K N I P S C H A A R

Štefan Papčo (1983, Slovakia) is the first artist-climber in the international art world. He interconnects these initially separated worlds so closely together that - in his life - one never goes without the other. 

Political restrictions in Czechoslovakia in the 70s and 80s prohibited citizens to leave the country. Only climbers who achieved the most challenging ascents in the High Tatras were allowed to gather twice a year in the Alps or other major mountains abroad. This way climbing enabled an escape to freedom, pushing the climbers’ limits and questioning their relationship to the self and to the whole. These events inspired Papčo to create a sculptural group called “Citizens”: five wood carved sculptures modeled on five great mountaineers from Czechoslovakia. Each personality is represented in a bivouacking position. Over the course of 3 years Papčo will climb different mountain walls to place these sculptures in high altitude, where the mountaineers actually climbed.

Papčo achieves his artistic purpose by recasting the perception of landscape and of man in a raw environment. All of his works draw on this notion in a different way, always demonstrating a new relationship between the artist, the work, the mountains and the spectator. His works are not only rooted in profound concepts, but also translated into esthetically strong visual form enabled by his rare contemporary craftmanship.

Citizens, project in progress

Draw the Route, 2004, interactive video-installation, varied projection size, video 5,30 min.

TATRA - Version, 2009, site-specific installation created for an old power station hall LYSE in Lysefiord, Norway, 800x800x400 cm

Mono-ha was an art movement based in Japan, active from around 1968 to 1975.  The artists tended to present natural and industrial materials such as stone, soil, wood, paper, cotton, steel plates, and paraffin—”things” (mono)—on their own or in combination with one another.  Contrary to the mainstream anti-art tendencies of Zenēi Bijutsu (avant-garde art), Mono-ha attempted to reconfigure art through the reduction of objects to their primary form. 

Unaltered, natural matter and objects were considered not as material, but in and of themselves significant and autonomous.  Attempts were made to draw out a kind of artistic expression from matter by directly engaging in its being (ari-yō), perception, and relations. (~ text)

Susumu Koshimizu, Paper, 1969

Susumu Koshimizu, Crack the stone in August ’70, 1970

Lee Ufan, Things and Words, 1969 

Lee Ufan,  Relatum,1971

"Rite Of Passage: The Early Years of Vienna Actionism, 1960-1966," an exhibition of paintings, collages and photographs, will be on view at Hauser & Wirth's Upper East Side location (Sept. 9-Oct. 25).

"The sexual, violent and scatological performances of the Vienna Actionists, a group of artists whose operations began in the 1960s, are among the art world's most notorious. Members Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler were active among the ruins of the Austrian capital after World War II, tapping into their city's deep psychoanalytic and artistic avant-garde roots—the city was also home to Sigmund Freud, Egon Schiele and the Vienna Secession artists." (~ Kerry Gaertner Gerbracht in Art in America)

Photo's:

Günter Brus, Self-Painting I (Total Head Painting), 1964, gelatin silver print on baryta paper, 11 3/4 by 9 inches. © Günter Brus; Courtesy Collection Hummel, Vienna and Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna. Photo Ludwig Hoffenreich.

Hermann Nitsch, Station of the Cross, 1961, dispersion on canvas, 74 3/4 by 116 7/8 inches. © ARS, New York. Photo Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich.  

Text and images: http://www.creativeapplications.net/

Created by Seoul based art and design studio Kimchi and Chips, Lunar Surface is the latest in the series of projects by Elliot Woods and Mimi Son investigating digital light as a semi-material to articulate digital visual mass in physical space.

In this project, a vertical flag of fabric is stroked by the wind, displaced by curves of air pressure, swinging back and forth. As it sweeps, it extrudes a trail of light which draws a moon floating in space. Long exposure photography captures this invisible dimension of space, extruding the moon into existence on a set of unique photographic prints.

Rudolf Stingel

at Gagosian,

through Apr. 19

522 W 21st St.

Detail from an anonymous Portolan chart of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, probably from Genua, made somewhere between 1325-1350. The Ristow-Sketon-chart is kept at the Library of Congress in Washington. (Photo)

Piotr Kowalski, Cube no. 3, 1966

Lothar Baumgarten, I prefer it There Better than in Westphalia, ELDORADO (Voltaire’s Candide), 1968-74, 35mm slide projection of 187 images and audio track, 36:5 min

Photo

February 12, 1542: Francisco de Orellana's expedition 'discovered' the Amazon River.

Anselm Kiefer. Sefer Hechaloth. painted photograph, 2002

"In the Sefer Hechaloth, the ancient book that came before the kabbala, there is no worry of directions. It describes stages, metaphors, and symbols that float everywhere. Up and down were the same direction. The Hechaloth is the spiritual journey toward perfect cognition. North, south, east, and west, up and down are not issues. For me, this also relates to time. Past, present, and future are essentially the same direction. It is about finding symbols that move in all directions." ~Anselm Kiefer

Syoin Kajii. from the series of Nami. 2004. 

Now on view at Foil Gallery in Tokyo.

Laurent Millet. Je croyais voir un piège, produced by Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, mixed techniques, chromogenic and silver prints, 150x190cm, 100x120cm, ambrotypes, 17x22cm, 2012.

Renaud Auguste Dormeuil. The Day Before _ New York _ September 10, 2001 _ 23 : 59. 2004