The 'Business' of Art 

Carey Young - Uncertain Contracts

" The Zambia-born, London-based artist's pieces here adopt the trappings of contracts as a variation on the basic format of conceptual art, from Fluxus performance scripts to Sol Lewitt's instructions for making drawings. Young recognizes that these scripts and instructions are a sort of contract, and then bends the format toward critiques of our nation of laws and business agreements."

 The 'Art' of Business

"Utopia and Perforated Sheeting" 

"Where else other than Berlin does the urban attitude to life celebrate its existence on a daily basis? Only the capital of Germany is mentioned in the same breath with other metropolises such as New York, Shanghai and London. Consistently surprising and courageous architecture contributes to this, by – as in the case of Dan Graham’s pavilion – willingly using perforated sheeting."

- Mevaco

(leading manufacturer and supplier of 

perforated and expanded metals in Europe)

  

Privateers of Utopia: The Art of Improving the World at Weserburg Exhibition

JOSEPH BEUYS|HEINER MÜLLER|ALEXANDER KLUGE|PETER LAND|ANDY WARHOL|EINAR SCHLEEF|MARTIN KIPPENBERGER|GAVIN TURK|BRUCE NAUMAN|ARTUR ŻMIJEWSKI|JONATHAN MEESE|OLAF METZEL|ASTRID KLEIN|JAUME PLENSA|ROLF DIETER BRINKMANN| AND GUESTS... 

"In an extensive collage in text and image, the exhibition traces out the longing for utopian designs of another world. The artistic media extend from pictures, sculptures and installations past photographs and film all the way to texts, books and interviews."

 

Joseph Beuys, Dürer, ich führe persönlich Baader + Meinhof durch die Dokumenta V, 1972

 Astrid Klein, ohne Titel, 1993/2011, Spiegel, Einschüsse, Galerie Sprüth Magers

Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning), 1992, Bruce Nauman, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany

Jeremy Deller

The Battle of Orgreave

(video)

Josephine Meckseper

 

 

"...protest culture as a form of youth fashion."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Esther Shalev-Gerz

 

Menschen Dinge 

 

Thomas Hirschhorn

"I want to work for a non-exclusive audience because art can only, as art, be open to non-art. Art can only, as art, have a real importance and political meaning."

 Hirschhorn Philosophical Battery Interview

Arcosanti - Paolo Soleri's Utopia

 "In the high desert of Arizona, halfway between Phoenix and Flagstaff, the Turin architect imagined his ideal town in the `50s: a utopia that became reality and still continues to grow 30 years after its foundation"

 

Arcosanti was an experiment to test Soleri’s theories about arcology [architecture and ecology]

"Arcology advocates urban interaction and accessibility in environmental structures. It seeks to minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment."

"Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before -- that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment."

                                  - R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path 1980

Utopias

Constant Nieuwenhuys - Symbolic Representation of New Babylon - 1969

Agnes Dene - Wheatfield: A Confrontation - 1982

Mark Titchner - We Want Answers to the Questions of Tomorrow - 2003

Therapeutic Utopia:

Antony Gormley - Asian Field - 2006

"The numbers - 180,000 little figures, 25 tonnes of clay, 3500 boxes - all those statistics are justified if you realise it's tackling big issues...The project is to try to make a surrogate world population, as the unborn, the future, the possible inheritors of the earth."

"Gormley,...said he did not know what would happen to the Chinese figurines after the Biennale was over, but he hoped that someone might buy it for £2 million ($5 million). "