2022

In Loving Memory of Kaari Upson (1972 – August 18 2021) 

Saâdane Afif, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Louisa Clement, Lauren Halsey, Annika Kahrs, Susan Philipsz, Anri Sala, April Street, Thomas Struth, Andrea Zittel 

The exhibition, curated by Berlin based Nana Bahlmann, examines the ancient figure of the hermit against the backdrop of the current pandemic. The show presents examples of loneliness, melancholy, and longing, as well as physical and mental withdrawal. Some of the works by former Villa Aurora fellows and Los Angeles-based artists, have been created during periods of personal isolation, others have been newly conceived for the exhibition. Before L.A., "all the lonely people" was shown in Berlin at silent green in autumn 2021.  

"all the lonely people" makes the experience of isolation and solitude visible. In doing so, the artworks take up traditional motifs associated with hermitage— retreat into nature, contemplation, and the dualities of inside and outside, exchange and silence, exclusion and trauma—and apply them to some of today’s urgent questions. They offer new perspectives on loneliness in the digital age, off-grid self-sufficiency, and imaginary places of refuge in the midst of gentrification and systemic oppression.

The selected works explore the motif of the hermit through photography, video, sculpture, sound, and installations: Vajiko Chachkhiani's video Life Track presents an impressive image of a physically and mentally isolated man whose loneliness takes place in the midst of our society, yet remains invisible. Louisa Clement's Representative, a lifelike self-portrait of the artist as a "Real Doll," thematizes the solitude of lives lived increasingly online and the alienation from oneself experienced when virtual avatars become noticeably distinct from reality. Thomas Struth's Vacuum Chamber, JPL, Pasadena and GRACE-Follow on Bottom View, IABG, Ottobrunn depict metaphorical, yet real places of hermetic isolation and evoke notions of boundless distance, expanding the idea of alienation to outer space. Bahlmann's exhibition toggles between nature and artificiality, as in the works of Annika Kahrs and Andrea Zittel. In Playing to the Birds, Annika Kahrs revives artistic echoes of retreating into nature and shows the attempt to overcome its solitude through music and communication across species. Andrea Zittel’s Wall Sprawl (Next to Las Vegas Bay) – aerial photographs of fringe areas where the wideopen desert meets largescale urban developments montaged into an ornamental, all encompassing wallpaper – depicts the encounter between the natural world and civilization and will cover almost the entire exhibition space, framing the exhibition as a whole.  April Street's Still Life at 12 o'clock references nature as an imagination and creates a fantastic landscape where physical reality and the artist’s inner world are united into a single pictorial plane, while Lauren Halsey imagines the collective refuge of many marginalized groups in the artist's native South Central LA,  In Trees and Flowers Suzan Philipsz lends her voice to the fear of the outside experienced during isolation, whilst Anri Sala's early video work Uomoduomo captures the isolated existence of an unhoused person, forced to live on the fringes of society. In a new work, Saâdane Afif explores strategies of shared authorship in the context of artistic self-encounter.

The exhibition is accompanied by a supporting program of films, readings, talks, performances.

The exhibition is generously supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, the Berlin Senate Chancellery, the Friede Springer Foundation and a private patron.

The Los Angeles version of the exhibition was further made possible through support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the LA Arts Recovery Grant.

LAXART is a nonprofit visual art space that promotes developments in contemporary culture through exhibitions, publications, and public programs. LAXART believes that contemporary art is a means of understanding key issues of our time with all their inherent contradictions. Contemporary art assumes many forms. Rather than provide answers, it raises questions. Through a range of offerings, LAXART contextualizes contemporary art both socially and art historically. LAXART’s programs are free and designed to be accessible to the general public.

6 Friedberg-Chicago, the first institutional solo exhibition by German-American artist James Gregory Atkinson, illuminates a part of African-American-German history on a personal, social, and political level. In the exhibition, the artist presents his new film of the same name, which was shot at Ray Barracks, a former US Army Base in Friedberg. It was made in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Josh Johnson and harpist and singer Ahya Simone, among others. The exhibition also presents a non-linear archive that explores the history of Black soldiers in Germany and their descendants, which Atkinson developed in collaboration with Eric Otieno (sociologist and political scientist) and Mearg Negusse (art historian).

An exhibition by Dortmunder Kunstverein sponsored by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation as part of the "Catalogs for Young Artists" grant.

The film production has been supported by Hessische Kulturstiftung, Goethe-Institut and Villa Aurora.

*Dortmunder Kunstverein e.V. was founded in 1984 as a civic initiative as a non-profit association for the promotion and mediation of contemporary art in Dortmund. Since 2014, it has been located in the immediate vicinity of the Dortmunder U - Center for Art and Creativity, thus helping to strengthen this cultural center for contemporary art in Dortmund.

Further information about the exhibition and the supporting program can be found here (in German only).

The artist talk between James Gregory Atkinson and scientist Alexander Ghedi Weheliye will explore various aspects of the themes negotiated in the exhibition: the body as archive, the constructed fear of Black masculinity and postcolonial perspectives on institutional racism in Western countries.

The first institutional solo exhibition by the German-American artist James Gregory Atkinson includes his new film 6-Friedberg Chicago - which he shot in a former US Army installation in Friedberg - as well as an extensive non-linear archive exploring the history of Black soldiers in Germany and that of their children. Atkinson compiled the archive together with Mearg Negusse (art historian) and Eric Otieno (sociologist and political scientist). The film was partly funded by Villa Aurora L.A.

in cooperation with Dortmunder Kunstverein
as part of the exhibition 6 – Friedberg Chicago.

Dortmunder Kunstverein e.V. was founded in 1984 as a civic initiative as a non-profit association for the promotion and mediation of contemporary art in Dortmund. Since 2014, it has been located in the immediate vicinity of the Dortmunder U - Center for Art and Creativity, thus helping to strengthen this cultural center for contemporary art in Dortmund.

How has the meaning of archives changed? Who decides which material finds its way into a collection? Which concepts are worth challenging to create new perspectives on historic topics?

The short film “Nägel”(nails) by Sonya Schönberger will be shown, followed by a discussion and a Q&A session.

Now online on our YouTube channel!

ESMoA is an art laboratory located in El Segundo, California and is run by artlab21 Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3). Founded in 2013, its mission is to spread the spark of creativity through the display and education of visual arts. ESMoA functions as a catalyst for creative thinking offering unique “Experiences.” The “Experiences”—a.k.a. exhibitions—present a variety of media, including sculpture, painting, works on paper, performances, and photography. ESMoA's activity is based on three fundamental pillars: experiences, arts education programs, and artist residencies. ESMoA provides an array of programs and events, including school programs, artist-led workshops, talks, and family days.

sonic activation, villa aurora is a work-in-progress by the sonic duo LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander), conceived for the occasion of their fellowship at the eponymous artist residency, that continues their exploration of nuanced format with regard to acoustic space as a potentially radical gesture. 

Through a series of playful spatial arrangements, LABOUR invites the listener into acoustic space through a sequence of sonic activations that highlight the localization of sound and its often complex interaction with space. 

Set in the former residence of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger, the sounds themselves create a sense of dialogue between both human and non-human agents and include digital sound synthesis using psychoacoustics and algorithmic compositional processes, the unique in-house pipe organ and grand pianos, acoustic percussion, and acoustic kamancheh performed live. 

Whatch the video here!

in cooperation with O-Town House
as part of the exhibition Sarah Loses Out (You Ought to be in Pictures).

O-Town House is an exhibition space in Los Angeles started by curator Scott Cameron Weaver in July 2018. It was founded upon a commitment to exploring models and modes for the production and presentation of art today. With its flexible exhibition space, O-Town House is host to a variety of art and events that hope to encourage dialogues with artists and the community in Los Angeles. O-Town House is located in the historic Granada Buildings on Lafayette Park.

In collaboration with: USC Max Kade Institute, Villa Aurora, Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles, German Consulate General Los Angeles, California State University Long Beach German Program, and German Studies Student Association

Reading War

Produced before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, these films investigate the repercussions of war on individual lives and national identity. Focusing on the Donbass region and the conflicts that arose following the 2014 Maidan uprising, the artists interpret conflicts and influences from different perspectives, thus revealing a new specificity using complex relationships to images of violence. In Dana Kavelina's Letter to a Turtledove (2020), appropriated war videos and other archival footage center around a monologue spoken off-screen. The resulting collaged film examines the war in Donbass through a feminist prism:

"The film itself is an attempt to build an alternative optic in order to examine the conflict in Ukraine, an invitation to understand the war not through the lens of the ‘friend-enemy’ distinction, but through the ‘rapist-victim’ dichotomy." (Dana Kavelina)

In Mykola Ridnyi's NO! NO! NO! (2017), the main heroes are the young people of Kharkiv in the Eastern part of Ukraine. An LGBT activist and poet, a fashion model, a group of street artists, and a creator of a computer game are all working in the creative industries. The protagonists’ lives are transformed by the war as they react to and reflect on political events through their specific relationships with the urban space and the reality of social media.

Reflecting on images of war both past and present further connects the program to its own location–Villa Aurora–which was a place of refuge during another war. Since the 1940s, Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger opened their exile home to luminaries such as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, who––together with photographer Ruth Berlau––assembled his Kriegsfibel (War Primer) in Los Angeles. A bitter reflection on war in the tradition of Goya or Dix, Brecht dedicated one of the originals to his close friend, Lion Feuchtwanger. Reading War reveals not only a new specificity of complex relationships related to war, but also how audiences have read images of violence through time.

A railway tunnel under the Bering Strait: a utopia, a vision, a mission. But also reality? 

A 76-year old engineer is on a mission: to connect the United States and Russia with a 100-kilometer long train tunnel beneath the Bering Strait. 

The Strait Guys follows Czech-born mining engineer, George, and his fast-talking protégé, Scott, along the proposed route of the InterContinental Railway through Alaska, to the Bering Strait and onward to Russia. The “Strait Guys” endeavor to convince international governments, corporations, and First Nations to green-light their $100 billion railway project—with the promise to become the Panama Canal of the 21st century.  

As they struggle to keep their monumental vision alive in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the Strait Guys leave us wondering: What is really preventing the US and Russia from being connected?  

Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the tunnel plan certainly seems absurd. Yet the Strait Guys are more convinced than ever that their mega-project is exactly what the world needs to finally leave wars behind and create “peace, progress and prosperity” for all. 

4K, 99 min., Color, English and Russian with English subtitles

More information on the film: http://thestraitguys.com/ 

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

Street parking is available on Los Liones Drive. Shuttle service starts from Los Liones Drive, off Sunset Boulevard two blocks North East of Pacific Coast Highway and is running from 6:30-7:30pm and after the program. Please do not park in the Topanga State Park Lot!

This event is a collaboration between the Villa Aurora and Brightwork newmusic.

Schappi

A collection of absurdist comics short stories navigating etiquette and diplomacy within the vicissitudes of the animal kingdom: from proud ostriches to racist mice, and delicious-looking weasels.

In Schappi, Anna Haifisch blurs the boundaries between humans and animals in subtle and absurd ways. In these five collected comics short stories, carnivores and herbivores meet at a disastrous congress of the animals; we get to know a merciless, art-collecting lizard; and are introduced to dancing ostriches and a melancholy, meditating octopus. With singular humor and charm, and a brilliant eye for color, Haifisch tells of the everyday struggle from the prairie to the drawing table, of self-imposed isolation and friendship. At the end of the day, there is hope, even for crying weasels. Haifisch's wry sense of humor reveals many truths lying underneath her absurdist wit. Printed in five gorgeous Pantone inks, Schappi will shine from a bookshelf like a mad husky's iris.

"With dry wit and understated visual flair, Haifisch finds new things to say in an age-old anthropomorphic tradition." — Publishers Weekly

"Haifisch’s work is very funny [with] a charming, scratchy line and a faintly unsettling colour palette." — The Quietus

Below Ambition (Megg, Mogg and Owl)

Following Simon Hanselmann’s 2021 smash hit graphic novel Crisis Zone — which captured the zeitgeist of life under Covid and the New York Times Book Review called “the first great work of pandemic fiction” — things settle down, and Megg the Witch and Werewolf Jones get the band back together.

Megg and Werewolf Jones are Horse Mania. Horse Mania is a test of the audience’s patience, proudly the “worst band in town,” without any ambition to make it. Join the musicians as they battle through shoddy, distracted practice sessions, a squalid house show, and a doomed interstate tour. Watch as they drunkenly flail through their sets amidst toothaches, nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, mounting hatred, and a galaxy of benzos. This is music and performance in its most primal, multifaceted, and pure form. Feel the tension. See the dirty looks. Taste the pain. Smell the depravity. Hear the veiled beauty. Horse Mania wants you to lose your mind.

Below Ambition is a meditation on youth, performance, and memory as only Simon Hanselmann, the best comedic writer in comics, is capable of. The book will also include a flexidisc single by Horse Mania, "Stick It In for the Ambient", which will be bound into the book with a perforated edge for easy removal and play.

"Astoundingly well-crafted and punishingly heartfelt." — Vulture

"Hanselmann is one of the most gifted cartoonists alive." — The A.V. Club