Monthly Archive for October, 2010

From Laura Bradley at i-D…

Today marks the opening of Anish Kapoor’s major exhibition in London. Rather than the conventional gallery surrounds, Kapoor’s latest works, a series of large scale sculptures, are situated in the picturesque surrounds of Kensington Gardens.

Organised by The Royal Parks and the Serpentine Gallery, the exhibition is part of the gallery’s 40th anniversary exhibition programme and initiates a new arts strategy by The Royal Parks. Once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens is one of eight Royal Parks. Originally carved out of the western section of Hyde Park and designed c.1728-1738 by Henry Wise and Charles Bridgeman, the park’s much-loved features include the Round Pond, formal avenues and a sunken Dutch garden. Never shown together in London, Kapoor’s four mirrored works (the largest has a width of 35ft) are constructed from highly reflective steel and sited across the park, by the bank of the Serpentine Lake and in the centre of the Round Pond near Kensington Palace. More…

From Dezeen…

Tate Modern today unveils the latest commission in The Unilever Series, Sunflower Seeds, by the renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The sculptural installation appears at first to be a vast, flat landscape of sunflower seed husks, covering the east end of the Turbine Hall. Visitors are invited to walk across the surface of the work and discover that each seed is in fact a unique porcelain replica, one of over 100 million individually handmade objects which have been specially produced for the commission.

This is the largest work Ai has made using porcelain, one of China’s most prized exports, with which he has previously created imitation fruit, clothes and vases. Although they look identical from a distance, every seed is different, and far from being industrially produced, ‘readymade’ or found objects, they have each been intricately handcrafted by skilled artisans. All of them have been produced in the city of Jingdezhen, which is famed for its production of Imperial porcelain. Each ceramic seed was moulded, fired at 1300°C, hand-painted and then fired again at 800°C. Over the course of two years, over 100 million of these were made, forming a mass of objects that weighs over 150 metric tonnes, covering 1000 square metres of the Turbine Hall. The casual act of walking across their surface contrasts powerfully with the precious nature of the material and the effort of its production. More…

From Morgan Meis at The Smart Set…

In a public park where families take their children to play on the swings, in what was, just a few decades ago, East Berlin, is a wall of relief sculptures. The sculptures date from the Communist days. They depict children who are happy and healthy, adults who are industrious and kind. There is work, play. There is life. Monuments like these — the remnants of the dreams and aspirations of a lost civilization — can stimulate that most disconcerting emotion amongst Germans: ostalgie (literally, east-stalgia, nostalgia for the old East Germany). It is not the first thing you expect to encounter in Berlin, ostalgie, until you realize that nothing in Berlin is settled, no aspect of the recent past has yet been laid to rest.

Just up the block from the park is a square, in the center of which is the Zionskirche (Zion Church). The Zionskirche itself is a church in the form of a ruin. This was once the church of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Do you know that Bonhoeffer taught Sunday school at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem for a little while? This was in the early 1930s. Then, Bonhoeffer went back to Germany where he set up the Confessing Church. He was going to stop Hitler with that church. In fact, he ended up in a concentration camp and was hanged by the Nazis in 1945. More…