Ocula Conversation Sandrine Colard on the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest Francophone nation in Africa with vast resources and nearly 80 million inhabitants, is a place where commodities play a vital role in the national economy and the country's significance on the world stage. This is the context from which the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale (24 October–24 November...
Ocula Report From 20 to 21 July 2019, Artspace Sydney held a two-day symposium that brought artists in conversation with leading curators, writers, activists, academics, diplomats, and journalists from across Asia. The symposium was the final chapter of the 52 ARTISTS 52 ACTIONS exhibition, publication, website, and Instagram project. Instigated and...
Ocula News We Are Our Infrastructure, Argues Newly Announced Shanghai Biennale Chief Curator 13 December 2019 The Power Station of Art will make a fitting location for Andrés Jaque, whose past projects expose the politics concealed by buried pipes and managed cables. Spanish architect, writer, and curator Andrés Jaque has been named the chief curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, which will take place at the Power Station of Art (PSA) from 13 November...
Ocula Insight 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...
Elger Esser, born 1967 in Stuttgart, Germany and raised in Rome, is a graduate of the‚ Becher class‘ of the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie. However one can not detect the formal strictness of Bernd Becher in Essers landscape and architectural photography. They seem to be more related to the earliest photography in their romantic static’s.
Read MoreTheses in faded yellow dipped landscapes, mostly taken in France and Italy, are in strange kind of transition; all the details are correct, nothing has been retouched, but still everything seems to be unreal and remote. Just as after a dream, there remain no concrete landscapes but vague impressions and memories of travelling through peaceful scenes, especially river landscapes and coastal regions. Essers merging picture zones of water, sand, snow and clouds create their un-insistent suction by extruding mainly one thing: calmness.
Related Press Elger Esser: ‘Beauty is not important; it’s a logical result in my opinion’ Studio International : 30 May 2017 For his first solo exhibition in a public institution in the UK, Elger Esser (b1967) presented a new body of photographic pieces, entitled Morgenland (Morning land), at Parasol Unit, London. The works in the show, which has just ended, document his visits to Lebanon, Egypt and Israel from 2004 to 2015. But rather than simply depicting the vast...
