5 To See: This Weekend

For the weekend of 9-11 June, we take a spiritual journey into Shinto traditions with Rinko Kawauchi’s latest series of images that feature elegant flocks of migrating birds. The theme of motion continues in the Whitney Museum‘s animated presentation of Alexander Calder’s sculptures and mobiles in New York. In Paris, Chiharu Shiota explores the body and concepts of temporality through intricate woven structures at Galerie Daniel Templon, while A Handful of Dust at Whitechapel Gallery, London, provides a lasting reminder of the transient nature of dust in the visual world.

1. Rinko Kawauchi, Halo, Christopher Guye Galerie, Zurich
Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi develops her exploration of spirituality and the Shinto rituals which inspired her earlier pieces in a new exhibition titled Halo. This latest series is made up of three interwoven sections, focusing on different spiritual traditions. One of the three depicts the dance-like movements of countless numbers of migratory birds that appear throughout Europe in wintertime. The formation of these flocks or collective bodies is an activity thought to stave predators away, and at the same time they resemble human society itself.

2. Calder: Hypermobility, Whitney Museum, New York
The Whitney Museum focuses on the extraordinary breadth of movement and sound in the work of Alexander Calder. Hypermobility brings together a rich constellation of key sculptures and provides audiences with an opportunity to experience the works as the artist intended: in motion. The pieces will be activated at regular occasions throughout the exhibition run, revealing the all-important kinetic nature of Calder’s work, as well as its relationship to performance. Influenced by the artist’s engagement with choreography, Calder’s sculptures contain an embedded performativity.

3. Chiharu Shiota, Destination, Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris
Another Japanese artist, Chiharu Shiota returns to both Galerie Daniel Templon’s spaces with a spectacular site-specific installation and a series of new sculptures. Making a name for herself through vast environments created from woven wool yarns, she first used the form of a boat as part of her Japan Pavilion contribution at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Her pieces explore the notions of the body, temporality, movement, memory and dreams. At Galerie Daniel Templon, a five-metre boat, the frame of its hull resembling a human skeleton, floats in a sea of red yarn, while red panels adorn the walls.

4. A Handful of Dust, Whitechapel Gallery, London
Conceived by writer and curator David Campany, A Handful of Dust traces a visual journey through the imagery of dust from aerial reconnaissance, wartime destruction and natural disasters to urban decay, domestic dirt and forensics. The exhibition takes as a starting point the 1920 photograph taken by Man Ray of Marcel Duchamp’s work in progress The Large Glass (1915–23) deliberately left to gather dust in his New York studio. The show features works by over 30 artists and photographers including Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Robert Filliou, Mona Kuhn, Man Ray, Gerhard Richter, Sophie Ristelhueber, Aaron Siskind, Shomei Tomatsu, Jeff Wall and Nick Waplington.

5. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Zwirner, New York
An influential artist to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s conceptual work resonates with meaning that is at once specific and mutable; rigorous and generous; poetic and political. The exhibition at David Zwirner features pieces drawn from museum and private collections, from throughout the artist’s career. These pivotal bodies of work are presented in a series of distinct installations in nine spaces on two floors: they range from intimate to expansive and respond to the physical architecture and the simultaneously private and public nature of the gallery.

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Credits
1. Chiharu Shiota, Destination 2017 at Galerie Daniel Templon.