Galerie Nagel Draxler

Irmgard Wiese
7.Juli 1943-25. Juli 2024
R.I.P
Irmgard was a close friend and supporter of the gallery from the early years on. She was a cofounder of INIT Kunsthalle Berlin, and traveled to all the important art events with us.
Over the years she put together a great collection with her husband Peter Wiese.

50 Years | 50 Photographs
SELECTED BY WILHELM SCHÜRMANN
 
APR 26 — DEC 20, 2024
 
An extraordinary exhibition with extraordinary works at
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„On the occasion of the Berlin Gallery Weekend, Kicken Berlin is dedicating the exhibition “50 Years | 50 Photographs” to mark the gallery’s 50th anniversary. Selected by Wilhelm Schürmann - collector, photographer and, in 1974, the gallery’s founding partner together with Rudolf Kicken (†2014) - the exhibition presents works from 50 years of gallery history in Aachen, Cologne and Berlin.
 
In 1974, Kicken and Schürmann opened the first show at the „Lichttropfen“ (Drops of Light) gallery in Aachen, one of the first galleries in Europe to specialize in the medium of photography. (…) Attending art fairs such as Art Basel or Art Cologne – Cologne being the location of Galerie Rudolf Kicken since 1979 – was an important contribution. The “photo family” was in constant dialogue: it was Bernd Becher for example who recommended to discuss American color photography. (…) Altogether it was an important concern for Kicken and Schürmann to reestablish masters of the photographic avantgarde who had fallen into oblivion onto the open stage. Cooperations with museums and collections such as Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn or Hannover-based Kestner-Gesellschaft helped to generate public awareness for the photography of the Bauhaus or artists like Werner Mantz or Umbo.“

- excerpt from the exhibition text

Images:
1.ROBERT FRANK: „Street Line, New York City”, 1951 
2. WILHELM SCHÜRMANN : „Irland (Dublin)“, 1973
3. RALPH GIBSON: „Untitled, from the series ‚Deja-vu‘“, 1973
4.  HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: „Madrid, Spain“, 1933
5. ED VAN DER ELSKEN: „Self-portrait with Ata Kando“, Paris, 1952
6-9. Exhibition view: „50 Years | 50 Photographs”, KICKEN BERLIN, 2024
 

Image Credits:
1. © June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation
2. © Wilhelm Schürmann
3. © Ralph Gibson
4. © 2024 Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
5. Nederlands Fotomuseum © Ed van der Elsken
6-9. Kicken Berlin

Last days: Group Exhibition „There is no future like no future“ with Joseph Zehrer at
On view until August 3, 2024.

Image:1) Joseph Zehrer „Kino für 21 Stühle“, 1999/2024
Image 2: Joseph Zehrer „projection of three live streams“, (Pro7, Sat-1, RTL )
Image 3: Joseph Zehrer „Straub-Huillet: Cézanne - in conversation with
Joachim Gasquet“, 10:00 mins, 1990

courtesy of Rinde am Rhein, Düsseldorf.

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Joseph Zehrer (*1954 in Perbing, Bavaria) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He lives and works in Cologne. His works are represented in international collections such as the Museum Ludwig (Cologne) and the mumok (Vienna). His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at Galerie Christine Mayer (Munich), Galerie Nagel Draxler (Berlin) and Kunstverein Leverkusen. In addition, his works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions, for example at Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland), Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (Liechtenstein), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany) or Künstlerhaus Graz (Austria)

Mark Dion & Alexis Rockman
Journey to Nature‘s Underworld, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY
On view until January 5, 2025

(…) „Journey to Nature‘s Underworld“ invites visitors on a voyage of discovery into the depths of our threatened natural world through large-scale painted and sculptural works that will occupy the Tang‘s two largest galleries. Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman have, for decades, been addressing humankind‘s strained relationship with the environment and its vast ecological consequences.
(…) The exhibition is the first two-person show of these artists. Together, they have embarked on tropical expeditions, published dialogues, and coedited „Concrete Jungle“, the pioneering 1996 book about anthropogenic ecosystems. Thus, „Journey to Nature’s Underworld“ is not just evidence of their shared psyche, it is also a manifestation of a long and fruitful friendship (Excerpt from the press release)

Images:
1. Mark Dion
Department of Tropical Research-Jungle Station, 2017
2. Mark Dion, Concerning the Elephant Bird, 2016
3. Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman (with Aaron Delehanty, Loud Cow Studio)
American Landscape, 2022
4.Mark Dion, Cabinet of Marine Debris, 2014

Credits:
1. Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and American Federation of Arts
2. Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and American Federation of Arts
3. Courtesy the artists and American Federation of Arts
4. Margulies Collection, Miami Courtesy American Federation of Arts

Ein Münchner im Himmel

Kader Attia
Descent into Paradise, MO.CO, Montpellier
On view until 22 September, 2024.

In conjunction with the exhibition Being Mediterranean, an exploration of contemporary art from around the Mediterranean to be held at MO.CO. Panacée, the MO.CO. is devoting a monographic exhibition to Kader Attia, one of the most prominent French artists on the international scene.

For his exhibition Descent into Paradise, Kader Attia drew inspiration from the very geography of the MO.CO., its journey from top to bottom, from the sky to the earth and its depths, offering a reflection on reparation and transcendence that questions the notion of verticality as a vital and spiritual movement. Just as the wounds of the past irrigate the fractures of the present and juxtapose eras in a back-and-forth movement, spirituality enables us to escape the grip of History. Like the rain that ravages and transforms, is there not an ascension at play in a downward flow ? While Kader Attia’s works have strong philosophical and political implications, Descent into Paradise will also bear witness to the poetic and aesthetic concerns of an artist whose research and thinking are rooted in a practice where form and content merge into a language of their own.

Alongside some of the artist’s major works, the exhibition will feature a number of new artworks, including a brand-new immersive installation consisting of a film shot in northern Thailand and a rainstick installation created for MO.CO.

Curator : Numa Hambursin

- excerpt from the exhibition text

Images 1-7: © Kader Attia. Adagp, Paris, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Laurent Lecat
1: Kader Attia, Sans titre, 2023
2: Kader Attia, Rochers Carrés, 2008
3: Kader Attia, Halam Tawaaf, 2008
4:Exhibition view, “Descent into Paradise”.MO.CO., Montpellier, 2024.
5: Kader Attia, La Mer Morte, 2015
6: Kader Attia, Mirrors and Masks, 2024
7: Kader Attia, Oil and Sugar #2, 2007

Image 8-10: Galerie Nagel Draxler
8: Kader Attia, On Silence, 2021
9:Kader Attia, Culture, Another Nature Repaired, 2024
10: Intifada: The Endless Rhizomes of Revolution, 2016

“SURVIVAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY”
With Leon Kahane
on view until November 5, 2024.
, Hamburg.
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The exhibition project SURVIVAL IN THE 21st CENTURY explores the foundations of life in the age of the polycrisis. Developed by Georg Diez and Nicolaus Schafhausen in close cooperation with the Deichtorhallen, the exhibition incorporates elementary questions of ecology, technology and spirituality. The "School of Survival" expands the about 40 international artistic positions and turns the exhibition venue into a learning space for the future.

SURVIVAL IN THE 21st CENTURY focuses on fundamental questions of human existence and reflects on the radical disruptions we are facing: climate change, the digital revolution, growing injustice on a national and global scale, the crisis of democracy and the question of community. The elaborate exhibition with numerous multimedia installations and an exhibition architecture designed by Bundschuh Architekten demonstrates how cultural survival requires new cultural practices.
The exhibition aims to make world concepts accessible beyond artistic practice. It is a social offer to learn together and from each other as a constructive public - in workshops, lectures and continuously through the seminar-like educational program of the "School of Survival" also in the city. The exhibition house will become a kind of school for the new century, which sees and embraces the changes in education and learning as essential. Art is the medium, survival is the goal.

Curators: Georg Diez and Nicolaus Schafhausen
Research Curators: Lena Baumgartner und Frances Fürst
Image 2: Installation views, © Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Foto: Henning Rogge.
Images 1, 3-7: Installation view, Foto: Leon Kahane

25/05 - 24/08/2024
Lone Haugaard Madsen
Raum #415 - K**b 2024

An exhibition by Lone Haugaard Madsen is like an expressive gathering of colour, language, and form, both familiar and mysterious. With her assemblage of paintings and sculptures, she shapes an unexpected visual conversation, like a déjà-vu never witnessed before – or a “jamais-vu”, in her own words. Canvases with translucent overlays of magenta red, rusty orange, crimson, and mud grey appear weightless and uncannily beautiful. Objects, like unexpected guests, interact with these paintings consolidating their presence in the room. These provocative and seductive sculptures made from discarded workshop components move in and out of the paintings, conferring them with figurative agency. Once you’ve looked through the unique lens of Madsen’s paintings, nothing seems quite like before. Her exceptional ability to generate a lingering repertoire of sentient images confirms her position as the most significant Danish painter and artist of her generation. (…) For this exhibition at Nagel Draxler, Madsen has retrieved core elements from her past work, such as the infamous Doorstopper first shown at Secession in Vienna in 2006, a wooden wedge that functioned to let air in, and institutional pressure out. A new sculpture made from twisted yarn partially caged by vertical mesh stands in a weathered concrete block near a steel pole that spouts deflated red balloons and multicoloured steamers. Geometric mouldings discarded from bronze-casting are painted a virulent green, shot through with chrome yellow. Positioned next to the canvases, these metallic forms combine painting and sculpture and in their alchemical metamorphosis, appear as light as a leaf. In the foundries and workshops Madsen searches for the understatements of production that fuel her ascetic methodology. (Excerpt from the press realese by Dr. Clémentine Deliss)

Images:
1, 2, 4, 6 - 8: Exhibition views: Lone Haugaard Madsen Raum #415 - K**b, 2024
3. Raum #415 - K**b, 10
5: Raum #415 - K**b, 19

Credits: Simon Vogel

May 15–August 3, 2024
Main Gallery
Curator: Gaëlle Morel

This exhibition, comprising signature series along with new works, celebrates the career of Canadian artist Ken Lum, winner of the 2023 Scotiabank Photography Award. Lum is internationally known for his conceptualist and often humorous approach, which draws on methods from cultural and social studies, semiology, psychoanalysis, and political philosophy. The artist’s impactful practice utilizes photography to investigate the relationship between language and representation in the public space. By doing so, Lum critically challenges the social hierarchies and dominant narratives related to identity, class, and gender that are always at play in capitalist and postcolonial societies.



Images: Scotiabank Photography Award: Ken Lum (installation views)
Credits: Larissa Issler, The Image Centre, 2024

Art fairs in the 1990s

A look into our archive: „Art Cologne“ and „Unfair“ at the beginning of the 90s.

1. Unfair 1992, BALLONI Hallen, Ehrenfeldgürtel, Cologne, fLTR: Michael Janssen, Christian Nagel, Heike Kempkes, Tanja Grunert
2. Unfair 1993, Citibank at Rudolfplatz, Cologne
3. Unfair 1993 with Jutta Koether
4. Unfair 1993, David Zwirner at his booth with a solo presentation by Jason Rhoades
5. Unfair 1993, Christian Philipp Müller and Diethelm Stoller with students from Lüneburg at his solo booth at Galerie Christian Nagel
6. Unfair 1993, Stuart Regen in front of a piece by Jack Pierson
7. Unfair 1993, Work by Thomas Locher at his solo booth at Grunert Janssen
8. Unfair 1993, Inge Rodenstock and Nina Borgmann at Petzel Borgmann booth
9. Art Cologne 1991, Galerie Christian Nagel booth
10. Art Cologne 1991, Cosima von Bonin in front of two photo works by Hans-Jörg Mayer and Clegg&Guttmann and a lamp sculpture by Cosima von Bonin at Galerie Christian Nagel booth

All photos by Andrea Stappert

Sneak Preview: We are extremely proud to present: Lone Haugaard Madsen: Raum #415 - K**b 2024 - opening Sat May 25.
One of the most powerful positions of contemporary art in Scandinavia. Thank you Lone!

This year our gallery celebrates 30 years of participation in Art Basel in Basel!
Sneak preview: Stefan Müller, straight from the studio…

Sven Johne : „Freie Welt“, on view at the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte (HBPG) in Potsdam until 03.11.2024johnekultur.geschichte

Sven Johne's solo exhibition „Freie Welt" in Potsdam focuses on the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of the Western Group of Forces (WGT) from Brandenburg.
With the film „Das sowjetische Hauptquartier" (2023), Johne explores the emotional history of the transformation period in the early 1990s, addressing the voids left by the withdrawal and the transition to a "free world."
„Heilpflanzen im Todesstreifen“ (2021), a 25-part photo series was created during a 1,400-kilometer-long hike along the former inner-German border, which he completed with his children and their friends from south to north.
Nature has taken the first step in the transgenerational healing process alongside the children: they jumped around naturally where Sven Johnes stepfather used to work as a border guard with "shoot-to-kill orders"; the wild mallow, the rosehip, the tansy, and the dandelion have already reclaimed the death strip, thus accelerating the healing process.
Curated by Dr. Katalin Krasznahorkai, Curatorial Director, Brandenburg Society for Culture and History.

Images:
1. Sven Johne in front of the exhibition banner in Potsdam, 2024
2-3. Filmstills of „Das sowjetische Hauptquartier“, 2023
4. Installation view „Freie Welt“, HBPG 2024
5-6. Detail view of Sven Johne „Heilpflanzen im Todesstreifen"

Credits: © sevensmaltry / benjamin maltry

We are happy to share
GHAREM STUDIO presents:
The Gracefulness of Daily Life
at Zidoun Gallery Dubai
organized by Suzy Sikorski, Founder of Mid East Art
Private Opening: 10 may 2024 Exhibition: 11 may 2024 — 8 June 2024 Open Tuesday to Friday 11am to 6pm
Saturday 11am to 5pm

© all images courtesy the artists

The show is dedicated to emerging and established artists from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, coming out of Gharem Studio, Riyadh – a creative arts residency linked to some of the most well-known talent of the country. In this show, photography, printmaking, video, installation and sculpture on display reflect the ongoing documentations, observations, and exchanges reflected across generations and communities of the country, and both their local and international responses.

Gharem Studio is a non-profit arts organization dedicated to encouraging individual thought and self-expression with artists across the region. Founded in 2013, the studio offers residencies within a purpose-built studio in Riyadh, as well as art education, career guidance, resources, equipment, promotion and opportunities for exhibitions both in the Middle East and internationally.

Mid East Art is a digital storytelling platform of art and culture of the Middle East region dedicated to arts coverage and bespoke curated events. Founded and run by Suzy Sikorski, the platform is an archival reference analyzing Middle Eastern art history while also readdressing global art within the context of the region. Storytelling is driven by in-person public and private sessions focused on interactive arts education; this includes exhibitions, performance re-enactments, manifesto readings, exhibition walkthroughs, artist studio visits and independent focus groups.






alanbari

03/05/2024 – 24/08/2024
Halla Bint Khalid
to have and to hold

in juxtaposition with excerpts from Martha Rosler’s Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain (ca. 1966–1972)
Galerie Nagel Draxler Munich.

_

Galerie Nagel Draxler is proud to present the first exhibition of Riyadh-based artist Halla Bint Khalid in Germany.

Halla Bint Khalid was born in Saudi Arabia in 1971. She was 8 years old when, on November 20, 1979, militant Islamists occupied the Great Mosque of Mecca and seized many pilgrims aiming at overthrowing the Saud royal dynasty and establishing an end-time theocracy. The Saudi royal family, which had already increasingly legitimized its rule in religious terms since the 1960s, in order to ideologically counter both Nasser’s Arab nationalism and communism, further intensified its religious policy as a result of the terrorist act. Religious Sharia regulations were tightened and more strictly controlled, Islamic preachers and Wahhabi religious scholars gained increasing influence.

These pivotal events can be seen as a historical backdrop to the restrictive climate during Halla Bint Khalid’s coming of age and her young adulthood characterized by the desire to become an artist. They are the historical background to the strictly regimented lives of Saudi women of her generation and subsequent generations.

In her famous series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain (ca. 1966–1972), Martha Rosler extracts depictions of womens’ bodies from popular media sources – glossy print ads and men’s magazines – and reassembles them in ways that upend the original messages. Rosler is largely concerned with the external pressures, expectations, and fantasies projected upon women and the exploitation of their labor. With their fragmented materiality, the works expose the glaring commodification of women’s bodies, posed, segmented, and packed like products for consumption; in some, Rosler reconceives images of women meant for male consumption as gestures of defiance and expressions of liberation.

- excerpt from the press release.

Gabi Dziuba & Friends
With , , Hans-Jörg-Mayer, Joseph Zehrer and more.
On view until 26.05.2024 .pforzheim

Gabi Dziuba’s importance as a jewellery artist derives from her sensitively perceiving new trends in the art, music and fashion worlds, and translating them into rigorously inventive jewellery creations. From the start, she has been breaking with the conventions of her craft, seeking to share thoughts and ideas with visual artist, and designing jewellery with them. In staging «Gabi Dziuba & Friends», Pforzheim’s Jewellery Museum devotes a comprehensive exhibition to her, giving an overview of her entire oeuvre and her collaboratively created works for the first time. Her oeuvre is being displayed in dialogue with selected wall pieces, paintings and sculptures created by her artist friends and collaborators. A central piece of the visual artists’ works is the interior of the showroom, designed by Heimo Zobernig and located on bustling Rosa Luxemburg Square in the heart of Berlin, which Gabi Dziuba opened in 2009. It provides the ideal artistic setting for showcasing her jewellery. The exhibition illuminates Gabi Dziuba’s sources of inspiration and narratives in multifaceted ways, displaying a kaleidoscope of documents from renowned jewellery and fashion photographers, including snapshots, sketches and personal notes, as well as music and her Instagram posts. It spans four decades from her early days in Pforzheim up to her latest collaboration with Alexandra Bircken.
The exhibition has been curated by Cornelie Holzach, Vera Gliem, Elisabeth Heine and Stephan Strsembski.

Images: Exhibition views, "Gabi Dziuba & Friends", Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, 2024.
Photo: Winfried Reinhardt.

HEIMO ZOBERNIG & LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY

Exhibition: April 26 – August 31, 2024

Missing for 86 years, the experimental film “ABC in Sound / Tönendes ABC” (1933) by Hungarian artist and Bauhaus educator László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was rediscovered by curators at the British Film Institute in 2019[1]. This film is the starting point for the exhibition “Heimo Zobernig & László Moholy-Nagy”, which opens on April 26th at our Berlin Crypto Kiosk. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Moholy-Nagy Foundation.

Throughout his career, Moholy-Nagy worked across various media. He was a painter, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, industrial designer, typographer – an approach he shares with Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig (*1958). Zobernig is widely known for his intense studies on typography, language, classification systems, and color theory. In his abstract works, he combines elements of Minimalism with expressive brushstrokes, geometry, or typography, all while maintaining a focus on the grid and monochromatic elements.

[...]

_________________

[1] British Film Institute

Images:

1: László Moholy-Nagy: „Construction in Enamel 1,2 and 3“, 2012.
2&3: László Moholy-Nagy: Tönendes ABC / ABC in Sound, 1933 / 2023.
4: Exhibition view: László Moholy-Nagy & Heimo Zobernig
5: Heimo Zobernig: „Untitled“, 2004.
6: Exhibition view
7: Heimo Zobernig „Untitled“, 1985.
8: Heimo Zobernig: „Untitled“, 2016.

Kader Attia: „J’Accuse“, on view at Berlinische Galerie until 19.08.2024

Galerie Nagel Draxler is pround to draw your attention to this outstanding exhibition by Kader Attia.

“J’Accuse” (2016) consisting of 28 sculptures and an eleven-minute excerpt from an anti-war film of the same name by French director Abel Gance (1889–1981) portray ‘gueules cassées’ (broken faces), First World War soldiers who had suffered severe facial disfigurement. Here Attia continues to explore his concept of “repair”, which has been at the centre of his art for many years. In the video of “The Object‘s Interlacing”, Kader Attia builds a dialogue with various experts about the dabte on the topic of restitution of cultural assets violently looted during the colonial era. Together they construct an understanding of restitution as a practice of repair with far broader implications than simply repatriating objects looted from their place of origin. These two pieces by Attia are complemented by selected collages made by Hannah Höch for her iconic series “From an Ethnographic Museum” (1924- 1934) [...]. (Excerpt from the press release)

MIKE KELLEY & JOHN MILLER
Duo Exhibition, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin.
On view until June 22, 2024

Galerie Nagel Draxler is proud to present an exhibition of outstanding works by American artists Mike Kelley and John Miller. The two friends and colleagues, both born in 1954, studied at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and maintained an intensive exchange on topics of art, politics and American popular culture and their roots in the American unconscious until Kelley's death in 2012.

On Mike Kelley's Paintings in Time

Rumor has it that Mike Kelley hated the time between Christmas and New Year because there was no one to distract him from the boredom, and because people were spending time with their families, which is a difficult time for those who don't have a family. This is also the reason why the last of his Paintings in Time, dated December 31, is cut in half. It is the day when life begins again.
John Miller (JMB) (b. 1954 in Cleveland, Ohio, lives and works in New York and Berlin) embodies a singular position in contemporary art, representing a synthesis between a radical critique of representation and a post-conceptual return to the "real". In his extensive and multi-layered oeuvre, John Miller repeatedly counteracts the desires of Western consumer society.(...)
In the 1980s, Miller became notorious for his works that liberally employed a sh*t-brown acrylic paint. The brown paint covered and unified the various objects and materials that constituted his paintings, assemblages, reliefs, and sculptures.(...) (Excerpt from the press release)

Images:
1. Installation view, Galerie Nagel Draxler, 2024
2. Mike Kelley, „Paintings in Time“, 1994
3. John Miller, „Projekt #12“, 2012
4. John Miller, „Incommensurability“, 2015
5. Installation view, Galerie Nagel Draxler, 2024
6. John Miller, „Everything is said #27“, 2009
7. „Paintings in Time“, 1994, detail
8. John Miller, „Everything is said #16“, 2009
Credits:
Simon Vogel

We would like to draw your attention to the group show „Rebel Garden“ featuring the work of Guillaume Bijl among other artists.
From April 13th to September 1st, 2024.

Musea Brugge presents the most urgent art exhibition of the moment: Rebel Garden. What is man's impact on nature, and how does it affect our environment? The ambitious expo breaks out of traditional museum walls and occupies no fewer than three museum sites. Old and contemporary art take a close look at the tumultuous relationship between man and nature and highlight the painful wound that is climate crisis. An exhibition in the context of Triennial Bruges. Rebel Garden and its accompanying extensive public programme broach highly topical themes such as the effects of global warming, the sixth mass extinction and climate activism, man's symbiosis with nature and the relationship between artist and garden. A selection of artworks from our own collection introduces those themes and engages in debate with some recent works and creations. Works from our own collection by Roger Raveel, Emile Claus and Otobong Nkanga, amongst others, are on display, but you can also expect top-notch work by over fifty contemporary artists such as Guillaume Bijl, Christine Ödlund, Giuseppe Penone, Rose Wylie and Per Kristian Nygård, whose garden sculpture is one of the eye-catchers of Rebel Garden on Gruuthuseplein. (…)
Musea Brugge's latest expo is a must-see exhibition that is part of Triennial Bruges. (Excerpt from the website)

Images:
Guillaume Bijl: „The concise history of prehistoric man“, Triennale of Bruce, 2024.

Credits:
Guillaume Bijl

We would like to draw your attention to the group show "Diàlegs insòlits“ with featuring the work of Anna Ridler among other artists.
From April 4, to May 26, 2024

The continuous technological innovations have shaped the world we inhabit, and in recent years, artificial intelligence has experienced exponential growth. Improvements in hardware and access to large datasets have enabled the training of advanced AI models. The open-source nature of many software packages has made it possible for researchers worldwide to contribute to the development of algorithms, democratizing the creation of generative tools. Referring to algorithms as "intelligent" is a common and accepted way to describe their ability to perform complex tasks, but it is crucial to remember that there are fundamental differences between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.

In this context, the exhibition "Unusual Dialogues" aims to help disseminate some of the current computational systems that mimic the human learning process and to promote the idea that AI and humans can cooperate in many areas. The exhibition seeks to generate a space for building relationships, where dialogue is primarily an essential tool for learning. Ultimately, the relationship between AI and humans can be seen as a collaboration to create a future in which both can thrive.

The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the intersection between AI and human experience, while exploring the capacity of these technologies to reinterpret, mimic, and generate new forms of artistic expression. Viewers will be able to experiment with works that incorporate different algorithmic learning systems, allowing them to explore concepts such as various aspects of memory, recall, and recreation from a new perspective. (Press release)
Curated by Pilar Rosado

Images:

1, 2, 5 and 6 Installation views "Diàlegs insòlits“, Roca Umbert, 2024

3 and 4: Anna Ridler "Fall of the House of Usher I", 2017

Credits:

Toni Torillas

Andrea Fraser: "I just don't like eggs!"
On view until February 22, 2025

Curated by Andrea Viliani with Vittoria Pavesi, the exhibition is the first survey solely dedicated to Fraser’s works investigating collectors, collecting, the art market, and the intersections between private and public collections. The project includes works spanning the artist’s overall research, from the late 80s to her recent productions, including a new artwork especially conceived for this
exhibition.
Taken from the script of Fraser’s performance May I Help You?, the title «I just don’t like eggs!» evokes the language and mentality of collecting as an enactment of taste, desire, distinction, possession, categorization, negation, exclusivity, and the exercise of choice as an expression of power.

One of the most radical and influential artists of her generation, Fraser's pioneering work in institutional critique investigates the social, financial, and affective economies of cultural organizations, fields, groups, and individuals. Performatively embodying the data that she generates through her research,
Fraser’s practice is as physical and affective as it is critical and intellectual, working through humor and pathos as well as analysis.[...][Excerpt from the press release]