VernissageTV Art TV

Jason Jenn is one of the artists selected for the exhibition “Days of Reverie” at the Sturt Haaga Gallery at Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, California. Jason Jenn’s work is a site-specific installation titled “Arboreal Soul”. It includes a participatory aspect, inviting visitors to create their own designs on the central pedestal from an ample supply of natural plant materials found around Descanso Gardens. In this video Jason Jenn talks about his work.

“Days of Reverie” at Descanso Gardens’ Sturt Haaga Gallery presents new bodies of work by four Los Angeles-based visual artists: Catherine Ruane, Debbie Korbel, Jason Jenn, and Jill Sykes. Accompanying these visual works is a specially composed musical score by Joseph Carrillo, the exhibition’s guest artist. The project was initiated and curated by Vojislav Radovanović, who envisioned each artist creating entirely new works inspired directly by the beautiful environment of Descanso Gardens. The exhibition runs until January 26, 2025. In another video Vojislav Radovanović guides us through the show.

Jason Jenn: Arboreal Soul / Descanso Gardens, La Cañada Flintridge, CA. October 27, 2024.

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During our visit to the Simchowitz Hill House in Pasadena, we had the opportunity to speak with artist Ken Taylor Reynaga about his work. Ken Taylor Reynaga’s art captures the intimate yet complex experiences of everyday life, particularly within immigrant and working-class communities. Born in Southern California and raised in Bakersfield, Reynaga’s background in the agricultural Central Valley deeply informs his work. He explores themes of cultural identity, masculinity, and class through scenes that may seem ordinary—like family meals, backyard parties, or soccer games—but reveal deeper social narratives. His paintings, often created on unconventional surfaces like tablecloths or bed sheets, blend figuration with abstraction, highlighting small yet significant details, such as a cowboy hat beside a floral table arrangement. Reynaga’s works offer a fresh perspective on Chicanx and Latinx art, defying conventional categorization.

This video is the fourth in our series about Hill House. See also the video about the opening of Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy’s exhibition at Hill House, the interview with Stefan Simchowitz, and the Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz.

Interview with Ken Taylor Reynaga / Simchowitz Hill House, Pasadena. October 20, 2024.

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At Art Cologne 2024, Galerie VIVID presents works by Gerrit Rietveld, Marianne Brandt, Piet Tuytel, Gerd Arntz, Tomas Rajlich, and Bobo Bonies, among others. In this video, director Aad Krol shows us some highlights of Galerie VIVID’s booth at Art Cologne.

Galerie VIVID at Art Cologne 2024. Cologne (Germany), November 9, 2024.

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Galerie VIVID has been founded 25 years ago in the center of Rotterdam by Saskia Copper and Aad Krol. “With 140 exhibitions and 50 fairs, VIVID tells an unique story. It was one of the first to show contemporary design and contemporary art side by side. The exhibitions provide a platform for important contemporary artists and designers. Also artists and designers from the 20th century, who played an important role and whose work is still relevant today, are presented at VIVID. It organised, among other things, two Rietveld retrospectives, a Bauhaus exhibition in 2019 and recently a major Interbellum 1919-1939 overview. VIVID has been participating fairs for more than 15 years.
After 2019, partly due to the changing situation in the world, VIVID’s focus has shifted more towards Art. VIVID still distinguishes itself by showing that there is an area in art and design that overlaps these two disciplines. This intermediate area has been VIVID’s focus for 25 years now and will continue to do so in the future.” (source: Galerie VIVID).

Dittrich Schlechtriem Gallery (Berlin, Germany) participates in Art Cologne 2024 with a presentation of artworks by Julian Charrière, Zuzanna Czebatul, Marta Dyachenko, Monty Richthofen, and Lukas Städler. Each artist engages with concepts of borders — whether environmental, political, or social — addressing how these boundaries are created, challenged, and reshaped by human intervention and natural forces. In this video, Carl Hohrath (Dittrich Schlechtriem) provides us with an overview of the artists and works on display.

Lukas Städler has been selected for Art Cologne New Positions 2024 and exhibits a new body of work after his first solo exhibition Ouvertüre with the gallery in Berlin in summer 2024, which was immediately followed by his first institutional solo show HAIN at Fotografiska Berlin. For New Positions, Städler presents works from his ongoing cruising series, alongside new works documenting friends, strangers, animals, landscapes, and waterscapes.

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Fred&Ferry is an artist-dedicated gallery showcasing and promoting national and international artists. The gallery is run by Frederik Vergaert and Ferry Saris and has its focus on emerging artists that work across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation and digital art.

At Art Cologne 2024 the gallery Fred&Ferry (Antwerp, Belgium) presents two artists: Leyla Aydoslu and Antoine Waterkeyn. In this video, Antoine Waterkey talks about his works that are featured in the gallery’s booth in the Neumarkt sector of Art Cologne 2024.

Antoine Waterkeyn / Fred&Ferry at Art Cologne 2024. November 8, 2024.

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At this year’s Art Cologne (7-11 November 2024) the LBBW Collection has been showing the collection presentation “Transitions”. Curated by Birgit Wiesenhütter, the show featured works from the LBBW Collection that not only create transitions between artistic genres and media, but also relate formally and in terms of content to diverse transitions in space, time, society and culture. In this video, Barbara Thomann (LBBW Collection) and Birgit Wiesenhütter (freelance curator) take us on a tour of the show. (in German language, english subtitles via YouTube).

“’Transitions’ reflects processes of change. Transitions accompany the crossing of boundaries and at the same time create connections,” explains Birgit Wiesenhütter, who curated the collection presentation as an independent curator. “Nature, every person, every society is in a process of constant change and transition. Transitions are therefore something that we are constantly experiencing.”

Part of the exhibition is a special presentation of works by Tim Berresheim (*1975) with a wallpaper that can be viewed in 3D through 3D glasses. The artist’s works illustrate the transition to a digital world. As an “early bird” (the title of one of the artist’s series), he has been using the computer as a malleable tool to create his images for over 20 years. Some of the works are augmented and can be experienced in their digital extension with the help of an app.

Transitions / LBBW Collection at Art Cologne 2024. November 8, 2024.

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The Kunstverein SALTS is currently showcasing three solo exhibitions at its City SALTS location in Birsfelden (Basel, Switzerland). In its Cabane space artist Paul Fritz shows two video loops, the Garage space has been turned into a mixed media installation by the artists Jannik Giger and Demian Wohler, and the Box space features works by Estefania García Pineda and Edinson Quiñones Falla. All three shows run until February 25, 2025. This video takes us to the exhibitions’ opening event on February 2, 2024.

The Kunstverein SALTS encompasses CITY SALTS, situated in various spaces within a garden by the Birs riverside, at the confluence of the Rhine in Birsfelden, on the border of Basel City (since 2009), and COUNTRY SALTS, a spacious remise with living space, a library, nestled high in the green hills of the Basel region in Bennwil (since 2020).

November Opening at City SALTS, Basel. Birsfelden (Basel, Switzerland), November 2, 2024.

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Exhibition texts (excerpts):

Dummies: Solo show by Paul Fritz in the Cabane, curated by Benedikt Wyss & Samuel Leuenberger

By blending techniques that range from computer-generated images to traditional hand-drawn animation, stop motion, and even live-action footage, Lausanne-based artist Paul Fritz (1999) explores genres and layers of narration to craft illusory stories, where reality and fiction dance hand in hand. «Dummies» is showing the casting tapes’ outtake of two CGI characters auditioning to play the role of the artist and his brother when they were six and four years old. The videos are inspired by original child star casting tapes, such as the one from Henry Thomas auditioning to play Eliott in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

Paul Fritz (b. 1999) lives and works in the Lausanne region. He is currently a student in the Master of Visual Arts program at ECAL. Coming from a background in animation, he maintains both an artistic and a filmmaker’s practice, with a fluid boundary between the two. His work is primarily video-based, often incorporating elements of sculpture, installation, and/or performance. His work was featured in group shows at For Space in Basel in collaboration with Virginie Sistek (2024), POP GUN in New York (2024), Basecamp in Locarno (2023), and HEK in Basel (2023). His films were shown at the LUFF in Lausanne (2024) as well as UFM in Lucerne (2023 & 2024).

Lamento: Video installation by Jannik Giger and Demian Wohler in the Garage, curated by Benedikt Wyss

The Basel-based composer and video artist Jannik Giger (1985) and the Zurich-based set designer Demian Wohler (1984) explore desire and affect in their walk-in installation «Lamento.» They reflect on the fact that there is never an encounter of unmediated bodies, only the meeting of socially constructed fantasies and role plays. In the accompanying video work, extracted verses from iconic love songs are combined with sampled organ sounds, creating a new composition that is projected onto staged human bodies. In this reverse exorcism, two figures on a film set are emotionalized, animated, and instrumentalized by the musical material.

Ofrenda: Duo show by Estefania García Pineda and Edinson Quiñones Falla in the Box, curated by Mario Kreuzberg

Our guest curator duo Mario Kreuzberg (Manuela Morales Délano und Charles Benjamin) presents their last exhibition for SALTS together with Colombian artists Estefania García Pineda (1991) and Edinson Quiñones Falla (1982) who are part of the collective Mingas de Pensamiento Prácticas De-coloniales. For Quiñones, Art is synonymous with healing, his research focuses on making visible what seems invisible and legal what is illegal. His artistic practice includes personal, collective, family, and territorial healing processes. Pineda is an artist and curator from Montelíbano. She has accompanied social processes linked to memory, environment, activity mining, and the development of territorial processes; her work has been focused on symbolic relief and aesthetic bets that become identity constructions, through creative processes and art.

“Days of Reverie” is the title of a new exhibition at Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, California. The show at Descanso Gardens’ Sturt Haaga Gallery presents new bodies of work by four Los Angeles-based visual artists: Catherine Ruane, Debbie Korbel, Jason Jenn, and Jill Sykes. Accompanying these visual works is a specially composed musical score by Joseph Carrillo, the exhibition’s guest artist. In this video, the curator of the exhibition, Vojislav Radovanović, guides us through the show.

This project was initiated and curated by Vojislav Radovanović, who envisioned each artist creating entirely new works inspired directly by the beautiful environment of Descanso Gardens. The exhibition runs until January 26, 2025.

From the Genie Davis’ essay about the exhibition:

“With Days of Reverie, Radovanović has curated a powerful group of artists who revel in the perfection of nature’s grandeur and the gardens in which it is allowed to flourish. Compelling and visionary, the exhibition explores the eternity of change through all seasons and hours during the passage of a year, presenting a compelling cultural dialog about the sensorial, spiritual, and visceral experiences of gardens.”

“It connects the natural beauty of Descanso Gardens itself with artistic renderings of its flora and fauna in a museum-quality show. The fragility and resilience of our Earth are here, too; the endless, rich dichotomy of its precious and fraught balance. Descanso Gardens provides the ideal setting for this show’s exploration of our natural world, the soothing promise of quiet hours spent listening to the rustling of wind in the leaves and the songs of birds, drinking in the fragrance of flowers, trees, and grasses, and experiencing the caress of branches and sunlight.”

Descanso Gardens is a botanical garden located in La Cañada Flintridge, Los Angeles County, California. It sits on the northern edge of the San Rafael Hills. Descanso Gardens features a wide area, mostly forested, with artificial streams, ponds, and lawns. It also features the Sturt Haaga Gallery. Its aim is to encourage visitors to contemplate the intersection between contemporary art and garden science. Most Sturt Haaga exhibitions are group shows featuring works based on a single theme proposed by a curatorial advisory committee made up of garden staff, trustees, and art experts from Descanco’s surrounding community.

Days of Reverie / Descanso Gardens, La Cañada Flintridge, CA. October 27, 2024.

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In this video, we sit down with Stefan Simchowitz to discuss the launch of Hill House, his new art space in Pasadena, and his other projects, including his recent move into politics. We first met Stefan in 2010 during Portugal Arte 10, a major international contemporary art exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal, where he served as artistic director. Since then his ventures in the field of contemporary art evolved considerably. He started the a pop-up exhibition program called The Newsstand Project, provides industry specific art services via Creative Art Partners, and runs artist residencies in Los Angeles and Cape Town. There’s also Simco Shop, Simco Editions, Simco Drops, Simco’s Club – and Simco Audio, which plays a significant role in enjoying art at Hill House.

This video is the third in our series about Hill House. See also the video about the opening of Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy’s exhibition at Hill House and the Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz.

Interview with Stefan Simchowitz. Pasadena, October 20, 2024.

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Elektrohalle Rhomberg (Salzburg, Austria) is for the first time participating in the art fair Art Cologne. The gallery presents the artist Arang Choi (born in 1992 in Seoul). In this video, co-founder Boris Lesicky talks about the artist and her work.

Arang Choi / Elektrohalle Rhomberg at Art Cologne 2024. Cologne (Germany), November 8, 2024.

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Arang Choi: Parallel Panorama, 2023, oil on canvas, 220 x 475 x 100 cm (installation).

Exhibition text (excerpt):

Arang Choi (1992 born in Seoul) finds her inspiration for her forms, colors and surfaces mostly in documentaries about nature, landscape and animals paired with her own observations, which the artist then processes directly into drawings or photographs, thus creating her own fantastic visual world.

At the center of the solo presentation is Arang Choi’s diploma thesis (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2023): in the multi part large format installation (220 x 500 cm), which refers to the atmosphere of Renaissance painting, the artist shows a fantasy world she has created, which becomes an almost realistic three dimensional experience for the viewer, also due to the slightly curved shape of the work.

“Parallel Panorama” – the title of the key work – refers to the format of the installation and the possibility of immersing oneself in an infinite number of parallel worlds, realities or mental states.