A video featuring Art21 artist Tim Hawkinson was recently released on NewArtTV.com. In this interview, Hawkinson discusses many of the objects in How Man is Knit, the artist’s first solo exhibition at Pace Wildenstein Gallery in May 2007.
Tim Hawkinson on NewArtTV
Life on Mars: Carnegie International 2008
The 2008 installment of Carnegie International, the oldest international survey of contemporary art in North America, will explore what it means to be human in the world today. Titled Life on Mars, CI08 opens to the public on May 3, though related programs and events are already underway. A four-session lecture series, Approaches to Contemporary Art & the 55th Carnegie International, explores changes in art in the last 50 years. The two remaining sessions will take place on Thursday, April 17 and 25.
CI08 is curated by Douglas Fogle, the Carnegie’s curator of contemporary art. On April 6, Fogle posted the following on the exhibition blog:
“In David Bowie’s song, ‘Life on Mars,’ he sings about a world spinning out of control. Bowie poses the question of whether Mars is a place to escape to, or whether we’re on Mars already, because this world we live in has become so strange and unfamiliar to us. The title [of CI08]–appropriated from the Bowie song…poses a poetic question of longing, and of trying to connect. It relates not only to a literal search for extra-terrestrial life, but also to sending out signals in the dark, and hoping to get a response…Every curator is a product of their particular time, as well as their own personal history. This show is the show I had to do right now.”
The forty emerging and established artists in the exhibition include Mark Bradford (Season 4), Barry McGee, Mike Kelley(both Season 1), Vija Celmins (Season 2), Doug Aitken, Cao Fei, Phil Collins, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Ryan Gander, Thomas Hirschhorn, Sharon Lockhart, Marisa Merz, Noguchi Rika, Thomas Schutte, David Shrigley, Rudolf Stingel, Paul Thek, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Rosemarie Trockel, to name just a few. The exhibition closes on January 9, 2009.
Tim Hawkinson Down Under
Scout, an exhibition of work by Art21 Season 2 artist Tim Hawkinson, is on view at the Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand until May 16th.
Hawkinson’s full range of mad scientist quirkiness is on exhibit, ranging from drawings and paintings to multi-media constructions. The wide array of works are meticulously designed and constructed, integrating scavenged and ephemeral materials with a healthy dose of absurdist humor.
“Through his work, Hawkinson draws the viewer into a Carrollean world of inverse proportions, surreal adventures, and fantastical, sometimes sinister characters. His über-imagination produces a cast of hybrid animals, queasily enlarged body parts and grotesque collages that occupy a space situated somewhere on the other side of the looking glass” (from the press release).