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Hammer Projects: Simon Denny
Jan 21–Apr 23
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA
SIMON DENNY with Linda Kantchev, Blockchain company postage stamp designs: 21Inc, 2016, custom-designed postage stamps, 15 × 15 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Continuing his explorations of technology, Simon Denny will present a research-based project about blockchain, an encrypted network that forms the backbone of the cyber currency Bitcoin. The Berlin-based, New Zealand-born artist’s installation will address his interpretation of blockchain’s future by adapting the unique trade-fair booths of three real startup companies and their potential use of the blockchain technology.
Tony Chakar: On Becoming Two
Jan 25–Mar 28
Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon
TONY CHAKAR, All That is Solid Melts into Air (detail), 2017, acrylic paint on wall, 600 × 300 cm. Courtesy the artist and Beirut Art Center.
Writer, artist and architect Tony Chakar has engaged spaces in his poetic and critical discourse for over a decade. The Lebanese artist will invent a site-specific journey through the ground floor of the Beirut Art Center, leading to spots where literature creeps onto the walls and reconstructed decorative panels from public buildings are amplified by sound installations.
India Art Fair
Feb 2–5
NSIC Grounds, New Delhi, India
FN SOUZA, Man and Woman Laughing, 1957, oil on masonite, 152 × 122 cm. Presented at the booth of DAG Modern, New Delhi. Courtesy DAG Modern.
Since 2008, India Art Fair has been surveying and presenting contemporary art in South Asia. The 9th edition of the fair will consist of five sections: local and global galleries, curated solo sections, emerging galleries, museums and Art Projects, which will showcase site-specific, specially commissioned works. Visitors can expect to see a stainless steel sculpture by Anila Quayyum Agha that speaks to traditional craft of paper-cutting, the first major piece by the artist to be shown in India. Additionally, the fair will host a program of lectures, film screenings, projects, curated walks and public events across the city.
Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians
Feb 4–Jun 4
Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
SHIRIN ALIABADI, Miss Hybrid 3, 2008, C-print, 154 × 123.5 cm. Copright the artist. Courtesy Mohammed Afkhami Collection.
Twenty-seven artworks by twenty-three “contemporary Persians” rise up in a cultural rebellion against the constraints of politics, religion, gender and war in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, with playful works by Farhad Moshiri and Shirin Aliabadi, the abstractions of Monir Farmanfarmaian and conceptual projects by Mahmoud Bakhshi.
NS Harsha: Charming Journey
Feb 4–Jun 11
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
NS HARSHA, Ambition and Dreams: Project designed for TVS Academy, Tumkur, Karnataka, India, 2005, cotton cloth, wheat gum and rock, size of each shadow: 6 meters. Courtesy the artist and TVS Academy, Tumkur, India.
As a part of ongoing series of solo presentations of mid-career artists from Asia, the works of Indian artist NS Harsha will be exhibited at the Mori Art Museum for the first time. The retrospective focuses on major multimedia works from 1995 through to today, including his synchronic acrylic paintings, often depicting dozens of figures or animals as a commentary on the interrelationships of people and nature.
Ali Cherri: Somniculus
Feb 14–May 28
Jeu De Paume, Paris, France
ALI CHERRI, Somniculus, 2017, photograph. Courtesy the artist.
For Ali Cherri’s project at Jeu De Paume, the history of archaeological objects will be explored in relation to its existence and heritage within museums of ethnography, archaeology and natural sciences. Premiering the Lebanese artist’s latest film, Somniculus (2017), which was shot inside empty institutions across Paris, Cherri investigates ways artifacts are representative of its own moment in history, and can also stir new meanings in the present day.