Althamer

Paweł Althamer, a Polish, "international" artist, has his first retrospective exhibition in Warsaw, at the prestigious Zachęta (national) gallery. His works are so diverse, it is difficult to sum them up. He is perhaps best known for his ingenious installations/performances, like this one:


You guessed it, it was made in the year 2000. This is a real building, and the photo has not been retouched. Meaning - what you see is what you get. As long as you think about it - because, as often with contemporary art, you might not get much out of it if you don't want to :). For me, it is above all about one guy walking from door to door and convincing his neighbors to do something different, a little strange, crazy and seemingly useless to many of them. The building is the actual building he lives in, in a poor and ugly part of Warsaw. You can read more about the new exhibition, which contains mainly sculptures and films, at NonStarving Artists, a good fine arts site. (For the English version, scroll down or click on..."English":)).
I don't like Althamer's sculptures as much, and don't know his films at all, but I must admit they have something in them:




On the State-owned site culture.pl, you can find a slightly longer Althamer biography.

Avantgarde

"Today's current theatre avant-garde includes reruns of the historical avant-garde as well as the practices of formerly experimental artists whose work is by now 'classical' in terms of its predictability, solidity, and acceptance. (...) The current avant-garde offers no surprises in terms of theatrical techniques, themes, audience interactions, or anything else. (...) The current avant-garde is not only dominated by a group of oldsters (of which I am, for better or worse, one), but it is also quite clearly an established style of performance, one that in many ways is not distinguishable from orthodox theatre and dace. What innovation comes from the current avant-garde, is mostly emanating from performance art, where people are exploring such things as explicit sexual art and the combining of the extremely personal with the political." - Richard Schechner (theatre/performance theorist and practitioner)

Who cares about theatre?

"I've never really been interested in theatre as such." - Robert Lepage (theatre director, of course) (other info about Lepage here and here)

Another Christo alternative!

Now this is really strange... By some total coincidence, I discovered yet another take on The Gates (read previous post for explanation...):


From The Boston Globe:

"Geoff Hargadon -- Hargo, now that he's a star -- is the creator of The Somerville Gates, a micro sendup of the saffron extravaganza now in New York's Central Park. And he has become almost preposterously famous.

After he posted photos on his website of his 13-gate installation -- made from stuff he picked up at Home Depot that he glued together and painted orange -- Hargadon received more than 4 million hits, so many that he had to take it down yesterday because his Internet service was charging him for every visit. He owes thousands, he says.

Museums across the country are after him. Manhattan's Pratt Institute wants a Somerville Gate for its permanent collection. Ditto, the Browne Popular Culture Museum in Bowling Green, Ohio; the Portland Art Museum in Oregon; and Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C. Someone from Tufts University invited him to display the work in a juried art show.

...
The Somerville Gates came into being one night while Hargadon and his wife watched the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on television, discussing the hype around Christo and Jeanne-Claude's $20 million-plus Gates in Central Park. They ran to the store, plunked down a total of $3.50 for supplies, and spent the evening gluing and painting. The photos they took depicted the same 13 gates arranged in settings around their Somerville loft, usually marking paths walked by his cat, Edie."

Oh, don't you just love art? :))

Christo - alternative

I'm sure you know about Christo and Jeanne-Claude's latest work, The Gates:
.

Well, this is an amazing alternative artwork, The Crackers:


You can find more about this masterpiece right over here. Enjoy :)