CPH = ART
Purple Face Dream by Ida Kvetny at Helene Nyborg Contemporary
Do not despair if you are not located in the centre of fashion – London! – this weekend. Art Copenhagen – Scandinavia’s largest and leading art fair for international contemporary art will take place from tomorrow Friday the 17th September until Sunday.
More than 500 artists, from the greatest masters of contemporary art to the newest shooting stars, are represented. The exhibition showcases the highest quality within paintings, sculptures, graphics, installations, photography and video.
Check especially Galleri Wolfsen, V1 Gallery, Wonderland Art Space, Helene Nyborg Contemporary and Galleri Henrik Kampmann.
For more info
NEW DESIGNER BIOGRAPHY
Autumn is always full of interesting fashion/design/art exhibitions, creative and stimulating books launches, film premieres etc. And what is perfect than attending these kind of arrangements followed by a coffee enjoying the last warm sunbeams of the year.
No matter if you are in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, Paris there will most certainly be one or more interesting creative adventures.
One of the things happening in London is the launch of book and exhibition portraying British designer Matthew Williamson. Colin McDowell himself has written the book, with forewords by actress and devoted Matthew Williamson fan Sienna Miller.
This lavishly illustrated monograph will cover the designers work, life and achievements in a definitive volume and celebrate the collaborations Matthew Williamson has executed over the years with seminal artists, photographers, architects and designers, and features word and image contributions from luminaries of the fashion world, including Alexandra Shulman, Anna Wintour, Zandra Rhodes, Joan Burstein and Sir Paul Smith.
The book will be sold internationally from Monday 18th October and will be accompanied by a display at the recently reinvigorated centre for visual arts, Somerset House, in London.
Matthew Williamson, Sommerset House, London, 13 October 2010 – 30 January 2011
AVEDON ON AUCTION
6 years after his death, The Richard Avedon Foundation will auction 60 works at Christie’s in Paris.
The sale’s centerpiece is an enormous print of the “Dovima With Elephants” (1955), which hung in Avedon’s studio for 30 years. The iconic shot of the willowy model in a Dior evening gown and bracketed by circus pachyderms is expected to fetch a half-million of the group’s $4 million to $6 million estimate.
The first museum to exhibit his work after his sudden death in 2004 was in fact Louisiana museum in Denmark. They had already made an oral agreement with the photographer a year before his death and The Avedon Foundation afterwards decided to keep that agreement. This retrospective exhibition also comprises the “Dowima With Elephants” mentioned above.
“Avedon: Photographies provenant de la Fondation Richard Avedon”, Christie’s Paris, 20 November 2010
FASHION ILLUSTRATIONS
Mats Gustafsson
I’m an image-fanatic! I collect art; take great pleasure in browsing through magazines and books and love going to museums and art galleries. Therefore, I couldn’t be more excited than the news of up-coming exhibition at the design Museum in London. They will from 7 November showcase Munich gallery owner Joëlle Chariau’s unique and outstanding collection of fashion illustrations. Co-curated by the fashion historian Colin McDowell, it brings together clothing by Poiret, Lanvin, Chanel, Alexander McQueen and others as drawn by Erté, Lepape, René Gruau, Antonio and Mats Gustafson.
It will be the first time this collection, which was put together over 30 years by, the before mentioned, Joëlle Chariau, has been displayed. Later on the exhibition will be accompanied with a book published by Prestel – if you can’t make it to London in time before the exhibition ends.
Drawing Fashion, Design Museum, London, 17 November – 06 March 2011
POST CFW
New initiatives often follows a fashion week – and this time it’s the Danish Museum of Art and Design who this fall offers a number of free talks on subjects like the furnisher designer Finn Juhl’s drawings and documentation (this Wednesday at 4.30pm), Japanese: pictures and books and Danish fashion designer Erik Mortensen’s sketches.
And you better sign up for their newsletter – last Friday Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, popped by the museum and talked about fashion exhibitions in art museums.
Danish Museum of Art and Design
Ps. Those of you who don’t know it or haven’t’ been their yet – check out their library – it’s a mini version of the library at the V&A in London – a super inspiring intellectual oasis!
THE SERPENTINE SEES RED
The French architect Jean Nouvel’ new pavilion was unveiled at the annual Serpentine Gallery summer party in London last night.
It is now 10 years since the Serpentine Gallery built the first of its temporary summer pavilions, a characteristically wonky marquee designed by the then largely untested Zaha Hadid.
Each year since, it has asked a different architect to take on this small but potentially highly impactful commission, the one rule to the parlour game being that they should not have completed a building in the UK. The programme has become a much-loved tradition, often producing buildings as charming as they are innovative
Guests at the summer party included Grace Jones, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Lily Cole, Tracey Emin, Nicky Haslam, Zaha Hadid, Matthew Williamson, Poppy Delevigne, Alice Temperley and Matthew Williamson who all turned out to admire the vast geometric structure made of red, lightweight glass with a 40-foot high freestanding wall built at one end.
For more info clic here
BACK TO CIVILIZATION
Now, that both Glastonbury and Roskilde are well behind us, it’s time to get civilized and focus on another end of the culture scale than music – art!
One of my favourite Danish artists, Richard Mortensen, exhibits right now at one of my favourite Danish museums, Aros. Richard Mortensen belongs to an exclusive circle of Danish artists of international fame and stature who, in the course of a painterly and visual debate made a major contribution towards building a bridge between the intellectual life of Denmark and that of the rest of Europe.
Like the greatest composers, Richard Mortensen mastered the instrument in his visual field – line, form, and colour – and succeeded in producing compositions and moods combining the into a harmonise whole of either splintered or concentrated spaces.
Richard Mortensen – Grafik, 19 June – 12 September 2010 at Aros
For more info check click here
COPENHAGEN – A HIDDEN ARTISTIC GEM
Although art in Copenhagen is fades in comparison to Basel, New York, London etc. you’ll still find huge potential. And it’s indeed a hidden gem for up-coming contemporary artist and galleries.
One of my favourite independent galleries Helene Nyborg Contemporary holds an exhibition preview and book launch on Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen’s ‘Meditation on the Uncanny’ on Friday 4 June @ 5-7pm.
In his work, Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen explores painterly space, drawing inspiration from built environment via photography and models and to me his paintings draw parallels to David Hockney’s early work, which I love for their simplicity and graphic beauty.
If you’re around, go have a look.
Meditation on the Uncanny, 4 June – 10 July 2010
Helene Nyborg Contemporary
Store Kongensgade 40H, ground floor
Skt. Annæ Passage
1264 Copenhagen K
Denmark
www.helenenyborg.com
HOCKNEY EMBRACES THE iPad
One of my favourite contemporary English artists David Hockney has swapped his sketchpad for an iPad.
He sees the latest hi-tech gadgetry as a way for traditional drawing, using the hand, to make a comeback. He told the Evening Standard: “The iPad is far more subtle, in fact it really is like a drawing pad. They will sell by the million. It will change the way we look at everything from reading newspapers to the drawing pad.”
The iPad is the newest example of Hockney’s experimental streaks; cameras, faxes, printers, mirrors, oil, watercolour and pencil have all been used. And in the last year he has created many paintings on his iPhone.
“What is also unique is that with the iPad you can actually watch a playback of your drawing. I have never watched myself actually drawing before.”
Hurray for people in there seventies still open minded and ready to embrace the newest technology.
For more info on David Hockney click here