The 10th edition of Europe's nomadic biennial, Manifesta, will be hosted by the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The biennial, which changes its location every edition, was launched shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall to encourage artistic dialogue between countries formerly divided by the Iron Curtain. Manifesta in 2014 will be the first edition to take place in an eastern European country.
Image: Hermitage

The Getty says the second Pacific Standard Time will explore the artistic connections between Los Angeles and Latin America. “Our city has had deep roots in Latin America, making it a nexus  of cultural creativity between North and South.” says Getty President and CEO Jim Cunro. Los Angeles and Latin America follows the first edition of Pacific Standard Time, which brought together dozens of museums to celebrate the historically under-recognised art of Southern California from 1945 to 1980.
Image: The first edition of Pacific Standard Time included an exhibition of Chicano performance and conceptual art group Asco at LACMA

Billy Apple is represented in Howard Wise Gallery: Exploring the New at Moeller Fine Art, New York. The exhibition is a homage to pioneering galleist Howard Wise and features work by Apple, Christo, Nam June Paik, George Rickey and others.
Image: Billy Apple, Unidentified Fluorescent Object (UFO), 1967

The Museum of Modern Art is calling on its network of artists, architects and designers to help rebuild Rockaway Beach, which is struggling to recover after being hit by Hurricane Sandy. “We are asking artists, architects, designers and urban planners to present ideas for creating social spaces, new housing models, urban interventions and other ideas related to rebuilding and protecting the shoreline,” says MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach.

Twenty five selected proposals will be presented publicly in the press, social media and on site in a series of presentations organised by MoMA in its temporary relief and cultural VW Dome 2 in Rockaway Beach during April.
Image: Post-Hurricane Sandy Rockaway Beach

Image: installation view of Martin Basher's current exhibition at Starkwhite

Architect Andrew Burns says his prize-winning entry in the inaugural Fugitive Structures architecture competition has an ambiguous presence between architecture and art object and transforms an ordinary rose apple hedge into a thing of beauty. He hopes his black box will become a sanctuary of quiet contemplation for visitors to Gene Sherman's Contemporary Art Foundation over the next six months.

Launched in Sydney by Sherman in partnership with BCN Architecture, the brief for the $10,000 prize was to create an inspiring architectural space on a 20 square meter courtyard site, with a three-metre height restriction – dimensions that allowed the temporary structure to slip under the radar of the local council. She came up with the idea for the award after visiting the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London's  Kensington Gardens. Each year the Serpentine commissions an architect to create a temporary pavilion in the grounds near the Gallery.
Image: Crescent House, Andrew Burns' prize-winning Fugitive Structures pavilion 

Image: Ralph Hotere, Black Painting (1964)

A new book out next week offers unedited transcripts from Calvin Tompkins' interviews with Marcel Duchamp ahead of a major profile in The New Yorker that ran the following year. Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews (Badlands limited/DAP) comes out on the centenary of the first readymade Bicycle Wheel, and the debut of Nude Descending a Staircase at the inaugural Armory Show in New York. Read more…

Recently The Village Voice published a piece on the influence of big money on art today – how it affects the way art is made, understood and ultimately experienced. Read more…
Image: artwork by William Powhida from The Village Voice

Martin Basher's exhibition continues at Starkwhite this week through to 2 March. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.

The Getty Research Institute has released a video on legendary curator Harald Szeemann. You can view the video here.
Image: Harald Szeemann

Construction is underway on Bosco Verticale, the twin tree-clad apartment buildings in Milan that will the be world's first ever vertical forest. In addition to adding an eye-catching feature, the buildings' 900 trees along with a variety of shrubs and plants, are meant to absorb CO2 and particles from Milan's notoriously dirty air, shield radiation, produce both humidity and oxygen, filter noise pollution and provide energy saving shade to each of the towers' apartment units. The buildings will also have wind and solar systems, along with greywater recycling systems to help irrigate the greenery on the buildings' cantilevered balconies, and a team of in-house horticulturalists to tend to the trees, the tallest of which will grow to a maximum height of 30 feet.
Image: architectural renderings of  Stefano Boeri's Bosco Verticale, Milan

Grant Stevens' Supermassive is showing L.A. Louver to 23 February. You can read an Los Angeles Times review of his exhibition here.

On the eve of their exhibition at Melbourne's Anna Schwartz Gallery, AES+F spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald about art-making in post-Pussy Riot Russia. Read more…
Image: figure from AES+F's Angels-Demons series

Martin Basher's exhibition continues at Starkwhite this week through to 2 March. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.
Image: installation view of Martin Basher's current exhibition

This year the Chinese New Year falls on February 10 and Starkwhite celebrates the start of year of the snake with Shangahi-based artist Jin Jiangbo who is in Auckland to oversee the installation of an exhibition of interactive works, which opens on 7 March as part of the visual arts programme of the Auckland Festival of Arts.

Alicia Frankovich presents a new performance tonight at Berlin's Galerie Michael Janssen. The missing action takes place between 18:00 and 20:00 at the opening of Assaf Gruber's exhibition Every Corner of the Soul.

The Mendel Art Gallery and future Remai Art Gallery of Saskatchewan has announced the appointment of former Power Plant director Gregory Burke as director and chief executive. Read more…

Despite earlier reports that South Korea would present a group show at this year's Venice Biennale, Kim Sooja will be the country's sole representative. Best known for her installation, video and performance work, the artist is a seasoned biennale performer – this is the fifth time she has participated in the Venice Biennale. Read more…
Image: from Kimsooja's Bottari Truck Migrateurs

We opened our 2013 programme on Tuesday evening with an exhibition by New-York based artist Martin Basher, which runs to 2 March. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.
Image: Installation view of Martin Basher's current exhibition at Starkwhite

The auction house Christie's, which has owned Haunch of Venison since 200,7 has decided to close the gallery and stop resresenting artists. The gallery's headquarters in London will operate as a space for the auction house's private sales and the gallery in Fitzrovia, along with the New York branch in Chelsea, will close down at the end of their current exhibitions.”Private sales at Christies' have been growing exponentially and that's where the focus should be,” the gallery's international director told Bloomberg.

The news comes as no surpise to those in the art world who felt the marriage of an auction house and dealer gallery was an unholy alliance. Read more…

John Kaldor, the art patron/collector renowned for bringing art superstars to Australia, believes his latest exhibition, 13 Rooms, will be “the most exciting exhibition of the decade.” Described by Hans Ulrich Obrist as an exhibition like a sculpture gallery where all the sculptures go home at night, Kaldor Public Art Project #27 brings together 13 international artists and over 70 performers to present a group exhibition of living sculpture within 13 purpose-built room in Sydney's historic Pier 2/3. The exhibition builds on two prior iterations and continues the project of curators Hans Ulrich Obrist (co-director of London's Serpentine Gallery) and Klaus Biesenbach (director of MoMA PS1 in New York). You can see some of the works in the show in a Guardian review of 11 Rooms in Manchester. View video
Image: performance/installation by Xu Zhen, one of the artists in 13 Rooms which runs from 11-13 April 2013

Participating galleries from Australia rate the 2013 edition of Art Stage Singapore as a great success. Ursula Sullivan of Sydney's Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art says: Art Stage Singapore was brilliant this year. After 2012, we almost did not come back as it was a bit of a tragedy, but thankfully we did.” Read more…
Image: Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art at Art Stage Singapore

The Sovereign Art Foundation has announced the thirty finalists for this year's Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Jae Hoon Lee is in the lineup of contenders for the US$30,000 prize to be judged by David Elliott, director of the 17 Biennale of Sydney; Emi Eu, director of Singapore Tyler Print Institute; Lars Nittve, director of M+, Hong Kong; Tim Marlow, director of White Cube and Philip Tinari, Director, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Becoming, (2002)

The world's first online biennale, an exclusively internet-sited art exhibition, will be launched in April under the directorship of Jan Hoet. He is working with a team of international curators including: Daniel Birnbaum, director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Fulya Erdmci, curator Istanbul Biennale; Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and curator of the Sharjah Biennial; Adriano Pedrosa, independent curator, Sao Paulo; and Nancy Spector, Guggenheim Museum NY. Read more…
Image: Jan Hoet

ARTINFO reports that Art Los Angeles Contemporary has finally hit its stride. “With a strong mix of international exhibitors alongside local galleries, the fair served to showcase L.A.'s growing presence as an international hub.” Read more…
Image: John Pylypchuk's installation at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, 2013

We open our 2013 programme with an exhibition by Martin Basher, which runs from 4 February to 2 March. You can read our press release here.

The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki is highlighting the role of patronage in collection-based exhibitions drawing on works gifted by its patrons group and the Chartwell Collection, which is on long term loan to the gallery. The shows include works by a number of Starkwhite artists: Grant Stevens features in Whiz Bang Pop; Phil Dadson, Gavin Hipkins and John Reynolds are in Partner Dance: Gifts from the Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery, both curated by Natasha Conland; and the evolving downstairs show Toi Aoteroa includes a new section, also curated by Conland, with works by Martin Basher, David Hatcher, Gavin Hipkins and Jae Hoon Lee.
Image: David Hatcher, The Simplest Surrealist Act (Andre Breton), 2002, silkscreen on plexiglass, 2000 x 1430 mm, Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki; Gavin Hipkins, Dunedin (Landscape), from The Homely series, 1997-2000, C-type colour photograph,  600 x 400 mm collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki; Phil Dadson, Echo-Logo, 2003, DVD, 7 mins, collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

Lorenzo Rudolf's move to corner the southeast asian segment of the art market seems to be paying off with reports of deep-pocket collectors from the region turning up for Art Stage Singapore. But one of his new moves has drawn flak. Rudolf's decision to set up an Indonesian pavilion and to represent many of the artists has upset galleries representing Indonesian artists. They believe the fair is competing with them for sales, but Rudolf remains convinced the pavilion is necessary because of the lack of a proper Indonesian art infrastructure, including a well-established network of commercial galleries.

Rudolf is also staying on song about Art Stage Singapore having its own identity and not going head-to-head with Art Basel in Hong Kong. “Southeast asia will be the next big trend,” he said. “It is important that both are close to each other but not copy each other; that both have their own identities. This will mean that if Hong Kong is successful, we profit; and it we are successful, Hong Kong profits.”

Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee will curate the presentation by Berlinde De Bruyckere at the Belgian pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale. The artist recently worked with Coetzee on a book with text by the author and photos by the artist and when asked for more on his appointment said: “I thought why shouldn't I ask him to be the curator and he agreed.” Read more…
Image: JM Coetzee

2013 promises to be a big year for art fairs in the Asia/Pacific-Rim region. Art Los Angeles Contemporary and Art Stage Singapore both opened last night and run from 24 – 27 January. Next up is the India Art Fair  (1 – 3 February), followed by Art Basel in Hong Kong Art (23 – 26 May), Auckland Art Fair (7 -11 August), Korea International Art Fair (12 – 16  September), Shanghai Contemporary (13 – 15 September), Sydney Contemporary (20 – 22 September) and Art Platform – Los Angeles (27 – 29 September).

So where will the power plays come from in 2013?

After buying a majority interest in ARTHK, the Art Basel Group will roll out its debut edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, putting an end to speculation over the past five years about which fair would become the Art Basel of the Asia/Pacific region. With more than half of the exhibitors coming from the region, the new owners have also eased fears that the revamped fair would lose its Asian identity under Art Basel management. Art Basel in Hong Kong is set to continue where ARTHK left off as the region's pre-eminent fair.

Directed by Lorenzo Rudolf, Art Stage Singapore is capitalising on Singapore's position as a hub between East and West, blending art from the region with international superstars. Rudolf is also making some new moves that will give Art Stage Singapore a point of difference from others in the region. He says international art fairs should not just be spaces for selling art, they also have a role to play in developing an eco-system between artists, galleries and collectors, and where galleries are failing, an art fair should step in. The current edition of his fair includes dedicated space for Indonesian galleries and an exhibition of about 30 Indonesian artists, but in an unusual move for an art fair, Art Stage Singapore is representing about two thirds of them. “We only want to show the best, but many Indonesian artists don't work with galleries,” he said. “The infrastructure is not there.” It's a bold new move, but raises questions about how participating galleries will feel about Art Stage Singapore competing with them for sales.

Olafur Eliasson's is heading to the World Economic forum in Davios where he will discuss Little Sun, an inexpensive solar-powered lamp that he and his engineer partner Frederik Ottesen have designed to be widely distributed in the developing world to people with no access to an electrical grid. The lamp gives 10 times more light than using a kerosene lamp, and at a 10th of the cost.

Daria Kirsanova reports on the emerging contemporary art scene in Iran, including a growing gallery system. Read more…

The curator of the 2013 Istanbul Biennial, Fulya Erdemci, has outlined her vision for the event, which will be staged across the city. Entitled Mom am I barbarian? the biennial will explore the notion of the public domain as a political forum, touching on notions of democracy, civilisation, barbarity and social engagement.

With Andrea Phillips, a reader in fine art at Goldsmiths College Gallery, Erdemci is also running a public programme called Public Alchemy in the lead up to the biennial. The first session, Making the City Public, runs from 8-10 February, to be followed by others including Public Address (22-23 March), Becoming Public Subjects (14-15 September) and Future Publics/New Collectives (1-2 November).