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Studio 35 Minutes, Tokyo

July 18 2014
3:00 PM

Owned and run by Kota Sake, Studio 35 Minutes is an unassuming gallery located in Araiyakushimae that inherited the name of the old photo lab it replaced in a quiet part of Tokyo northwest of Shinjuku. Simple yet generous, previous shows have featured artists from both Japan and overseas. However, its real genius lies in how the gallery’s social gatherings have fostered a diverse community, showing work that’s more inclusive than exclusive. “Transmission,” the latest show curated by Dan Abbe, contributes to this atmosphere. Whilst younger artists have been the focus of past exhibitions, “Transmission” goes further, bringing together two well known artists; Iwate-born photographer Naoya Hatakeyama and Shuji Akagi, a former painter turned photographer now living in Fukushima City. Hatakeyama is one of Japan’s most sophisticated photographers, known for documenting the changing face of natural and urban landscapes in works such as Natural Stories (2012), Terrils (2011), Ciel Tombé (2008) and BLAST (1998). Akagi meanwhile has merited attention for his poignancy and immediacy, focusing on day-to-day images that he terms “historical.” Despite their disparity, both artists offer a personal take on documenting Fukushima while sharing an awareness for how their images are transmitted and received. The chance to see their work together in an part of Tokyo that rarely hosts anything remotely similar is a rare opportunity that should not be missed. (Stuart Munro)

“Transmission” at Studio 35 Minutes, Tokyo, runs through August 2

Ramiro Chaves, "La Loma del Orto," installation view at Yautepec, Mexico City
Courtesy of the artist and Yautepec, Mexico City

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San Rafael, Mexico City

July 15 2014
3:00 PM

Conveniently close to the city center but still spared by the otherwise galloping gentrification, Colonia San Rafael is the new hideout for artists in search of spectacular accommodation and cheap studio spaces in sprawling Mexico City. The most recent additions to the neighborhood are Lodos Contemporáneo, a tiny exhibition space run by artist Francisco Cordero-Oceguera, and NO Space, operated by artists Andrew Birk and Debora Delmar from within their fancy penthouse. In front of Lodos, the restored mansion known as Casa Maauad hosts several artists’ studios as well as an informal residency and exhibition program, often including foreign artists who happen to be in town. Around the corner, the artist-run project space Diagrama gathers a mixed community of local artists with a program focused mostly on painting. A crucial actor in San Rafael’s current emerging scene is Yautepec Gallery, whose owners initiated Mexico City’s second art fair, Material. Yautepec Gallery represents a mix of Mexican and foreign artists, and it recently participated in Art-o-rama in Marseille, NADA in Miami and Art Los Angeles. A show entitled “Fitzcarraldo” with Andrew Birk, Nicolas Colón and Yann Gerstberger runs through July 26. Interestingly, nearby museums El Eco and El Chopo have recently included more and more young artists from the local scene: at last a beneficial effect of gentrification? (Dorothée Dupuis)

Hannah Weinberger, "Looking Forward," installation view at Hacienda, Zurich, 2013
Courtesy of the artist and Hacienda, Zurich

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Hacienda, Zurich

July 3 2014
3:00 PM

This summer marks the end of a full year of programming at Hacienda, an off-space located in Zurich’s Seefeld neighborhood. Run by Arthur Fink, Fabian Marti and Oskar Weiss, Hacienda is located in an apartment in a small townhouse, lending the exhibitions a domestic feel. The project’s three founders each have a different background: Fink currently studies art history and philosophy in Basel after having worked with Karma International, Zurich; Marti is an artist who co-founded the artists’ collective PAC and the artist-run space CAP in Fribourg and established the Zurich Arts Club; Weiss also runs Galerie Weiss, a bookshop in Zurich which was formerly a gallery, and works on different artists’ archives and estates. Given their backgrounds, the presence of a library reading room in Hacienda is no surprise; neither is the fact that they create their program through discussions and research. Their first year of operation has seen them work with Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist, who designed the Hacienda logo; Swiss artist Hannah Weinberger, who created the space’s inaugural exhibition; the Swiss experimental musician and artist Anton Bruhin; and American artist Pentti Monkkonen. After “Swiss Jarry,” a solo show by Rainer Ganahl in May; “Naughty by Nature,” an exhibition by Lisa Anne Auerbach and Liz Craft in June, and then “1989 – 2013,” a solo show by Keith Boadwee in July, Hacienda will have to move to a new location. Stay tuned! (Maaike Lauwaert)

Lary 7, installation view at Audio Visual Arts, New York, 2014
Courtesy of Audio Visual Arts, New York

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Audio Visual Arts, New York

May 27 2014
3:00 PM

Audio Visual Arts (AVA) is a small Lower East Side installation space and gallery making big sounds. Artist and curator Justin Luke formed the gallery in 2008 when he took over the lease of a storefront above the basement he uses as a recording studio. In addition to hosting various sound and media pieces within the interior gallery, AVA curates a monthly selection of recorded work called Exterior Sounds. Neighborhood listeners plug headphones into a specially designed jack that resembles a simple intercom system and select their preferred composition. Recordings have included sound collage works, spoken word, and performance pieces. Inside the storefront, AVA recently hosted Ephemera, an auditory and olfactory installation organized by the UNSOUND music festival. Later this spring, AVA hosted The Persistence of Traces, Seth Cluett’s exploration of scale and surrounding space with a multimedia installation. In Forgetting through effacement, the artist projected a single-channel video onto a pocket size mirror, prompting viewers to squat down to glimpse the screen. Elsewhere, as in Tension and Contraction (2014), Cluett covered part of the front window in a cotton rag paper frame with a tiny opening, guiding the viewer’s eye toward a precise point in the adjacent park across from the gallery. Currently on view is “Came to Call Mine,” Graham Lambkin’s first solo show and presentation of his expansive publication of the same name. Outside, viewers are invited to plug headphones into the exterior sound box to experience Lambkin’s audio component. (Simone Krug)

"Büroarbeit," installation view at YEARS, Copenhagen, 2013
Courtesy of the artists and YEARS, Copenhagen

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YEARS, Copenhagen

May 22 2014
11:00 AM

Rejecting the format of the white cube, YEARS is a small, rustic gallery, located alongside Copenhagen’s industrial buildings in Nørrebro, the multi-cultural area of the “happiest city of the world.” Being run, according to the Danish artistic tradition, by a horizontally structured group of self-organized artists with minimal administration, YEARS has hosted several shows including solo presentations by artists such as Will Benedict and Julian Stalbohm, as well as group exhibitions featuring Danish artists and reenactments of historical shows. Currently YEARS hosts “L’ombre d’un doute/I tvivlens skygge,” an exhibition conceived in collaboration with castillo/corrales, the Parisian artist-run space and publishing house, who have been invited on the occasion of Copenhagen’s Artist Run festival. The exhibition takes as its starting point “Notorious (Christian Leigh),” a castillo/corrales exhibition that assembles documentation of Leigh’s years as one of the most inventive and original exhibition-makers of his time. Collaborating with YEARS, they develops the self-proclaimed prolific filmmaker, performance artist and book editor’s tactics and trademarks for the Copenhagen iteration, thus broadening the archive with its actions. Later, in mid-June YEARS will host “Your hands and fingers glisten ice cold like Michigan,” a solo exhibition by Mette Hersoug. Interested in overlaps and shifts between existing cultural narratives, the artist will present an installation that will weave together geographical and linguistic associations in order to reflect on how human agency operates in the present tense. (Ingrid Melano)

On May 22, don’t miss the official opening of YEARS’ sister platform NEW YEARS, with a show by Danish artist Heine Thorhauge Mathiasen.

"Wearing Potentiality," installation view at Paradise Row Gallery, London.
Courtesy of the artists and Paradise Row Gallery, London. Photo by June Calypso

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The Basement at Paradise Row, London

May 19 2014
3:00 PM

The Basement is a new exhibition programme at Paradise Row, a gallery opened in 2006 in London by art critic Nick Hackworth. Previously located in a Victorian terraced row in Bethnal Green, and now extended over two floors in Fitzrovia, The Basement exhibits work by emerging artists curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini. It kicked off with a solo show by Majed Aslam in June 2013, which was followed by  presentations of Harry Meadley, Johann Arens and Sam Austen. Currently on view is “Wearing Potentiality,” a group show with works by Matt Ager, Laura Aldridge, James Clarkson, Hannah Lees and Dominic Watson. The artists here look at an enlarged notion of potentiality, while placing emphasis on materiality and its disengagement from any original visual context. With The Basement programme, which runs alongside the gallery’s main programme, Paradise Row is exposing itself to a new audience, in a way that plays interestingly with the protocols of the private gallery. (Melissa Canbaz)

"Enigma," installation view at Minibar Artistspace, Stockholm, 2014
Courtesy of the artists, and Minibar Artistspace, Stockholm

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Minibar Artistspace, Stockholm

May 14 2014
3:00 PM

Located in close proximity to Stockholm’s commercial gallery district, Minibar Artistspace is a not-for-profit initiative run and curated by artists Malin Henningsson, Sofie M. Westin and Anna Sagström. It acts as a platform for presenting innovative, short-term contemporary art exhibitions and collaborations, always accompanied by unconventionally designed, aesthetically post-digital publicity material. Minibar’s most recent show dealt with the issues of the relationship between the physical and the digital space, the boundaries between the real and the unreal, as well as with the subject of coding and of decoding works of art. With a text from Rasmus Fleischer, “ENIGMA” presented artistic interventions by Steve Bishop, Constant Dullaart, Christian Jeppsson, Sonia Kacem, Sofia M. Westin, Anna Sagström, Pilvi Takala, Lars TCF Holdus and Yoga Center, which appeared to create enigmatic links between, at times, seemingly un-combinable worlds and aesthetics. Minibar’s next show, which opens on 24 May, will present works from artist Yuri Pattison. The solo show, titled “colocation time displacement,” will focus on Pattison’s new moving image piece filmed in a former civil defence centre in Stockholm’s White Mountains Södermalm borough, which was built to protect essential government functions from nuclear strike. The bunker has now been turned into a data center run by Bahnhof AB—a company known as a free speech internet service provider (its clients include Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay). The show will also feature a publication and new 3D-printed sculpture works. (Agnes Gryczkowska)

Laura Hunt, Say it Going Nowhere and Where it Started, Installation View at Essex Flowers
Courtesy of the artist; and Essex Flowers, New York

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Essex Flowers, New York

May 6 2014
3:00 PM

Essex Flowers is a gallery space that lies below a flower shop in New York’s Lower East Side. The artist-run venue opened in June 2013 after the flower shop’s owner, Bill Frazer, offered his basement as a project space to a group of young artists. In the spirit of DIY, nine artists collaborated in renovating the 400-square-foot basement, also converting a back room wall and garden into an exhibition area. In addition to taking turns curating exhibitions, the group rotates programming duties and gallery tasks. Last summer’s  inaugural exhibition, titled “Group Show,” presented the nine artists’ works. Subsequent shows have featured community-themed projects such as “Frequencies Vol. 2,” a collaboration between visual artists and DJs at nearby Beverly’s Bar and The Institutional CriTiki Lounge; upcoming events include a backyard book launch of Bunk Club’s FAN OF: JOSHUA SMITH and a poetry reading event by Keith J. Varadi, Lucy Ives and Andrew Durbin (May 9th). Flowers are mostly absent from the gallery setting, save for Lizzie Wright’s trio of wooden sculptures embellished with lime-green blooms from a piece featured in “EZ Spirit,” a show organized by the artist in collaboration with Saira McLaren and Janine Polak. The current show, “Lion King” by Andy Meerow, features monochrome beige two-word diptychs, which share the basement space with life-size casts of salted pretzels under Plexi frames. Word combinations such as “body/text” and “system/prison” float around in the same space as the popular carbohydrate. Just upstairs, the flower shop functions with little sign of the innovative programming beneath the bouquets and floral arrangements. (Simone Krug)

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