As the title implies, the art of Rachel Whiteread carries with it a certain sense of finality – an event has just taken place here, somebody once occupied this space, or at one time this object had a purpose. Now, it sits empty; the viewer cannot obtain closure from the current state, there is no resolution and there is no reassurance. Whiteread’s monolithic architectural forms occupy negative space with their own more subtle brand of emptiness; they loom like spectres, ghostly forms with a presence both palpable and sepulchral. Very powerful indeed.

(History of Our World)

Artist Kathy Prendergast is on display at Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. The exhibition is  titled “the grey before dawn, part 2″ Date: October 23 – November 21, 2009 (contemporaryartdaily)

The hours between 4 am and 7 am have provided Kathy Prendergast with the creative context for her latest exhibition. An artist who generates a compelling narrative through the very real processes of her work, the mysterious quality of the very particular light just before dawn has provided the departure point for exploring the artistic possibilities of this intermediary space. For more…

The central themes of Prendergast’s work; longing, belonging, identity and the meaning of place continue to take centre stage. Included are a new series of large map drawings that develop the artist’s ongoing project of creating an emotional Atlas of the World. With obsessive attention to detail, Prendergast has transformed generic maps of Europe into magical views of a night sky where towns and cities become complicated constellations of planets and stars. Accompanying these are a number of enigmatic, hand painted bronze sculptures that transform everyday objects, such as a hearthrug or a coffee table, into poignant works of love, memory and loss.

In 1995, Prendergast was awarded the Premio 2000 for the best young artist at the Venice Biennale. A section of her monumental project ‘The City Drawings’, comprising several hundred tiny delicate drawings of the street plans of the world’s capital cities, was shown first at Venice and subsequently at the Tate Gallery, London. A larger section again was exhibited in Prendergast’s 1999 solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which has since acquired the work in its entirety for its permanent collection. In recent years Prendergast has exhibited widely in various venues including Sydney Biennale, the ICA, Boston, the Drawing Center, New York and ’0044′, an exhibition which toured PS1, New York, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo in 1999/2000.

Prendergast is represented in the collections of the Tate Modern, London, CAS, UK, Arts Council of England, Arts Council of Ireland , Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo Contemporary Museum, Honolulu,  and Hugh Lane Municipal gallery, Dublin and numerous private collections in Ireland, Great Britain, Europe and USA.

Mirror/Dash plays Dan Graham: Beyond from MOCA on Vimeo.

A little while ago I was at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New Yorkat an exhibition by Dan Graham called Beyond. I am trying to take some pictures of a room at in the top two images, but I can see now that it is difficult to capture exactly what was going on. Basically you had two rooms that where identical, with mirrors at the back of the room and a piece of see through glass in the middle of the room so what looks like my room being mirrored in the back is actually just another room.. The video shows the rest of the exhibition with some “avant garde” rock music.
The exhibition is over now, but for more information, an interesting picture of D. Graham performing his art and links…

Dan Graham: Beyond surveys the artist’s career from the mid-1960s to the present. As one of contemporary art’s most innovative and influential figures, Dan Graham has been at the forefront of many of the most significant developments in art, including conceptual art, video and film installation, performance, site-specific sculpture, and musical collaboration. This exhibition—his first retrospective in the United States—examines each stage of Graham’s career through his photographs, projects for magazine pages, films, architectural models and pavilions, performances, video installations, prints, drawings, writings, and his work with musicians Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca, and Japanther.

Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1942 and grew up in New Jersey, a suburban landscape that would inspire him throughout his career. He began his career as a writer, and founded and directed the short-lived John Daniels Gallery in New York in 1964, exhibiting the work of a new generation of conceptual and Minimalist artists—including Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Smithson. This experience had a deep influence on Graham’s subsequent work, particularly the artist’s relationship to his peers and to the culture at large as well as his interest in art’s economic and social framework.

Graham’s rejection of the high-seriousness of modern art emerged at the same moment as Pop art in the early 1960s. “I love magazines because they are like pop songs,” he once explained about his early conceptual magazine works, “easily disposable, dealing with momentary pleasures.” He infused his approach with a wide range of literary, anthropological, and scientific influences, from cybernetics and topology to the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gregory Bateson, and Margaret Mead. Graham’s performances of the 1970s and his architectural pavilions of the 1980s to the present, with their kaleidoscopic refraction of bodily experience, demonstrate his interest in revealing the private self as part of a social, public context.

The fluid, democratic quality of Graham’s work continues to exert a powerful influence on younger generations of artists. His desire for a connection to others mirrors our own; yet his work offers a way to critically explore that desire at a moment when interconnectivity and instant feedback are conditioning our collective consciousness to an unprecedented, global degree. (whitney)

Barry X is Ball is on display at Salon 94 in New York from October 29th through December 12th. His exhibition is titled Masterpieces, and if you get the chance you should go check it out. (contemporaryartdaily)

The primary medium of Californian artist James Turrell is light. Probably the best-known artist in his field, Turrell’s entire oeuvre since the 1960s has been devoted to exploring the diverse manifestations of this immaterial medium and working towards a new, space-defining form of light art. While light here refers to nothing beyond itself, it causes surface, colour and space to interact and allows viewers to immerse themselves in a mysterious, painterly world.

Occupying a central place in James Turrell’s oeuvre is the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in the Arizona desert which the artist has been transforming into an observatory since 1974. Building upon the cosmic aspects of this quiet, meditative place, Turrell is creating the worldwide largest museum installation he has made to date at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, producing a light-filled space of experience in the tradition of his Ganzfeld Pieces. Making full use of the adaptable architecture system of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg – unique within the German museum landscape – his installation will be an exploration of space and light: immaterial and material at once. The timelessness and fascination of James Turrell’s works derives from his incredible skill at capturing fleeting light and giving it the visual presence and tactile density of a physical body. This exhibition is supported by Volkswagen Financial Services. Zumtobel’s innovative lighting solutions enable James Turrell’s artistic vision  to become reality.

Images via DesignBoom

Artist Andy Warhol @ Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition is titled: Andy Warhol: The Last Decade

Dates: September 26, 2009 – January 3, 2010

Via contemporyartdaily

Artist Tobjorn Rodland @ Venue Standard, Oslo - Andy Capp Variations

Date: August 28 – September 26, 2009

Via ContemporaryArtDaily

“Having had the ability to capture one of the art world’s true greats, a series of Lee Jaffe photographs reveal an intimate look into the process of the legendary Jean-Michel Basquiat. The ability to photograph somebody of Basquiat’s prowess offers newcomers an in-depth link to an important figurehead in the world of pop art.” (via)

(via)