Issue 2 - The Art Newspaper

More documents

Recommendations

Info

14 INTERVIEW Cécile B. Evans Artist The Belgian-American artist Cécile B. Evans, 29, is the winner of the 2012 Emdash Award for emerging artists living outside the UK. Her proposal—an audio guide to Frieze— was selected from more than 700 applications, and the work forms part of Frieze Projects (P3). For This Is Your Audio Guide, which is hosted by the historian Simon Schama, Evans asked well-known people from other fields, such as the model-turned-cook Sophie Dahl and the astronomer Patrick Moore, to respond to the works on show. The artist’s prize includes a £10,000 production budget and a three-month residency at the Gasworks studios in south London, where, last month, she showed a series of rejection letters from celebrities who declined to take part in the project. She is not currently represented by a gallery. Evans was born to Belgian parents in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. She began to act at the age of five, and spent four THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE ART FAIR Wednesday 10 October 2012 years at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts from 11 September 2001 (“it was my first day as an adult—the plane flew over our heads”). After working in film and television in Paris, Evans moved to Berlin to pursue a career in art. Her work often refers to both high and low culture; the video Countdown, 2012, updates Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s performance Rosas danst Rosas, 1983, with the novel addition of animated asparagus. The Art Newspaper: This Is Your Audio Guide counters art-world jargon by asking non-experts to respond emotionally to the works at Frieze. How did the project begin? Cécile B. Evans: I took a group of teenagers to this year’s Berlin Biennale, which was notoriously dense, and asked them the questions I was working with. “Does this remind you of anything? How do you relate to an object in here?” You strip away all the things you’re supposed to say about art and then you go for the emotional value. Why did you ask Simon Schama to host the audio guide? Simon Schama is art history. He lives it, breathes it, walks with it every day to work. He’d say: “I’m concerned—is this what we want people to think about art?” My reaction is that I’m not telling people how to look at art. Simon is very good at explaining art in a way that people understand, and it’s been amazing to see how some of [the contributors] hit the mark. It gives me chills. Why did you create a hologram of Schama to introduce the work? It’s a way of connecting the ears with what you’re seeing, and also playing on the dynamics of subjectivity and reality—anything to [increase] the suspension of disbelief. There are also small hologram boxes [throughout the fair], which use the Pepper’s ghost technique, a 19th-century theatre trick. One of them looks as though Simon has been kidnapped and put in the box. Who were your favourite contributors? Rabbi Lionel Blue and Sophie Dahl Big in Germany: Evans’s Paula Abdul-influenced video Straight Up, 2011 With a little help from her (celebrity) friends This year’s Emdash Award winner has created the first ever audio guide to Frieze— starring Simon Schama, Sophie Dahl and Patrick Moore. By Ria Hopkinson were fantastic. With Rabbi Blue, I just turned on the dictaphone and got everything from what he thinks heaven is going to look like to how he thinks a piece by Ryan Gander looks like perfume bottles. I’m still adding people. I’m exhausted. Many of your works attempt to measure emotions, including the “Schirmer Collages”, 2011, which juxtapose film stills with tearmeasurement strips. I took screenshots from movies starring Meryl Streep, which are the ultimate cryfest, and named [the works] after the tearjerker line—You May Keep One Of Your Children is [from] “Sophie’s Choice”. This is my year of tears. I set out to say that it’s the clearest representation of emotion, and I think it’s something I’ll always work with. But I don’t want to look back and say: “That was my crying period.” I’m starting to do research into ghosts, and the idea of loss. Are you interested in displays of collective emotion, such as the Come and visit us at FRIEZE MASTERS Stand M14 FRIEZE LONDON Stand M1 The judges’ verdict Members of the selection panel on Evans’s work Sarah McCrory Curator, Frieze Projects “We realised that Cécile had a really good understanding of the Frieze audience. Her background as an actor shows her interest in understanding the world around her, and the work couldn’t have been made without that aspect of her personality; it helped convince wellknown people to be involved. Until the project happens, we don’t know what the outcome will be, and that was part of the reason for choosing it.” Andrea Dibelius Founder, Emdash Foundation “Frieze has never had an audio guide before, so this is totally new territory for the fair. The work is conceptual but accessible, and this is one of the main messages of the project—to give visitors a different and possibly more inclusive way of understanding and questioning works at the fair. I also hope that industry people will be challenged by being confronted with a radically different way of talking about art.” R.H. to receive a discount of up to 30% on a one-year subscription to THE ART NEWSPAPER STRAIGHT UP: © CÉCILE B. EVANS
EVANS (BIOGRAPHY BOX): © STUDIO DE JOODE. RAZMI: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST/FRIEZE. FUJIWARA: PHOTO: LINDA NYLIND. © FRIEZE LONDON. WOLFSON, GARCIA TORRES AND ROTTENBERG: PHOTOS: POLLY BRADEN. © FRIEZE LONDON. PRIETO: PHOTO: DOMINICK TYLER. © FRIEZE LONDON The crying game… You May Keep One Of Your Children, 2011 outpouring of grief in Britain after Princess Diana’s death? Absolutely. I want to study and eventually visit North Korea—the videos of collective mourning for Kim Jong Il were so unfettered and direct. How they express themselves in society must be radically different from anything I know. I don’t think I would tell them I was an artist; it would become political, and tying politics to emotions is a whole different thing. You studied experimental theatre before moving to Paris to work in film and television. When did you start to move towards art? I nearly got sued for copyright by J.D. Salinger when I tried to do a play of [his book] Franny and Zooey. So I built a bathroom in Times Square and told the story through the eyes of the bathroom, because there’s always a bathroom in Salinger’s stories and you can’t copyright space. That was my first experience of not depending so much on other people. In your video Straight Up, 2011, inspired by Pina Bausch’s Nelken, 1982, you perform a Paula Abdul song in sign language while drunk. Why did you show it in a Berlin sex shop? I got so excited that I couldn’t wait for someone to ask me to show it. I lived above a sex shop in Mitte for almost two years, so I said: “Hey, guys, can I use your movie theatre one night? I’ll hire a cleaner. It’s nothing to do with porn.” They were both named Mario, and they were like: “Ja, we love Paula Abdul.” I put all these references, from high to low, in the same place, and then you attach whatever you bring to it. THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE ART FAIR Wednesday 10 October 2012 15 Which contemporary artists do you admire? Aleksandra Domanovic and her boyfriend, Oliver Laric. My boyfriend, Yuri Pattison, and [his collective] LuckyPDF. [The 2009 Cartier Award winner] Jordan Wolfson was one of the first people I met in Berlin who took a look at my work and said: “OK, I know what you’re thinking, but you need to do more.” You’ve lived in cities all over the world. Has your residency in London inspired you? I really love Peckham: the scene, the African families, the hair salons that are slamming on Saturdays at 12.30pm. You know they have nail art? I got a bunch of rhinestones and spelled out, in Braille, a quote from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?” about tears. Everyone is making art— I’ve never seen so much work. • Frieze Projects includes This Is Your Audio Guide (P3) and new work by Thomas Bayrle (P2), Joanna Rajkowska (P1) and Aslı Cavusoglu (P4) Biography Cécile B. Evans Born: Cleveland, Ohio, 1983 Education: Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 2001-05 Lives and works: Berlin, Germany Future projects: 2012 Lecture (performance), Fiac, Paris; residency, CCA Andratx, Majorca Selected solo exhibitions: 2012 “Trilogy”, Peckham Artist Moving Image festival, London 2011 “Straight Up”, MSV Sex Kino, Berlin 2010 “From Five To Seven”, Galerie Gavriel, Bremen, Germany 2008 “What Are You Doing After the Dance?”, 0fr Galerie, Paris 2007 “Jack and Margot”, Reykjavik International Film Festival, Iceland Selected group exhibitions: 2012 “E-Vapor- 8”, 319 Scholes, New York 2011 “Gaze & Lust: Sexuality in Contemporary Art”, Bergen Kunstmuseum, Norway; “A Skeleton In the Closet 2”, ReMap 3, Athens, Greece 2010 “Art By Telephone” (with the curator Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel), Art Basel Miami Beach; Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale, Galerie im Regierungsviertel, Berlin 2009 “Renegades: 25 Years of Performance at Exit Art”, Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco Winning works 2011 Anahita Razmi Trisha Brown’s 1971 performance Roof Piece was the starting point for Razmi’s video installation, which referred to the rooftop protests in Tehran in 2009. The German-born artist showed Roof Piece Tehran, which featured 12 dancers wearing red, on 12 screens around the fair. 2010 Simon Fujiwara After dreaming up a lost civilisation buried beneath Frieze, the British-Japanese artist created Frozen, a site-specific installation piecing together the fragments of his fictional city. Visitors to the fair saw descriptions of the ancient settlement, recovered artefacts and archaeological digs. 2009 Jordan Wolfson String theory was the unlikely subject of Your Napoleon, the conceptual US artist’s walking tour of Frieze. Theoretical physicists explained the concept to one visitor at a time, and transcripts of the tours formed a script that was directed by Wolfson and performed by actors in Regent’s Park. 2008 Wilfredo Prieto In the Cuban artist’s site-specific installation, Ascended Line, the red carpet commonly associated with celebrities snaked around the galleries’ booths before joining the top of a flag-pole outside the fair—a comment on how the global fascination with fame can displace a sense of national identity. 2007 Mario Garcia Torres For many years, “Allen Smithee” was a pseudonym used by film directors who had lost creative control of their work. In the Mexican conceptual artist’s I Am Not a Flopper Or…, the actor Stephen Campbell Moore played the fictional Smithee, performing a monologue about his many films. 2006 Mika Rottenberg The New York-based artist’s work, Chasing Waterfalls: the Rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland Sisters, Part 1, was inspired by siblings who sold hair-growth tonic near Niagara Falls in the late 19th century before joining P.T. Barnum’s circus to display their floor-length locks. R.H. • The Emdash Award replaced the Cartier Award in 2011 Visit the Private Sales Online Gallery Fall Session · Open thru December 21 The Online Gallery offers a convenient and flexible way to view works available for private sale outside the auction timeline. This season’s selection of Post-War and Contemporary art features works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Ed Ruscha, Dan Flavin and James Rosenquist. Contact Alexis Klein Associate Vice President, Specialist Post-War and Contemporary Art aklein@christies.com +1 212 641 3741 christiesprivatesales.com ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) The Scream (After Munch) (detail) screenprint in colors on Lenox Museum Board 40 x 28 in. (101.6 x 71.1 cm.) Executed in 1984. This work is a unique color variant. ©2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Page 1 and 2: MILIBAND: PHOTO: DAVID OWENS FIND U
Page 3 and 4: HAUNCH OF VENISON NEW YORK 550 West
Page 6 and 7: JOSEPHBEUYS AT FRIEZE VISIT US ON B
Page 8 and 9: 8 FEATURE Two leading collectors of
Page 10: ph Vitaliano Lopez - art Francesco
Page 13: 3 4 THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE ART FA
Page 17: www.pad-fairs.com 88-Gallery UK Adr
Page 20 and 21: 20 CALENDAR Frieze week 9-14 Octobe
Page 22 and 23: 22 THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE ART FAI

Issue 2 - The Art Newspaper

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?