Art Photos mixed

Cherry blossom trees line a streen in Bonn, Germany | Photo by Andre Distel

The mischievous British artist David Shrigley will be making his presence felt in both London and New York this autumn, with major public art commissions on both sides of the Atlantic. In September, New Yorkers will encounter Shrigley's 17-foot-tall granite Public Art Fund sculpture, entitled Memorial, at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park (a shopping list will be engraved on the surface—sausages, carrots and milk, and possibly “cleaning stuff” will be inscribed on the imposing civic monument).

Meanwhile, the Brighton-based sculptor is due to unveil on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth 29 September his humongous piece, Really Good, showing a hand giving a thumbs up (the thumb is elongated, looking particularly absurd).


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“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” famously wrote the arts and crafts pioneer William Morris. Lovers of contemporary art and homeware can now kill two birds with one stone at Art Licks Trading, which launches this evening (1 June) at its temporary home of Safehouse 1 in Peckham, south London.

Ten emerging artists have made functional items for the home, including a champagne-flute-and-sickle tea towel by Pio Abad; a halo pillowcase by Holly Slingsby; a misprinted pencil set by Patrick Coyle and a JCB-yellow bottle opener by James Capper.All the works have been produced in limited editions, priced from £6-£500, and are being sold to fundraise for this year's Art Licks Weekend, says the Art Licks founder and director Holly Willats. The yearly festival showcases the work of emerging artists, curators and not-for-profit spaces across London. But with only part of its funding coming from the Arts Council, “we need to raise a further 62%”, Willats says. “All of the artists have featured in our printed magazine, and several have taken part in the festival itself […] and I thought it would be fun to work with them all again on this slightly unusual project,” Willats says. The objects can also be viewed and bought online at artlicks.bigcartel.com




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The Louvre Museum in Paris stopped admitting visitors this afternoon, 2 June and will be closed tomorrow, 3 June, due to the threat of flooding from the Seine River, which it borders. The Seine’s level is currently over 5m, and the city centre has been placed on an orange-level flood alert after days of rain.An internal email by the Louvre’s director Jean-Luc Martinez to the museum’s staff, obtained by Reuters, said: “The museum will remain closed to the public tomorrow out of precaution: there is no danger to the public or our staff but will allow us to calmly remove certain art collections should it be necessary.” The Louvre has had an official flood plan in place since 2002, which includes evacuating works from the reserves of around 250,000 stored underground, and according to a museum statement, staff have begun moving works to higher floors. The museum carried out a flood evacuation drill in March.

The Orsay Museum on the opposite bank of the Seine has also put an emergency plan to evacuate works into place. It closed early today at 6pm and will stay closed tomorrow. The Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this month and is also located along the Seine, is monitoring the situation but so far does not have plans to close, the museum’s communication department confirmed to the Nouvel Observateur.


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France. 1900 World's Fair Paris

Berlin is embracing digital-savvy (and digital-skeptic) artists with two major exhibitions this month. The back-to-back openings of World on a Wire at the Julia Stoschek Collection and the ninth Berlin Biennale: the Present in Drag, are no coincidence in a city teeming with tech startups. World on a Wire, the inaugural exhibition of the Berlin satellite of the Julia Stoschek Collection, takes its name from the 1973 sci-fi film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The show features 38 works—mostly videos made between 2015 and 2016—by 20 artists, many of whom are also exhibiting at the Berlin Biennale. The temporary satellite of the Düsseldorf-based video art collection spans two floors of the former Czech cultural centre in Berlin. A preserved wood-paneled theater from the 1960s is the backdrop for a giant projection of Ian Cheng’s “live simulation” computer game, which is based on an algorithm that could (in theory) run forever. Other highlights include two films by Wu Tsang and Jon Rafman’s Betamale Trilogy. At the opening press conference, Klaus Biesenbach, the director of New York’s MoMA PS1 and the co-founder of the Berlin Biennial described the satellite as “a museum-quality space” and “a fantastic contribution to Berlin”.



Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks at Perfection (2015). (Image: courtesy of the artist and Pillar Corrias, London)


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First light
Photo by Marcos Paulo

909 Madison Avenue. Photo: Courtesy of Dominique Lévy

Emmanuel Perrotin’s gallery declined to name the location of its new gallery in New York, following the announcement today that dealer Dominique Lévy will take over all of 909 Madison Avenue, which she has shared with Perrotin since 2013.“After three successful years at 909 Madison Avenue, Emmanuel Perrotin has decided to move his gallery to a new location in Manhattan, to be revealed in the near future,” a gallery spokeswoman says. “We can’t give you more information at the moment but it’s worth waiting!”

The new arrangement gives Lévy three floors of exhibition space. She has commissioned designer Bill Katz to remodel the ground floor of the former bank, which was previously occupied by Katz, “while growing its private viewing rooms and research facilities on the lower level.”

“With its upcoming expansion, the gallery will continue its internationally acclaimed program of solo exhibitions by gallery artists, innovative pairings in two-artist exhibitions, and curated group exhibitions,” the gallery says in a release.


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Dream Landscape
Photo by Tobias Richter

The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has transformed the palace of Versailles outside Paris with a series of dramatic installations, from a waterfall in the chateau’s Grand Canal to a veil of fine fog in the Bosquet de l’Etoile grove in the palace gardens. The exhibition of works dotted around the grounds and famous salons of the 17th-century chateau opens to the public. The waterfall, located behind the Fountain of Apollo, cascades from a height of around 40 metres according to the French newspaper Le Figaro. On his Instagram page, Eliasson writes that Louis XIV’s garden architect, André Le Nôtre, had planned a grand waterfall for Versailles, which was never realised.



Olafur Eliasson, Waterfall (2016) (Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. © Olafur Eliasson)









Eliasson says in a statement: “This waterfall reinvigorates the engineering ingenuity of the past. It is as constructed as the court was, and I’ve left the construction open for all to see—a seemingly foreign element that expands the scope of human imagination.” The artist created four temporary waterfalls along New York’s East River for the Public Art Fund in 2008.Eliasson, known for his technically ambitious works focused on environmental issues, has posted an image on social media of a fountain at the chateau with a glacial surface. The caption reads: “Glacial rock flour: an excellent fertilizer at Chateau Versailles. Science holding hands with art.”

A series of mirror and light works are on show in rooms such as the Hall of Mirrors (Your Sense of Unity) and Salon de l’œil de Bœuf (Deep Mirror Yellow/Deep Mirror Black). “The works are very subtle, he is very respectful of the chateau and its surroundings,” says the Paris-based art advisor Laurence Dreyfus. “The sunlight on the fog piece in the Bosquet de l’Etoile is beautiful. The works touch upon ecological concerns but above all, they’re about reflection.”


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