Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and close to...
Ocula Report MoMA Expansion: Once the Modern, Always the Modern 29 Nov 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula In the early decades of its existence, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, transformed from a philanthropic project modestly housed in a few rooms of the Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to an alleged operating node in the United States' cultural struggle during the cold war, and one of the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Exhibition view: Dike Blair, The Modern Institute, Osborne Street, Glasgow (16 November 2019–22 February 2020). Courtesy the Artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow. Photo: Patrick Jameson.
The Modern Institute was founded in Glasgow in 1997. The gallery works with 45 internationally established and emerging artists including Martin Boyce, Jim Lambie, Richard Wright, Anne Collier, Cathy Wilkes, Simon Starling, Urs Fischer, Luke Fowler and Nicolas Party.
Working on both public and private shows with the artists worldwide, The Modern Institute hosts a yearly programme across its two spaces in Glasgow, as well as participating in major art fairs. The gallery regularly curates projects internationally and annually publishes artist books and monographs.
Ocula Photolog Frieze New York 2019 6 May 2019 'Building on Frieze's history as a platform for discovery and challenging the traditional art fair format, the eighth edition introduces new curators and collaborations with leading museum directors; including two exhibitions exploring virtual reality and the significance of self-taught artists, and two new sections celebrating Latin American art...
Ocula Insight Thomas Houseago at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong 1 July 2016 Thomas Houseago (b.1972), who was born in Leeds, England, but now lives and works in Los Angeles, is an artist of great energy known for his large scale sculpture. His work is often figurative, conveying both force and frailty through varied materials: carved wood, clay, bronze, steel rods, concrete, and hessian. This year he started showing...
Ocula Report The Best Exhibitions to See in Basel 12 Jun 2015 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula Kunsthalle BaselAnicka Yi7,070,430K of Digital Spit12 June to 16 August, 20157,070,430K of Digital Spit is about forgetting as an aesthetic operation. Framed as a “coda” to Yi’s “last few years of intense artistic production"—specifically, the last five years—this exhibition is as much...
Related Press Monuments to Industry: ‘Analog Histories in Primary Colors’ Berlin Art Link : 15 November 2019 The group exhibition 'analog histories in primary colors' at neugerriemschneider—featuring work by Mike Nelson, Sharon Lockhart and Simon Starling—is a contemplative exploration of the temporal nature of industry. The exhibition reflects on industrial societies that left machinery abandoned and defunct, and the implications of these...
Related Press Urs Fischer: Burning down the house VAULT : 31 May 2019 In March, the National Gallery of Australia will unveil its most recent significant international purchase, Francesco (2017), a sculptural portrait by Urs Fischer of respected Italian art curator Francesco Bonami standing atop a refrigerator, looking intently at an iPhone in his hand. The sculpture is designed to be burnt: wicks are inserted at...
Related Press NGA curator Jaklyn Babington on #askacurator and watching Francesco melt Art Guide Australia : 21 May 2019 In March 2019, the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) acquired Urs Fischer’s four-metre red wax sculpture, Francesco (2017), for their permanent collection. With wicks running through its wax frame, Francesco is designed to be lit and slowly melted like a candle. Documenting Francesco’s decomposition via social media, the NGA recently conducted an...
Related Press The Best Things to See at the 2019 Venice Biennale AnOther : 13 May 2019 The 58th edition of the Venice Biennale, May You Live in Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff–from London’s very own Hayward Gallery–proves to be as interesting as its title promises. Venice is an easy city to get lost in, and it’s easy to see why Proust dubbed the city’s labyrinth of alleyways a network of 'innumerable slender capillary...
Related Video & Audio Studio Talk with Matt Connors and Matt Wolf Walker Art Center : 15 April 2013 What does a director of documentaries learn from a painter, and vice versa? Does it influence how they think about or make their own work? Matt Wolf, one of Filmmaker Magazine's '25 New Faces of Independent Film,' interviews his friend Matt Connors, one of the artists featured in the exhibition Painter Painter.
