In his short films and visual devices, Pierrick Sorin makes fun of human existence and artistic creation. In his films he is often the only actor (and he has also starred in two feature films). Since 2006, Pierrick Sorin dedicates himself to the staging of performances, opera in particular. With his “Théâtres Optiques”, he blends new media and the traditional diorama. In these miniature stage sets he magically appears as small hologram.

Pierrick Sorin was born in 1960 in Nantes, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nantes and received his Diplôme national supérieur d’expression plastique in 1988. In 2010, the culture center Lieu Unique in Nantes organized his first major retrospective. The exhibition at Galerie Albert Benamou runs until October 21, 2011.

Pierrick Sorin, solo exhibition at Galerie Albert Benamou. Interview with Pierrick Sorin, September 22, 2011. Video by VTV correspondent Christophe Ecoffet.

Sonar is a pioneering festival that is unique in terms of its format and content: a leading international benchmark thanks to a carefully assembled range of culture that combines entertainment with artistry, the avant garde and experimentation, featuring the most consolidated artists and trends in electronic music and their interactions and hybridisations with other genres. In Barcelona, Sonar’s artistic programme is divided between the activities at Sonar by Day (concerts, showcases, professional zone, exhibition area), the keynote of which is the search for new talent, and the major shows at Sonar by Night, which presents the leading names on the international music landscape. Each year, the festival also features a series of parallel events in cultural venues in the city such as the Auditori (the Barcelona main music Auditorium) or Cosmocaixa (Barcelona’s Science Museum), and occasional collaborations with other main city events (such as the Summer festival’s GREC in 2010). Sonar Barcelona 2011 will take place on 16, 17 and 18 June.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

Currently, if you walk into the big hall of Grand Palais in Paris, you are not seeing the iron construction, instead you are caught in a huge whale. The visitor enters a walk in hose with three gigantic, spherical convexities. It is yet another sculpture of Anish Kapoor. The London based, in India born, artists was chosen as the leading artist for the fourth Monumenta in Paris. He is in line with Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra and Christian Boltanski. The red-purple of the thin membrane fogs the view of the visitor and blurs the depth. The piece is called “Leviathan” and it relates to the title “Monumenta” very well and commensurate with the architecture surrounding.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

London’s Somerset House could not have arranged a more contemporary public exhibition than the one on display since beginning of this week. Ai Weiwei’s work is being honoured as the first ever to go on display in the historic courtyard of the institution. It is also the first major outdoor public sculpture installation by the artist in London. The monumental installation comprises 12 bronze animal heads, re-creations of the traditional Chinese zodiac sculptures which once adorned the fountain of Yuanming Yuan, an imperial retreat in Beijing.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

Adel Abdessemed, Habibi,
2003, Resin, fiberglass, polystyrene, and airplane engine turbine, 1700cm
© Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York

Opening:
Tuesday 21st September 18:30 – 20:00

Adel Abdessemed: Silent Warriors
Curated by: Ziba Ardalan
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art
14 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW
United Kingdom

March 11-August 30, 2010

This spring, Neue Galerie New York presents “Otto Dix,” the first solo museum exhibition of works by this major German artist ever held in North America. Organized by Olaf Peters, Professor of Modern Art History and Art Theory at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, the show will open at the Neue Galerie, then travel to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

More than almost any other German painter, Otto Dix (1891-1969) and his works have profoundly influenced the popular notion of the Weimar Republic. His paintings were among the most graphic visual representatives of  that period, exposing with unsparing and wicked wit the instability and contradictions of the time.

The exhibition includes more than 100 masterpieces by Otto Dix, and addresses four themes. The first is Dix’s traumatic experiences as a soldier in World War I. The second is portraiture, a genre at which the artist excelled. The third is sexuality, a key theme in the Dix oeuvre. The fourth is religious and allegorical painting. The show includes the work that Dix is best know for—paintings from the so-called “golden Weimar years”—but to contextualize them, it also includes Dix’s work from the early 1920s, as well as his later work, produced as veiled protest against the Third Reich.

If you are in New York between now and 7 May you should take a day and visit the MoMA to see William Kentridge’s great exhibition called: Five Themes.

The South-African born artist is famous for his compositions of poetical elements with policital themes. With a range of animated short movies, the museum also shows other drawings, sketches, collages, prints as well as performances that gives a great retrospective on Kentridge’s Œuvre of the last 30 years.

Visit MoMAs homepage

Watch more movies from Kentridge

If you are around Zurich, Switzerland in the next few weeks, you should visit the Gallery of Andrea Caratsch to see some of Damien Hirst’s impressive pieces, including the famous sharks moulded in formalin.

In the 90ties, Damien Hirst was the star amongst the young British artists, with his scandalous pieces that made him to one of the high remunerated living artists on the world.

more info for this exhibition

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.21360