Ted Prize winner artist JR is currently displaying a solo exhibition titled “GIANTS” at Lazinc’s new flagship gallery in Mayfair, London.
The name of the presentation directly references the artist’s ongoing GIANTS project which made its debut during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he created enormous black and white prints of athletes jumping over Rio’s buildings, swimming in its ocean, and diving off its mountains like Greek titans. .
Even if pictures of the installations in situ might look good, it’s very difficult to recapture their impact. So to give some sense of the scale of the project in the gallery space settings, the viewer has to walk underneath the massive paper head and shoulders of Sudanese high jumper Mohamed Younes Idriss, fixed to scaffolding, just to get in.
At the same time, visitors can discover the artist’s process from start to finish with behind the scenes items like architectural plans that were created to support his large-scale installations, installation permits collaged into 3D-printed digital reliefs of the final images, and look at the artist’s digital photography techniques.
Somerset House is currently hosting Hassan Hajjaj: La Caravane, a homecoming exhibition of the British-Moroccan artist, showcasing his vibrant fusion of contemporary cultures through new and celebrated works.
The exhibition is the first UK solo show of his work in seven years, celebrating his multi-layered works which fuse traditional and contemporary North African culture with familiar Western imagery and iconography.
Born and raised in Larache, Morroco, Hassan Hajjaj moved to London aged twelve and his artistic practice sees him spend much of his life travelling between these two countries and cultures. His artworks reflect his neo-nomadic lifestyle and the relationships he has formed with a variety of characters along the way, from musicians to artists and athletes to street performers. These individuals inspire Hajjaj’s diverse artworks from photographic portraits to video installations, sculptures, music, design and handcrafted objects.
Infused with a bold palette, the materials Hajjaj uses include patterned textiles, furniture, clothes and props often created by the artist to inform our understanding of the person in the image. All of these elements, including the frames made out of everyday items in which his images sit, are chosen deliberately to highlight these individuals’ identities.
He is perhaps best known for his colourful photographic portraits, including the Kesh Angels series, from which many new works feature in the exhibition.
Blending the glossy aesthetic of a fashion shoot with Moroccan tradition and street culture, these witty and poignant images, although outwardly light-hearted, challenge Western perceptions of the hijab and female disempowerment.
Another new body of work in the exhibition is My Rock Stars: Volume 2, a nine screen installation of distinctively dressed musicians. Each musician occupies an individual screen and takes it in turns to play their instrument, while the other performers turn to watch. The clothes and brightly patterned backdrops in each screen have been carefully selected by Hajjaj to highlight each player and their individual performance.
Visitors can view the performances from Hajjaj’s signature Le Salon installation, which takes the form of a customised sofa, whilst the music travels throughout the whole exhibition.
On 6 January a free special event will take place to celebrate the final weekend of the exhibition and Somerset House’s season of African Art, including live music and a family workshop inspired by elements of Hajjaj’s work.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Lisson Gallery, the gallery is partnering with The Vinyl Factory to stage an ambitious group exhibition called ‘EVERYTHING AT ONCE‘, inspired by a quote by John Cage in 1966 “Nowadays everything happens at once and our souls are conveniently electronic (omniattentive).”
More than ever before, contemporary art, like life, assaults us simultaneously from all angles and from anywhere on the globe, existing also as multi-sensory visions of an accelerated world. Time and space are no longer rational or linear concepts and great distances can be traversed with an instantaneous click.
Through 45 new and historical works by 24 artists, ‘Everything at once’ is a multi-sensorial experience, an interconnected journey exploring effect and event, invoking immediacy and immutability in the 180 Strand building, home to the Vinyl Factory.
Participating artists include : MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ – AI WEIWEI – ALLORA & CALZADILLA – ART & LANGUAGE – CORY ARCANGEL – TONY CRAGG – RICHARD DEACON – NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG – CEAL FLOYER – RYAN GANDER – DAN GRAHAM – RODNEY GRAHAM – SUSAN HILLER – SHIRAZEH HOUSHIARY – ANISH KAPOOR – LEE UFAN – RICHARD LONG – HAROON MIRZA – TATSUO MIYAJIMA – JULIAN OPIE – LAURE PROUVOST – WAEL SHAWKY – LAWRENCE WEINER – STANLEY WHITNEY
In parallel to the exhibition, Ryoji Ikeda’s ‘Test Pattern [No.12]’ – commissioned by Store X The Vinyl Factory – is a discombobulating experience, in which black and white bar code-like patterns pulse in the darkness. The Japanese artist and electronic composer converts data from music and photography into monochrome binary patterns, immersing gallery-goers in a dazzling kinetic environment.
To kick off the exhibition, the ground floor contains important sculptural statements from the last century by Anish Kapoor – At the Edge of the World II (1998) , a UFO like installation that floats above head height, receding seemingly impossibly into space and time – while Richard Deacon presents his own takes on materiality and multidimensionality.
Ai Weiwei’s giant wallpaper installation stretches 50m along the building and depicts people’s continuing movement across the globe, paired with a landscape of blasted tree roots – together speaking of displacement, conflict and alienation, a reference to the ongoing global refugee crisis.
Cory Arcangel’s video projection features ‘MIG 29 Soviet Fighter Plane and Clouds’ depicting elements of a hacked video game from the early 1990s.
Richard Long created a 60-metre long mud work called ‘Pelopennese Line’, using his hands dipped in slip from the river Avon.
Stanley Whitney is exploring the formal possibilities of colour within ever-shifting grids of multi-hued blocks inspired by music and dance.
Works by Ryan Gander present four metallic sentinels in dramatic postures displaying a range of emotions while remaining faceless, as well as a draped mirror and a stairway to Heaven.
‘Minster’ totemic sculptures by Tony Cragg built from scraps of rubber, stone, wood and metal recall the spires of a cathedral .
Susan Hiller’s installation entitled Channels, showcases a series of 104 analogue television screens with a collection of audio accounts and oscilloscope recordings of people who have experienced death and returned to tell the tale. These vivid stories in many different languages constitute a remarkable contemporary archive, whether the accounts are regarded as metaphors, misconceptions, myths, delusions or truths.
Everything at Once Until 10 December 180 The Strand, London, WC2R 1EA
London based artist Alexander Chappell debuted his solo show entitled ‘Nobody‘ at StolenSpace, exploring the path of anonymity in a society obsessed with being ‘somebody’.
Featuring 12 graphite portraits of graffiti writers: Astek, Bonzai, Chu, Conor Harrington, D*Face, Eine, Inkie, Insa, Joe Holbrook, Tizer and Xenz. Contrary to today’s obsession with fame, the depicted artists have led their artistic career through anonymity, using an alias and not showing their faces.
After photographing them, Alexander Chappell painstakingly recreated the portraits in fine detail using graphite and white marker. The depicted writers added their tagged signature in red on the framed portraits.
The show also features a self portrait of the artist, with a collaboration with Conor Harrington.
Alexander Chappell – Nobody
Until 19 November 2017
StolenSpace
17 Osborn Street,
London UK E1 6TD
French artist Ludovic Vernhet aka Ludo (covered) is back to the London streets with new large paste ups. Continuing his ‘Nature Revenge’ series, Ludo created three artworks on the theme of love, violence and fame using his signature neon green paint and monochrome paste ups. Featuring hybrid creatures mixing nature and technology and weaponry, Ludo highlights societal and environmental issues.
Ludo – Have a Nice Day, London 2017
Ludo – Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, London 2017
Ludo – Love at first sight, London 2017
Here are further works from Ludo in the streets of London we enjoyed throughout the years: