New York, NY - CHAOSMOSIS  has been borrowed by Jonas Pihl from a Deleuze's term 'chaosmos' as the title for his first solo exhibition in the United States. It represents complexity of the themes and formal issues he investigates and reveals the artist's ceaseless scrutiny of the spectrum of paradoxes to be found when random transforms into pre-determined and chaos amalgamates with cosmos. Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 2009, 6-8 pm. On exhibition from 19 September through 10 October, 2009 at Black & White Gallery in New York City.

Jonas Pihl - Round&Round, 2009 acrylic on plastic 24x24x4 inches Courtesy of Black & White GalleryIn his native Denmark, Jonas Pihl is best known for extensive groups of works in which he connects the formal and the conceptual aspects of painting. The starting point for Pihl is paint itself. He investigates qualities and meanings of paint in its fluid and frozen states as revealed through reconstructed shapes of random splashes. Both three dimensional and painted still, his works combine moments of sync and resolution with unsettling agitations in the recorded form. Turbulent visual planes provoke barriers and gaps in the viewing experience.

Since 2005, the Copenhagen-based artist has been developing a new series of three dimensional works. He uses various shapes of random paint splashes to create stylized plastic shapes resembling the original splashes. Absurd scenarios are then painted on the three dimensional shapes to further reinforce the optical illusion of the perspective. In his choice of the bizarre figures and forms, the artist draws upon and transforms sci-fi motifs and themes from popular culture. These new works are being shown for the first time in CHAOSMOSIS . Installed on wall paintings serving as a stage-like backdrop, the new presentation simultaneously emphasizes and defies the trompe l´oeil perspective of this optically illusional environment and morphs into a psychologically charged spatial installation - a monumental single piece.

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Opening days mired by repression of Chinese artists, but international contributions unscathed

beijing. The inaugural Beijing 798 Biennale, held in the sprawling 798 art district in China’s capital, saw a chaotic opening on 15 August, with major works by Chinese artists widely censored by authorities. The biennale was arranged with international contributions operating independently at numerous private galleries in the 798 complex, which were not affected by the censorship and avoided the operational issues that hampered the main exhibition hall.

Billed as the first non-government biennale in China, the event was hampered by a lack of funds, operational support, and some inexperience on the part of the organisers, who were predominantly Chinese art journalists.

In steaming temperatures of around 40ºC, hundreds stood out in the sun to listen to opening speeches by assembled dignitaries. The ceremony was briefly interrupted by a demonstration and water being thrown at the platform. The demonstration, whose purpose seemed obscure, was performed by a group including a deaf mute in ancient Chinese costume, a man wheeling a cart of bedpans and another man wearing a metal mask accompanied by someone dressed as a bride. 798 Biennale’s chief curator, Zhu Qi, said they were protesting about their exclusion from the exhibition.

Zhu outlined the problems faced by the fledgling biennale: “Seven pieces about Sichuan were suddenly censored, as Sichuan province has now become a very sensitive topic.” These included works referring to nail houses—people who refuse to move out of houses slated to be demolished—the Three Gorges dam, and the earthquake of May 2008, with works such as Zhang Lisheng’s Three Gorges migration videos, and Yuan Gong’s records of the disaster zone. “I think the Sichuan propaganda department called the Chaoyang district government directly,” said Zhu. “The censorship was by the Chaoyang district, not the central government. Some pieces were already shown in Sichuan.”

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Palace Square is the heart of imperial Russia,” says Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The heart of its immense collection is housed in the Winter Palace, the official residence of the Russian czars.

“Imperial Russia no longer exists. There is no longer a palace or an emperor. We are in the place of the emperor—our museum—and the military,” Piotrovsky says, referring to the czarist-era General Staff Building with which the museum shares Palace Square and to the square itself.

Piotrovsky’s richly decorated office, overlooking the Neva River, is fit for an emperor, with its 17th-century tapestries, a table once used by Czar Alexander III, and a clock that belonged to Tchaikovsky. Framed photographs of Piotrovsky show him with European royals, Pope John Paul II, Kofi Annan, and former Russian president Vladimir Putin, a Saint Petersburg native who, Piotrovsky says, is very knowledgeable about the Hermitage.

The museum holds everything from Egyptian antiquities to Matisses commissioned by Sergei Shchukin, the prerevolutionary arts patron whose collection was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, to Cézannes and Renoirs brought from Germany as trophies after World War II and first displayed to the public, amid much controversy, in 1995.

Piotrovsky succeeded his father, who led the Hermitage for almost three decades, in 1992. His keen sense of the institution’s historical uniqueness is matched by his grasp of modern necessities. The Hermitage is the only museum in Russia that has a line item in the federal budget, he says, noting that when he became director he had an operating budget of only $1 million. He laughs when asked about the impact of the global economic crisis, which has led to a 16 percent cut in the Hermitage’s federal funds. “We always live in conditions of crisis, so now one of our functions is to show others how to live in conditions of crisis. Our big activities and conceptions were born in conditions of crisis,” he says of the museum’s global ventures and the Greater Hermitage Project.

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