With the recent rise in tensions along the disputed border between North and South Korea, as well as the ongoing debate over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, the complexities of geopolitics have been front and center. So it’s as fitting a time as any to examine the work of artists concentrating on land and space, and the intersection of these elements with human lives. There is in fact an exhibition currently showing at the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, NJ that brings conflicts from across the globe off the front page and into the gallery, showcasing some of the most notable land art from the past decade in the process.
      Each of the nine projects assembled for “Nobody’s Property” (open through February 20, 2011) highlights land issues in specific sites. Nature and natural resources are key to the exhibit, but the show isn’t precisely about art and ecology. Whereas past movements in art have treated nature as an entity of its own, curator Kelly Baum explains that “when the artists in this exhibition see land and space, they don’t see dirt and rocks as much as they see human beings and human relationships manifested in the way we use and abuse land.”
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The fiftieth anniversary celebrations for the capital city of Brasilia in 2010 were an occasion for many to comment on its operational and design deficiencies, as well as those of the Brazilian government itself. In an earlier piece about the anniversary we noted how demographic shifts have challenged the city’s original master plan. These sorts of discussions, while necessary, tend to obscure the city’s ambitious, Utopian origins. Brasilia’s designers, urban planner Lucio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer, had shaped it to embody the most progressive political, social, and aesthetic concepts. A new book of photographs by Marcel Gautherot, “Building Brasilia,” that documents the city’s construction and early years, evokes these ideals with great power.
     Gautherot was a Paris-born photographer who trained as an architect and worked as an ethnographic photographer in the 1930’s, traveling within Mexico and Brazil to document traditional cultures. After serving in the French army in Senegal during World War II, he returned to Brazil and began a photography practice. There he crossed paths with Niemeyer, who would begin working with Costa on plans for the new city in 1956. At Niemeyer’s encouraging, Gautherot visited Brasilia repeatedly as it was under construction from 1957 to 1960, and then again several times in the 1970’s. While the bulk of his photographic oeuvre is comprised of ethnographic work, Gautherot’s photographs of Brasilia offer a thorough, cohesive portrait of the new city.
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Jesse Hazelip is an artist firmly rooted in the now. Equal parts street and fine artist, the Oakland-based Hazelip has crafted an iconographic language based on global headlines, warfare, and the political monotony of repeated mistakes. His upcoming solo show, Belle of the Brawl, centers on the recent discovery of lithium in Afghanistan and our ongoing occupation of the country. It also demonstrates Hazelip’s ability to infuse the Middle East conflict with a contemporary angle — rare amongst artists of his generation. His work is a provocative, yet painterly call for intellect and revolution, created out of a deep inner need for resolution. Mingling his telltale herons and buffalo with Islamic geometry and scientific renderings, Hazelip’s new paintings reveal a primal relevance rooted in history, politics, and the latent desire to be better human beings. With this show, it’s clear that he’s moving beyond the substrata of modern-day street art, revealing a heightened focus and sharpened point of view that repeatedly begs the question: how are we going to change these patterns? Jesse Hazelip spoke candidly with PLANET about some possible answers to that very question.
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Seseña Nuevo is a deserted mini-city built some 40km from Madrid, in the middle of a barren landscape. Also known as “Francisco Hernando Residential” after its constructor, this phantasmagorical site hosts 13,508 flats. The site was built without any regard for urban planning or basic amenities, such as water and public transportation. Seseña Nuevo began rising from the ground in the year 2000, during the construction boom that took place in Spain. Perhaps it was Francisco’s hope that the angry voices of the buyers of his flats would be enough to force the authorities to accept the new landscape and bring all the basic public services to this new city. However, this was not the case: it turns out that in 2009 only 3,000 houses had been sold to some unlucky speculators. Approximately 2,000 of the apartments have been transferred to the property of banks as credit payment. The lack of legal guarantors and the fierce reaction of local authorities have frustrated Francisco’s intentions and made Seseña Nuevo the symbol of speculation in Spain. For those driving down highway A4, towards Toledo, this useless mass of concrete will loom in the horizon for years to come.
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Artist, curator, entrepreneur, and observer of Japanese society, Takashi Murakami is, without hesitation, one of the most respected contemporary artists today. His solo show will be on display at Gagosian Gallery in Rome from until January 15, 2011. The exhibit consists two epic paintings: ”Dragon in Clouds – Red Mutation” and “Dragon in Clouds – Indigo Blue.” The paintings are each comprised nine panels and measure an awe inspiring eighteen meters long. These enormous red and blue monochromatic paintings are a step in a new direction from Murakami’s usual techno inspired, color saturated work. Rendered in the artist’s distinct style “Superflat,” Murakami employs classical Japanese painting techniques to depict anime and pop culture. For the purpose of this exhibition, Murakami’s draws inspiration from inventive 18th century Japanese artist, Soga Shōhaku. Shōhaku‘s cloud and dragon paintings, called “Unryūzu” were hung in Japanese Buddhist temples, embedding a sense of strength in the culture of the Japanese people. Murakami’s giant re imaginings of these rich iconic images of dragons underscore the same sense of strength only this time in mammoth proportions.
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Elod Beregszaszi is a London based artist who specializes in paper art and engineering. His creative enterprise, “Popupology”, has brought him internet popularity, and his work has been seen in store windows, galleries, and hotels in the London area. Beregszaszi’s work with this delicate medium has lead to some spectacular creations of folded and cut designs. ”I guess I am trying to look for a language of folding; so with this series I want to cover as many cut & fold variations as i can to maybe find out some of the underlying visual (3D) and pattern (2D) principles.”
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Lane Coder, a photographer living in Brooklyn, has been working professionally in the commercial world for more than seven years. Over the last 5 years Lane’s work has won much acclaim and has been included in Art + Commerce’s “Festival of Emerging Photographers” competition and gallery show (2003), W magazine’s “Behind the Lens” Competition and gallery show (2004), PDN magazine’s “30 to Watch” competition and publication (2007), The International Photography Awards competition and book (2006), Surface magazine’s “Avant Guardian” competition and publication (2007) and his work in Playground, an art and fashion book was accepted into the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s permanent collection. Exhibiting a broad range of work, from portraits, landscapes and fashion spreads to a music video, there appears to be a modern, ethereal quality to his work, a common thread that unifies his pictures. His aerial series, inspired by his late father started with experiments with shooting out of a plane window in college. His carefully composed pieces, conscious of color and texture reveal a more painterly, fine art quality in his photographs.
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After decades of reorganization and reconstruction, Berlin has emerged as a hip European capital and tourist destination. Berliner Luft, a book by photographers Benjamin Tafel and Dennis Orel, celebrates some of the city’s less obvious delights. It spotlights destinations tucked away in faraway neighborhoods, behind unmarked doors, and open only late at night.

     Divided politically, culturally, and physically after World War II, Berlin was a potent symbol of both cold war anxiety and postwar recovery. After reunification in 1989, and before the international economic collapse in 2008, the city offered plentiful housing stock and affordable rents. This, as well as the slightly romantic, run-down spirit of the place, drew creative types from around the world. So, at the same time that Germany was becoming part of the European Union, Berlin was distinguishing itself as a global center for art, fashion, design, and food. The city which had, before reunification, inspired musicians like David Bowie and U2, gave rise to a mecca-like club scene and became a playground for international DJ’s. The city’s oldest airport, Tempelhof, which was designed as a stage set for the Third Reich, was closed to air traffic in 2008 and has been happily, if controversially, repurposed for skateboarding, fashion shows, and music festivals.
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Dutch photographer Jean-Dominique Burton is a cultural preservationist. For Nabaas—Traditional Chiefs of Burkina Faso, Burton’s ethnographic images capture the rich history of the Nabaas, the traditional power structure of Burkina Faso. The west African country whose name means “the land of upright men” or “land of honest people” is a nation where old and new power structures coincide. “The Nabaas administer justice and resolve problems in ways that the centralized modern structure sometimes cannot, because the Nabaas are better informed of people’s real needs.” Fascinated by this coexistence, Burton took on the challenge of photographing the Nabaas – a work that has been attempted several times, without success. Equipped with only a medium format camera, black and white film, and the light of day, Burton’s “photographic paintings” are a rare and intimate glimpse of the Kings “portraying them alone, without the opulence of their palaces and without their families or normal coterie of ministers.” The result is a series of deeply revealing, fine silver gelatin portraits, through which Burton hopes to “convey my belief that this culture is a treasure to be preserved. Such cultures can be easily lost and forgotten if we are not mindful of them and their importance.”

Nabaas—Traditional Chiefs of Burkina Faso is on view at the Bekris Gallery, San Francisco through December 29.
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For an artist who has worked within the confines of one material for the better part of his career, Brain Dettmer’s artwork has been explained in a variety of clever ways: book autopsies, excavations, conceptual deconstructions, 3D collage. It seems his technique (using surgical tools and knives) and finished products are so unique, nobody really knows what to call it. Taking one of the most recognizable symbols of the Modern Age — books — and reinventing them in a radical, magical, unexpected way, Brian Dettmer’s become something of a sculptor, cartographer, and historian all rolled into one. Much like the surprises a reader experiences with every turn of the page, each hard-cover book sculpture involves a huge degree of happenstance. Once Dettmer seals a book and starts to carve, he has no way of knowing what’s coming next. Dettmer talked to PLANET about knowledge, power, and the tantalizing lure of the future.

Can you begin by talking about your new show, “New Worlds to Conquer”?
I’d been thinking about the quest for knowledge and exploration of the world by adventurers and authors around the beginning of the 20th century — specifically between WWI and WWII — when flight became accessible to an elite few. There was a strong drive to explore the world and share discoveries of these adventures in books. The search for knowledge and exotic places can be a slippery slope though.
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