PRIVACY Exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle

PRIVACY_Exhibition_at_Shirn_Kunsthalle_Frankfurt_dash_snow

Private—a word from the past, or so it would seem these days. A word of hardly any relevance in an era when everything—from one’s favorite recipe to one’s current relationship status—is posted on Facebook. Exhibitionism, self-disclosure, the delight in telling stories, showing off, and voyeurism are the social strategies in today’s world—a world that has long since undergone a structural transformation of the public sphere. In contemporary art, domestic scenes and personal secrets are mirrored in photographs, Polaroids, cell phone photos, objects, installations, and films. The familiar and intimate are put in the picture. Through a consideration of numerous contemporary approaches the Schirn investigates the dwindling private sphere and the “publicness of the intimate.” Aiming her camera through a rear courtyard window, Merry Alpern captures blurred scenes of hurried sexual encounters; in his romantic video piece Akram Zaatari explores an online chat between two men; and Fiona Tan combines private snapshots from different countries to create large tableaux. The exhibition undertakes memorable excursions to the fragile borders between the self and the other. Other artists include Dash Snow, Mark Morrisroe, Ai Weiwei and Marilyn Minter. Privacy will be on view from November 1, 2012, to February 3, 2013 at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Romberg, 60311 Frankfurt

The Shaping of New Visions

Valie Export, Einkreisung (Encirclement) from the series Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations). 1976.

The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook, on view this month at the MOMA in New York, covers the period from 1910 to today, offers a critical reassessment of photography's role in the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements—with a special emphasis on the medium's relation to Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, Conceptual, and Post-Conceptual art—and in the development of contemporary artistic practices. The shaping of what came to be known as "New Vision" photography bore the obvious influence of "lens-based" and "time-based" works. El Lissitzky best summarized its ethos: "The new world will not need little pictures," he wrote in The Conquest of Art (1922). "If it needs a mirror, it has the photograph and the cinema." The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary art from April 18 to April 29, 2013.