IDW - Design Weekend 2009

The format of the IDW-design weekend '09 is divided in two core souls linked by a common topic, leitmotif of the whole event: "Mediterranean Design between present and future".

IDW - Design Weekend 2009

Robots From Motion to Emotion?

Robots
From Motion to Emotion?

24.6. – 4.10.2009

Robots are ever-present in our society. The film industry and the media have made the theme very topical. However, our knowledge and image of robots appear to range widely between reality and science fiction. In general robots either mean industrial machines, film figures such as Terminator or toys. What they have in common is the idea that fascination for technical progress is accompanied by a diffuse fear of the soulless perfection of the machine. The exhibition is mainly concerned with the question of how close reality has now moved to fiction. Starting with its historical roots, it aims to give an overview of the use of robots in a social but also a design context and show what robots will really be able to do in the future. On show are robots from the various fields of household, research, industry and the military as well as toys.

museum of design zurich

Holbein to Tillmans

Approximately two hundred works from the Kunstmuseum Basel, together with others from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation and private collections, have left their familiar surroundings for a time and found a home at Schaulager.
A large store of images, each of which was chosen for its own sake – hand selected, explicitly desired, considered particularly beautiful, particularly attractive or particularly mysterious.

Released from the museum’s ordering system, these images can be seen in a different light at Schaulager. Some of them have been preserved for the exhibition as still unpolished raw material, only roughly sorted. Spread out on a monumental wall, the pictures hang next to, beneath or above one another, as an enticing treasure for the imagination. This wall provides the framework for the interior spaces of the exhibition.
The other, larger group of resettled works are installed as a coherent installation in these interior spaces. The connections are, however, not produced based on the model of a classical museum hanging. Rather, the result was a different, new narrative, or better: an essay of pictures. It evolved, image by image, by means of diverse and unexpected relationships and numerous dialogues that ensued between the works, until finally the essay ‘Holbein to Tillmans’ took shape.

Hanging at the entrance to the exhibition is the monumental light box ‘Allegory of Folly’ by the Canadian artist Rodney Graham. Sitting on a mechanical horse once used to train jockeys is a man, the artist himself, dressed in old-fashioned clothing: a coat with fur trim. He is sitting backwards on the horse and engrossed in reading a thick book. The image alludes to a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger depicting Erasmus of Rotterdam, the author of the famous treatise ‘Praise of Folly’ as a half-length figure in profile. ‘Allegory of Folly’ acts as a kind of guide to the exhibition. The juxtaposition of a work from the sixteenth century and a large-format black and white photograph from 2005 demonstrates exemplarily that old does not necessarily mean past; rather, an old painting seen with today’s eyes can suddenly become contemporary again. The figure of the man sitting backwards on a horse demonstrates that looking backwards is part of looking forwards, that what will come is connected to what was. And we stand in the middle of it all, contemplating the moment and absorbed by the present, just as the reading figure shows.

Schaulager | Exhibition | Holbein to Tillmans

Art Basel news

Art Basel: comienza la feria de arte contemporàneo | Arte Spain

Art 40 Basel 2009 / Art Unlimited Preview / Part 1/2 | VernissageTV art tv

Cuatro décadas a la vanguardia del arte | Cultura | elmundo.es

20minutes.ch - Brad Pitt s’offre une toile a' un million de francs - People

Diciassette artisti sul palco ArtBasel, apertura "teatrale" - Recensioni - Arte - Repubblica.it

Art Basel, a spasso tra le opere con Brad - LASTAMPA.it

Ticinonews - Radio3iii - Teleticino - Estero - Basilea: inaugurata oggi la quarantesima edizione della fiera d'arte

Alle Preisträger der Swiss Art Awards - Kultur: Diverses - bernerzeitung.ch

Ausstellungen Rezensionen: Art Basel: So viel war noch nie - Badische-Zeitung.de

Basel, l’arte? sta bene| Liguria | cultura| Il SecoloXIX

Art Basel in tijden van crisis | Kunst

Tim Maguire

Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to announce its third exhibition of new paintings by Australian artist Tim Maguire.

In this latest body of work, Maguire continues his practice of combining digital image-making techniques with a painterly process to create large-scale oil paintings. Some of Maguire's subject matter remains familiar—tight angles of poppies, stems and brilliantly blue sky—as does his technique, using a three-color separation of a single photograph to create his cropped floral paintings.

The rest of the work is a departure from the plant life. Lush, thriving gardens are replaced by winter cityscapes of falling snow. Yet Maguire does not record this mundane imagery as it appears to the naked eye. Instead, the artist builds upon his original process, by introducing elements of refracted light and chance using three photographs, each shot a second apart and then realigned. Any moving elements, such as snowflakes, become pure, refracted color, much the same way as light moves through a prism. Maguire then paints the scene, including these newly reconfigured, candy-colored snowflakes, looking like so many spilled gumdrops falling from the sky.

The artist employs his signature method of applying successive layers of paint to the canvas. Maguire mirrors the basic printing process, using only cyan, magenta and yellow, while splashing solvent along the way to reveal the underlying layers. The smooth surface of the finished works creates a physical relationship with the viewer, forcing one to step away from the painting, then back again. From afar, these large-scale paintings almost look like mechanically reproduced photographs, yet upon closer inspection the images become abstract, more about Maguire’s shapes, color and process than the subject matter at hand.

Tim Maguire has exhibited extensively in Europe and Australia for more than two decades, including a 2008 solo show at Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, UK. His work is held by virtually every Australian museum and is included in major public and private collections throughout Europe. The artist lives and works in London.

VON LINTEL GALLERY - NEW YORK