Skip to main content

Featured

YAYOI KUSAMA, A SUPERSTAR IS IN BASEL, The Foundation Beyeler

YAYOI KUSAMA A SUPERSTAR IS IN BASEL 12 OCTOBRE 2025 - 25JANUARY 2026 THE FOUNDATION BEYELER, Basel, Switzerland Nazli Kok Akbas, Art Editor,  Geneva,Switzerland  ... 'I'm wide awake, my eyes won't shut inside my head it's cold and wet with raindrops I want you let me sleep what is this madnes           in my heart? O raging storm outdoors         subside awhile for me' Yayoi Kusama,   AGAINST THE GLASS, SLEEPLESS NIGHT ,   1983  'I HAVE SEEN THE BIG BANG.  IT LOOKS LIKE POLKA DOTS.' Yayoi Kusama  Striking colors, polka dots, dreamlike flowers, giant pumpkins, infinity mirror rooms, supernatural, Star Wars-like sculptures, inflatable floating giant creatures surround the visitors in the Foundation Beyeler in Basel nowadays , offering something like an 'Alice in Wonderland' experience for all ages ! WHAT ELSE ! Kusama's shows are a fascinating mix of mass audience popularity and serious curatorial atten...

ANTONIO OBA, "Rituals of Care", The Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva


How does Antonio Oba transform a tragedy into a playful scene of cinematic vice in his painting Angelus 2022?

                                   (detail -A.Oba,Angelus ,2022 oil on canvas ,private collection)
 
 Quotations abound in Oba's painting, but he brings something unexpected: the collapse of a fire escape as it is known, Fire on Marlborough Street, a monochrome photograph by Stanley Forman, won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1976 and the title of World Press Photo of the Year. 

Stanley Forman ,Fire on Malborough Street,1975, Monochrome Photography .

 The photograph, taken with a motorised camera, shows the tragic scene of 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones, who supernaturally survived the fall much thanks to Diana's body cushioning the toddlers descent, falling from a burning appartment on Marlborough Street in Boston, July 1975.

 Originally published in the Boston Herald American and 100 newspapers, which led to the adoption of new fire escape legislation in the USA. 

 In Oba's painting, the tragedy suffered by the young woman and the infant is transformed; they almost seem to be falling playfully from the sky into a deep imaginary purple ocean.

 Perhaps it is because the images of the mother and child cast a shadow on the sky, as if the sky were a backdrop on a stage set. Oba brings something unexpectedly dreamy or hallucinatory to the scene, adding a quintet of cherubic children hovering around the fire and a kind of pieta.
Narratively, there is much to discover. 

Antonio Oba ,Angelus ,2022, on canvas ,Private collection.(NKA Photography,2024)

Antonio Oba lives and works in Brasilia,Brazil.

          SOLO EXIBITIONS: 
Pina Contemporanea,SaoPaulo,Brazil  2023
Oude Kerk,Amstedam ,2022
X Museum ,Beijing,China 2022

         GROUP EXIBITIONS
         12th Liverpool Biennal ,Liverpool,UK,2023
         Museum de Fundatie,Zwolle,Netherlands,2023
         MASP,Sao Paulo ,Sao Paulo,Brazil,2022
         Cape town South Africa ,2022
         Bourse de Commerce-Painault Collection ,Paris,France 2021

         PUBLICATIONS
Antonio Oba ,Diana Campbell,Diane Lima,2023 
Published by Circle Books and Cobogo, 116 pages

       
Centre d'Art Contemporain de Geneve 
16 Novembre-16 February 2025
Curator ,Adrea Bellini,
 
Reported by Nazli kok Akbas
NKA ART REPORTS Switzerland-France-Istanbul
December 2024

Comments