Walker Art Center

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Trajal Harrell and the Art of Conscientious Hosting

By Debra Levine March 8, 2016

Trajal Harrell practices the art of conscientious hosting, writes dance scholar Debra Levine. He creates opportunities for others to step in and out of his position, while inserting himself into a lineage of artistic impresarios who precede him—including, in his Walker-commissioned new work, Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikaa, Nouvelle Danse leader Dominique Bagouet, and La Mama ETC founder Ellen Stewart.  More

Trajal Harrell’s The Ghost of Montpellier Meets the Samurai will see its US debut March 11–13, 2016.

“There Are Many Ways to Destroy a Piano”

By Fionn Meade March 2, 2016

Burning, sawing, toppling: “There are many ways to destroy a piano,” says Andrea Büttner of Piano Destructions (2014), a video installation that presents interventions by (largely male) artists alongside footage of women pianists performing Chopin, Schumann, and Monteverdi—at once complicating the presumption of men as artistic iconoclasts and destroying a traditional symbol of bourgeois education for women. More

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Andrea Büttner, Piano Destructions is on view November 21, 2015–May 15, 2016.

Statistical Salvos: WARM and the Guerrilla Girls

By Patricia Olson February 29, 2016

When black-and-white posters boldly announcing statistics about inequality in the art world started appearing in 1985, Patricia Olson took note. A decade before the Guerrilla Girls began using New York walls as a canvas, she helped found WARM—the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota, a 40-member feminist collective and gallery that likewise used the power of data to fight for gender parity in the arts.  More

The Guerrilla Girls speak March 5 at the State Theatre as part of their Twin Cities Takeover. Their 88-poster Portfolio Compleat is on view in the Walker exhibition Art at the Center.

On Image Ubiquity and the Ordinary Picture

By Haley Ryan February 26, 2016

Not your ordinary photography show, Ordinary Pictures surveys the work of some 40 artists—from Steve McQueen and Sturtevant to Amanda Ross-Ho and Elad Lassry—who question, critique, and exploit the materials and methods of commercial image production. From appropriation to collage to experimental film, their practices complicate the ever-expanding global image economy and the role of art within it. More

Ordinary Pictures is on view February 27–October 9, 2016.

The Human Body in Shahryar Nashat’s Present Sore

By Isla Leaver-Yap February 18, 2016

Reflecting upon what the “ideal body” might look like in the 21st century, Shahryar Nashat’s Walker Moving Image Commission constructs an image of a human form whose mobility, physicality, and sensuality are comprehensively mediated by a series of objects and technologies Nashat calls “prosthetics.” Fittingly, the work is presented in a 9:16 aspect ratio—the format of most hand-held mobile devices. More

A Walker Moving Image Commission, Shahryar Nashat’s Present Sore (2016) premieres on the Walker Channel February 18–March 18, 2016. 

The Conditions of Two Things About Suffering

By Isla Leaver-Yap February 18, 2016

An allegorical impulse has been a defining feature of Uri Aran’s art—including his video Two Things About Suffering, which presents two men pacing in an industrial ruin. “I wanted the title to sound like a lesson,” he says. “Maybe these figures are two forms of suffering. They ‘walk the yard.’ They are two fish in a tank. The space is so deep and so high they could be two men inside the belly of a whale.” More

A Walker Moving Image Commission, Uri Aran’s Two Things About Suffering (2016) premieres on the Walker Channel February 18–March 18, 2016.

Announcing 16 New Works for the Garden

By Olga Viso January 21, 2016

Katharina Fritsch’s giant blue rooster. Commissions by Nairy Baghramian, Theaster Gates, Mark Manders, Philippe Parreno, and others. Sculptures by Sam Durant, Kcho, and Liz Larner. When the renovated Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opens in 2017, visitors will see the return of old favorites plus the arrival of 16 new works. Here’s a first look at the art and artists that’ll animate the new 19-acre campus. More

Taste as a Political Matter

By Coco Fusco January 13, 2016

Exploring NYC’s “nocturnal underworld” at age 24, Coco Fusco stumbled upon her “first encounter with a full-on feminist art intervention”: a show at the Palladium curated by the Guerrilla Girls. “This was an activist approach that I could connect with, as it spoke truth to power playfully, with wit and style,” she writes in honor of the Girls’ 30th anniversary—and one that influenced how she makes art today. More

In conjunction with the Twin Cities Takeover, the Guerrilla Girls’s 88-poster Portfolio Compleat is on view in the exhibition Art at the Center.

Art News from Elsewhere More

Via Artnet.com

Gallery Tally (External)

Twenty-seven years after the Guerrilla Girls’ first “weenie count” at the Met, Los Angeles’s Gallery Tally is using similar strategies—text-based posters and creative infographics—to critique the gender imbalance that still exists in the art world today.

via theintercept.com

Redaction Art (External)

As “the absence of evidence operates as evidence in its own right,” the concept of secrecy can merit as much investigation as secrets themselves. A spate of artists—from Jenny Holzer to Eyal Weizman—are exploring this notion in the context of the war on terror.

Via theguardian.com

As You Dance It (External)

Shakespeare without words? That’s how Brian Eno and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker like it. De Keersmaeker’s As You Like It—performed in London this week—conveys the Bard’s classic through movement and the music of Eno’s Another Green World (1975).


Via nytimes.com

Art/Lab (External)

“As a scientist, you want to be precise, correct. But he pushed me a little bit out of my comfort zone, saying, ‘Imagine something and see if it can be done.’” A scientist on working with Tomás Saraceno, one of 30 artists embedded in MIT’s labs in recent years.

Via nytimes.com

Eiko Anew (External)

As her partner Koma recovers from an injury, dancer Eiko has taken to the East Village to perform for the first time in 40 years. “The experience of an Eiko solo is, if possible, even more intense. Without Koma, there’s no buffer between you and her uncanny presence.”

Via hyperallergic.com

Painted Maps (External)

Pentagram’s Paula Scher says her painting practice has “nothing in common” with her corporate design work. Using “letters and numbers a bit like a pointillist uses dots,” Scher’s new exhibition features large, colorful maps illustrated with layers of data.


Minnesota Art News

Via mnartists.org

Dispatch: NYC Winter Dance Festivals

A report from the dance showcases surrounding the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference, including Under the Radar at the Public Theater, PS122’s COIL, and the American Realness festival. More

Via mnartists.org

One Cold Weekend

Artist Alexa Horochowski’s personal essay wanders through the bitter chill of midwinter, from experiments in the Soap Factory’s raw, third-floor space to a broken boiler and a winter’s tale at the movies.  More

Artspeaks

Commentary

Andrea Büttner’s Piano Destructions

“There are many ways to destroy a piano,” says Andrea Büttner of Piano Destructions (2014), a video installation that presents interventions by (largely male) artists alongside footage of women pianists performing Chopin, Schumann, and… More

Commentary

On Curation, Care, and Andrea Büttner’s Moss Garden

“Caretaking is where the word ‘curating’ comes from. Curare means to take care—to care for something outside one’s self.” German artist Andrea Büttner, Walker Artistic Director Fionn Meade, and Walker… More

Commentary

Jack Whitten on Mapping the Soul

“As an abstract painter, I work with things that I cannot see,” says Jack Whitten. “Google has mapped the whole earth. We have maps of Mars. We don’t have a map of the soul, and that intrigues me.” Here the painter discusses Soul Map… More

Walker Channel

Artist Talk

Insights: Sulki and Min Choi (Sulki & Min), Seoul

When asked what their studio motto might be, designer/artists Sulki Choi and Min Choi replied, “Clarifying is our business, obscuring is our pleasure.” Indeed, this tension between fact and fiction… More

Trailer

Ordinary Pictures

Featuring works by some 45 artists, Ordinary Pictures surveys a range of practices through the lens of the stock photograph and other forms of industrial image production. Spanning generations and movements—from 1960s avant-garde film and Pictures Generation… More

Dialogue / Interview

Comments Section: Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Art, and its production, has a price. Artists and arts workers gather to discuss the discrepancies in pay in the field as well as the funding and support structures that make this work possible. Moderated by Mn Artists program… More

Quoted

Ongoing Series

Superscript Reader

Six artists have each been commissioned to create a new work that will premiere online. These works respond to the inspirations, inquiry, and influence of three key artists in the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection: Derek Jarman, Bruce Conner, and Marcel Broodthaers.

Superscript Reader

An editorial supplement to Superscript: Arts Journalism and Criticism in a Digital Age, an international conference held at the Walker Art Center May 28–30, 2015.

Artist Op-Eds

A series of commissioned opinion pieces featuring provocative reactions to the headlines by artists Ron Athey, Ana Tijoux, Dread Scott, and others.

Art (re)Collecting

In celebration of the Walker’s 75th anniversary, Martin Friedman—Walker director from 1961 to 1990—shares his reflections on encountering artists from Duchamp to Cage.

Lowercase P

An election-year series on personal politics and the way artists contribute to the conversation on making a better society.

From the Archives

Charlotte Cotton

Pop and the Traveling Image

With the Walker’s International Pop now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art we revisit this discussion on the role of the traveling mass-produced image during the 20th century. More

Andrew Blauvelt

A Timeline of Design History

For nearly fifty years, Design Quarterly chronicled the changing terrains of architecture, urban planning, and design. Here’s a selection of our favorite issues, featuring the likes of Muriel Cooper, Martin Filler, and Armin Hofmann. More

Centerpoints

Ghost Building: Walker Galleries 1927

A ghostly image of T.B. Walker on the grand staircase of the 1927 Walker Galleries reminds us that before the brick-and-aluminum facility we know today there was another home for the Walker. More