Most people press flowers between the pages of books. Artist Mark Dion prefers seaweed, and as you can see in this exclusive Art21 video, the effect can be stunning.
The talk in art circles may be about China these days, but the northern European scene isn’t doing too bad for itself either. Just this summer in New York, there’s “From Another Shore: Recent Icelandic Art” at Scandinavia House, “Arctic Hysteria: New Art from Finland” at P.S. 1, and of course, Denmark’s Olafur Eliasson is staging the huge New York City Waterfalls.
In a period of radical expansion of public interest and market forces, what is the state of contemporary art’s production, presentation, and acquisition?
Take Your Time is the first comprehensive survey in the U.S. of works by Olafur Eliasson, whose installations use multicolored light projections, mirrors, and water, stone, and moss to shift the viewer’s perception of place and self. See a video about the exhibit, on display at MoMA and P.S. 1 now through June 30th. Eliasson’s ‘Waterfalls’ will grace the East River later this month.
This August, just in time for the Olympics, the U.S. will open a brand new embassy in Beijing. The $550m complex, designed by the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will be one of the State Department’s largest foreign construction projects to date. To mark the occasion, the State Department plans to display master works by 18 American and Chinese contemporary artists.
Designed for Pleasure (on exhibit now at the Asia Society and Museum) examines Ukiyo-e (pronounced oo-key-yo-ay), the paintings and woodcuts that depict the “floating world,” a term that has become identified with the pleasure quarters and theater districts of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka during the late seventeenth to late nineteenth centuries. GO
