Mondo Fine Art

C.A.N. Condensed

August 4th, 2010

Damien Hirst "Mother and Child Divided"

• The Living Coasts zoo and aquarium in Torquay, England, is home to an educational exhibition called “Tamed," which includes work by Damien Hirst. The artist’s Mother and Child Divided – a formaldehyde-preserved, bisected cow and calf – is on display until August 30. From The Art Newspaper. • It has been reported that the security offices at Shanghai’s World Expo have employed the services of “art spies” to seek out and report controversial artwork and exhibits. There have already been minor conflicts at over-crowded pavilions, and the Chinese government maintains that censorship aids in the successful presentation of the Expo. Read more about this story here.

Part of the Sydney Biennale, Paul Pfeiffer's "Vitruvian Figure"

• Sydney’s 17th Biennale closed on Sunday, and attendance figures showed that over half a million people attended the two and a half month art fair and exposition. Chief Executive Officer Marah Braye called the Biennale “the most successful exhibition ever presented by the organization and has received an overwhelmingly positive critical response – both nationally and internationally.” Check out the full article at Art Knowledge News. • New York art dealer Lawrence Salander was sentenced yesterday to 6-18 years in federal prison for grand larceny and fraud. Salander-O’Reilly Galleries on the Upper East Side filed for bankruptcy three years ago, and Salander pleaded guilty earlier this year to stealing $120 million from clients and investors. From ArtForum. • British artist Jess Flood-Paddock has created a “sculptural scenario” for her first solo exhibition at a major institution (London’s Southbank Centre). The show, entitled Gangsta’s Paradise, is said to explore “historical and cultural specificity of moral behavior, populist self-help texts, the links between anthropology and infotainment, and the comedy and tragedy of scale - specifically gigantism.” More about the show can be found at e-flux.

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July 26th, 2010

Schiele's "Portrait of Wally"

• A collection of works by Henri Matisse, originally created for the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence on the French Riviera, will be shown at the Vatican in Rome later this year. Large-scale sketches, silk garments, and a belltower bronze cross will enhance the modern and contemporary religious art collection of the Vatican. For the full story, head to The Art Newspaper. • An agreement was reached last Tuesday between the US government, the Estate of Lea Bondi Jaray and the Leopold Museum of Vienna to conclude one of the longest running stolen art cases in history. Egon Schiele’s painting Portrait of Wally, stolen by a Nazi agent in 1930, will stay in its home at the Leopold in return for a $19 million cash settlement paid to the Bondi heirs, its rightful owners. Click here to read a description of the case.

"Untitled (Long Gray Construction)" by Jane South

• Work by internationally acclaimed British artist Jane South will be featured at the Knoxville Museum of Art in the exhibition Jane South: Shifting Structures (Aug. 7 - Nov. 7). Many pieces seem to blur the line between sculpture, installation and architecture, using little more than hand painted balsa wood and folded paper. Head to Art Knowledge News for more. • The Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans in October will open Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond, an exhibition meant to serve as a documentary showcase and memorial to the storm’s devastation. Eyewitness accounts, photographs and video, as well as scientific explorations will educate while they powerfully evoke the suffering of a major US city. A centerpiece of the exhibit is a ruined baby grand piano recoverd from the home of jazz legend Fat Domino. Check out the full story here.

Mini Golf for MAP

July 20th, 2010

Please join us for a special fundraiser for the Mondo Art Project (MAP) next Wednesday, July 28th, from 7-9pm at the Salt Lake Art Center. Enjoy a round of artist designed mini golf, while helping us raise funds for our upcoming expeditions to Colombia and the Navajo Nation. This will be a fun evening for the whole family! Please see the attached invitation for more details... For those of you who have been following our passion project, the International HeART Exchange, we have since changed the name to the Mondo Art Project (MAP). The goal of the Mondo Art Project (MAP) is to connect children from around the world through the common language of art. We do this by doing art projects and exchanging drawings with children in different countries. Think of it like "pen pals" but with drawings, where there is no language barrier. Children have a voice in the world and can tell their stories to other children while exploring their own creative voice. We hope this will help children learn of the beautiful unique differences of our international friends, while also seeing how much we have in common. We also, if possible, will work with the children on a mural for their school or orphanage so that their creative voice is shared in their own community as well. If you are unfamiliar with this project, check out the website to see how we are trying to connect children around the world through universal language of art: http://www.mondofineart.com/mondo-art-project Suggested donation for the event: adults $20, students $10, children $5 A very special thank you to the Salt Lake Art Center and the 337 Project for hosting us in their beautiful space and in collaboration with the "Contemporary Masters" exhibit. Please invite your friends and THANK YOU for your support! Hope to see you there!! front-w-minigolf

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July 19th, 2010

David Walsh in front of Fernando Botero's "Leda and the Swan"

• Tasmanian art collector David Walsh plans to open a museum in 2011 on his estate to showcase his uniquely macabre collection of art. Dubbed The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), the 6000 square meter space is entirely underground, situated in an excavated cliff. The works represent three different areas – Antiquities (Egyptian mummies and Roman mosaics), Australian modernists (Sidney Nolan, Charles Blackman, John Brack), and international contemporary art from the likes of Christian Boltanski and Damien Hirst. Check out The Art Newspaper for a full article and interview with Walsh. • Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art will move to a new building and location near the entrance of the Uptown project, an urban zone being revitalized through government spending on recreation and shopping. The new building will give the institution 11,000 square feet of increased space, and has been described as a “four-story faceted gem clad in tinted and transparent glass and shiny black stainless steel.” Read more here.

Warhol's "Portrait of Dennis Hopper"

• Pieces from the renowned contemporary art collection of late actor Dennis Hopper will hit the auction block at Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary sales in New York on November 10-11. Included will be important works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol (Portrait of Dennis Hopper, 1971). Click here to read more about the sale.

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July 14th, 2010

Henningsvær's caviar factory-turned-art gallery

• The Norwegian village of Henningsvær is now home to an art space occupying an old caviar factory in the Lofoten archipelago. Venke Hoff, the owner of the building, has amassed one of the largest contemporary art collections in the Nordic countries alongside her husband, but they claim their “aim is not establishing a venue for showing parts of our own collection, but inviting international artists for shows.” Read more at The Art Newspaper. • Eli Broad, the 76 year-old Los Angeles financier, philanthropist and art collector, has offered to lease a piece of city-owned land in order to build a space for his large collection of contemporary artwork. Although the funding for the lease, museum building and its endowment would come out of Broad’s own pocket, the idea has been criticized by some L.A. county officials. Head to the LA Times website for more.

Dennis Hopper "Bomb Drop"

• Dennis Hopper Double Standard is the name of the new retrospective at the Los Angeles MOCA of the late actor’s prolific 60-year career as an art maker. More than 200 photographs, paintings, assemblages, sculptures, and film pieces will trace Hopper’s obsessions with popular culture and the American relationship to art. Read a review of the exhibition at Art Knowledge News.

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July 12th, 2010

Pablo Picasso "Bathers with a Toy Boat" part of the Great Collections exhibition in Perth

• The Art Gallery of Western Australia this fall will present Peggy Guggenheim: A Collection in Venice, the first in a new series of exhibitions meant to showcase select groups of artworks from prominent museums of the word. The show is organized by Stefano Carboni, a native Venetian, and includes pieces from the collection of the Guggenheim Venice, including work by Picasso and Ernst. Check out Art Knowledge News for more information. • Two prominent Russians have been found guilty of ‘inciting religious and ethnic hatred’ in a 2006 pop art exhibition called Forbidden Art at Moscow’s Sakharov Museum. Yuri Samodurov, the museum’s former director, was quoted as saying, “Now any exhibition on religion showing works that are not straightforwardly religious can be deemed criminal.” Read the full article at the New York Times website. • Brandeis University in Massachusetts, in order to generate revenue without losing any of its $350 million art collection, has agreed to lease prized pieces of contemporary and modern art to Sotheby’s auction house. The director of Brandeis’ renowned Rose Art Museum has said he does not know which institutions might actually lease the art from Sotheby’s. Learn more here.

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July 9th, 2010

Film still from Mika Rottenberg's "Squeeze"

• The New Work summer series at the SFMOMA this year will focus on the “immersive video installations” of Argentinean-born artist Mika Rottenberg. A recent work entitled Squeeze forces visitors through a maze construction before encountering the video, which comments on both feminine exploitation and the difference between art and commercial objects. Read the full review here. • Chinese artist Wu Yuren has been beaten and detained by police in Beijing, according to his wife Karen Patterson, a Canadian citizen. Wu has been involved in the past months in land disputes between real estate developers and artists’ communities, and has lead protests near the politically charged Tiananmen Square. More information at the New York Times website. • Forty-four year old Julian Cox has been appointed to the position of Chief Curator for San Francisco’s de Young Museum. Cox has been curator of photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for the past five years, and also spent twelve years in the photography department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Check out ArtForum for more. • The wreckage of a commuter train forms the centerpiece for Zhang Huan’s Hope Tunnel, a curated social project on view at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, a non-profit in Beijing. The installation is meant to be a reflection on the devastation of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, engendering both remembrance and hope. Go to e-flux to read more. 1278622478image_web

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July 7th, 2010

A section of Gilbert & George's "The Paintings (With Us in the Nature)"

• An early work by the English artistic duo Gilbert & George will be borrowed by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, for a temporary display, but the museum hopes to raise funds in the meantime to purchase it. The Paintings (With Us in the Nature) is a gigantic triptych featuring younger versions of the artists in a green landscape, and after its completion in 1971 Gilbert & George abandoned painting for other mediums. Check out The Art Newspaper for further information. • There has been a few interesting discoveries of previously unknown and un-attributed artworks in the past week. The Staedel Museum in Germany has found a painting in its cellar that it believes is the work of Expressionist artist Ludwig Kirchner. A portrait by Italian Mannerist Pontormo has re-emerged thanks to Carlo Orsi, and is now on display at his gallery in Milan. Finally, an altarpiece in storage at the Yale University Art Gallery has been attributed to Spanish master Velázquez, in a recently published article by John Marciari. • A landscape by J.M.W. Turner, Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, sold at Sotheby’s Old Masters auction for $44.9 million today. It was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum. Sotheby’s sale set eight new artist records. From ArtInfo.

Turner's "Modern Rome"

• 21 young artists have been placed on the short list for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010, meant to help the next artistic generation find long-term support. Over 6,000 artists applied, and were chosen by a panel of art-professionals. Read about the prize and see the list here.

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July 5th, 2010

Roy Lichtenstein's "The Conversation"

• Over 100 works by American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein are now on view at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Lichtenstein’s well-known halftone dot paintings, some of which are pop interpretations of works by Picasso and Matisse, hang near examples of his sculptural work and drawings until October 3. Read more about the exhibition at Art Knowledge News. • An installation of work by Jeff Koons has been set up in the CT Scanning room at Chicago’s Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital. Koons, who donated pieces including the red Balloon Dog, teamed up with the non-profit RxArt to brighten up the typically sterile hospital environment. For more information click here.

The CT Scanning room at Chicago's Advocate Hope Children's Hospital

• A new film by Tamra Davis entitled Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child opens on July 21, and follows the rise and tragic fall of the late Neo-expressionist painter. The film includes never before seen footage of Basquiat as well as interviews with his friends and some art-world heavyweights. Check out ArtDaily for more. • Thirty year old Polish painter Jakub Julian Ziolkowski is having his first American solo show at Hauser & Wirth in New York. 28 paintings and gouaches, all made in the last year, comprise the debut entitled “Timothy Galoty & the Dead Brains,” a reference to an imaginary rock band. Read a review of the show at the New York Times website.

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July 2nd, 2010

"Portrait of a Man" - Delacroix or Sickert?

• The London National Gallery presents a summer exhibition entitled Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries, which will detail the ways that technology and scholarship can help “reveal the misconceptions” in the history of art. Featured is a painting previously attributed to Eugène Delacroix, that might have actually been painted by the eccentric donor of the work, Walter Sickert. Go to the National Gallery website to read more about the show. • The Athens Institute for Contemporary Art will show the work of four artists – Casey McGuire, Jon Swindler, Patrick Triggs, and Melissa Dickenson - in the newly opened ATHICAEmerges IV: Uncertainty. As the title suggests, the exhibition explores the artists’ reaction to the “precarious interconnectedness” of our modern world, through their painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Read more at Art Knowledge News.

Zhang Huan "Three-legged Buddha"

• London-based advertising mogul and art collector Charles Saatchi will donate his renowned Saatchi Gallery and its collection – valued above $37 million – to his city to create a new museum, the MOCA London. In the 1990s Saatchi helped launch the careers of artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin, and his collection is one of the world’s most prominent holdings of contemporary art. From ArtInfo. • A 28-foot tall, three-legged sculptural Buddha, courtesy of Chinese artist Zhang Huan, is the newest attraction at New York’s Storm King Art Center. The steel and copper piece weighs 12 tons and has also been shown at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and La Monnaie in Belgium. Read more here.

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