Artists 2011-2012

Pablo Helguera (Mexico)
Location One International Committee

Born in Mexico City, 1971. Lives and works in New York

Pablo Helguera (based in New York, born in Mexico City, 1971) works in the fields of pedagogy, literature, musical composition, and theater. His projects have included performance lectures, scripted symposia, and panel discussions with or without the knowledge of the audience, as well as a variety of experimental formats of verbal presentation.

Helguera’s works have been presented in many venues such as the Liverpool Biennial, Performa 05, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, ICA in Boston, MoMA, among others. His play The Juvenal Players, produced by Grand Arts in Kansas City, was presented at The Kitchen in 2010. His orchestral work Endingness was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. He is the author of more than 10 books including Theatrum Anatomicum (and other performance lectures), a collection of performative works. His social practice project The School of Panamerican Unrest (2006) consisted in the creation of a nomadic schoolhouse that traveled by land throughout the Americas from Alaska to Chile, presenting collaborative performance and civic events in over 26 cities. He has been recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Grant; and in 2011 was named the first winner of the International Award for Participatory Art of the Regione Emilia Romagna in Italy. As educator, Helguera has worked in museums for over two decades, currently working as Director of Adult and Academic Programs at The Museum of Modern Art. He is the Pedagogical Curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial, opening in September 2011.

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen (Denmark)
Danish Arts Agency

Born in Copenhagen, 1975. Lives and works in London.

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen’s sculptures pose as fictive relics, the possible artefacts of a future archaeology unearthing the ethnological debris of today. Influenced by early 20th century Modernism, Jurgensen often quotes from art history: intertwining recognisable forms and ideologies with fragments of popular culture to create ritualistic monuments divining a contemporary spirituality. Jurgensen’s Folly (The Mystical’s Sphere) nods to the futuristic architecture of Tatlin and Fuller; the sparse copper structure standing as a theatrical oracle, emanating a primitive occultism from the power of low-watt light bulbs.
website: http://www.jacob-dahl-jurgensen.com/

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen’s residency is made possible by The Danish Arts Agency.

Hiraku Suzuki (Japan)
Asian Cultural Council

Born in Miyagi, Japan, 1978. Lives and works in Tokyo.

Hiraku Suzuki obtained an MFA from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Focusing on ideas of memory and excavation, the work of Hiraku Suzuki centers around an expanded notion of drawing; encompassing works on paper and panels, installation, murals, frottages as well as live drawing performance. Much of his work hinges on the vast library of signs and glyphs he has developed by focusing on the shapes, forms, rhythms and materials of his immediate environment, which can be understood as the base units of the ever-changing hidden language of the city.

His recent solo exhibitions include at WIMBLEDON space, London (2011), Galerie du JourAgnes b., Paris (2010) and Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, Tokyo (2008). Group exhibitionsinclude Roppongi Crossing, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2010); 100 stories of love, The21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2009); Between site and space, ARTSPACE, Sydney (2009); Redbull House of Art, Hotel Central, Sao Paulo (2009)and Vision of Contemporary Art, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (2009). His early works are held in thecollection of The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Publications include GENGA, published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha/Agnes b., and Looking For Minerals, published by BEAMS.
http://www.wordpublic.com/hiraku

Mr. Suzuki’s residency is made possible by The Asian Cultural Council

Monica Baptista (Portugal)
Gulbenkian Foundation

Born in S. Paio de Oleiros, Portugal, 1984. Lives and works in Portugal.

Monica Baptista is a painter-turned-documentary filmmaker who has created several films on topics ranging from Chechnyan soldiers on the TransSiberian Express, to tracts on herbal tea, to experimental investigations of architectural structures. Present in all of her work is a focus on the perception of space and time in relation to the particular community or subject matter of her films.

Monica Baptista’s residency is made possible by The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso American Foundation

Agnieszka Kurant (Poland)
Polish Cultural Institute
Trust for Mutual Understanding

Born in Łodz, 1978. Lives and works in Warsaw.

Agnieszka Kurant is an artist based in Warsaw. She represented Poland at the Polish Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2010 (collaboration with the architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska). She is interested in the ways in which trying to interpret the world logically results in a fictional version of reality. Her works explore how things created as fictions, rumors, paranormal phenomena as well as objects not existing materially, enter into economy and politics of contemporary world. She is interested in virtual capital, imaginary property, immaterial labour, hybrid authorship, changes of aura, value and status of objects in cognitive capitalism. Many of her works are related to the existence of the future in the present. Her works have been shown in art institutions including: Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004); Tate Modern, London (2006); Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York (2005) and Museum of Modern Art, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Kurant has participated in international contemporary art exhibitions including: Performa Biennial, New York (2009), Athens Biennale (2009), Moscow Biennale (2007) and Bucharest Biennale (2008). In 2008 she was commissioned to realize Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair, London. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the International Henkel Art Award (MUMOK, Vienna). Kurant was an artist in residence at Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2004; ISCP, New York in 2005; Konstfak, Stockholm in 2007 and at the Paul Klee Center (Sommerakademie) in Bern, 2009. Sternberg Press published Kurant’s monograph “Unknown Unknown” in 2008 and the Venice Biennale catalogue “Emergency Exit” in 2010. Her solo show is currently on view at Montehermoso Cultural Center in Spain.

Agnieszka Kurant’s residency is presented in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York within its Poland-U.S. Artists-In-Residence Exchange Program, organized by a-i-r laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland and Location One in New York, with generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Atsushi Kaga (Ireland)
The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1978. Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.

Atsushi Kaga’s work depicts a fictional world inhabited by a cast of invented characters. Through his alternative reality, Kaga explores personal and cultural identity, as well as complex social issues faced in daily life. His mixed media work, which includes paintings, animations and wall drawings, attest to his keen sensibility and sense of intimacy. His work is whimsical and playful but with a dark and biting sense of humor underlying deceptively ‘kawaii’ imagery. website: http://www.atsushikaga.com/

Atsushi Kaga’s residency is made possible by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

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David Molander (Sweden)
Hasselblad Foundation

Born in Stockholm, Sweden 1983.

In the project An Urban Anatomy visual artist David Molander is in pursuit of the essence of the urban centers. By the use of digital photography and animation, he collects a documentary material of hundreds of photos and film clips that he dissects and reconstruct into large still- or moving images that can be placed between document and fiction. He cut open interiors, sample streetlights, stitch together pavement and gather parts of the city that although closely linked, seldom meet. Molanders work put emphasis on new relationships between architecture, social environment, living memory and the humans within it. David Molander has been studying photography and film at Harvard University and has a BA in Rhetoric and a BA in Art history from Uppsala University. He graduated 2010 with a MFA from School of Photography in Gothenburg/Sweden. Website: http://www.davidmolander.com

David Molander’s residency is made possible by The Hasselblad Foundation