Portikus presents The Future of Tradition: Aranda, Picasso, Matisse, Miro & Vidokle

Curated by Raimundas Malašauskas

Opening:
Friday, May 6th, 8–10 PM

Guided tour by Raimundas Malašauskas: May 17, 6 PM

May 7–June 26, 2011

Portikus
Alte Brücke 2/Maininsel
60594 Frankfurt am Main
Germany

portikus.de

Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.
—Pablo Picasso

The avant-gardist is at heart a traditionalist. Although seemingly paradoxical, keep in mind that in order for a work to be recognizable, it must be established in some context. No art exists within a vacuum. However, innovation is measured as an evolution from a “norm,” a change from tradition. Like the expression, “two sides of the same coin,” The Future of Tradition: Aranda, Picasso, Matisse, Miro, & Vidokle seeks to weave that line between “tradition” and “innovation.”

Genius of course is derived from the latin genius-, or the spark of the divine within each person, a soul. In Roman mythology, the unique tempers of these personal spirits were passed through each generation as a linage—hence the shared root between genus and genius. As such, it should come as no surprise that both Picasso and Matisse called Cézanne “the father of us all”. Such a grounding narrative not only allowed the works of Picasso and Matisse to be legible, it also established their work within a trajectory of ideas—one that stretches to Filippo Brunelleschi, Piero della Franceso & Leon Battista Alberti, who sought a geometric justification for realism so as to brake with the Gothic through an older tradition, “rebirthed.” Could this sympathy be the reason why Matisse often revisited the forms of the odalisque and the themes of arcadia, while Picasso developed a style now know as “neo-classicism”? Even the seemingly iconoclastic Joan Miró, who wished to “assassinate painting” did so not by attacking paintings, nor by producing works in new media like the Futurists or the Dadaists, but did so, counter-intuitively, through painting. Here instead of mere circumscription, these artists hit upon a third idea: novelty within a given discourse is what fosters critical reflection—the measure of which is the ability for a new work of art to form a new reading of the past. To do so, a work is placed into this story by presenting it publically, in a museum for instance, so that its references, appropriations, positions and so on can be layered on to it through that forum. Finally, these fronts slowly integrate as they too become used and made historic. In effect, art is a form of laundering as the proceeds of the artist’s theft are made legitimate through discourse—is there a VW Beatle in Picasso’s Baboon and Young (1951), or is it the face of an animal camouflaged by Picasso?

Along these lines, it is important to remember that the word revolution is derived from the same root as to turn around or, to return. Adding their own “spin,” Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle seek to establish a newer chapter by continuing the plot established by Brunelleschi’s breaking of the guild, Matisse’s beastly taunt of the cliché Impressionism, and Miró’s affront to the bourgeois tendency of painting, through, in Vidokle’s words, “the possibility of artistic self-determination…fought for and hard won from the Church, the aristocracy, public taste, and so on.”

The guiding spirits of this house, or the affinity which unites all of the practices presented here, is a desire to point at the flash of inspiration which lead the development of a new style, that special “decisive moment”. This putting of the spirit of discovery ahead of formal concerns is their genius loci. For this reason, this exhibition not only aims to look back at tradition, but also invokes its future. By doing so, this stance reworks iconoclasm as a form of sacrifice and transfiguration—Roman alters often bared the crest of a genius loci—to safe-keep the power of art while, also protecting the authority of the artistic family. With this support, the exhibition takes as its stake the enteral-return of artistic license as the productive genre par excellence with which to alter the order of art. And yet, as the title suggests, this mercurial projection is at the same time partially hidden, like a genie, even to these artists, just as it is to our contemporaries. Regardless an ethereal magic illuminates a path beyond…

Although these metamorphoses may seem violent, this exhibition instead offers Picasso’s Visage de la Paix (1951) in which our “angle of history” is configured as a face with the wings of a dove as its hair. Here, the classical symbol of a dove is wed to a smiling image of mankind, as peace after all, is about people and their happiness.

Gazing back at it though is Matisse’s profile of a woman, identified only as a lot number from a secondary market: S1PAIT5. This personalizing “face-to-face” between the angel and a woman proposes a difference between the two entities that at the same time acknowledges a shared responsibility to accept each other, peacefully. Such volleying is the signature of an “other” as well, namely the curator, Raimundas Malašauskas, who often unites exhibitions through synergistically folded repetitions of theme and variation to form a sum greater than its parts.

Guiding the viewers through this play of togetherness, Miró’s Adonides (1975) presents a short two-stanza poem. It begins in a poverty of understanding: I ignore everything I know / and know nothing at all / of all that I ignore. Once affirmed, the poem continues: How can I / believe in death / when I know / that you will die one day. Elegiacally the poet asks, since death is an unknowable, its absence can only be felt in the loss of a loved one, a loss too painful itself to even consider. Thus, death is an uncomfortable mystery. As such, the denial and anger aroused in passing can only be alienated through a mystical faith: the cycle of life and death made whole through incarnation and resurrection—the rebirth.

Calling forth this metaphysics, Aranda’s Which can do no harm (and a bone to pick) (2011), hints to a passage in Ezekiel wherein the lord breathes life into a set of desiccated bones. Featuring a mimetic carcass of chicken bones—a common item in divination—formed in unfired dry clay, the material serves as pun for Adam who God made by breathing “spirit” into a handful of earth. Here again we return to the idea of an inspiration, both literal and figurative, repeated in guised form. Yet, this hidden attribution causes little harm as the unfired clay will decompose on its own accord and peacefully return, dust to dust.

Rekindling our fire and responsibilities, Vidokle, just as Cassius queried Brutus, asks about Picasso: “Why should that name be sounded more than yours? / Write them together, yours is as fair a name”. Here, Vidokle does just that as the artist sourced a painting on the receipt of a Picasso biography—subtitled “Triumphant Years”—and endorsed the work by signing as its author.  It is with this final act that we get to the heart of the exhibition itself, that the future of tradition requires credit.

Remembering that credit is derived from “credo,” that is “faith”, all of these maneuvers recall a foundational magic, that art, in order for it to circulate requires dissemination. In other words, for these plays with history to have any currency, a trust must be developed between artist and audience, between receivers—to breathe together is of course, to conspire. This basis of the system is in actuality, the system itself, a trade of ever-manipulated representations and speculations. After all, all scripts are counterfeit, the real question is: will you take it?

—Thomas Stearns, May 3rd, 2011

Portikus: New Editions and Books

Portikus is pleased to present new editions by Helke and Thomas Bayrle, Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg and Wade Guyton as well as new books by Michael Beutler, Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg, Wade Guyton, Rachel Harrison, Nina Könnemann, Paola Pivi and Akram Zaatari.

Since its very beginnings, Portikus has invited artists who developed exhibitions for the space to produce an edition in conjunction with their realized project. The editions are generous donations by the artists and all revenues from the sales support the exhibition program.

Editions of recent years include works by Michael Beutler, Haegue Yang, Nina Könnemann, Paulina Olowska and Bonnie Camplin, Dan Perjovschi, Paola Pivi, Heimo Zobernig and many others.

New editions:

HELKE AND THOMAS BAYRLE
PORTIKUS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
2010
Edition by Thomas Bayrle for the Exhibition Portikus under Construction by Helke Bayrle
Offset print and Silkscreen on paper, 42 x 29,7 cm / 16.54 x 11.69 in.
Edition of 80

GUILLERMO FAIVOVICH & NICOLÁS GOLDBERG
EL TACO (unsortiert)
2010
Digital print, 30 x 40 cm / 11.81 x 15.75 in.
Edition of 40

WADE GUYTON
UNTITLED
2010
Print on newspaper, 45.7 x 30.5 cm / 24.8 x 15.4 x 8.9 in.
Edition of 12

New books:

MICHAEL BEUTLER
PORTIKUS CASTLE
Edited by Melanie Ohnemus; with essays by Michael Beutler and Melanie Ohnemus
16 x 24 cm / 6.3 x 9.45 in., 48 pages, paperback, German and English
Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010

HELKE BAYRLE
PORTIKUS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
3 DVDs
DVD I: 2001–2003, 19 Videos, 80 min.
DVD II: 2004–2006, 21 Videos, 94 min.
DVD III: 2007–2008, 13 Videos, 62 min.
PAL, 4:3, Color, Stereo
Booklet with an essay by Daniel Birnbaum and a conversation
between Helke Bayrle and Sunah Choi
12 x 17.8 cm / 4.72 x 47.01 in., 36 pages
Sternberg Press, Berlin, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2009

GUILLERMO FAIVOVICH & NICOLÁS GOLDBERG
EL TACO
The artist book The Campo del Cielo Meteorites – Vol. 1: El Taco was produced by dOCUMENTA (13) and published by Hatje Cantz on the occasion of the exhibition El Taco at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010.
Foreword by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Daniel Birnbaum, texts by Hernán Pruden, Tim McCoy, and Jutta Zipfel, conversation between Simon Starling and the artists. Texts in English, Spanish, and German
17 x 24 cm / 6.68 x 9.45 in., 184 pages, 84 color illustrations, clothbound

RACHEL HARISSON
MUSEUMS WITH WALLS
Edited by Bard College, New York, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, and Whitechapel
Gallery, London; with essays by Jack Bankowsky, Iwona Blazwick, Paul Chan, Tom Eccles, David Joselit, John Kelsey, Allan McCollum, Lucy Raven, Amy Sillman, and Steven Stern
23.5 x 30.5 cm / 23.5 x 12.01 in., 272 pages, hardcover, English
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2010

WADE GUYTON
BLACK PAINTINGS
Edited by Melanie Ohnemus; with an essay by John Kelsey
23 x 30.4 cm / 9.06 x 11.97 in., 600 pages, 260 black-and-white and 40 color plates, paperback, German, English, and French
JRP|Ringier Kunstverlag, Zurich, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010

HAEGUE YANG
SIBLINGS AND TWINS
Edited by Melanie Ohnemus; with essays by Doryun Chong, Bart van der Heide,
and Melanie Ohnemus
18 x 25 cm / 7.09 x 9.84 in., 160 pages, numerous black-and-white and color plates, paperback
German and English
Sternberg Press, Berlin, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010

NINA KÖNNEMANN
FREE MUMIA
Edited by Melanie Ohnemus; with essays by Melanie Ohnemus and Katha Schulte
22 x 27.7 cm / 8.66 x 10.91 in., 48 pages, with a series of pictures by Nina Könnemann
paperback, German and English
Spector Books, Leipzig, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010

PAOLA PIVI
IT’S A COCKTAIL PARTY
Edited by Melanie Ohnemus, Portikus, and Larys Frogier, La Criée Centre Dárt Contemporain, Rennes; with essays by Robert Cailliau, Massimiliano Gioni, Martin Herbet, Scott Jonsson, Larys Frogier, and Melanie Ohnemus
42 x 27.9 cm / 16,54 x 10.98 in., (Wide Format), 120 Pages, all Plates in Color, with several Foldouts, Paperback, German, English and French
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010

AKRAM ZAATARI
EARTH OF ENDLESS SECRETS
Edited by Karl Bassil, Akram Zaatari, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main;
with essays by Hannah Feldman, Laura U. Marks, Rasha Salti,
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, and Akram Zaatari
28 x 24 cm / 11.02 x 9.45 in., 382 pages, hardcover, German and English
Sfeir Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2010

Please contact info@portikus.de for sales and more information about individual works or visit our website at http://www.portikus.de. Editions by other artists from previous years are available upon request.
Upcoming editions: Sergej Jensen, Matthew Brannon

About PORTIKUS
Portikus in Frankfurt am Main was founded in 1987. As an exhibition space for contemporary art, it presents current work by established international artists as well as emerging ones. Its mission is to realize new projects that relate to the exhibition space itself, its history and the close relationship to the Städelschule by engaging in collaborations with the participating artists.

As part of the Hochschule für bildende Künste – Städelschule art academy, Portikus also allows for a unique situation of exchange between the invited artists and the students at the academy.

PORTIKUS
Alte Brücke 2 / Maininsel
60594 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
+49. (0)69. 9624 4540
www.portikus.de
info@portikus.de