Katharina Grosse (1961) is famous for her innovative painting style that is heavily inspired by graffiti and conceptual art. She usually uses an industrial spray paint gun to cover everything from mud hills, found objects to abstract forms made from wood, plastic and styrofoam, and often includes the walls and ceilings of the art space.

In her show Can You Spell Mixing at Dirimart, Istanbul she is showing a less known side of her work: paintings on canvas made between 2009 and 2011.

Katharina Grosse will be at Dirimart until September 3rd, 2012.

Untitled, 2009, 134×123 cm

Untitled, 2009 – 201×135 cm

Untitled, 2011 – 180×129 cm

(photos courtesy of DIRIMART)

It looks like somebody has misplaced two couches right in the center of Zürich, but curious passers looking for a rest will be surprised, the furniture feels hard and cold and doesn’t deliver the expected comfort. The Sofa in White are two artworks made out of marble, created by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (1957).

For Art and the City, the largest outdoor exhibition of Switzerland, he placed The Sofa in White right in the financial district. The artworks look like a certain model of 1970s furniture, sold in millions especially to the Chinese middle class and turned into an icon of a generation, representing achievable modest wealth and comfort. Weiwei’s couches are handmade by Chinese craftsman using expensive marble, each piece is 1.020 kg heavy. They are currently in front of Credit Suisse, with UBS one of the two big banks that are situated at the Paradeplatz since the end of the 19th Century. This place is one of the world’s most expensive locations and became well known through international tv as almost every report about Swiss banks shows the Paradeplatz. Now it embodies the cliche of Swiss banks like no other and stands for money and gold, bank secrecy and money laundering and for bonuses and financial crisis. The seatings are a symbol for globalization, a source of major profits for the Credit Suisse.

Ai Weiwei’s The Sofa in White and other artworks are on display in the city space until September 23rd.

Art and the City takes place in Zürich right now and shows 40 works by artists like Doug Aitken, Paul McCarthy and others. The public art project coincides with the Venice Biennale and Kassel’s documenta, roughly located between their two venues.

> directions

> overview of extensive tours and other dates and events of Art and the City

> Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds on Public Delivery

> Wilfredo Prieto’s b/w flags – Apolítico, another work installed in Zürich right now

(photos: courtesy the artist und Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing – Lucerne)

The Austrian Franz West (1947-2012), one of the most important postwar-artists, died less than two weeks ago. His work has been repeatedly exhibited at documenta, the Venice Biennale and in 2011 was awarded the Golden Lion at the Biennale di Venezia in recognition for his life’s work.

Internationally he got famous through participating at the Documenta IX in 1992: Several of his art pieces were distributed around the area and served as chairs and sofas. Due to their affordable price they quickly spread within the art world and finally became a mass-product. Though not appreciated by everybody, it made West’s approach to art clear: Creating usuable art. In an interview with Robert Fleck he also said “Best of all I like art in the streets; it doesn’t demand that you make a special journey to see it, it’s simply there. You don’t even have to look at it – that is probably the ideal art.”

In the 1970s West created Adaptives, small, portable sculptures. The following large artworks, made from plaster and gauze and painted with dispersion paint (see below) are directly based on them.

(photo: Art Basel)

This sculpture, Gekröse, 2011, was one of the most dominant pieces shown at the Art Basel Art Unlimited last year by Gagosian Gallery. It was West’s largest outdoor sculpture and sold for a seven digit figure a few hours after the opening.

(photo: Mitro Hood/Baltimore Museum of Art)

The Ego and the Id, 2008, a 20 feet high aluminum sculpture was installed at the Franz West retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art. It featured chairs that were built into the artwork and invited viewers to interact with it. The title of the art piece is a reference to one of Sigmund Freud’s most famous texts in which he describes the Id, ego and super-ego as the three parts of the psychic apparatus.

(photo: Noel. Y. C. / nyclovesnyc)

Afterwards the same sculpture previously shown in Baltimore got exhibited at the Doris Freedman Plaza in Central Park and was on display until March 2010 while some of his smaller sculptures could be seen at the MOMA.

(photo: apa /Franz West / Kunsthaus Bregenz / Rudolf Sagmeister)

Drama (Modell), 2001 at Kunsthaus Bregenz

(photo: Museum Ludwig)

Ergebnis, 2008 at Museum Ludwig

(photo: Gagosian)

Lying Not, 2008 for Gagosian New York at Art Basel Miami Beach Art Projects, 2009

(photo: Gagosian)

Installation view at Gagosian Rome, 2010

Underground #02 (Vienna), 2011

Underground #08 (New York City), 2008

Underground #01 (Budapest), 2011

Underground #08 (Berlin), 2010

We just had a chance to meet up with Timo Stammberger (b. 1980), a photographer from Berlin. He is the first to document subway tunnels in his extensive series Underground Landscapes that shows the underground architecture from major cities like New York, Lisbon, Budapest, Berlin and others.

The surprising element is that the subway tunnels that millions of people pass through every day have their own unique character, Stammberger’s photos reveal a stunning perspective on the city’s underground. The eager adventurer has discovered a broad variety of tunnels, from the dirty and old ones in NYC that were built in the 1900s, to the brandnew high-tech tunnels of Vienna, in operation since 2010. His work requires a lot of dedication: Usually the subway companies don’t allow photographers into their network and even taking photos on the subway platforms is forbidden. The underground architecture is protected by a broad variety of security measures, ranging from infra red cameras, sensors to security personnel. How Stammberger creates his photos will remain unknown for now but make sure to keep an eye out for this underrated photographer.

> visit timostammberger.com for more

Fireflies have become a rare sight in Japan. Once they used to glow their low light all over the country in the summer time but now they have become an uncommon sight even in rural areas. Last month 100,000 LED lights floated down through Tokyo’s city centre on the Sumida river mimicking a stream of fireflies. This happend on the occasion of the Tokyo Hotaru Festival (Tokyo Firefly Festival) which was first held in 2012 and is intended to revalue the river and its surroundings, similar to what Seoul has done with their prestigious Cheonggyecheon stream renaturation project. The LED lights were sponsored by Panasonic and equipped with solar cells. At the end all of the lights were taken out of the river by using a big net.

(via, photos by Tokyo Hotaru & Mai Suzuki)

Over the past 1 1/2 years British artist Antony Gormley has prepared an exhibition at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Europe’s biggest space for contemporary art. Rather than following through with the proposed retrospective, Gormley decided creating a huge interactive sculpture that only comes alive by the participation of the visitors. To enforce his point Gormley accomplished to keep the exhibition that runs until 9th of September 2012 free of charge.

The sculpture itself stretches over 1200m2 big and weighs 67 tons. One single person can make it vibrate, by walking, running or jumping. The experience is enhanced by the reflecting ground which makes a gigantic mirror. A dedicated website allows visitors uploading their own photos of the art work which then appear in a blog.

> extensive documentation and additional info at deichtorhallen.de

(photos by Henning Rogge)

Yu Lik-wai – Fantomas

Leung Mee-ping – I Miss Fanta

M+ is the name of a new museum that focuses on 20th and 21th century art and will be completed in late 2017. It will provide more than 60,000 square metres of space, similar to the NYC MoMA. Prior to the opening a series of major pop-up “nomadic” exhibitions curated by M+ will take place as the museum tries to engage the public.

Mobile M+ is their first project. It is a multi-sited exhibition consisting of six large-scale installations which are shown around Yau Ma Tei, one of Hong Kong’s busiest residential and commercial districts. “Neglected” spaces like shops, offices, a park and an empty lot under a flyover were chosen to turn those selected sites into “museums without walls” and bring art closer to the local community and people.

The exhibition is accompanied by free guided tours, a series of artist talks, an iPhone app and a bilingual exhibition catalogue. Mobile M+ is on display now and runs until June 10th.

> more information