, director of the late French artist’s estate, and husband of Klein’s widow, Rotraut. Moquay has helped to coordinate an exhibition on Klein – who would have been 90 this year – taking place in the spectacular settings of Blenheim Palace.
Related Press Christo: Alone but undaunted The Art Newspaper : 18 June 2018 The Art Newspaper: The Serpentine Mastaba is your first major sculpture in the UK. What is so special about this form?Christo: Mastaba is an old word coming from the first urban civilisation 7,000 years ago, when people moved from the countryside to mud houses in Mesopotamia, which today is Iraq. When for the first time archaeologists discovered...
Related Press Artist Christo on escaping Stalinism and his new floating Serpentine sculpture The London Evening Standard : 12 June 2018 Christo has been working with barrels since the start of his career, and many of his early works using them will appear in the Serpentine Gallery exhibition accompanying The Mastaba: 'retracing all that story,' as Christo puts it. In 1958, he was wrapping and stacking them and eventually he started filling rooms in galleries. The most famous of...
Related Press An Extensive Overview of Six Decades of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Career at Galerie Gmurzynska Arte Fuse : 5 June 2018 Galerie Gmurzynska is proudly presenting for the first time in Zurich in both gallery spaces an extensive selection of sculpture, drawings, photographs and archival material, with 27 works in total, celebrating and documenting Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s extraordinary career, stretching from their first seminal projects realized after relocating to...
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