Consumerism

Mika Rottenberg Still from Cheese – 2007

Mika Rottenberg at Laurent Godin Gallery

Mika Rottenberg’s videos explore labour – particularly repetitive women’s work. Her glamorous and oddly erotic workers are squeezed into sweatshops – often literally. Bodily fluids are sometimes part of the production process, where lo-fi machinery and Heath Robinson-like contraptions produce uncertain goods.

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Jean Luc Godard 2 or 3 things

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her By Jean-Luc Godard

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is perhaps Godard’s most revelatory look at consumer culture, shot in ravishing widescreen color by Raoul Coutard

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Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms

Gabriel Orozco’s Asterisms – Deutsche Guggenheim Museum

The Deutsche Guggenheim presents Asterisms, a two-part sculptural and photographic installation by the Mexican-born artist Gabriel Orozco and the eighteenth project in Deutsche Guggenheim’s series of commissions

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Jean Luc Godard made in USA

Made in USA by Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard directed this brightly colored, pop-art homage to American crime cinema, which somehow finds room for extended commentary on leftist politics and the corrupt nature of advertising.

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Gabriel Kuri

Gabriel Kuri : The Art of Consumerism

Gabriel Kuri is renowned for sculptures and collages made from the remains of everyday purchases and found objects. Kuri reconfigures meaning from tickets and receipts, retail supplies and slabs of marble, stones and other incongruous materials of related to consumption.

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Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 by François Truffaut

François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 brings Ray Bradbury’s big-brother world into crisp focus, employing a thought-provoking production design full of muted technicolor and almost entirely devoid of written language — even the opening credits are spoken. The

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Pierrot le Fou

Pierrot Le Fou by Jean-Luc Godard

Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou is blissful with color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard. It is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

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Alexander McQueen at The Met: Savage Beauty

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
May 4–August 7, 2011
Official Website: www.blog.metmuseum.org
www.alexandermcqueen.com

The exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute, celebrates the late Alexander McQueen’s extraordinary contributions to fashion. From his Central Saint Martins postgraduate collection of 1992 to his final runway presentation, which took place after his death in February 2010, Mr. McQueen challenged and expanded the understanding of fashion beyond utility to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity. His iconic designs constitute the work of an artist whose medium of expression was fashion.

The Romantic Mind

Jack the Ripper
Coat
Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims (MA Graduation Collection), 1992
Pink silk satin printed in thorn pattern lined in white silk with encapsulated human hair

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”
—Alexander McQueen

McQueen doggedly promoted freedom of thought and expression and championed the authority of the imagination. In so doing, he was an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly follows the dictates of his inspiration. “What I am trying to bring to fashion is a sort of originality,” he said. McQueen expressed this originality most fundamentally through his methods of cutting and construction, which were both innovative and revolutionary.

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Jeff Koons: Made in Heaven

In “Made in heaven” Jeff Koons made works depicting his sexual relationship with his wife, the Italian porn-star Ilona Staller, also known as Cicciolina. These provocative works show the naked couple in explicit poses and reference paintings by artists such as Edouard Manet to examine the place of sexuality in visual culture. Koons employed Ilona’s regular photographer and backdrops, to create the distinctive aesthetic associated with ‘glamour’ imagery. Blurring the boundaries between fine art and pornography, Koons challenged the conventions of artistic taste, encouraging his audience to make their own decisions about what is acceptable.

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MOMA PS1: The Talent Show

Official Website: www.ps1.org
December 12, 2010 – April 4, 2011

In recent years, television’s reality shows and talent competitions have offered people a conflicted chance at fame, while various kinds of Web-based social media have pioneered new forms of communication that people increasingly use to perform their private lives as public theater. During the same period, governments worldwide have asserted vast new powers of surveillance, placing unwitting “participants” on an entirely different kind of stage.

Against this backdrop, The Talent Show examines a range of relationships between artists, audiences, and participants that model the competing desires for notoriety and privacy marking our present moment. Ranging from seemingly benevolent partnerships to those that appear to exploit their subjects, many of the works in the exhibition animate the tensions between exhibitionism and voyeurism, and raise challenging ethical questions around issues of authorship, power, and control.

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Finding India at MOCA Taipei

Official Website: www.mocataipei.org.tw
10/22/2010 to 12/12/2010

India is one of the four ancient civilizations, and is known for its long history and affluent cultural heritage. Contemporary Indian art demonstrates an alternative direction in raising criticism of one’s own country’s social reality and controversial issues including class system, the wealth gap and political agendas.

This exhibition has selected 63 artworks by 29 artists, and intends to present the facets of art and aestheticism the general outline of contemporary Indian culture and social life.

Artists:

1. Thukral & Tagra

Thukral & Tagra

The artistic style of the duo is as unpredictable as fast changing, being product of the intersection between the Western popular culture and the deep-rooted traditional culture of India. Their works often explore the gradual loss of self-identity of the Indian society, and the influences brought by the globalization.

At the same time, the duo illustrated through human sculptures and portraits the different groups of people brought by the new era. Among these groups are: the farm boys who dream of fame, and the young delinquents who roam the streets, all of which reflects the influences of foreign cultures and the shift of aesthetic values in Indian society.

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