Modart » harlan levey projects

Zoe Strauss – Under the Freeway

Maxi — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:45:47 +0000

Zoe Strauss is coming to the Benelux!

We’re not the only ones in love with the work of Zoe Strauss or moved by what it brings forward. For over a decade Zoe has been getting back the same sort of love she puts out, and her current exhibition testifies to this. The opening of her mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art looked more like a night club than a museum, and the energy spread across the city in the form of 50+ billboards advertising a love story, which is and isn’t hers. What began with an investigation of her environment has developed into a timeless tale of everywhere.

Since the show opened, she’s been working nonstop: keeping office hours at the museum and giving a steady stream of lectures and talks while slipping out here and there to continue other projects. On April 3rd she’ll arrive in Europe for exhibitions at Showroom Mama in Rotterdam (April 6 – June 23) and Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels (April 14 – June 3), as well as speaking engagements in Eindhoven (MU, April 6) and Enschede (21rozendaal, April 9).

Both exhibitions highlight her project I-95 as presented in the book ‘Highbrow, Lowbrow, Nobrow: Mousse.’

Born in Philadelphia, Strauss was given a camera for her 30th birthday and started taking pictures of life in the city’s marginal neighborhoods. She is a photo-based installation artist who uses Philadelphia as a primary setting and subject for her work. Out in the streets, Strauss typically photographs whatever strikes her interest, paying particular attention to the overlooked (or purposefully avoided) details of life.

In 1995, she started the Philadelphia Public Art Project, a one-woman organization whose mission is to give the citizens of Philadelphia access to art in their everyday lives. Strauss’s photographic work culminates in a yearly “Under I-95” show, which takes place beneath the Interstate highway in South Philadelphia. She displays her photographs on concrete pillars under the highway and sells photocopied prints of her work for $5 each. Strauss now calls the Philadelphia Public Art Project an “epic narrative” of her own neighborhood. “When I started shooting, it was as if somewhere hidden in my head I had been waiting for this,” she says.

Stefan Gross @ HLP

AnnA — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:45:40 +0000

(The precarious future of) Sustainable Trash

Is art nothing more than sustainable waste: Garbage with purpose and a place in the future? Maybe. But if something endures, has it been wasted? Is it still qualified as trash or does it speak of alternative possibilities for value?

The recent work of Stefan Gross sees him as a sort of scientist setting out to transform both material and immaterial cultural waste by employing a formalistic approach to physical properties and a slapstick approach to cultural underpinnings. Found objects, rescued toys and human practical and spiritual necessity are employed as the artist works to recreate a problematic that concerns him: “The world is a serious place these days. This is the problem that I try to solve with my work.”

Following “The Superhero Project,” “More Future,” “Moussism” (with Jeroen Jongeleen) and the creation of the signature “Golden Mousse” (Tobias Allanson), HLP will close the year with a 5th Mousse Process Exhibition. This December, Stefan Gross will present figurative and abstract works with polymer, offering a colorful twist to pressing social contradictions.

Stefan Gross is the recipient of the AEG Art prize, the Kunstverein Drawing Prize and the Frits Philips Art Prize. He has been awarded funding for his ‘art you can hit’ project with Stella Boess (Love, Hate, Punch) by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. In 2009, he participated to the ‘Inside Job’ Group Exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, curated by Jeroen Jongeleen)

Say No To Violence Against Women

Janina Hübner — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:42:15 +0000

Say No To Violence Against Women (in Brussels).
And say No to Violence against Women everywhere else.
From October 22nd to November 6th, Harlan Levey Projects (HL

P) in Brussels will host a UNRIC exhibition of the thirty finalists and three jury selected winners. Additionally HLP will host a series of lectures and screenings.

MacGyver and the Mousse

Maxi — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:00:07 +0000

This Saturday Harlan Levey, the founder of NNE, is proud to welcome you to the opening of ‘MacGyver and the Mousse,’ the first solo exhibition from Tobias Allanson at Harlan Levey Projects in Brussles, which takes place during Belgium’s premiere design event, Design September.

Harlan says: “I have had the pleasure of working with Tobias on several occasions, and for many years we collaborated on Modart magazine. Tobias isn’t like most graphic designers I have worked with. He likes to do things off the screen. This exhibition is no different as Tobias takes things that have become easy to do digitally and gives them an analogue tweak. During Design September, Tobias will exhibit 5 different projects in Brussels. All are being shown for the first time.”

Please join us for the opening this Saturday (Sept, 10th 14:00 – 22:00). The exhibition runs until October 15th.

About Tobias Allanson

Swedish Designer Tobias Allanson has earned recognition for his inventive use of common items and the emphasis his practice places on action and approach. Having begun his career as a Graphic Designer, he then worked as an art Director (Modart Magazine), a Creative Director (Freitag) and later a freelance Concept Designer engaged by brands such as Electrolux, L&G and Absolut Vodka. He prides himself on maintaining a rigorous DIY attitude and transforming all types of objects in ways that please him, considering his professional endeavors ‘pseudo-commercial’ as he manages to satisfy clients with his own playful artistic vision.

Find more info on HLP here.

From the Mountains to the Museum

Maxi — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:40:08 +0000

This weekend, HLP artist Vincent Skoglund opens his long awaited solo exhibition at the Dalarnas Museum.

There is an old English proverb that claims: ‘You can’t go home again.’ Somehow this rather philosophical claim is one of the subjects in the exhibition, which opens in Falun, Sweden on May 21st.

Vincent left his hometown of Falun in the heartland of Sweden in the nineties to work all over the world as a snowboard photographer for titles such as Method Mag, Modart, Onboard and Snowboarder. The current exhibition summarizes personal projects undertaken during visits to his hometown, exemplifying the particular practice that the artist has developed in physically demanding alpine environments.

Vincent Skoglund Museum Preview from Harlan Levey Projects on Vimeo.

Information about the Exhibition:
The exhibition opens on Saturday the 21st May and runs until the 14th August, 2011. Dalarnas museum is on Stigaregatan in Falun, Sweden, and is open every day of the week: Saturday-Monday 12:00 – 17:00, Tuesday-Friday 10:00 – 17:00. Free admission. www.dalarnasmuseum.se.

Mu and More

Maxi — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:38:33 +0000

Our very own Harlan Levey, curator, founder of the NNE network and creative director of Modart, has been talking about Mousse for over a year now. While the novel concept of Mousse Art has been developed into a full blown theory Levey has been working on the second book-edition of Modart, which is dedicated to Moussism and its representative artists. Herein he links former unaccepted movements in modern art, that are fully acknowledged now, and contemporary art movements that are not always recognized as such. All under the rebellious motto: ‘Mousse art looks like shit but tastes sweet.’

On Thursday, March 24, Harlan Levey got invited by MU & Meer to tell us everything we always wanted to know about Moussism at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.

MOUSSISM = a non-traditional community based movement, which is not limited to a period, place or classical notion of aesthetics, discipline, medium, ideology or style. In terms of art, it is a movement that presents work, which migrates in the viewer’s mind from shit to THE shit.

Levey explains: “Carvaggio could be the first MOUSSE artist and played a significant role in the Counter Reformation, an artistic movement that struggled to create a balance to the reformation (and not be crucified). As the church manipulated art and social aesthetic values in propaganda maneuvers (more information of the political changes,) Carvaggio managed to make MOUSSE of the most recognized icons. He was a complete faux pas, but he was also such a good painter that it didn’t matter.

“We can take as examples, the seductive lips of the Lute Player, his drunken green Baccus or the first things that strike the eye when we come across his work ‘Madonna di Loretto.’ The first thing you see are dirty feet and the ass of a man, Madonna as a whore and peasants as believers, a baby so big he has no business being in his mother’s arms. Carvaggio made MOUSSE by abusing form through mastery of craft and managing to make subversive work without compromising the sincerity of his expression.

“He found a way to personalize commissions in a style that was ugly and sweet and undeniable. He sold his creativity and guarded his authenticity with his life. This is essential to making MOUSSE. This is where the honest and emotional are safe from mediated onslaught and illusion. It is an ethical stance towards creating in general and specifically to creating art. The work is not concerned with politics as a subject, the political act is the communication of the work.”

It’s not a trend, it’s a movement.

Superhero Abner Preis

Maxi — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:28:08 +0000

Last weekend, in the context of Parcours Modo, Harlan Levey Projects opened their brand new showroom with a banging show by Abner Preis. The Superhero Project by Abner is a true love child. Dressed up as a superhero Abner goes to different cities around the world and starts interacting with people on the street, triggering their imagination by asking about their superpowers.

The Superhero Project by Abner Preis from Harlan Levey Projects on Vimeo.

Together with Harlan Levey Projects Abner got invited to present The Superhero Project during Brussels’ premier fashion event: Parcours Modo. Brussels’ Designers’ Trail is a celebration of fashion in all its most creative eccentricity. For three days, the city’s shop windows and secret spaces are handed over to creative talents young and old. Models strut along an improvised catwalk behind the glass windows of a furniture store after dark, art installations allow established fashion designers to show a different side to

their vision. One of those eccentricities was Abner’s show. The 700 visitors were as much impressed as they were bedazzled about this odd one out. At the end of the night, Abner did a second performance where he gathered the last 30 people in the gallery, put some superhero theme tunes on his mini boom box and passed out chalk, encouraging them to be peaceful vandals and draw a massive heart attack up and down the fashion quarter.

I Can’t Believe This is Real from Harlan Levey Projects on Vimeo.

The result of the Brussels edition were beautiful photographs, two video installations, an interview, and some well known -and loved- drawings by Abner, including matching sculptures and stories. With this exhibition and especially with the photographs Abner went way out of his comfort zone to present something close to his heart. The result is a beautiful journey. The exhibition is still for some more weeks.

YouTube drawings – The Star Wars Kid

No New Enemies — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:39:42 +0000

Without You Baby There Ain’t No Us, is a project from Swiss Artists Admir Jahic and Comenius Roethlisberger (The Invisible Heroes). The most recent work in this project, spoke of crisis by referring to passion and absurd commitment to a joyous idea; the same sort of brilliant display that unfortunately caused the Star Wars Kid some pain (where as in exchange he made millions of people smile.) For this installation, Jahic and Roethlisberger recreated 604 rendered frames from this YouTube phenomenon, all of which will be on display at the Scope Art Fair in Basel as of Monday June 8th, 2009.

More Project Info at: withoutyoubaby.com and nonewenemies.net