After the success of Brigitte Lardinois’ exhibition ‘All About Eve’ here at Art Sensus she invites you to take part in her next project – Aday.org . On Tuesday May 15^th 2012, the Aday.org (www.aday.org) initiative will invite the entire world to participate in the largest and most comprehensive photographic documentation of a single day in human history. Whether an amateur with a mobile phone camera or a professional photographer, Aday.org asks anyone – and everyone – in possession of one of the world’s estimated one billion digital cameras to document their experiences of the day: uploading their images in order to create a visual archive of our lives today.

The images will form the biggest searchable online picture archive of its type, and the most striking photos will be used in a simultaneously-staged global exhibition in October 2012, and feature in a book entitled ‘A Day In The World’ (to be published in November 2012). For the purposes of maintaining this image archive for future generations, hard drives containing all of images from May 15^th 2012 will be stored within a secure underground location.

Aday.org was devised by Stockholm-based non-profit organisation, Expressions of Humankind, which supports scientific research and education centred on the photographic image and the written word. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who sits on the Global Advisory Board for Aday.org (and will be contributing his own photographs on May 15^th), comments: “Take this unique opportunity with me, and thousands of others around the world, to create a priceless collection of images, to boost understanding and enhance research and education.” Fellow Global Advisory Board member, Sir Richard Branson comments: “This great project is about real people taking pictures of real life in real-time. Please get your camera and share your life on May 15.”

Joining the Archbishop in documenting their days are astronaut Andre Kuipers, currently stationed at the International Space Station 300km above the Earth’s surface, as well as Grammy-nominated singer, Robyn, former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and Deputy Secretary General of the UN, Jan Eliasson – but so too are less immediately recognisable, but equally important individuals that have already signed-up to participate, including teenagers in Greenland, Japanese adults displaced by the Fukushima disaster, Moscow-based arts students, and psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires. Each person’s contribution will be of relevance to help document a day in all of our lives.

Aday.org seeks participants of all ages, backgrounds, and from every corner of our planet: each contribution as relevant and significant as the next person’s in creating this unprecedented snapshot of humanity.

To help get the largest number of people involved, Aday.org has already recruited hundreds of global ‘connectors’ – leading lights from the worlds of photography (including 30 World Press Photo winners), journalism and academia – who will both take part on the day and spread the word as well as encourage participation among their own social networks, intranets, mailing lists, or fan-bases.

How To Get Involved

In advance of May 15^th all interested participants should register (for free) at www.aday.org to receive updates on the project and to access details on how to make the most of the day when the world photographs itself.

Participants will be asked to upload their images at www.aday.org (following the easy-to-use instructions) and are requested to link each submitted image to major themes such as ‘Home’ and ‘Work’. Within users’ profile spaces, participants will be able to sort work into distinct sub-sections named “my wall”, “my tools”, “my room”, “my energy”, “my transport”, “my people”, “my technology”: allowing users to search and share pictures along specific themes. Any upload of a photograph will be accompanied by unique data on who took the picture and where, what camera was used, and why the subject or topic was chosen. This categorisation will assist in the display of all of the images submitted, helping make the pictures searchable and comparable.

Participants will retain the copyright to their images, and pictures submitted will be used for future research, and never for commercial purposes. A book ‘A Day in the World’ – containing the best images – will be published in several language editions in November 2012. The project is open to anyone with a passion for photography. Each person can upload up to 10 images. All images must be uploaded within 5 days of May 15^th.

The ADay.org website – containing full instructions – is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic.

ADay – Tuesday May 15^th 2012 - sign up at www.ADay.org

And follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AdayDotOrg and Facebook at www.facebook.com/adayorg

The catalogue for Absolute Return: Drawings exhibition at Saint-Etienne Museum of Modern Art approaches Molodkin’s ideas as a developing system. For the first time in his artistic career, the publication has treated each project from beginning to end as a gesamtkunstwerk, revealing the artist-engineer as the creator of ‘the Soviet Utopia, belatedly realized.’

Returning to the fundamentals of Molodkin as an artist-engineer, Absolute Return: Drawings visualises the stages of production, from the mathematical drawings created in the artist’s studio through to the factory made object. Previously unseen drawings provide a rare insight into the processes behind his monumental work and are further complimented by critical examinations and conversations with the artist.

Museum Director Lóránd Hegyi explores the generational distinctions between post-Soviet artists. In his text THE SHOCK OF THE REAL Andrei Molodkin’s New Agit-Prop Hegyi classifies Molodkin as the ‘third generation’, due to an inherent desire to present the abject brutality of the neo-Capitalist society through his work. In the interview Holy Oil, New York and Paris based critics and curators Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn discuss with Molodkin the political implications of his acrylic sculptures and the physical installations of his exhibitions. The conversation continues in The Genealogy of Failure where Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn question Molodkin on the Utopian element manifested in the assemblage of his constructions.  In 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – 0 – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – Transformer No. V579 : The Constructive Quality of Reductive Form Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan considers Molodkin’s relationship to the Russian Constructivists and American Minimalists, discussing the experiential implications of a reductive form. Jean-Pierre Frimbois concludes with the text Signs & Images; a systematic, project based exploration of Molodkin’s biro canvases and sketches.

The publication thus provides a fresh insight into the mind of the ex-Soviet solider by illustrating the cyclical journey of each individual project and encouraging a deeper understanding of this ritualised process.

Price at Art Sensus: £25

Title: Andrei Molodkn. Absolute Return: Drawings / Editor: L. Hegyi / Text: Jean-Pierre Frimbois, Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan, Lóránd Hegyi, Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn / Publisher: Silvana, 2011 / Pages: 232

We are delighted to announce the publication of Chtak’s catalogue ‘Bits of Truth’. The catalogue will feature texts by Ekaterina Degot, Alexey Buldakov and Ilya Malkin and an interview with the artist, by Nikolai Oleinikov. The 165 page catalogue will coincide with Chtak’s exhibition at Paperworks Gallery, Moscow  and was published with support from Baibakov Art Projects.

Please contact us if you are interested in purchasing a catalogue.

If you are in Moscow on the 30th of October be sure to visit the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, where Chtak will be giving a lecture at 3pm.

The UK press are quick to label Andrei Molodkin as the ‘bad-boy’ of Russian art, focusing at length on his macabre project of turning decomposing human bodies into crude oil. Yet they neglect to investigate the dualistic nature of his recent oeuvre.  At a time when Molodkin opens two exhibitions internationally, Transformer No. V579 at Art Sensus in London and CRUDE at Station Museum in Houston USA (click here), the following article aims to explore the bi-partite character of Molodkin’s successful artistic career. This article considers Molodkin’s controversial oil filled acrylic slogans and also the artist’s parallel pathway into Minimalism, ultimately asking whether this Minimalist quest, conversely, is more guided by socio-political concerns than his unforgiving word sculptures.

Andrei Molodkin’s solo show CRUDE opens at Station Museum of Contemporary Art on the 5^th of November, 2011. With the goal of the Museum: to encourage the public’s awareness of the cultural, political, economic, and personal dimensions of art, Molodkin will exhibit the most forthright of his recent work. A standout piece will be a biro canvas, on which he uses a technique once described by the artist as akin to hysterical masturbation, as the background to Obama’s sound-bite statement ‘YES WE CAN’. Positioned to the right of the canvas, on a stand of solid steel, is an acrylic block, hollowed out to read FUCK YOU; the letters oozing crude oil, pumping through adjoining see-through pipes. At once the viewer is confronted with the juxtaposition of a static utopian message of hope, and the potent, living sculpture of derision.  Also exhibited will be ‘Liberty’, another acrylic block, but this time negated with a mould of the Statue of Liberty’s burning flame infused with the corruption of dark, squalid oil.

Whilst Molodkin has been hard at work creating oil filled words such as ‘Democracy’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Justice’, he has also been in the factory working on Transformer No. V579; a tense, authoritative, machine-like installation.  Meticulously constructed from rows of steel pillars (each connect by just a single base screw) the installation is a true feat of engineering genius. On the inside of each pillar there is a balancing act of two acrylic pipes, the bottom filled with electric neon gas, and at the top, with oil.

With Minimalism acting as a reaction to Abstract-Expressionism, Minimalist art can be described as a demystification of the emotional thrust of a previous era.  As importance shifted from the ‘demy-God’ artist back to the material and development of the work of art slight compositions, unity and simplicity stepped forward. If Transformer No. V579 is to be viewed in the light of this process it becomes apparent that Molodkin has stripped back his installation to the very basics. Material becomes paramount as the factory-produced steel stands lock onto the clean lines of the acrylic tubes; the installation thereby becoming a linear structure, a meticulously engineered composition.

This return to simplicity comes as no surprise.  Minimalist practitioners of the 1960’s Dan Flavin, Robert Morris and Donald Judd referenced Tatlin, Rodchenko and Malevich respectively.  Molodkin, a Russian born artist, similarly uses the specific Art into production history of his native country in his own, unique form of artistic exploration.  Reminiscent of El Lissitzky’s claim that ‘…the pictorial line has descended regularly… 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to 0 but at the other extremity a new line begins, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…’ Molodkin’s tubes reflect this linear fluctuation and his ability to create and reduce simultaneously.

Furthermore, ‘Transformer No. V579’ fundamentally transgresses the boundaries of Minimalism as Molodkin fills each tubular wall with oil taken directly from diverse conflict zones in the Middle-East; Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi-Arabia and Sudan. The unsettling effect of this political statement is further enhanced by the smell of oil escaping from the tubes.  When standing inside Transformer No. V579 you are surrounded by the smell of greed, a certain type of greed that only the scent of oil (and indeed wealth) can evoke.  A duality is at play, as the interchangeability of a white utopia and black dystopia is further destabilised through the placing of heavy, crude liquid above the clean electric light.

Apart from the political, there is something quite spiritual about the Transformer. When spending time in Houston in the run up to the CRUDE exhibition, Molodkin visited the Rothko Chapel and he was keen to bring this experience back to London. Standing in the middle of the chapel, he recalls how he was overcome by the strong sense of religiosity. One might not think that something manufactured in a factory could equate to the art of Rothko, yet, when standing within the walls of Transformer No V.579, dazed by the light; the smell of the oil pervades every sense.

Molodkin has stripped his work of excess, taking his sculptures and installations back to the minimum.  Conversely this skill at reduction allows the artist to impregnate his installations with socio-political, religious and physiological messages.  While his choice slogans brutalise the corruption running through their very core, Molodkin’s installations instil a subtle unnerving sense of physical awareness, as the viewer literally feels the corruption engendered by the art. Through both facets of his artistic characterisation, Molodkin reflects society’s flaws back upon itself, and by exploring the possibilities of a political-minimalist subgenre the artist has mastered the brilliance of the Black Square.

The New Museum, New York, took on a seminal task when it decided to exhibit and explore the work of Russian and Eastern European artists who were active around the time of the fall of Communism.

The catalogue describes the premise of the exhibition as ‘not an authoritative history of the Communist period, but instead [the exhibition] seeks to sketch a psychological portrait of the region and, in doing so, expose the myths and memories that unite a diverse range of artists.’  This approach has clearly opened up the selection process, thereby providing the curator with a substantial increase of freedom in his choice of works (if, perhaps, too much).

With the term ‘Ostalgia’ being derived from the German words ‘Ost’ and ‘Nostalgie’, the title of the exhibition literally  means ‘nostalgia for the East’ (in all its Communistic glory).  Having been to other comparable exhibitions in both London and Paris, I was not expecting to see anything out of the usual. Yet, meandering around the faceted floor space of The New Museum I was pleasantly surprised at the tone. There were no cliché pop-art hammer and sickles of the Sots Art variety, although a series of the superstar Bulatov was unsurprisingly/unfortunately included, and no commodification of the face of Lenin; instead there was a variety of references to the Communist past that had real emotional depth – even for a Westerner born around the time of the fall of the Berlin wall.

The premise that the curator Massimiliano Gioni has worked with has given this exhibition the scope it needs to project a fresh insight into the fall of Communism.   What’s more, the geographical breadth that Ostalgia incorporates cannot fail to encourage new thinking around this ‘fashionable’ topic.

Through Ostalgia, The New Museum has encouraged wider thinking around a pivotal moment in time, a commission that has been long overdue.  Unfortunately, this high standard is not reflected in the somewhat poor reproductions of the black and white catalogue.  If at all possible, go to New York and see this wonderful exhibition, but don’t be in a rush to buy the book.

I never thought that a building in the LSE could be so eerie. The rooms were ransacked, with only up-turned desks and their sprawling contents remaining on the floor whilst replica police-tape cordoned off areas which were not safe to walk through. I cautiously climbed the stairs in search of the room where Tom Hunter’s seminal film A Palace For Us (commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery) was to be screened. Although I was initially confused about the choice of location for the nights event, it soon became apparent what was going on...

In my defence, I had only found out about the event that morning, having clicked onto Tom Hunter’s homepage. I was told that the neglected Edwardian St. Philips building that I had found myself in previously functioned as a workhouse, venereal disease hospital and refugee facility and was to be demolished in a couple of weeks time. Rather than seeing out its last days in isolation, a group of young curators and artists had decided to fill it with creative projects centring on the idea of destruction.  Interestingly, the claustrophobic room in which we were about to watch Tom Hunter’s piece was originally an eight bed hospital ward and so now braced with this new information, which contextualised the evening, I waited for A Palace For Us to begin.

I believe Tom Hunter’s photography is instantly recognisable and so I was anxious to see if this filtered into his film. In the photographs, by referencing compositions from Old Master paintings and inserting local people from the fringe of society, Hunter instantly canonises his subjects into the history of art. A beautiful example of this is ‘The Dolphin’, 2003 from his series Living in Hell and Other Stories, where a solitary, tired looking young lady stands behind the bar of a London pub, reminiscent of Manet’s ‘Bar at the Folie Bergere’, 1882. The 17min long film, A Palace For Us, continues Hunter’s personal quest to publically elevate his subject’s status by revealing their world to the gaze of the onlooker.  The documentary film centres on the Woodbury Down Estate in Stoke Newington, a giant estate complex which was built in 1962 to re-house people after the destruction left by the war. Over the warm, sumptuous colours that flicker between scenes of the past and the present, residents narrate their nostalgic memories and experiences of living in the Woodbury community. The film embodies Hunter’s entire oeuvre – as he treats his subjects as he would his friends. A Palace For Us becomes an extended photograph, to be placed amongst any one of Hunter’s photographic series. 

The film ends with the news that the Woodbury Down Estate is to be demolished. Over one thousand council houses are to be knocked down and replaced by four times as many new builds. The estate, as well as St Philips, will soon be torn down, but through this one significant event, Hunter has immortalised the memories of both.

Having bought a ticket for the Expanded Conceptualism symposia at Tate Modern (18^th – 19^th March, 2011) I then decided to check the programme. Of course there were the recognised names that you’d expect from a collaboration with the Courtauld Institute of Art; Boris Groys, Sarah Wilson, Anthony Gardner and the likes, but to my delight names such as Daniel Buren (artist), Seth Siegelaub (curator/exhibitor ) and Daniel McClean (Art lawyer) punctuated this multi-disciplined list. It mentioned that the two days were to be split into three subgenres; Migration and Mutation, Weapon and Survival and Mind and Body – each title as wonderfully conceptual as the ethos of those forming the gathering itself. 

Having finally had time to breath, and with the symposia being particularly dense and throwing up a plethora of wide-ranging starting points for discussion, I thought it wise to focus on two of the issues raised which related to the context of a commercial gallery.

On Saturday morning Daniel Buren began the day by giving an insight into the power of contracts within the world of contemporary art.  Foremostly known for his signature barcode-esque stripes plastered over billboards, walls and street furniture and (dare I say it) which acted as a precursor to the graffiti generation, Buren’s work ultimately entered the gallery. He soon realised the notion of the impotent artist – powerless and lacking control over the resale of work that had fallen into the depths of the secondary Art market.  In 1968/9 Buren wrote his Avertissement, a contract which would be signed on the original purchase of any work he produced.  Thus, if this initial contract was broken the work would automatically be regarded as a forgery, rendering it worthless.  Through this form of documentation Buren restored power back to the artist and took total control of reproductions, exhibition placement and potential acquisitions to auction.

The presence of Groys had a sure effect on this meeting of minds and consequently the idea of ‘power’ accentuated the ambiguity of ‘Conceptualism’ per se.  Indeed, we never quite concluded on a precise definition, rather we arrived at an overarching simplification that Conceptualism was simply an era.

Returning to the concept of ‘power’, art dealer/curator/exhibition organiser, and not forgetting plumper Seth Siegelaub, gave a clear insight into the birth of Conceptualism whilst in open conversation with Daniel McClean.  Having organised pivotal exhibitions such as ‘January of ‘69’’ and staging exhibitions comprised of simply the catalogue of works alone, Siegelaub questioned the growing power of the curator in the realm of contemporary Art today, expressing surprising concern and alarm at the formation of the cult-of-curator.

Ultimately, contemporary Art exhibitions require a curator and if curators were dispensed with a similar form of specialist would be required, albeit under a different guise. However, as  curators are rapidly becoming the superstars of the Art world and increasingly being paid the same superstar rates, should the power given by the public be granted to the gatherer or the gathered/the curator or the artist?

So with my short extract ending a little like the symposia itself, skirting round the issue of ‘Conceptualism’ and focusing on Groy’s fundamental perception of power, I would like to thank Tate for opening up the day to encompass Latin American mail Art, Parisian transgenderism and the certified Genius – Fred Wilson.

Written by James Whitehead:

Alexander Rodchenko bid farewell to painting in 1921 with Pure Red Colour, Pure Blue Colour, Pure Yellow Colour, predating Douglas Crimp’s 1981 article, ‘The End of Painting’. And like many postmodern art critics in the 1980s, it seems that the logical step after stripping painting bare was to move onto photography. The concept of photography as the socially progressive medium, and painting as the realm of the bourgeois, individual artist-genius, can therefore be seen as an echo of twentieth-century Russian art. The West is recast as culturally immature in the light of Soviet progress, clutching the remains of painting long after the funeral.

The Rodchenko and Popova exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2009 demonstrated the value of new media in a Soviet future. Rodchenko and his circle utilized the medium of photography in a practical, almost commercial fashion in his graphic works. However, one feels the need to strip away the embellishments, like he did in 5 x 5 = 25, and to concentrate on the raw medium. Rodchenko combines a compositional acumen through astonishing vantage points and the expression of socialist duty by its cultural relevance. He maintains an aesthetic eye without succumbing to art for art’s sake.

Photography’s means of production through digital cameras and facebook has to an extent diluted its impact on the modern art market. One has to bear in mind that every photograph on display has witnessed its subject first hand.

Written by James Whitehead:

The temptation after Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory in the 1960s is to cast mass-produced silk-screens and prints as the art market’s in-joke, that artists have tricked the market into treating their works like commodities, valued only through speculation and hype. If one juxtaposes the naive concept that somehow mass-production ‘democratises’ art and the economic reality of supply and demand, it is possible to see merit in this argument.

To be sure, Pop art was culturally relevant in the 1960s, but the question remains why are silk-screens still exchanged in the contemporary art market? Are we still capitalizing on an idea from half a century ago?

The difference between prints from the past and those of today is the impermanence of the original. Street artists such as Banksy realise that their works are fundamentally unstable. The ‘democratised’, freely accessible art form is transient. This is why the act of institutionalising the medium of graffiti is essential to its continuation. The pieces on display at our December show transcend the boundary between the original work, with the authentic ‘touch’ of the artist, and the limitlessly reproduced work, as documented by photography and film. With the eradication of the original, then surely the print is the only remaining link between virtual and actual art-object.

Furthermore, one has to bear in mind that art of all ages is subject to reproduction. The printing press, the bronze cast mould and the stamp are but a few examples. Nor has the art market ever held prejudice against the master for hiring studio assistants. The stigma against high-end reproductions is unnecessary, for it works within the traditional framework of art production, and in the case of street art, immortalises a craft subject to iconoclasm.

It is no small wonder that the average price of a Marilyn Monroe silk-screen shot up after her death in 1962.

As the unknown graffiti artist begins to develop a profile, 9 times out of 10 their hopes of turning their talent into a career are raised.  Here enters the gallery. Yet unfortunately it seems that this move into a fundamentally commercial setting provokes a less than positive reaction.  The point in question here is why shouldn’t an artist make a living from their own work legitimately, as opportunists actively steal/cut/hack off their stencils on the street to sell them for their own profit on the secondary market?

Nick is a classic case of street artist turned prolific contemporary artist, but this doesn’t mean that he hasn’t forgotten his roots. On the first day of The Pope´s recent visit to the UK Nick created his thought provoking stencil of ‘Cardinal Sinister,’ a disturbing characterisation of the Pope as a James Bond villain, on a wall near The Albert Hall. And yes, Nick had been granted permission to use the location. Does this make his depiction of Pope Benedict XVI any less relevant? Absolutely not.