Peter Buggenhout @ De Pont, Tilburg 28/05-18/09/2011

Peter Buggenhout
Invertebrate
part of Lustwarande '11 - Raw
28 May -18 September 2011
http://www.depont.nl/

Just as in 2004 and 2008, De Pont is holding a presentation within the context of Lustwarande '11. This international sculpture exhibition will take place for the fourth time this summer in Tilburg's park De Oude Warande. Its overall theme this year is the concept 'Raw'.

The sculptures of Peter Buggenhout (Dendermonde, 1963) are certainly raw and unpolished. At the same time they have a vulnerable and transitory appearance. The works have been made with 'vile' materials, things that no have a function or meaning and which people prefer to be rid of: construction material, packaging material, discarded molds, sheets of plastic, frayed cloth but also horsehair, blood, cow stomachs and household dust.

Unmissable: TRA at Palazzo Fortuny - Royal Academy of Arts Magazine

Unmissable: TRA at Palazzo Fortuny
by Sarah Greenberg RA Magazine Editor

Axel Vervoordt's exhibitions at Palazzo Fortuny during the last two Biennales have become legendary for their beauty and, especially, the way they mix ancient and modern art, known and unknown artists, artefacts and masterpieces.

The Belgian art dealer and collector is showing art from the collection of his foundation outside Antwerp, which is touring while he builds a museum for it, due to open in 2014. Vervoordt sees these shows as an invitation to viewers to share his art as we take a journey through this atmospheric Venetian gothic palazzo. He encourages us to follow our senses and discover new works of art and ways of looking. This is exercise for the eyes and it's a fantastic workout.

The Venice Biennale - The NY Times (10/06/2011)

The Venice Biennale, by Design

By HELENA NILSSON STRäNGBERG AND MARCO VELARDI

Last week the art world descended on Venice for the opening of the Biennale, which will run through Nov. 27. Masses of devotees came together to celebrate Bice Curiger’s directorship of the 54th International Art Exhibition, “Illuminations,” to attend banquets in fancy palazzos, on private boat parties and at rent-your-own-island dinner parties (as Frieze magazine did to celebrate its 20th anniversary) — and to check out some art. This year, there was also plenty to see from the perspective of architecture and design.

The talk of the opening was the Fondazione Prada’s new Venetian address in the freshly restored Ca’ Corner della Regina, an impressive 18th-century palazzo. There, the curator Germano Celant brought together an interesting mix of work, including sculptures by Anish Kapoor, Michael Heizer and Jeff Koons, playful pieces by Damien Hirst and an installation by Louise Bourgeois. The exhibition also includes a scale model of the OMA/Rem Koolhaas-designed Fondazione headquarters, which are scheduled to open in Milan in 2013. And as part of the full Prada experience, the museum attendants are impeccably dressed.

Another great space with an almost magnetic attraction is the spectacular Palazzo Fortuny, where the designer Axel Vervoordt has, for several biennales now, curated wildly popular shows. This year’s effort, “Tra,” includes some 300 artworks from all over the world that are shown to genuinely fascinating effect throughout the three floors of the palazzo. Artists like Marina Abramovic, Fernand Léger, Auguste Rodin and Lucio Fontana, and even the designer Enzo Mari, are all part of the mix.

TRA - The Edge of Becoming, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, June 4 - November 27 2011

The title of the exhibition is TRA. Chosen for its strong and suggestive conciseness, that includes also the word “art” (if read at the inverse). As preposition it signifies “in-between”, “inside”, and as prefix it has also the meaning of an action that goes “beyond”, “ahead of”. As a suffix, TRA is common to many Sanskrit words: mantra, tantra, yantra…

TRA recalls the complex and problematic ensemble of cultural and symbolic meanings that are connected to the concept of threshold and door. It concerns a physical and mental place that defines the point of interrelation between inside and outside and vice versa. It relates to the idea of crossing, of being purified and renovated through a ritual or an initiation. It is the space (or empty space) between two dimensions that marks the moment of passage from a condition to another, a breach towards new experiences. It is the idea of border that, seen from the point of view of its surpass, becomes site of process of creative transformation.

The subtitle of the exhibition TRA is EDGE OF BECOMING. It relates to the void as the pregnant possibility of energy, to chaos as the state of infinite becoming, and to becoming as the movement towards a situation. While the rational, empiric and technological Western world has abused of the male and Ying power, the Eastern systems of knowledge have always sustained the dynamic processes of non-linear interaction between Yin and Yang polarities. TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING is also looking for that healing balance, for a creative interaction that unfolds every beginning, every birth, every renaissance.

The specific curatorial team for TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING is composed by Daniela Ferretti, director of Palazzo Fortuny; Rosa Martínez, independent curator and art advisor; Francesco Poli, philosopher and art history professor; and Axel Vervoordt, president of the Axel Vervoordt Foundation.

TRA-Edge of Becoming

Palazzo Fortuny, San Marco 3780-San Beneto, Venice
4 June – 27 November 2011
http://www.tra-expo.com/