Hasta La Ideas

Tight rope performer Philippe Petit in a gallery show

Philippe Petit, the daring performance artist who captured the world’s attention when he rigged a tight rope between the World Trade Center’s twin towers, is the focus of Clic Gallery’s current exhibition “Line Up: Rigging Knots and Glimpses of a Master Class.” Not only is Petit a incredibly skilled balancing act, but the multi-hyphenate artist is a bullfighter, street juggler, lock-picker and talented sketcher.

His pencil drawings will be on display, along with rare photos of the man-in-perpetual-motion, shot by photographer Victoria Dearing.

The intimate exhibit will show Petit exploring the rigging knots that determine his fate when he is walking in the clouds as well as reveal a more philanthropic side of Petit, who has spent much of his life since his 1974 World Trade Center stunt imparting wisdom onto his students.

Meet Petit at the opening of “Line Up” tomorrow, 16 December 2010 and the show runs through 16 January 2011.

Industrial designer Konstantin Grcic’s installed seats made of netting suspended from a metal structure at Design Miami/ last week. 

Located in the courtyard of the design fair, Netscape featured a six-point star-shaped metal frame with netting forming a series of hammock-like seats.

The installation was commisioned by Design Miami/ for the fair, where Grcic was presented with the Designer of the Year Award 2010 (see our earlier story).

See all our stories about Konstantin Grcic »

The following information is from Design Miami/:

Konstantin Grcic

Each December, the Design Miami/ designer of the year award recognises an internationally renowned designer or studio whose body of work demonstrates exceptional quality, innovation and influence, while expanding the boundaries of design. Selected by a committee of esteemed design luminaries from around the world, each designer of the year must demonstrate a consistent history of outstanding work, along with a significant new project, career milestone, or other noteworthy achievement within the previous twelve months. This year, we are thrilled to name Konstantin Grcic as the winner of the 2010 Designer of the Year Award.

For years, konstantin has been celebrated for an exceptionally thoughtful approach to advanced design, factoring in not only aesthetics but also a wide array of the most pertinent questions facing design creation today: how are we to deal with material scarcity? how can the relationship between objects and their sites of usage be harnessed to create more effective design work? how should design interface with other disciplines — art, architecture, theory, etc. — to maximize its potential? how can we simultaneously tap design’s history while fulfilling the promise of new materials and new technologies, while also creating humanistic work that responds to the pressing needs of the present?

In addition to designing objects for both mass and limited-edition markets, konstantin has also begun to direct his unique vision to curating design exhibitions, always reminding us of what matters most in design production and discourse. konstantin is a true designer’s designer. We are honored to recognize his immense talent and his impressive accomplishments.

Konstantin Grcic was born in 1965 in Munich, Germany. he apprenticed as a cabinet maker at parnham college, uk, and then earned a degree in Industrial Design at the royal college of Art in london, where he went on to work for Jasper Morrison, before establishing his firm konstantin Grcic Industrial Design in Munich in 1991.

kGID has since become one of the most important players in the international design industry, creating objects that have garnered numerous important awards (e.g., the compasso d’oro in 2001) and that have been acquired for the permanent collections of the world’s most prestigious museums (MoMA, New york; centre Georges pompidou, paris; Die Neue Sammlung, Munich; and others). his impressive roster of clients includes vitra, Magis, classicon, flos and Established & Sons, and his limited-edition work is represented by Galerie kreo in Paris.

the commission

to commemorate this award, each recipient is given a major commission to be unveiled at Design Miami/. konstantin has chosen to create a two-part project. the first part involves a six-point, star-shaped installation featuring hammock-like seats, designed specifically in response to Design Miami/’s temporary structure and an idea of how to service fair visitors in an original, novel way.

More than a seating element, ‘Netscape’ is conceived as a catalyst for social interaction. the project embodies konstantin’s acute sensitivity to the physical site and to the contextual demands of the given project. We know our visitors will enjoy putting this project to good use. The second part of konstantin’s commission involves a special exhibition of the designer’s favorite projects representing the remarkable arc of his career.

The works in the exhibition, chosen by Grcic himself, include seminal pieces displayed on readymade modeling stands placed in front of large-scale digital images taken in konstantin’s studio. through this presentation, viewers are invited into konstantin’s world, where they can glimpse the logical yet romantic process that is so important to his work. We would like to thank Nasir kassamali and luminaire for generously providing objects for konstantin’s exhibition.

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Konstantin Grcic at Design Miami/ 2010	Bench Between Pillars by Ryuji Nakamura Architects	Pole Dance by SO-IL at P.S.1

Concertinaed paper-like ribbons swoop through an exhibition about performance art and movement designed by London firm Amanda Levete Architects at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Called Move: Choreographing You, the exhibition charts the relationship between performance and visual art over the last 50 years and invites visitors to participate in the installations on show.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

The translucent paper-like structures, made of Tyvek, create partitions and help to direct visitors around the exhibition.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

Taking inspiration from origami and kites, the structures were developed in collaboration with London studio Kite Related Design.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

The exhibition continues until 9 January 2011.

Photographs are by Gidon Fuehrer unless stated otherwise.

See all our stories about Amanda Levete Architects »

The following information is from the architects:

Move: Choreographing You

Move: Choreographing you is an exhibition of visual and performance art curated and hosted by the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank. The theme of the exhibition focuses on sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer through interaction with performers, visitors, and the pieces themselves.

AL_A was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery to do the interior spatial design and planning of the exhibition, as well as develop a multi-media archive in collaboration with interactive designers Unit 9.

The exhibition design was driven by the relationships between choreography and geometry, movement and form. Inspired by the photographic motion studies of the human body of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, we have created a collection of spatial dividers which are defined by a serial transformation of a single material: a sequence of folded oscillations of Dupont Tyvek.

The resulting translucent paper-like fabric ribbons, a counterpoint to the brutality of the building, rise and fall with undulating folds which simultaneously define themselves as way finding devices, partitions, suspended ceilings, and portals. These fluid spatial and formal transformations choreograph the movement of the visitor through areas of sculpture, film, archive and performance.

Click for larger image

The spatial configurations defined by our dividers are intended to embody two types of performative experience: public and private. In the public experience, the ribbons frame views, carve space, and lead visitors to a fluid and communal experience of the interactive objects and installations of Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Franz West, Franz E. Walther, William Forsythe, Christian Jankowski, and others.

In the private experience, the ribbons are used to enclose and define smaller more intimate spaces for introspective and singular experiences with the works of Isaac Julien, Dan Graham, Simone Forti, Tanya Bruguera, Lygia Clark and others.

While the expressive form of the ribbons was conceived as a choreography of material inspired by origami, the structure and bespoke detailing of the paper-like ribbons was inspired by those found in kites and was developed in close collaboration with fabricators Kite Related Design.

Click for larger image

Status: 2010
Client: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Location: London UK
Programme: Exhibition design for Move: Choreographing You, an exhibition of visual and performance art sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer.
AL_A Team: Amanda Levete, Alvin Huang, Tanya Rainsley, Gemma Douglas

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Corian Showroom by Amanda Levete Architects	Amanda Levete and Corian at LDF	More interiors on Dezeen

Artists, ready your muffin baskets! The Whitney Museum of American Art has named the curators of the 2012 Whitney Biennial, its signature survey of contemporary American art. Following in the footsteps of 2010 curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari will be the Whitney’s Elisabeth Sussman and independent curator Jay Sanders. The Biennial will go on view in March of 2012.

“Over the past three decades, Elisabeth has distinguished herself as one of the premier curators in the field,” said Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s chief curator and deputy director for programs, in a statement issued by the museum. “Her recent historical exhibitions have had tremendous impact on a younger generation of artists whom she has also been actively acquiring for our collection.” Sanders, a former gallery director at Greene Naftali and Marianne Boesky Gallery, brings deep experience in performance art, as well as film and video works. “Through his writings and exhibitions, Jay has demonstrated a highly innovative sensibility, championing the work of emerging artists and older figures who feel newly relevant in our time,” noted Salvo. The countdown is on for the release of the highly anticipated list of artists selected for the Biennial. Can Sussman and Sanders top Bonami and Carrion-Murayari’s charming video announcement? We’ll have to wait until late next year or early 2012 to find out.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Dossier magazine’s creative director Skye Parrott tests the limits of autobiography in her first solo photo exhibit

In today’s hyperreal visual landscape, erasing lines between fact and fiction has become a controversial trope. “First Love, Last Rites”—photographer Skye Parrott‘s new solo show at Brooklyn’s Capricious Space—does just that, revisiting a year-and-a-half of the artist’s tumultuous teen years, beginning when she was 15 and in a relationship with her first love. Casting her real-life ex-boyfriend and a model as herself, Parrott recreated and photographed the events of her youth—defined by the couple’s drug addiction. The resulting works not only shed light on this hazy period of her life, but also provide real insight into the subjectivity of memory and the possibility of ever having a “true” experience.

After comparing notes with her then-boyfriend Alex, Parrott began to realize that what she so firmly believed to be the reality of their years together was not exactly cut and dry. “I was struck by the discrepancies between his memories and mine. The more I delved into the story, the more I had the feeling that we were both, in a way, telling the truth. We had both made choices—conscious or not—about what to remember based on what narrative we needed to tell. I found that memories are something more layered than I’d thought them to be, and that truth can be a bit more fluid.” To make these disparities explicit, she even goes so far as to deliberately change a detail in a photograph from corresponding text in the accompanying book (featuring personal artifacts like letters, photographs of Parrott herself and items discovered inside old pockets) so that the two fail to tell exactly the same story.

There’s no question that the work is deeply, almost shockingly, personal. (A sensibility not unrelated to Nan Goldin, with whom Parrott used to work.) Originally, the project was for her eyes only, so there was no limit on the details she divulged in the work she assembled. But the night before the show opened at Capricious, what she was about to do finally struck her: “It seemed kind of insane. And I think it probably is a little insane, but it’s also honest. I know that’s something I really respond to in other people’s work, so I hope this work will give someone else that feeling.”

Whatever it ultimately evokes in others, it was a cathartic experience for Parrott, whose other ongoing project is the magazine Dossier that she founded. “One of my drives in working on this originally was a real feeling of disconnect between who I was then and who I am now, and I feel like examining that history helped me to bridge that gulf. The whole experience was therapeutic in the sense that I felt, in finishing the project, like I was putting that time in my life, and that relationship, to rest.”

First Love, Last Rites is on view now through 15 January 2011 at Capricious.