While you try to recover your energy after the arty marathon, between Documenta 15, Hydra, or Art Basel, this is what happen in the fashion, art, and pop culture world this week.
1. Documenta 15
Documenta 15 was released last week, among scandals that we are not going to discuss, the most important is the message of the new generations who have the engagement on a solid social message. Documenta 15 starts from June 18 to September 25, 2022, under the artistic direction of “Ruangrupa” in 32 different venues in Kassel, Germany. The Jakarta-based artist collective has lead the groundwork for the 15th edition of the Documenta on the core values and ideas of “lumbung”, the Indonesian term for a “communal rice barn” that will be the focus of this Documenta.
Lumbung as an artistic and economic model is based on principles such as community, communal resource sharing and equitable allocation which are integrated into all parts of the collaborations and exhibitions. To this end, Ruangrupa and the Artistic Team have invited collectives, organizations and initiatives that share the values of lumbung through its inspiring methods, deeply artistic roots in local social structures, and experimental organizational and economic approaches. We hope that this evolution of social art leaves many reflections on how we interact with the skill and its proposition.
2. “Mondrian Evolution” Beyeler Foundation
June 5 – October 9, 2022
One hundred fifty years ago, an artist, who brought art to the maximum abstraction of spirituality and essence, who took the still movement to other levels, was born. This artist is Piet Mondrian and for his 150 years birthday, the Beyeler Foundation wanted to honor his memory with an evolutionary perspective; I was able to see a similar approach at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, but we could call this exhibition one of the most complete with 89 works from private and public collections from Europe and the United States. “Mondrian Evolution” covers the impressive career of the artist, which has unpublished works for the public and will allow more than one to travel to the universe of the artist, who always sought the absolute abstraction of nature and urban landscapes, making reflections and complex studies that only by visiting a retrospective can the evolutionary path of this artist be clear. Going from Dutch landscaping, symbolism, cubism to reaching abstract painting and the abstraction of shapes and colors (for that reason the palette of primary colors in his previous works) seeing his evolution is a direct ticket to the still movement and his search for the purest and most spiritual state of the art.
Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful retrospectives of this year.
3. Jeff Koons’ Apollo, Deste Fondation
Slaughterhouse, Hydra (June 21 – October 31, 2022),
© Jeff Koons, Photo: Eftychia Vlachou
© Jeff Koons, Photo: Eftychia Vlachou
© Jeff Koons, Photo: Eftychia Vlachou
The week’s project went to Jeff Koons for DESTE’s Project Space Slaughterhouse on the Hydra island in Greece. This project started this last June, brought together the entire art jet-set between museum directors and significant figures of the art world; the project bears the name Apollo, making a nod to Greek mythology, with a rotating oracle that blurs with the local country and the color palette of the sunset. The exhibition is open to everyone and any visitor curious to discover Hydra and the passage of contemporary art on this island.
The exhibition will be on view between June 21 and October 31, 2022.
4. EGONLAB
The concept of this emerging brand is the JUXTAPOSITION a original concept from the brand, a journey between the masculine, the feminine, modernity, the passing, and the present, with a completely urban-punk DNA and always with a focus on visual arts as the main element.
One of the first shows for the Paris Fashion Week opted for the non-gender aesthetic. Full of contrasts between the punk, the expected and the unheard, this brand comes stomping to accompany a new generation complete metamorphosis.
Text by Sophia Thowinsson
