Artist Makes Portraits On Glass With Just A Hammer

Simon Berger is an artist who works with a hammer and glass. He has figured out a way to crack the glass so precisely that it creates an image of a face. It’s a delicate process that has taken him three years of trial and error to get right. Sometimes it takes him one try, but other times it can take him five. And an expensive series of mishaps could cost hundreds of Swiss francs. One wrong hit, and he’ll have to start all over again.

The first performance in decades in Beirut's abandoned Grand Theater

Le Grand Théâtre des Mille et Une Nuits is a historical landmark in the center of Beirut. Built in the late 1920s, it played host to international performances, films and was an icon of contemporary Middle Eastern culture. After the 1975 civil war, the building suffered structural damage and was eventually boardd up and forgotten. There was no attempt to revive the theater until the people’s revolution of 2019, which led to its barriers finally being pulled down... Musician: Anthony Sahyoun Soprano: Monà Hallab Cinematographer/editor: Nader Bahsoun Set designer: Whard Sleiman Installation Designer: Aya Atoui

Piiiiissssst, a performance installation by Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem of Beirut based 200 Grs

A series of striking film narratives from the streets of Lebanon mark almost a year to the Beirut port blasts. Rana Haddad of Beirut based studio 200 Grs puts our eye to The Human Lens at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021. One of the most intriguing installations in the Pause series is Piiiiissssst, which packs the struggle for survival and escape into a moving suitcase with protruding human limbs

Mona Hatoum - Hot Spot

Mona Hatoum's first solo exhibition in Finland opens on 7th of September 2016 in Kiasma. In this video, the artist talks about her work, Hot spot. The exhibition is organized by the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in collaboration with Kiasma and Tate Modern, London. The video is made in Centre Pompidou.

JAVIER MARTIN APPROPRIATION OF FRAGMENTS INSTALLATION ALMA AT ASCASO GALLERY MIAMI

"Fragments" Part extracted or preserved, broken or detached , in this case decontextualized and modified for the adoption of new concepts. A language that Javier Martin has been researching and developing for more than a decade, an extension of his "blindness" concept where he explores through the appropriation of advertising images and icons, apparently perfect symbols of a standard of beauty in contemporary society, deconstructing these images to create a contrast between consumption and technology. In appropriation of fragments, Martin uses the space to create a dialogue between the individual fragments and their collective composition that forms the whole, transforming the gallery into a theater filled with fragments, representing the information overload of our time. A society created of fragments of information driven by advertising, technology and social media, questioning the veracity of what we recognize, through the use of appropriation, cutting, alteration and reflection, accentuating their emptiness; including the viewer in the scene and transforming them into a part of the fragments that invite self-reflection. This exhibition is composed of three different body of works, where we can find a journey that shows the interdisciplinarity of the artist. From the installation Alma, part of the permanent collection of the Seoul Museum, which consists of a cube covered with mirrors where the viewer is reflected through the appropriated images stamped on them and illuminated by neon, a material appropriated by Martin who considered it a form of public writing, unassociated with art, and traditionally associated with popular culture. He invites the viewer to step into a room where he has conceptually removed the walls, replacing them with unlimited light and space. Eliminating the barriers society imposes, which fill our minds with banal and insignificant thoughts, keeping us trapped and unable to realize the potential that exists beyond. In contraposition to the installation, the body of work “CUT” first presented by the artist in Shanghai in 2015, a thought-provoking series that challenges our preconceptions about the power of celebrity and the way we consume media. Creating iconic hand-cut photographs, technique inspired by The Chinese tradition of paper cutting, giving importance to the use of the negative space and the contraposition between wholeness and emptiness.

Hassan Hajjaj at Barakat Contemporary

The Art Collection of David Bowie

David Bowie’s music has inspired people all over the world, but what inspired David Bowie?

Ana Montiel | INITIATION

OMR presents INITIATION, a 3 stage evolutionary exhibition by Ana Montiel as her first solo show with the gallery. An extensive overlaying of pigments covers the gallery’s exhibition space like an expansive wave that irradiates from the artworks of this project. This clear imprint of the work that Ana Montiel (Spain, 1981) has been realizing over the past few weeks, beyond accentuating the immersive character of her painting style, turns the viewer into a witness of her exhaustive production process. With this gesture, the artist’s habitual hermeticism she tends to work with from her studio is vulnerated, raising a series of underlying topics in her work that have not yet been posted in such an open manner. The project is divided into 3 stages, each lasting one month: Departure, Limbo, and Transfiguration. The three distinct phases allude to Joseph Campbell’s hero myth: The hero departs toward a new adventure, its initiation, and finally, the hero’s return to their village as a transformed being and the conflict this entails. This archetypical structure is shared in multiple cultures’ narratives and seized by Montiel to explore her own journey. An initiatory journey tangled with deep thresholds and existential questions. The search for the sublime merges with a partial understanding of psychedelics, botanical studies, sexuality, the cosmos, science, shamanism, paganism, love, or nostalgia for a nomadic past. The artist works on the idea of myth under a Jungian tradition: as a psychic phenomenon that reveals the soul’s nature. INITIATION reminds us that we are in continuous transformation, praising and magnifying it through the use of symbols and perceptual stimuli. It helps us question what we know and to stop denying other kinds of wisdom. To open ourselves up to other possibilities of being without acting condescendingly toward what we do not understand, what we do not want to see or are terrified to accept. In a perpetual search, Ana Montiel will continue working in OMR’s exhibition space throughout the 3 stages, fading all traces of their beginning or end. In constant recalibration, mimicking the Earth’s magnetic poles. The artist visualizes her journey through a misty walk as a circular river, which its grooves generously widen at each turn.

YOSHITOMO NARA // Retrospective Highlights

Yoshitomo Nara is among the most beloved and globally recognized Japanese artists of his generation. Spanning 36 years of his practice from 1984 to the present, this international retrospective gathers over 100 major paintings, sculptures, and installations as well as 700 works on paper. In this short video curator Mika Yoshitake shares a few highlights of the exhibition as well as excerpts from her July 2020 conversation with the artist. Nara shares the story of his working process, his inspirations, his work as a catalyst for communication and shared interests, and the unanticipated inclusion of a new painting created during the pandemic that reflects a new artistic direction.

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence

As collateral event of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini shows the exhibition Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence. Curated by Christophe Leribault, Kehinde Wiley presents a new body of work in which he sheds light on the brutalities of American and global colonial pasts using the language of the fallen hero. Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence is curated by Christophe Leribault, organized by the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and supported by Templon. Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence / Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (Italy). April 24, 2022.

Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes, 2018–19

The largest US museum survey of this pioneering artist to date, "Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes" features more than thirty large-scale paintings that reveal the artist’s considerable influence in the field of contemporary art. Charline von Heyl (German, b. Mainz, 1960) studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and participated in the Cologne art scene in the 1980s before moving to New York in 1995. Her work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, and is in collections around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. She was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2014 and has been awarded residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Chinati Foundation. Organized in collaboration with the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, this major multinational exhibition highlights the artist’s groundbreaking artistic output since 2005, including recent works that point to new developments in her constantly evolving practice.

Julian Schnabel in in the Course of Seven Days

An intimate portrait of the controversial artist and film director, Julian Schnabel, whose hybrid approach to painting keeps him at the forefront of the contemporary art scene.