Anri Sala

Pierre Huyghe, Zoodrum 4, 2011, live marine ecosystem, resin shell after Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910) Ishikawa Foundation, Okayama, Japan. © Pierre Huyghe
Photo © Guillaume Ziccarelli

Coinciding with the inauguration of the Hôtel des Collections on June 29, the MO.CO. unveils the first public presentation of masterpieces from the Ishikawa Collection. This outstanding and relatively recent private collection begun in 2011 by Yasuharu Ishikawa, a Japanese entrepreneur born in 1970 at Okayama, is characterized by exceptional coherence and a Japanese feel that derives primarily from its emphasis on minimal, understated, subtle forms.

The exhibition Intimate Distance, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) features nearly 30 works by artists such as Simon Fujiwara, Ryan Gander, Liam Gillick, Pierre Huyghe, and Anri Sala.

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Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Helen & Gordon, Safety Curtain, Vienna State Opera, 2015/2016
© museum in progress (www.mip.at) © Adagp, Paris 2019
Photo © Andreas Scheiblecker

Opera as the World is a journey through the history of opera in the 20th and 21st centuries, and specifically its relations with the visual arts. Anything but a conventional reading of its subject and much more than a presentation of set designs by artists, it seeks to relate – either echoing or in opposition to the legacy of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk – how the visual arts and opera have nurtured and, on occasion, radically influenced each other. From the experimental staging of the first avant-garde production to the works of contemporary artists such as Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Anri Sala, the exhibition maps interdisciplinarity from a different perspective.

Anri Sala, Take Over (Marseillaise), 2017, HD video projection, color, stereo sound, duration 7:56 min
Film still © Anri Sala

Skanderbeg Square, Tirana

Photo © Filip Dujardin

Esther Schipper congratulates Anri Sala and the architecture firm 51N4E, who have won the European Prize for Urban Public Space for their renovation of Skanderbeg Square in Sala's native Tirana, Albania. 

Like no other public space, Skanderbeg Square, Tirana’s nerve centre and symbolic site for the whole country, reflects Albania’s complex, convulsive history. Finalised in 2017, the rennovation has turned Skanderbeg Square into a public space of more than ten hectares exclusively for the pedestrian use. In the centre of the square there is a clear esplanade of almost 40,000 square metres. Rather than being flat, the esplanade is shaped like a four-sided Roman pyramid with a slope of 2.5% and a height of two metres at its tip. A fountain at the top lets water trickle down the sides, thus bringing out the colours of the mosaic paving which is made from stones from all over Albania.

Kunsthalle for Music at Witte de With in Rotterdam was the subject of a recent feature by Nina Siegal in the New York Times. Led by Artistic Director Ari Benjamin Meyers, this exhibition includes a newly commissioned work by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, as well as a repetoire of existing pieces collected from Anri Sala and Tino Sehgal, among other artists and composers. The exhibition also includes three of Meyers’ works: Serious Immobilities, Duet, and Anthem.

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Find more about the exhibition here: www.kunsthalleformusic.org

Anri Sala, The Last Resort, 2017

42-channel sound installation including 38 altered snare drums, loudspeaker parts, snare stands, drumsticks, soundtrack and 4 speakers

Duration 58:28 min, dimensions ø 850 cm

Photo © Peter Greig

On October 14, Anri Sala will share his insights into the conceptual and creative development of The Last Resort in a conversation with Maud Page, Deputy Director and Director of Collections, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Read more about the event here

The 57th International Art Exhibition, VIVA ARTE VIVA, will take place at the Giardini and the Arsenale in Venice, from May 13 to November 26, 2017. Curated by Christine Macel, it will feature 120 artists from 51 countries, including Liu Ye, Philippe Parreno, and Anri Sala.

The exhibition will offer a route that unfolds over the course of nine chapters or families of artists, beginning with two introductory realms in the Central Pavilion, followed by another seven across the Arsenale through the Giardino delle Vergini. Each of the nine chapters or families of artists of the Exhibition will represent a Pavilion in itself, or rather a Trans-Pavilion as it is trans-national by nature but echoes the Biennale's historical organization into pavilions, the number of which has never ceased to grow since the end of the 1990s. From the "Pavilion of Artists and Books" to the "Pavilion of Time and Infinity", these nine episodes will tell a story that is often discursive and at times paradoxical, with detours that mirror the world's complexities, a multiplicity of approaches and a wide variety of practices.