iona rozeal brown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

iona rozeal brown
On view January 29th, 2010 through May 16th, 2010

ON VIEW in the William D. Ginn Gallery and Dr. Gerald and Phyllis Seltzer Rotunda Gallery

Organized by MOCA Cleveland

Curated by Megan Lykins Reich, Director of Education and Associate Curator

Recipient of the 2009 Joyce Award, this exhibition features recent and newly commissioned work by Washington D.C.-based artist, iona rozeal brown, who examines the globalization and appropriation of hip-hop culture in vibrant large-scale acrylic paintings. Sparked by her interest in ganguro, a trend in the late 1990's among Japanese teenagers (mostly girls) who were infatuated with looking like African-American hip-hop stars, brown integrates hip-hop's stylistic motifs into the compositional framework of Japan's most illustrious modern artistic tradition: ukiyo-e printmaking. Connecting hip-hop's material culture to the opulent ukiyo-e world of geishas, samurais, and Kabuki actors, brown reveals the malleable, polymorphic nature of history, culture, and identity.

This exhibition will feature a commission of new paintings referencing prints from the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. In addition, rozeal brown will be working with select area high school students* in January 2010 to design and paint wooden Japanese screens that will be exhibited in our Rotunda gallery.

CLICK HERE for more information.

Melanie Manchot at Whitechapel

13 January - 14 March 2010
Outset Project Gallery (Gallery 5)
& 176 / Zabludowicz Collection Project Gallery (Gallery 6)


Drawing on traditions of group portraiture at public street parties, Melanie Manchot’s new work explores individual and collective identity through photography and film.

For this commission, Manchot has worked with residents of Cyprus Street, east London, to hold a street party and make a new film. She documents this event with a single tracking shot, capturing residents as they gather in front of the camera. The film bridges still and moving image, to look at the process of forming and dissolving a group portrait. It asks questions about what it means to form a community: both through the collaboration between residents and artist for the party, and in the relationships captured on film among the participants.

The film is shown alongside a new series of photographs made with the residents and a display of archive footage of street parties, such as peace parties in 1919 and 1945. Celebration (Cyprus Street) is part of the Gallery’s Education Programme, which commissions artists and explores the relationships between the Gallery, public spaces and community.

Melanie Manchot is a London-based artist working with photography, film and video.

CLICK HERE for more information

Ahmed Alsoudani Vossstrasse Exhibition

Sadly, Ahmed Alsoudani's exhibition in Berlin had to close early. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it to Vossstrasse, it was a fantastic opening and exhibition. If you were unable to see it in person here are a few photos to enjoy!

Type A at the Tang

Type A "Barrier" is on view at The Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, through January, 2nd.

Ain Cocke -- 21C Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Ain Cocke is featured in the current show at the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, KY. The show, entitled Creating Identity: Portraits Today, includes Ain's painting Das Geheimnis des Garten. The group show also features art by Kenhinde Wiley, Chuck Close, Yinka Shonibare, Vik Munix, and Catherine Opie, among others. The exhibition will be open until April 2010.

Titus Kaphar at Roberts & Tilton

tryharder blog has posted images of Titus Kaphar's current show at Roberts & Tilton in L.A. Click here for more details.

Mont Blanc Prize awarded to Chiharu Shiota

The Montblanc brand is historically and naturally bound to artistic creation, to the art of writing, of expressing thoughts and staging them. This intellectual dimension of the brand is part of its genes and did not stop developing through its products but also through its communication in its widest meaning. It opened itself at multiple artistic forms as classical music, opera, contemporary painting, and more recently cinema and photography.

Montblanc supports numerous projects in those different domains. Particularly through its Cultural Foundation which rewards every year, since 1992, illustrious Arts sponsors in 11 different countries, of which France of course.

It was thus natural to sponsor the Mont Blanc Docks Art fair prize which distinguishes the best of contemporary artistic creation in such eclectic domains.

Chiharu Shiota, the winner of this year's award, will have an exhibition in October in the new shop of the brand, Place Vendôme, in Paris.

The committee, specially joined together for this occasion, is:

Paul Ardenne, art critic and French curator - Paris

Marc Blondeau, modern and contemporary art expert - Geneva

Olivier Houg, Olivier Houg Galerie director, Docks Art fair art director - Lyon

Hélène Kelmachter, cultural attaché of the French embassy in Japan - Tokyo

Ingrid Roosen, worldwide director of the cultural affairs at Mont Blanc - Germany