On the occasion of the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, a book is being co-edited by the Institut français, Manuela Editions and the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), with the support of the Fundación/Coleción Jumex (Mexico) and of the Coleción Isabel y Agustín Copel (Mexico).

The book, which has been conceived by Anri Sala and Christine Macel, is first and foremost intended to be a research tool, and to provide the reader with an entry point to the issues that the artist was exploring in the process of creating Ravel Ravel Unravel.

A range of different texts offer a variety of perspectives, which complement and enter into dialogue with each other in order to convey the complexity of reality: on the one hand, we have the historic statements of Maurice Ravel, Paul Wittgenstein and Marguerite Long (a famous pianist and friend of Ravel’s), texts taken from the novels of Alexander Waugh (a Wittgenstein specialist) and of Jean Échenoz (extracts of his novel Ravel), texts about John Cage and the anechoic chambers by Dana Samuel or about the musical technique of the left hand by Hans Brofeldt, and finally essays by Laurent Pfister (on copyright, and more particularly on the case of the composer of the Boléro), by Peter Szendy (a musicologist and philosopher) and by Christine Macel (commissioner of the French Pavilion).

Similarly, the illustrations provide vibrant visual and temporal concertinas: archive images and illustration, preparatory drawings by the artist and images from his films.

The design for the book conveys this sense of movement, of a discrepancy between the musical tempi: the pages are given a sense of rhythm by areas of vertical black vibrations; the inner fold of the book is transferred to a horizontal position inside it, the fore edge slides from the back to the front cover.

This book is just as much an informative work as an artist’s book, and offers both an immersion into the eventful story of a piece of music and into Anri Sala’s mind as he conceives a piece of work and develops its main themes and principles.

In close collaboration with the new chief curator Ellen Blumenstein and her team we have re-designed the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, including all printed matter, online services, signage and publications. Typedesign by Laurenz Brunner. Please join us for the opening on Saturday, 27.4.2013 from 5pm. Visit the new website here. More soon…

Saâdane Afif/Mount Moon:
‘L’s Bells — The Busker of the Gray Line’

Andrea Büttner
MMK Frankfurt, Milton Keynes, König Books

Edi Rama: edited by Anri Sala
Published by JRP Ringier

Edited by Clara Meister
Texts by Andrew Berardini, Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, Isobel Harbison, Lucy Ives, Graham Parker, Barry Schwabsky, Helena Sidiropoulos, Antje Stahl, Paul Stephens; interviews with Bo Christian Larsson, some of the members of A Dog Republic, Maria Loboda

The publication gives an overview of the 2012 curatorial year at MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38. Curatorial resident Clara Meister’s program focused on different concepts of translation, bringing together an interdisciplinary exhibition program based on the assumption that artistic ideas can be translated into disparate forms and therefore can take varying modes of expression. Four solo exhibitions with Natalie Czech, Bo Christian Larsson, Saâdane Afif, and Maria Loboda, as well as a collaborative project with A Dog Republic (Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, Nico Dockx, Yona Friedman, Helena Sidiropoulos, Krist Torfs) were accompanied by small poster publications, which constitute the individual chapters of the book. Writers, artists, and thinkers were invited to contribute playful essays that were either a source of inspiration for the exhibition or linked to its ideas.

More here

We have moved.
Please note the new studio address:

Studio Quentin Walesch
Görlitzer Ufer 1
10997 Berlin

Photography by Oliver Helbig
Text by Julia Voss

The Breathing Line (2012), a collaboration between Anri Sala and Ari Benjamin Meyers, is inspired by the reliance between the breathing and the music in the film 1395 Days without Red. The work creates a poetic dialogue between the exhibition space and the subject matter. We see the musical score installed on the aluminum shelves that take up the length of the wall. By physically walking around the installation, so we enter into the filmic space; the time and movement of our reading of this installation create a play of special perception and displacement of sound.

Dear friends of Ludlow 38,

We would like to invite you to the opening of L’S BELLS—The Busker of the Gray Line, a new installation by Berlin-based French artist Saâdane Afif. In his work, Afif appropriates strategies of art and music, in order to critique notions of interpretation and repetition. His installations combine lyrics and music, for instance from popular culture, with prefabricated or ready-made objects.

Having lived in New York for the past six months, Afif takes another step into the city for the exhibition at MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38. In recent years, Afif has asked fellow artists, curators, and critics to write descriptive or metaphorical song texts referring to his work. These lyrics are usually presented as wall texts accompanying his art objects. For L’S BELLS— The Busker of the Gray Line, Afif invited Brooklyn-based street musician Mount Moon to compose and perform nine songs using such texts, in his American singer-songwriter style. While the lyrics will be presented at the gallery, the other part of the exhibition will wander through the city with Mount Moon, who will perform the songs in the Bedford Avenue and Lorimer Street subway stations in Brooklyn at various unannounced times throughout the exhibition period.

Saâdane Afif was born in Vendôme, France, in 1970, and lives and works in Berlin. In early 2012 his solo exhibition Anthologie de l’humour noir [Anthology of black humor], which originated at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2010, took place at MMK Zollamt, Frankfurt am Main. Other recent solo exhibitions include The Fairytale Recordings at Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, in 2011. Afif has also shown his work at OPA, Guadalajara; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and Museum Folkwang, Essen, among others. In 2007 he participated in documenta 12. Afif was the recipient of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2009.

Mount Moon is the musical outlet of Wesley Bryon, resident of Bushwick, Brooklyn. His songs retain a folk- and blues-influenced vibe when played live, but recordings showcase more instrumental experimentation. Bryon also produces comic books, art, and meager amounts of writing, and plays bass in the psychedelic blues experience Sagopalm.

The exhibition is accompanied by an album with all new songs performed by Mount Moon and a publication with texts by Lucy Ives, Clara Meister, and Antje Stahl.

In partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy within the framework of the Carte Blanche program.

For more information on the exhibition and related events visit www.ludlow38.org

Dear friends of Ludlow 38,

We would like to invite you to the opening of a new site-specific installation by Berlin-based Swedish artist Bo Christian Larsson. The Emperor’s New Thoughts will unfold during a happening with live music by Shawn Greenlee, a recording of which will contribute to a subsequent installation in the gallery.

Bo Christian Larsson uses his drawings and paintings as blueprints for his installations, which often are the outcome of happenings. For each happening, many of the spatial elements and references are pre-chosen, while the spontaneous moments are not controlled. This combination of spontaneity and intention is prominent in Larsson’s practice; the artist sees no difference between his finished work and its process. Working with obscure and mysterious symbols, Larsson simultaneously plays with the clichés of symbolism and the common reading of clichés.

The starting point of The Emperor’s New Thoughts is a loose adaption of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. Larsson had parts of the tale translated through synaesthesia, a neurological condition in which certain experiences, such as color and taste, are combined. The words of Andersen’s story were translated into colors and shapes of familiar symbols, like circles and squares. During the happening, one of Larsson’s Alter Egos will activate the visualization of the synaesthetic interpretation by pulling strings. The strings release pigments in a certain order, creating forms in a brightly lit room, which serves as a stage. This translation of movements into shapes is followed by another translation, into music. Drawing on his longstanding interest in music, Larsson collaborates with Shawn Greenlee, a sound artist who will make the shapes audible with customized instruments, in a direct reaction to the happening.

Bo Christian Larsson (born 1976 in Kristinehamn, Sweden) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at AKI, Academy of Visual Arts in Enschede, Holland. Larsson has had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Braunschweig; Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria; and Gallery Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen. His work has been presented in group exhibitions at Kunstverein Munich; Lenbachhaus Munich; Shiryaevo Biennale, Russia; Hayward Gallery, London; and Arario Gallery, Cheonan, Korea. In 2009 Larsson received the Philipp Otto Runge Residency Scholarship and was artist-in-residence at Kunst:Raum Sylt Quelle. During The Emperor’s New Thoughts, a selection of his sculptures, drawings, and paintings will be presented at Vogt Gallery, New York.

Shawn Greenlee is a sound and electronic media artist. In his recent performance and installation work, Greenlee has focused on generating digital audio from graphic patterns. Via computer programs of his own design, he advances new methods for interpreting visual images as sound (graphic synthesis).

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by Paul Stephens and Graham Parker, and the first published interview with all of Bo Christian Larsson’s Alter Egos.

For more information on the exhibition and related events visit www.ludlow38.org

Anri Sala – Centre Pompidou Galerie Sud
3 mai – 6 août 2012
11h00 – 21h00

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Dear friends of Ludlow 38,

We would like to invite you to the first solo exhibition in the United States by Berlin-based artist Natalie Czech opening on Thursday, March 29, at 6:00pm.

On Saturday, March 31, at 6:00pm, we will host a reading by Tan Lin in the exhibition. Please see below for more information.

Czech’s photography explores the visual possibilities of poetry, deepening the dialogue between the written word and visual art. I have nothing to say. Only to show. includes two series by the artist.

For A small bouquet by Frank O’Hara, Czech invited seven writers to interweave new texts with a picture poem by American poet Frank O’Hara. O’Hara’s calligram, simultaneously both poem and image, serves as the static visual structure around which each new text is arranged. Czech photographs each page, “retrieving” the disguised calligram by circling each of its words with oil pastel. Through this interplay of appearance and disappearance, Czech emphasizes the form of the calligram, as well as her own approach: one can never see the image and read the text at the same time.

For the series Hidden Poems, Czech discovered pre-existing poems in articles in magazines and illustrated books. By highlighting single words in these texts, she reveals poems by Jack Kerouac, E. E. Cummings, Robert Lax, Robert Creeley, and others. Confronted with Czech’s photograph of each page, the viewer scans the text, reading each word of the short, often pictorial poems in sequence. The poems do not serve as Czech’s “second reading” of the text; they rather exist as a hidden, coincidental message, in conversation with the remaining text and the adjacent illustrations.

Natalie Czech (born 1976) lives and works in Berlin. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at, among others, NKV Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden; Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and Kunsthaus Bregenz. Her work will be shown in Made in Germany Zwei at Sprengel Museum, Hannover, opening May 2012. She has received numerous awards and grants, including, in 2011, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach grant for contemporary German photography.

On Saturday, March 31, Tan Lin will project two Powerpoint works, Bibliographic Sound Track and The Ph.D sounds (both 2012). A brief discussion with Ludlow 38 curator Clara Meister will follow. The works explore different communications platforms such as Twitter, SMS, programming languages, and the couplet, and their effects on reading and genre. Tan Lin is the author of more than ten books, including Heath (Plagiarism/Outsource) and 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking (2010). His work has appeared in numerous journals including Artforum, Cabinet, and The New York Times Book Review.

I have nothing to say. Only to show. will be accompanied by a publication with essays by Andrew Berardini and Barry Schwabsky.

For more information on the exhibition and related events visit www.ludlow38.org

MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38
38 Ludlow Street (between Grand and Hester)
New York, NY 10002

OPENING: February 15, 6:00-8:00pm
OPEN Thursday – Sunday 1:00 – 6:00pm
February 16 to March 18, 2012

“one and the other are another” deals with language and translation in a reflection about the emergence of new meaning in communication – in text and speech as well as in well-known images and shared concepts. With new and recent works by mainly Berlin based artists:

Pierre Bismuth gives every speaking character of Walt Disney’s “The Jungle Book“ its own specific language. By assembling all dubbed versions of the animated film, he created a Babylonian encounter of languages in the jungle. Jonathan Monk passed a sentence of Wittgenstein about the distinctiveness of speech through an online translation program and starts a telephone game of translation. Antonia Hirsch deals with the naming and categorizing of colors through a semiotic system such as language taking a bridge spanning between former West and East Germany as an example. In the collages by Hank Schmidt in der Beek known classics of modern art communicate with comic and film characters. Ignacio Uriarte’s video “Infinity“ is an animation, which tries to make the handwritten infinity symbol truly infinite by moving the beginning and end point forward in an infinite loop.

Editor: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
German/English
16,5 x 24 cm
100 pages, approx. 100 color images, softcover
978-3-942405-48-5
Release: February 2012
24.90 €