Exhibitions

The Lay of the Land is still on view at the Walther Collection Project Space in New York, United States until January 16, 2016.

With this exhibition, the Walther Collection is starting a 3-year exhibition series on contemporary photography and video art from Africa. Expanding the collection’s longstanding focus on African photography, this program features a diverse range of emerging artists who are exploring new visions of social identity in Africa and the African diaspora. The first exhibition, The Lay of the Land: New Photography from Africa brings together three artists who investigate the effects of the built environment in postcolonial cities from Dakar to Johannesburg. Uniting their works is a vivid attention to color and form. The artists systematically portray monumental civic buildings or banal apartment complexes, imposing avenues or lonely corners, profiling spaces discovered on travels in Africa and abroad. Their images of physical structures and public spaces are encoded with the values, dreams, contradictions, and politics of urban life.

After Eden: The Walther Collection is still on view at La Maison Rouge in Paris, France until January 17, 2016.

Since its opening, each autumn La Maison Rouge has shown a major international collection. Since October 17th, 2015, Artur Walther’s exceptional collection of photography is still on view. Over a period of twenty years, Artur Walther has assembled significant and cohesive ensembles, beginning with German photography, then American, and later African and Asian photography. After Eden is presenting a selection of over 900 works by some fifty artists. The exhibition was entrusted to curator Simon Njami, who presents us a fable on aspects of humanity, following themes that he found running through the collection such as landscape, portraiture, city, identity, and performance, as well as anthropometric and ethnographic essays. The title “After Eden” was chosen to evoke a lost paradise, a fallen world in which humans struggle to leave a lasting trace.

Biennials

The Modern Life is the central theme of the 13th Biennale de Lyon that is open until January 3, 2016.

In 2015, Thierry Raspail, artistic director of the Biennale de Lyon, begins a new cycle of three biennials around the theme “modern”. His guest curator for this 13th edition is Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery in London, who curated one of the three exhibitions of this biennial. Entitled Modern Life, the exhibition will bring together 60 artists from 28 countries who explore the contradictory character of contemporary culture in varied regions of the world. Their work addresses the ways in which multifarious legacies of the “modern” era continue to colour and shape our perceptions as well as the salient scenarios and issues of everyday life. With acuity and wit, a desire to engage and provoke different ways of understanding, and adventurousness in fashioning new forms and images, their work invites the public to reflect on and re-imagine our relationships to the present moment in order to better re-invent them.

The State of the Art of Architecture is the central theme of the 1st Chicago Architecture Biennial that is open until January 3, 2016.

The inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial takes its title, The State of the Art of Architecture, from a 1977 conference organized by architect Stanley Tigerman, which invited leading American designers to Chicago to discuss the current state of the field. The Chicago Architecture Biennial will expand the spirit and scope of this event. It will invite both emerging and established practices from across the world to Chicago to demonstrate how groundbreaking advances in architectural design are tackling the most pressing issues of today. In this way it will enrich Chicago’s unique role in history as a crucible of architectural innovation. The setting for a succession of pivotal episodes in modern architecture and urbanism, and a context in which architects developed revolutionary projects, Chicago will operate as a nexus for the ideas and practices that are driving global architectural culture in the 21st century.

Art Fairs

Art Basel’s Miami fair is still open at Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, United States from December 3 to 6, 2015.

Art Basel returns to Miami Beach this December for its 14th edition, with 267 leading international galleries drawn from 32 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. 29 galleries are completely new to the Miami Beach show. This year, 267 of the world's leading Modern and contemporary art galleries display premier paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, prints, photography, film, video, and digital art by over 4,000 artists. Art Basel's exhibition sectors are carefully defined to provide visitors the opportunity to see many different types of important works, from historical masterpieces to the work of the newest generation of artists.