Art Basel continues its commitment to promote art through its online platform, with a series of newly conceived Online Viewing Rooms for 2021 spearheaded by the first edition, OVR: Pioneers. Live from 24 to 27 March, the event runs in lieu of Art Basel in Hong Kong, which is usually held during this period, but has been postponed to May this year. OVR: Pioneers features 100 galleries from 25 countries, and is dedicated to artists who have broken new ground aesthetically, conceptually or socio-politically.
Galleries are presenting carefully curated solo or group exhibitions of such pioneering artists. There are artists who pushed the boundaries of Modern Art like Korean Dansaekhwa master Ha Chong-Hyun or prominent member of Arte Povera Alighiero Boetti. Others are at the forefront of challenging urgent socio-political issues, such as Theaster Gates and his decommissioned firehoses or Hayv Kahraman’s examination of the borders of selfhood in relation to the politics of the nation state. OVR: Pioneers also gives a central role to artists working in new media and technology, like Miao Ying’s live simulation software using AI, or Frank Stella’s groundbreaking use of computer modeling and 3-D printing from the early 1990s to the present day.
ASIA here features a few presentations of artists and galleries from Asia not to miss at Art Basel OVR: Pioneers 2021. Enjoy the art from your Covid-restriction areas!
1. Through Eyes and Mouth: Jimmie Durham as seen by Haegue Yang @ kurimanzutto
Haegue Yang becomes a curator for kurimanzutto with a selection of works by artist, poet, author, essayist and political activist Jimmi Durham. Both artists create works that look beyond dominant ideologies of knowledge production, breaking the boundaries of what is familiar to give free reign to language and creation. kurimanzutto allows for the act of looking at an artist’s practice from the perspective of another, presenting a reflection on the politics of looking and a poetics of being. The works selected by Haegue Yang examine what we see and how we construct meaning out of the signs and symbols of both language and history. Class of 1940, Jimmie Durham, orginally from Texas, moved to Europe in 1994, first living in Berlin and then settling in Naples, Italy. While he claims to be a quarter-blood Cherokee, and was involved with the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, Cherokee tribal representatives wrote an open letter about him in 2017, stating that he is not of native Indian origins and that his actions and claims are harmful to the community. His resilience has brought him forward, withstanding such challenges to his identity, of which Haegue Yang says:
I envy the hard way Jimmie Durham swims freely around controversies and render them with political elegance. Jimmie has achieved to be so much yet at the same time to be one: himself. Maybe that makes him more of a cosmopolitan than an ordinary diaspora
A selection of film and sculptural work by Jimmie Durham is also on view in Barbara Wein’s Online Viewing Room as a duo presentation alongside works by Tomas Schmit.
2. Miao Ying – Pilgrimage into Walden XII @ Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
Born in 1985, Shanghai- and New York-based Miao Ying is a pioneer in using new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence in contemporary art. Her work on show entitled Pilgrimage into Walden XII – the Honor of Shepherds is a game engine live simulation software of machine learning Artificial Intelligence that can be run on computer. It is the first chapter of the “Pilgrimage into Walden Twelve” project. The other two chapters are The Roach’s Quest and Battle for Glorious Spells.
The game takes place in a medieval magical fantasy land called Walden XII, from the utopian novel Walden Two written by behavioural psychologist B. F. Skinner about a society where perfect behaviour is achieved as a result of reinforced positive conditioning of the desired behaviours, while meeting basic needs of citizens. In Walden XII, the artist has implemented the technology to enforce citizen behaviour, collect big data from citizens, and reward or punish them according to their behaviour score.
The work shows six Artificial Intelligence (AI) “Social Shepherds”, who represent different classes and different levels of intelligence, and who guard the Walden XII and shepherd the citizens—cockroaches, protect them from the demons and monsters from other kingdoms.
3. Kelompok Seni Rupa Jendela @ Gajah Gallery
Kelompok Seni Rupa Jendela features paintings and sculptures by the innovative Indonesian art collective, whose members include Handiwirman Saputra, Jumaldi Alfi, Rudi Mantofani, Yunizar and Yusra Martunus.
KSR Jendela first broke onto the regional art scene in 2005 with their exhibition “Biasa”(Ordinary). The group was founded to act as a sanctuary for young artists and an incubator for their ideas. At the time,Indonesia found itself in the midst of socio-politcal chaos and was struggling to find a post-colonial identity, aspects which were heavily reflected in the contemporary arts. KSR Jendela offered an alternative view, placing sensory play and collaboration at the heart of the creative process and the purpose of art. The collective plays a central role in the contemporary art scene in Indonesia and influences and inspires young artists’ practices.
4. Dayanita Singh @ Frith Street Gallery
Dayanita Singh has been working with photographyfor over forty years, investigaitng its potential to change, grow and shift. At OVR: Pioneers, the gallery features new and recent work by the artist that demonstrate her interest in photography’s relationship to architecture. In an accompanying video, Singh talks about her fascination with architects Geoffrey Bawa, B.V. Doshi and Le Corbusier and their groundbreaking work.
Knowing Singh and her work, the affinity between the artist and architecture becomes apparent also in the way she presents and exhibits her work. It is unfortunate that viewers right now can only see her work on a screen, as the physical experience in appreciating her oeuvre is of paramount importance. The works at OVR: Pioneers – Pillars, Ladders and Montages – all create physical spaces that the viewer would normally interacts with actively and kinaesthetically. Each Pillar or Ladder offer new combinations of images, new spaces to explore as you move around them. The Montages combine two or more different photographs of architectural settings, creating virtual spaces for contemplation.
5. Ha Chong-Hyun @ Kukje Gallery
A founding representative of Dansaekhwa, Ha Chong-Hyun (b. 1935) explores materiality to expand the boundaries of painting. At OVR, Kukje Gallery features a selection of works from the 1970s to th 1990s. Ha was instrumental in defining Korean modernism, challenging the strict delineation between sculpture, painting and performance. His work is recognisable for its muted earth tones and the use of burlap or hemp cloth, as seen in the neutral and earthy colours of his early Conjunction works (1970s), in which he substituted canvas with the coarser multipurpose material or burlap used by the U.S. military troops and aid organisations operating in South Korea at the time. The artist was inspired by the subtle hues found in the Korean landscape and culture, reminiscent of traditional Korean roof tiles called giwa, as well as tones evoking brick, soil and silvergrass.
This presentation shows the artist’s continuous struggle to situate his visual language within the historical context of the modernization of Korea.
6. Sunil Gupta: Cruising 1960s Delhi @ Vadehra Art Gallery
Pioneering photographer, writer, curator and activist Sunil Gupta revisits his experimentations ofhis sexual awakening and discovering his queerness growing up in 1960s Delhi. His works belie an autobiographical intervention into mainstream cultural consciousness, engaging with subjects like racism, alternative sexuality, migration, queer issues and marginalia. In the series on show, shot in the 1980s as Gupta returned for the first time in India after leaving as a teen, the artist composes “a revisitation of a revisitation, a memory of a memory”.
The images show significant places in Gupta’s sexual awakening as a boy and the discovery of his queer identity, providing visual memories around the Nizamuddin neighbourhood where he experienced sexual exploits with other boys, some of them older and from different socio-economic classes. Gupta reconciles with this emotional landscape years later, uncovering the trauma of separation that he describes as the loss of his otherwise idyllic childhood.
7. Krishna Reddy | The Embodied Image @ Experimenter
Sculptor and printmaker Krishna Reddy (1925 – 2018) experimented with form, technique and application. While in Paris in the 1960s co-directing Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, he developed and invented the process that he is most well-known for – simultaneous multicolour viscosity printing – and broke new ground in intaglio printmaking. Reddy was able to control the viscosity of the inks by altering the oil consistency in each impression, thereby allowing the inks to occupy different depths without mixing with each other. He used a range of rollers to push the inks to desired parts of the plate, creating unique mono-prints, rich in textural quality and dimensionality. The presentation at OVR pays homage to his seven-decade practice of experimentation with the medium of printmaking and his innovative ways of ‘sculpting’ the plates.
8. Sekine Nobuo @ Watanuki Ltd. / Toki-no-Wasuremono
Sekine Nobuo was a member of The Japanese 1960s-70s art movement Mono-ha, and became a pioneer on the international art scene with “Phase – Mother Earth” (1968), regarded as a monument of post-war Japanese art.
Until his death in Los Angeles in 2019, he continued exploring “Phase” with “Nothingness” and “Conception”.
In 1970, Sekine came to prominence after his success representing Japan at the Venice Biennale with the work Phase of Nothingness, a large stone placed atop a stainless steel column, now in Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
The exhibition will show Sekine’s exploration of “Phase”, beginning with a bronze sculpture of “Phase – Mother Earth” from the First Open Air Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition, with other works including granite sculptures, Phase Conception, works from the “Phase – Skin” series of his later years, and other works.
9. Heat of the Primordial @ SCAI The Bathhouse
Toshikatsu Endo (b.1950) is another pioneer of Japanese art. Proclaiming the “restoration of narrative” in art, Endo pioneered a Japanese rendition of post-minimalism in the 1990 Venice Biennale.
In the OVR exhibition are a series of his monumental sculptures made of wood, tar and fire from the 1990s to the present, alongside other works that together testify to his mastery of elemental materials.
The artist uses both inorganic shapes like cubes and spheres, as well as objects for human survival like a canoe, a log or a bucket, coupling the potentialities of the medium of sculpture with the primordial fire.
Alongside his work are two pieces by Tatsuo Miyajima, pioneer of incorporating digital numbers as a universal language and profound narratives of Buddhist philosophy.
10. Yun Suknam: The Godmother of Feminist Art in Asia @ Hakgojae Gallery
Machurian artist Yun Suknam (b.1939) is regarded as the godmother of feminist art in Asia. As an artist she represents the resisting feminist movement within the patriarchal East Asian culture. When Yun, a 40-year-old housewife, started her artistic career in the 1980s, monochrome painting was the mainstream.However, she choseto retaina figurative style, composing narratives around women’s stories. After her first solo exhibition at The Korean Culture and Art Foundation (currently Arko Art Center, Seoul) in 1982, she went to New York to study art, and upon returning to Korea, she established athefeminist Minjung artist group ‘Siwol-Moim’ along with Kim In-soon and Kim Jin-sook. She has been at the forefront of feminist art in Korea, continuing to explore new mediums and expanding her work through new experiences.
11. Pinaree Sanpitak, Fragmented Bodies: 1995 — 2020 @ Yavuz Gallery
At OVR the gallery presents a collection of installation, sculpture, drawing and painting that have defined Pinaree Sanpitak’s practice exploring the bodily form as a vessel of experience and perception over the past three decades. In the 1990s, her groundbreaking exhibition “Breast Works” marked the start of the Thai artist’s reference to the iconography of the female breast, which would become her defining characteristic. The recurring breast motif is stylised into basic forms such as vessel and mound, and related to Buddhist imagery (the stupa and the offering bowl). Transcending the image of the breast, Sanpitak has expanded to the human body and the bodily form as a vessel of experience and perception.
Her use of diverse media reflect her sensorial explorations, as well as her fascination with the potentiality of the body, her own body and her lived experience of the body as a woman and, more recently, the charged and shared space created between and among bodies by her participatory works.
C. A. Xuân Mai Ardia
Art Basel OVR: Pioneers runs from 24 to 27 March 2021 artbasel.com