HENRI CHOPIN

"in Neapel"



the show will be on the 24th of january 2010

Supportico Lopez is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of the French artist Henri Chopin.
During the 1950s Chopin started to work with sound on his first portable tape recorder, soon loosing interest in the simple human voice and replacing it with more primitive human sounds, working on their manipulation by experimenting with current technologies. Chopin’s interest focused on all possible variations of the human voice, seen as an action and “language” of the body. He discovered that the inside of a human being carries with it a form of primordial poetry that he decided to express in the form of ‘concrete poetry’. Chopin was also a painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, film-maker, broadcaster and arts promoter.

Chopin spent a lot of time in Naples from the beginning of the 1980s due to his collaborative projects with Peppe Morra, founder of Fondazione Morra, one of the most renowned spaces for contemporary art active within the city. Morra and Chopin worked closely together up until the final years of the French artist’s life. During this time they produced numerous publications, a large number of which were based on his stunning production of “typewriter poems”. Chopin found a new possibility for poetry both within sound and the written form; with a formal approach he constructed a new alphabetical narration that actually had no responsibility for communication.
A series of geometrical combinations forming an architecture of colour and texture creating a visual joke with our perception.

Henri Chopin was born in Paris in 1922 and died in England in 2008.
Chopin rebelled against the Nazi occupation during the Second World War and left France where he returned in 1946 until 1968, after which he moved and settled in London.
In 1957 Chopin founded “Cinquième Saison” a sound poetry magazine that for many years would be a point of reference for artists worldwide. In 1964 “Cinquième Saison” becomes “Ou cinquième Saison” and with this name he published an amazing series of vinyls dedicated to international sound poetry and worked together with international contemporary artists and writers such as Jiri Kolar, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Tom Phillips, Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs.

in collaboration with Fondazione Morra Naples

FRANZISKA LANTZ aka SAYDANCE

LIVE SET PERFORMANCE ON FRIDAY THE 20TH OF NOVEMBER
doors open at 21.00

www.myspace.com/seydance

SUPPORTICO LOPEZ AT "FRAME" FRIEZE ART FAIR WITH MICHAEL DEAN "DIALOGUE"

with

MICHAEL DEAN

LONDON, 13 18 OCTOBER 2009

MARIUS ENGH

EXHUME TO CONSUME
opening
19th of september 2009
7.00 pm

the show will be on until the 7th of november 2009

Supportico Lopez is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition with Norwegian artist Marius Engh.

The work of Marius Engh pushes far beyond merely simple, albeit intense documentation of the place and its scenarios to grasp the subjects of his search by creating clones of the original, thereby conquering new points of view and new conceptions of the “things” that belong to reality and experience.

This process of re-creation of what is real is an evident attempt to scan precisely the spirit and history that objects carry with them and the attempt, at the same time, to abstract them from their original context to exhibit them in new circumstances by seeking an unexpressed potential in them. In reproducing objects taken from everyday life and in this way highlighting some of their formal aspects, Engh implements a kind of transposition of the meaning of the chosen subject, managing to shift attention from historical and “archaeological” detail to formal detail with a simple gesture. The interest that the artist manifests in the details, traces and signs that civilisation has left behind it over time brought him to travel in Bosnia Herzegovina for archaeological/anthropological research. For some time, the population of this country supports the theories of a fellow countryman who claims to have made a fundamental archaeological discovery that would overturn their cultural heritage and the entire history of civilisation: the discovery of pyramids, higher than those in Egypt and older than any other existing pyramid, presumably pre-dating the glacial age. Today, these pyramids form a valley with a mysteriously geometric appearance, mountains with rich vegetation that effectively resemble huge pyramids covered by a cloak of greenery. This discovery would make re-writing of history necessary, raising the country to the role of cradle of European civilisation. The peaceful town of Visoko, standing on the slopes of what is known as the “sun pyramid”, bears witness to the immense curiosity that this “discovery” has aroused in the country itself and the rest of the world. Whether it is true or not still seems to be very much in doubt. Excavations carried out to verify the validity of the thesis of the amateur archaeologist, who discovered the colossal pyramids, have revealed the presence of stones assembled by man but not necessarily dating back to such a distant time. Whether it is true or not clearly does not interest Marius Engh in his research. What characterises this project, rather, is the need – hidden behind the enthusiasm among Bosnians in the great discovery – for an irrational, magical, legendary and mythical element that alone manages to reconstruct an identity shattered and worn out by the war that still echoes in these places. All this seems to describe perfectly the complex condition implicit in the reconstruction of the unity and identity of a country that has survived such violent and recent conflict. The need and the relief of being able to grasp a mythical reality that re-balances the past and the future in a kind of popular religious belief.

The works in the project all refer to an idea of hope and desperation, of life and death, a contrast that seems to emerge precisely from the need that man feels to have to (re)build a temple to house the vacillating certainties of a time in which guiding values can be overturned, mauled and down-trodden to the point of becoming worthless dust. In a dichotomy that compares the possibility of affirmation of power and its consequent manifestation against the possibility of failure, the works in “Exhume to consume” emerge as elements linked with the concept of monumentality alongside depictions of temporary structures. A parallelism between Man's success and failure, a highlight of the corruptibility of Man and his contemporary search for salvation in order to survive, a condition that the title of the project itself already suggests to us by referring to the insatiable hunger for myths that contemporary man devours in the search for Nietzsche's absolute.

Marius Engh (Oslo, 1974), lives and work in Berlin. A selection of recent exhibitions includes Galerie Standard, Oslo; BildMuseet, Umea; “Street: Behind The Cliché”, Witte de With, Rotterdam, curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen; "Dislocations (Don't Try Popping Them Back Into Place)", curated by: Chus Martinez, with Gardar Eide EInarsson and Matias Faldbakken, ARCO; Glassbox, Paris; Kunsthalle Bern; Bergen Kunsthall; Kiasma, Helsinki.

THE SHOW CONTINUES UPSTAIRS

SEBASTIAN HAMMWOEHNER/ WILLIAM E JONES/ JUDITH HOPF/ HENRI CHOPIN/ LUCY STEIN/ KLAUS WEBER/ PATRICK TUTTOFUOCO/ ADRIAN PIPER/ MAXIMILIAN ZENTZ ZLOMOWITZ

from 20 june 2009 to 25 july 2009

SUPPORTICO LOPEZ AT NO SOUL FOR SALE
A Festival of Independents

X-INITIATIVE NEW YORK
Opening Reception: June 23, 6-9 pm with a performance by Martin Soto Climent.
Opening time: June 24 - 28, 2009, 1-9 pm
www.x-initiative.org

Participants include: Ballroom (Marfa), BizArt/Arthub (Shanghai/Hong Kong), DISPATCH (New York), FLUXspace (Philadelphia), Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado (Lisbon), Forgotten Bar Project (Berlin), Hermes und der Pfau (Stuttgart), Kling&Bang (Reykjavík), L’Appartment 22 (Rabat), Latitudes (Barcelona), LAXART (Los Angeles), Light Industry (Brooklyn), Migrating Forms (New York), Mousse Magazine(Milan),Next Visit (Berlin), Participant Inc. (New York), X initiative announces international festival to take place between Phase 1 and Phase 2 programmingRhizome (New York), STARSHIP (Berlin), SUPPORTICO LOPEZ (Berlin) Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York), Studio Film Club (Trinidad), Swiss Institute (New York), TART (San Francisco), Thisisnotashop (Dublin), Transformer (Washington, D.C.), Via Farini (Milan), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), White Columns (New York) (list in formation)

SUPPORTICO LOPEZ

will partecipate with

PETER SAVILLE
poster project

SUPPORTICO LOPEZ AT "FRAME" FRIEZE ART FAIR

with

MICHAEL DEAN

LONDON, OCTOBER 2009

EMILY WARDILL opening 3rd of april 2009 h 19.00

'Basking in what feels like 'an ocean of grace' I soon realise that I am not looking at it but rather, I AM it , recognising myself.'

the show will be on until the 16th of may 2009

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ 13 february - 21 march 2009

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ

Arthur Rimbaud in NY - Heroin - Jean Genet masturbating in Metteray prison

13 february - 21 march 2009

open from tuesday to saturday h. 14.00 - 19.00

“I've always treated the camera as a journalistic device but at the same time, for years and years I've taken pictures of things because they were psychologically loaded--whether it's a clock, or a hand with some tadpoles in it--no matter what it was it was always extremely loaded. In the course of looking at all those negatives, I realized that the photographs were like words in a sentence and that what I try to do is to construct paragraphs out of the multiple images.” DW

David Wojnarowicz is recognized as one of the most potent voices of his generation, and his singular artistic achievements place him firmly within a long-standing American tradition of the artist as visionary, rebel and public figure.

[…] He drew upon the common experiences of most Americans, and used ordinary images to construct abstract formal relationships. Symbols of the American dream are recontextualized and deployed as searing indictments of American capitalism and violence. Advertisements are transformed into visions of horror, as in his supermarket ad series

[…] It is Wojnarowicz’s refusal to be silent that imbues the work with such power. His heavily documented life and the art he produced have become examples of one man’s attempt to awaken social consciousness and transform the world’s disdain into a powerful indictment against intolerance and apathy. -- Dan Cameron

"I have never had what could be described as an ART EDUCATION.

I am not even sure what an ART EDUCATION is."

"All my life I've made things that are like fragmented mirrors of what I perceive to be the world. As far as I'm concerned the fact that in 1990 the human body is still a taboo subject is unbelievably ridiculous. What exactly is so frightening about the human body?" DW

Wojnarowicz’s work emerged directly from his life. He knew little art history, had no training past high school, and made a point of not trolling the galleries to see what everyone else was doing. Exposed to unusual hardship as a boy, as a sexually active teen, and as a street person, he didn’t see his experience reflected in the culture. Art was his antidote. Art was his way of witnessing. -- C. Carr

“1979. Worked on first super-8 film in the abandoned warehouses and shipping lines of the hudson river. Film was about HEROIN – made it using friends who were flirting with I.V. drug use in the mistaken hopes that it would get them to reconsider the directions they were moving in. Film unedited. Also began a photographic series entitled: ARTHUR RIMBAUD IN NEW YORK playing with ideas of compression of “historical time and activity” and fusing the French poet’s identity with modern new york urban activities mostly illegal in nature.” DW

[about the Arthur Rimbaud in New York series] "...The figures are posed, on the fly and in verità style, in various situations of public and semi-private urban life. They represent a very specific moment in history, a brief period of both innocence and raunch­ the City after Stonewall but before AIDS, a wonderland of sex and drugs, of art and love, of material poverty and overwhelming emotional richness. That was the world Wojnarowicz was formed in, and, as we know too well, it was followed by an era almost opposite in every regard, years when Manhattan became dominated by money and death, a sleek wealthy city rising, while an entire generation of gay men, drug users, and others were being buried."-- Jim Lewis

Wojnarowicz died of AIDS related illness in New York City in 1992, at the age of 37. He is the author of five books. His artwork is in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was member of the band 3 teens kill 4.

Thanks and courtesy of Cabinet, London – PPOW gallery, NY – Fales Library, NY

Supportico Lopez is a project of Gigiotto Del Vecchio and Stefania Palumbo

Supportico Lopez Graefestr. 9

10967

Berlin Kreuzberg

info@supporticolopez.com

+49 (0) 30 31989387

+49 163 9298810

+49 1577 8504627

U8 Schonleine - U1 Kottbusser Tor

thanks to Cabinet - London; PPOW - New York, Fales library - New York