Mohamed Namou is presenting solo exhibition Trash-Talking: D’où naît une action parallèle at Mexico City’s Proyectos Monclova, opening September 23 and running to November 5.
Working fluidly with different media, the Paris-based artist explores the image, “tracing out its sources, from the concept to its concrete visibility.” He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2014) and has shown internationally. His last solo exhibition High Resolution, Step 1 was on at Paris’ mor charpentier (2014).
The show is one of over forty exhibitions happening during Gallery Weekend Mexicowith over thirty-four galleries and independent spaces participating.
Visit the gallery webpage for more details.**
Mohamed Namou, ‘High Resolution, Part 1’ (2014). Installation view. Courtesy the artist + mor charpentier, Paris.
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Art Cologne is on again, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary and running in the German city April 13 and 17.
Last year mid-April was extremely busy so we wrote this, and picked out a couple of names like Katja Novitskova, Daniel Keller and Slavs and Tatars who contributed to the overall line up of the oldest art fair in the world.
Maximilian Arnold, Christopher Füllemann and Leonhard Hurzlmeier will present with Berlin’s DUVEwhile Georgia-basedAndro Wekua‘s show Anruf, opens at Kölnischen Kunstverein during the weekend of Art Cologne and continues until June 19.
See the Art Cologne website for the extensive list of around 200 international galleries.**
Andro Wekua. ‘Get out of my room’ (2006). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery.
Adrien Missika’s exhibition Zeitgeber, an installation of photography, assemblages and video, ran from September 18 to November 7, 2015, at Mexico City’s Proyectos Monclova. Carefully considered material choices are planted in the barren landscape of the gallery, diluting and re-translating a sincere effort to connect with time and space.
Zeitgeber is a German word for “time giver” and is used to describe internal body clocks that become synchronized with the external environment, such as air temperatures, sunrises and sunsets. Providing important background information for the context of the works, the press release acts as a framework for the personal narrative that is played out around the space.
A corridor painted beige is titled ‘Cosmic Latte’, and references the shade chosen by a group of scientists in the early 2000s as being the average colour of the universe. The bright lights that run along the ceiling accentuates the stark emptiness of the hallway, with only a small steel box placed awkwardly on its own. Covering the top, a glass sphere similar to an astronaut’s helmet encases/protects an earthy substance.
Three large photographs titled ‘Stargazer’ make up a triptych along the main wall and were taken by Missika while in a hammock looking up at the sky. Similar to an abstract painting aesthetic, the amateur style of photography gives off a romantic sensitivity. Highly pixellated, shaky and soft coloured in hue, they act as a trace or memento of a significant individual experience of searching for the moon in the night sky. Potted plants intertwined with incomplete structures are placed in the middle of the room. Mimicking the colours in the photographs, the pots are painted a light pink, blue and purple. Titled ‘Higher Future,’ they cling to thin steel columns grounded in concrete. Another version places a cactus down the middle, its vertical shape in tandem with the steel as they reach towards the sky. In contrast to these more stable monuments, a thin sheet pulled into the shape of a one-man tent shelters another potted plant. The leaves pierce through the top of the fabric.
A set of hammocks inhabit the rest of the space, their form pulled into different directions by “carrying water, sand, Zen objects, and written records of experiences in altered states.” Sitting somewhere between fashionable aesthetics and the re-creation of a camping trip, the works position themselves both sincerely and ironically in relation to the natural phenomena of the universe.**
