ArtReview Magazine, December 2010

Issue 46 £5.00 ‘In the Western world people see the work as just pattern; if I show it in the Arab world the work changes totally’ Susan Hefuna

December 2010 Rasheed Araeen: The artist who came in from the cold Adrian Ghenie: His work may be haunted by history, but he ain’t no history painter Ignacio Uriarte: One man, four pens, eight sheets of paper

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Current exhibition: Fathi hassan, 12 november – 18 DeCember 2010, Leighton house museum, LonDon artists representeD inCLuDe: ayman baaLbaki, bita ghezeLayagh, Chant aveDissian, hassan hajjaj, khaLiL rabah, parastou Forouhar, raeDa saaDeh, susan heFuna, taraneh hemami anD WaLiD siti

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feb 26 – m a r 26, 2011 CALI FO R N IA D R E AM I N ’ M Y TH S AN D LEG E N DS O F LOS AN G E LE S a group show curated by hedi slimane

john baldessari , chris burden , aaron curry, mark grotjahn , patrick hill , dennis hopper ,

mike kelley, joel morrison , raymond pettibon ,

sterling ruby, ed ruscha , jim shaw, aaron young .

DIRK BELL MADE IN GERMANY Until 16 January 2011

Dirk Bell Revelation Big Sun, 2009 (detail). Photo: fubbi.com Courtesy: BQ, Cologne; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; The Modern Institute, Glasgow.

BAL373

IGNACIO URIARTE 22.10.10 - 04.12.10

THE WINTER SHOW 10.12.10 - 29.01.11

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH 02.12.10 - 05.12.10 | artbasel.com

VIP ART FAIR 22.01.11 - 30.01.11 | vipartfair.com

Patience Is Beautiful, 2010, wood, ink, 170x170 cm, Courtesy Galerie Grita Insam, © Susan Hefuna

MAPPING WIEN: a project by SUSAN HEFUNA Nov 17, 2009 - Jan 8, 2011 GALERIE GRITA INSAM An der Huelben 3 / Seilerstaette 1010 Vienna Tel. +43 1 512 5330 www.galeriegritainsam.at Exhibition: HEFUNA @ WIEN 2010 GALERIE GRITA INSAM Nov 19, 2010 – Jan 8, 2011

Art Kabinett: Susan Hefuna / Booth # B 27 ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH Dec 2 – 5, 2010

ADRIAN GHENIE 3 December 2010 - 27 March 2011

Citadelpark 9000 Ghent Belgium www.smak.be

TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY www.timvanlaeregallery.com

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Contents

on the cover: Susan Hefuna photographed by Robert Nethery

december 2010

DISPATCHES 25 Snapshot: Christian Patterson Now See This: Shanghai Biennale, Carey Young, Freedom of Speech, Hito Steyerl, Günther Förg, Anna Bjerger, Shadow Catchers: CameraLess Photography, Stephen Shore, Frances Stark, My City Columns: Paul Gravett on Mustashrik’s cross-cultural influences and newfound pickup technique; Joshua Mack watches as the Park Avenue Armory readies itself for the big time; Raimar Stange on Berlin’s vanishing political art; Marie Darrieussecq on the politics of exhibition nudity The Free Lance: Christian Viveros-Fauné takes a dim view of New York’s two-speed creative economy London Calling: J.J. Charlesworth questions the purpose of institutional surveys The Painted Word: Nigel Cooke sees the critic as superspectator The Shape of Things: What’s the social status of the tattoo? asks Sam Jacob Design: Hettie Judah takes on the Good Life-ers Top Five: The pick of shows to see this month as selected by Fiona Bradley A New Concise Refererence Dictionary: Daedalus to dystopia, defined by Neal Brown Consumed: John Latham’s DVD, Chrissie Abbott’s mug, Ari Marcopoulos’s camera bag, Manfred Kielnhofer’s neon chair, Lynda Benglis’s print portfolio, David Amar’s Raymond table, Oscar Niemeyer’s chocolate bar, Dom Pérignon and Absolut’s limited editions. Digested: Louis: Night Salad, John Pawson: Plain Space, Luc Tuymans: Is It Safe?, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, Sam Francis: Lesson of Darkness, Vanity Fair

New on ArtReview.com News International art, design and architecture news, updated every day, as it happens

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First View Oliver Basciano is thrilled by Forced Entertainment’s new touring production and reviews Alek O. at Gallery Vela, London; Joshua Mack sizes up John Baldessari’s Pure Beauty at the Met, New York; David Ulrichs visits the Kunsthalle Krems and reports on the latest round of Berlin openings, including Carsten Höller at Hamburger Bahnhof Video Oliver Basciano tours the British Art Show 7 and talks to curators Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton; J.J. Charlesworth and Oliver Basciano discuss the 2010 artist projects programme at Frieze Art Fair

52 Variables (Number 1) and (Number 13), 2010, mixed media on aluminum, 39 3/8 x 31 1/8" each. © Keith Tyson, courtesy The Pace Gallery

KEITH TYSON 52 Variables

December 10, 2010 – February 5, 2011

510 West 25th Street, New York City

8 8 85 ) & 1" $ & ( " - - & 3: $ 0 .

Contents

December 2010

FEATURES Susan Hefuna 58

Mark Rappolt explores the Egyptian-German artist’s wilfully slippery statements about identity and the self

adrian ghenie 66

Jane Neal looks at the influence of cinema, psychoanalysis and National Socialism on the Romanian painter’s evolving practice

Scott king 78

Oliver Basciano investigates the satirical work of the pop-loving graphic design marketeer turned artist agitator

biC Monochromes and BiC Stereochromes 85 In the first in a series of artist interventions in the pages of ArtReview, Ignacio Uriarte demonstrates his penmanship

Rasheed araeen 96

REAR VIEW Reviews 115

British Art Show 7, Pavel Büchler, Vicky Wright, WITH, Jennifer Tee, Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, The Space Between Reference and Regret, Matthew Day Jackson, Tony Cox, Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler, Allen Ruppersberg, Alberto Burri, Takashi Murakami, La Carte d’Après Nature: An Artist’s Selection by Thomas Demand, Make Yourself at Home, New Realisms: 1957–1962, Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg, Media City Seoul 2010

BOOKS 134

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Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane; Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership; Dara Birnbaum: Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman; Working the Room

Richard Dyer looks at the whole story of an original British minimalist

THE STRIP 138

dan holdsworth 101

ON THE TOWN 140

Mark Rappolt navigates the lunarlike terrain of Iceland’s remote interior via a new series of images by the British photographer

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The smoky world of Mustashrik

The ArtReview party at Almada, London

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OFF THE RECORD 142

Gallery Girl discovers dystopia around a Mayfair corner

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Editorial

Art

Editor Mark Rappolt Executive Editor David Terrien Associate Editors J.J. Charlesworth Martin Herbert Editors at Large Laura McLean-Ferris Jonathan T.D. Neil Assistant Editor Oliver Basciano [email protected]

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Contributors Contributing Editors Tyler Coburn, Brian Dillon, Hettie Judah, Axel Lapp, Joshua Mack, Christopher Mooney, Niru Ratnam, Chris Sharp Contributing Writers Neal Brown, James Clegg, Alex Coles, Nigel Cooke, Amanda Coulson, Marie Darrieussecq, Richard Dyer, Gallery Girl, Rebecca Geldard, Paul Gravett, Luke Heighton, David Everitt Howe, Sam Jacob, Jane Neal, Steve Pulimood, Ed Schad, Raimar Stange, Sam Steverlynk, Jennifer Thatcher, Jonathan Vickery, Christian Viveros-Fauné

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Contributing Artists / Photographers Mustashrik, Robert Nethery, Christian Patterson, Ian Pierce Interns Roisin McQueirns, Katie Bruce

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ConTRIBUTORS

December 2010

Sam Steverlynck

Besides being a correspondent for ArtReview, Brusselsbased freelance critic Sam Steverlynck is a regular contributor to Belgian and Dutch magazines ART, DAMn° and Kunstbeeld. He has also written for Art Papers, artpress and Gonzo (circus). Since he quit his activities as a nightlife critic for Brussels’s weekly The Bulletin, Steverlynck has appreciated filing copy without a bursting headache, bloodshot eyes and an awkward mix of self-loathing and self-pity. Sam shares his time between writing art reviews, trimming his beard and trying to get persistent wine stains out of his white suit.

Robert Nethery

Spending his youth in Miami surfing and skateboarding, Robert Nethery developed an interest in photography when he picked up a camera and set about capturing the laissez-faire attitude of his free-spirited friends. His passion eventually landed him assisting positions with Bruce Weber and Alasdair McLellan, where he gained further creative experience. Nethery creates perceptive images that convey an astute intimacy with his subjects, blurring the lines of fashion and portraiture. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Jane Neal

Independent art critic and curator Jane Neal has curated exhibitions in London, New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Zurich, Prague, Bucharest and Cluj, and contributes to a wide range of international art publications. Over the past five years Neal has become increasingly involved with the developing art scenes of Central and Eastern Europe, and has gained a reputation for profiling young artists from this region. Educated at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute, London, Neal continues to live and work between these two cities, although it’s starting to seem as though she spends most of her time in Wizz Air’s passenger cabins.

Neal Brown

An artist and writer, Neal Brown is the author of Tracey Emin (Tate Publishing 2006), Mat Collishaw (Other Criteria, 2006) and Billy Childish, A Short Study (L-13, 2008). In 2009 he published Nineteen Raptures (NB Publishing). He curated To the Glory of God: New Religious Art, presented at the second Liverpool Biennial, and in September he exhibited in Art Hate, at Galleria Art Hate, London.

Ignacio Uriarte

Ignacio Uriarte is a visual artist based in Berlin.

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ArtReview

fragrance takes to the wing

International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair

Contacts:

April 8/11, 2011

phone +39 02 48550.1 fax +39 02 48550420

Con il co-finanziamento di

Mimmo Jodice, Duomo, Milano, 2010

[email protected] www.miart.it

DISPATCHES DECEMBER

Snapshot Now See This The Free Lance London Calling The Painted Word The Shape of Things

25 26 32 34 36 38

Design Top 5 A New Concise Reference Dictionary Consumed Digested

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46 48 52

This ‘snapshot’ is of the planned site of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ in New York City, where an Islamic organisation is planning to construct a multifaith community centre and mosque, to be located about two blocks from the World Trade Center site. As an American, I am disappointed by the widespread opposition to the project and the ignorance and lack of respect for the First Amendment, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. My mentor William Eggleston once said, ‘Ignorance can always be covered by [the term] “snapshot”’. As an artist, I see much more in this image. I see how a photograph can allude to or portray the energy and presence of a place or thing. It’s this ‘otherness’ that fascinates me. 

snapshot

Christian Patterson ArtReview

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now see this words

Martin herbert

In a cultural moment characterised by lowered expectations, financial aftershocks and an artistic turn towards the performative, a biennial that styles itself as a ‘rehearsal’ rather than a polished and perfected affair makes total sense. Drawing all these impulses together, the organisers

Shanghai Biennale (various venues, Shanghai, to 23 January, www.shanghaibiennale.org) of the eighth

reckon that artists collectively went into a crisis at the same time as the banking system, in 2008: a feeling of being cogs in the system and of having

which has encompassed videos in which the invariably business-suit-wearing artist gives a skills workshop, art-as-legal-contract and recreations of classic performance artworks amid the blank corporate architecture of Dubai – get shown.

Freedom of Speech (Kunstverein Hamburg, 18 December – 13 March, www.kunstverein.de; Neue Berliner Kunstverein, 11 December – 30 January, www.nbk.org) considers the Politics, part III:

role of the titular concept within democracies, via assemblages of media reports and a somewhat mindbending list of artists that includes Norman Rockwell, Hans Haacke, Bruce Nauman, Sister Corita Kent and Mark Wallinger (whose State Britain, 2007, here gets its first showing in Germany). Meanwhile, because it’s the artworld circa 2010, the works will apparently be ‘examined on their truth’ by an institute for language research, and the show will come with its own iPhone app. And Politics, part IV:

nothing new to say. (You might think this happened earlier, but…) The response here is seemingly not so much a conventional exhibition as a multipart intellectual workshop aimed at working past habitual solutions, and includes a 40-artist main event comprising various interactive ‘scenes’; seminars, reading lists and a prefatory collaboration between Liam Gillick, Anton Vidokle and Performa that’s somehow connected to a soap opera; and an ‘India– China Summit on Social Thought’ with attendant exhibition. Let’s boldly predict that this will be marvellous, or a mess, or somewhere in between. Another way to confront art’s inextricability from the larger corporate world might be to burrow more deeply into the latter, to test and illuminate its potential relations to the artworld. Over the past decade, that’s been the approach of

Carey

Young (Eastside Projects, Birmingham, 26 November – 29 January, www.eastsideprojects.org).

Here, alongside a new film, Memento Park (2010), ten works from the British-American artist’s oeuvre – 26

ArtReview

Hito Steyerl (Chisenhale Gallery, London, to 19 December, www.chisenhale.org.uk), a In Free Fall (2010), by

film in which ‘various “crash” narratives’ unfold within the context of an aeroplane junkyard in the California desert, where specific retired planes

clockwise from left: Liu Xiaodong, Untitled, 2010; Carey Young, Memento Park (production still) 2010, video, courtesy the artist; Christoph Schlingensief, Ausländer Raus, 2000, photo: David Baltzer

DISPATCHES

from top: Hito Steyerl, In Free Fall (film still), 2010, film, commissioned by Picture This, Bristol, Chisenhale Gallery, London, and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, with support from the Scottish Arts Council and Arts Council England; Günther Förg, Untitled, 2009, acrylic and oil on canvas, 120 x 160 cm, courtesy Galerie Lelong, Paris, New York & Zurich

Mustashrik Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1985 and currently based in London, Mustashrik is like the comics, films, art and design he makes: a fusion bestriding multiple cross-cultural influences. From South Asian cinema comes his fascination for choreography and sudden removals from reality into ornate, escapist sequences of song and dance. From Japan comes a passion for the sensory overload of manga and anime, and the ambiguity and suggestiveness of Haruki Murakami. And from living in various parts of Britain comes an empathy with the plight of others from all stretches of life. His first sustained graphic novel was a tour de force modernisation of Julius Caesar (1599) in 2008 for Londonbased publishers SelfMadeHero’s ‘Manga Shakespeare’ line. Let loose, Mustashrik’s inky brushmarks dance across the pages, the coalescing figures acting in grand, desertlike expanses, evoking recent memories of the Iraq War and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Next in development, in honour of his favourite sci-fi hero, the Japanese Ultraman, is Bigman, an open-ended, cross-platform project. According to Mustashrik, “it’s an unconventional love story in which a girl shows a giant creature how to dance to Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival”. Currently, he’s focusing on Smoke Outside Please, a combination of documentary, music, photography and illustration, inspired by a brief period of debauchery and experiences of ‘smirting’ (smoking and flirting mashed together), a new sexual phenomenon sparked by the ban on indoor public smoking. Mustashrik explains, “It’s picking someone out of a crowd, realising they smoke, waiting for the opportune moment, and then asking them for a light, even if you have your own lighter in your pocket. It’s opened up a whole new level of exploitation in the social scene and an even more evident divide between groups on nights out. You see hundreds of people outside bars smirting, and those who don’t, inside.” Nonsmokers have been known to carry fag packets and lighters to get in on the act. Now that he’s a casual smoker, Mustashrik’s successes with smirting and the people he encountered have inspired him to evolve them into characters in a stylised storyworld. Some have already been caught on camera in teaser trailers at www.mustashrik.com, while others are appearing in graphic form – in this issue’s Strip, for example – hazy with fumes and ashes, the women’s tresses, clothes, smoke and words sensuously billowing, forming an ephemeral sense of communal connection. His smirters’ latest incarnation fills a large digital composition as part of the London Print Studio exhibition That’s Novel: Lifting Comics from the Page!!! Of all his chosen media, comics appeal to him for “the unbridled expression you can create. Anything your mind conjures up can appear on a page within minutes. With comics you are only limited by your own constraints, and in that lies the beauty of it all.” That’s Novel: Lifting Comics from the Page!!! is at the London Print Studio Gallery until 18 December words

paul gravett

(such as the Boeing 4X-JYI Howard Hughes used to own, which ended up being blown up in Jan de Bont’s 1994 action movie Speed) become loci for cycles of capitalism. But enough bloody politics, you cry; let’s have some painting. And you’re in luck. Since his emergence

Günther Förg (Galerie Lelong, Paris, 25 November – 22 January, www.galerie-lelong.com) has in the 1980s,

seemingly done whatever the hell he liked, the freedom itself being the point: producing stonefaced responses to hard-edged American painting years after the fact, photographing fascist architecture and – these days – adopting a mellifluously lyrical ‘old man’ painting style whose singing swatches of chroma synthesise Guston and Matisse, before hanging it on rhapsodic exhibition titles such as (this time) Come, or the stellar tide will slip away. Improbably, the German artist’s stubborn past manages to make this feel almost

radical, though when those hues hit, you won’t care

Anna Bjerger (Paradise Row, London, to 23 December, www. paradiserow.com), meanwhile, starts from either way.

small beginnings – browsing an archive of old magazines and reference books – before effecting

New York Joining the celebrations this holiday season, the Park Avenue Armory – long known to the artworld as the venue for the annual Art Dealers Association fair – kicks off its first full year of cultural programming with the multimedia installation Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway. (More Easter than Christmas, and a bit heavy on ego for the season, but an extravaganza is an extravaganza.) Given New York’s sad lack of attention to its urban treasures, it’s something of a miracle that the Armory, which sits on a prime block in the Silk Stocking District, survived; but no surprise that, like many of our publicly owned treasures, its superb nineteenth-century interiors and 55,000 sq ft drill hall had fallen into disrepair. In 2006 ownership passed from New York State to a nonprofit conservancy which has been transforming the structure into an arts centre. To the tune of $200 million, with renovations by Herzog & de Meuron. After a few experimental seasons – an Aaron Young event with motorcycles and Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land (2010), first seen at Paris’s Grand Palais – the place is now ready for the big time. Planned events include an installation by Ryoji Ikeda, a six-week residency by the Royal Shakespeare Company and final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s farewell tour. I love that the Armory is flexible enough to cover these bases, and that it places performance and installation in the centre of a residential neighbourhood – unlike the Whitney, which was forced by local opposition to build its expansion in the Meatpacking District, a gentrified construct at the fringe of Manhattan, rather than near the Breuer building on the Upper East Side. What I don’t like is how both projects play to the vein of festivalism rampant in our cultural life. True, the Whitney needed more space; but like the High Line, the old freight rail spur renovated to resemble an overgrown ruin, which the museum’s Renzo Piano facility will abut, it will offer tourists (requisite traffic, given the cost of the new digs) a grand monument to starchitecture and amusement-park-scale art. While the Armory is constrained by its size, now that the obvious choice to use it as an arts venue has been made, its challenge is to programme without reinforcing the idea that bigger is necessarily better. The problem is, its draw is its scale; and with clearly grand ambitions and commensurate costs, it needs to play whatever cards it can to attract visitors and donors in the competitive worlds of culture and fundraising. The inevitable consequence is a ramping up of the decibel levels in the ongoing ‘mine is bigger’ shouting match. Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway is on view at the Park Avenue Armory, New York, from 2 December to 6 January words

JOSHUA MACK

a low-key kind of grandstanding: the found images she chooses to paint, through the looseness of handling and sedulous cropping, tend to hum with wild ambiguity in ways the originals never could.

Shadow Catchers: Camera-Less Photography (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, to 20 February, www.vam.ac.uk)

Reversing these terms, meanwhile,

spotlights five photographers – unencumbered by Hasselblads but virtuosic with photographic paper, light and physical objects – who turn their indexical medium radiantly painterly and near

abstract, from Garry Fabian Miller’s glowing, Josef Albers-meets-Tron inset squares to Adam Fuss’s softedged, spectral photograms. If we have no problem with colour in photography

Stephen Shore (Sprüth Magers, Berlin, to 8 January, www.spruethmagers.com), who (along with now, it’s partly thanks to

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from top: Anna Bjerger, Flannel, oil on aluminium, 50 x 40 cm, 2010, © the artist, courtesy Paradise Row, London; Garry Fabian Miller, The Night Cell, 2009–10, water, light, lightjet c-print from dye destruction print, © the artist, courtesy HackelBury Fine Art, London

DISPATCHES

from top: Stephen Shore, Stampeder Motel, Ontario, Oregon, July 19, 1973, 1973–2007, c-print, 51 x 61 cm, © the artist, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York, and Sprüth Magers, Berlin & London; Frances Stark, Toward a score for ‘Load every rift with ore’, 2010, paint and printed matter on paper, 220 x 201 cm, courtesy the artist and Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles

Berlin Berlin once had artists whose ideals were not purely aesthetic: artists who were also known for their political engagement. Witness Olaf Metzel’s legendary 13.4.1981 (referencing a riot sparked by the premature report of terrorist Sigurd Debus’s death in police custody), a sculpture which met with vigorous protest from people and politicians alike in West Berlin when it appeared outside the Café Kranzler in 1987. That things have changed is all too clear from the shortlist of contenders for the 2011 Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art: Cyprien Gaillard, Kitty Kraus, Klara Lidén and Andro Wekua. Once again, and now in its sixth edition, there is not a single artist with an explicitly political agenda among the potential winners of this prize (sponsored by BMW!). Not that it is surprising that there is barely any political art on show in the city’s commercial galleries. After all, the idea is that well-heeled collectors – not naturally left-leaning – should buy the works on display. But with the balance of power shifting to galleries and collectors, the overall situation is becoming increasingly problematic. In the mid-1990s, there were barely 50 galleries in newly reunified Berlin; nowadays there are close to 600. And the collectors are becoming ever more conspicuous. Instead of donating their collections to public institutions in the timehonoured fashion, major players – Boros, Hoffmann, Olbricht, Schürmann and Haubrok spring immediately to mind – are opening their own exhibition spaces. These magnates from the worlds of advertising and financial services are now in effect deciding what is ‘good art’, usurping the role of the independent art curators and historians of the past. And the perilous depoliticisation of the art scene in present-day Berlin is exacerbated by the distinctly surprising fact that a lot of ‘alternative’ art spaces are gaily joining in the game. A good-bad example is the locally not-unknown artists’ collective Stedefreund, currently presenting a three-part exhibition series in its premises in Berlin-Mitte. The aim of the series is ‘to articulate and simultaneously abandon historical antecedents such as Constructivism and Minimalism, along with their ideological instrumentalisation and the discursive debate concerning abstraction versus figuration’. Abstraction will be observed through a ‘magnifying glass’ and ‘subjected to contemporary scrutiny’, as we learn from the press release. An artistic reflection on abstract art – in other words, purely a matter of artistic form; a good seminar topic for secondyear undergraduates at art school – is deemed here to be an adequate curatorial concept, with not a whiff of political engagement. The only (lonely) voices in the wilderness are the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and the NGBK, both of which still concentrate on art as social criticism. Even so, it is worth noting that with its recent exhibition Goodbye London – Radical Art and Politics in the Seventies, the NGBK felt the need to provide us with a historical overview of what once was. words Raimar Stange translated from the German by Fiona Elliott

William Eggleston) took flak in the early 1970s when he produced his conceptualism-indebted serial 3x5s of vernacular America. His 1973 series Uncommon Places, showcased here, doubly demonstrates his being ahead of the curve. Shore was onto nonplaces such as intersections and petrol stations long before they became cultural-studies fodder, and his crisp 8x10 shots have a capacity to put us right amid them, leaving us to navigate not only the photographer’s prescience but our own reflex nostalgia for era-specific emptiness.

Tracing the trajectories of one’s own thought has, for the last decade, been the guiding principle for

Frances Stark (List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, to 2 January, http://listart.mit.edu). Aptly presented in a

hothouse of thinking, the California artist’s first US survey should find her text-based art, fine-boned drawings and crackerjack sculptures – giant telephones doubling as costumes, for example –

DISPATCHES

But enough bloody mental gymnastics, you cry; let’s have a tour of Turkey. And you’re in luck, because

My City (various venues and cities, Turkey, into 2011, www.mycity.eu.com),

coinciding with Istanbul’s year as European Capital of Culture and aimed at fostering dialogue between Turkey and Europe, finds five artists from five EU countries situating projects in five Turkish cities, including Germany’s Clemens von Wedemeyer in Mardin, Poland’s Joanna Rajkowska in Konya and (again) the UK’s Mark Wallinger in Canakkale. This last artist’s video installation, in a temporary cinema constructed for the project and facing onto the Dardanelles strait, offers a lifesize, time-delayed (by 24 hours) view of the liquid line between Europe and Asia outside it – layering recent and (symbolically) distant pasts onto present; fractious local history onto now. But enough bloody Turkey, you cry…

Paris At the entrance to Larry Clark’s exhibition Kiss the Past Hello, currently at Paris’s Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, a sign reads: ‘Under-eighteens not admitted’. This was a surprising decision on the part of the socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, whose intention was to protect those responsible for the museum: ‘Times have changed’, he has said, evidently referring to the sinister affair of the CAPC Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art, where an association ‘for child protection’ has been harrying (legally) that museum’s director and two curators for ten years, following their exhibition of works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager and others. Has the precautionary principle been taken too far? One of the CAPC curators, Marie-Laure Bernadac, told me she was dismayed to learn that Kiss the Past Hello has been closed to under-eighteens, because that’s precisely what the decency lobby that ranks art alongside pornography wants. Clark himself is distressed about the fact that pictures of teenagers are refused to teenagers, insisting on his models’ consent. City Hall defends its position by remarking that panels warning sensitive natures of explicit content now provide insufficient legal cover. The leftwing press speaks of censorship; the rightwing press takes advantage of the situation to question Clark’s work. It’s so crowded in the museum that the photos are barely visible. Two young Gus Van Sant-style skaters are turned away. They’re seventeen. A young woman with a newborn in a kangaroo sling has to talk her way in: “He’s only a month old!” The baby has been in very close contact with this young woman’s vagina not so long ago: what will the police do about that? The show starts with photos by Clark’s parents (Clark’s mother was a door-to-door baby photographer, as it happens) and continues with the screening of a 16mm film shot in Tulsa in 1968, showing the daily life of young junkies, one of whom is pregnant. “I’m the one who shouldn’t be seeing that”, the young mother says to me, looking rather pale. A wall is covered with a black-and-white series in which a teenager mimes suicide by hanging, revolver and razor blade. Further on, ecstatic faces, experimental coitus, a very beautiful take on Courbet’s Origin of the World (1866). Gangsters with children’s faces and adult-size genitals: bodies that shock precisely because of their adolescent state, that intermediate age Larry Clark has borne witness to from the 1960s till today. There’s a big difference between purposely choosing to visit an exhibition and being forced to see teenage bodies (particularly girls’) in advertising everywhere. Pornography is down the first street you take, on the first website. Larry Clark purifies our way of seeing by encouraging us to think, to remember who we are and recall our own first times. Larry Clark: Kiss the Past Hello is at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris to 2 January words marie darrieussecq translated from the French by Emmelene Landon

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ArtReview

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Sun Cinema, 2010, My City project in Mardin

accruing into a beautiful babble of exposed mental wiring. A year ago, this author reviewed a Stark show and suggested that her invariable inwardness risked looking like a nervous shtick; since she’s now titled this exhibition This could become a gimick (sic) or an honest articulation of the workings of the mind – that deliberate misspelling being a sizeable logic problem in itself – either she reads her own press or, more likely, she’s deliberately and boldly painting herself into a corner to see where it leads.

the free lance

it was the best of times It was the worst of times

words

article, Godfrey Barker: ‘I phoned him up and told him: “Do you realize that in the present market we can get you $50 million for your Rothko?” There was a very long silence at the other end of the phone. Eventually he replied: “Well, Ms. Westphal, that sure is tremendous news. But what the hell would I do with $50 million in the bank?”’ It’s not surprising then that New York currently boasts Frankenstein-type sequels to resale boilerplate. November auction sales in the city flogged some 2,266 lots (up 39 percent from last year’s stingy offerings), plus Christie’s and Sotheby’s are back to hyping vanity catalogues and jetting prize artworks around like pushy debutantes. Phenomena that encapsulate the secondary market’s capacity to torpedo the rest of the artworld, they also highlight the chasm between this era’s haves (the mega-rich) and its significant have-nots (its increasingly impoverished artists). Ben Davis, writing on artnet.com, astutely describes the present situation as a ‘Tale of Two Art Worlds’. Consider, on the one hand, this year’s astounding $100 million auction sales ($104.3 million for Giacometti’s Walking Man I, 1960, and $106.5 million for Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 1932). Now think about the estimated 79,625 artists – 32

ArtReview

Christian Viveros-Fauné

according to Don Thompson, author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark (2008) – that squeak by every month in New York and London. The social picture is of a banana republic populated unequally by oligarchs and social climbers. Crippled by art’s luxury status, this bifurcated economy has additionally made it doubly hard to justify awarding public monies to shore up the deepening creative crisis. The reality of the art crowd not facing up squarely to its split-screen existence becomes harder to bear when one considers this artworld’s enduring creative paradigm: the Janus-faced commodity critique. An artistic method perfected by Andy Warhol and filched by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, et al., this twin celebration and belittling of art as an endless evening sale of expensive tchotchkes long ago segued into what Fredric Jameson calls ‘the dominant cultural logic of late capitalism’. Put another way, yesterday’s commodity critique is today’s business as usual. Dickens’s famous opener has rarely rung truer than it does today: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’. One feels anything might happen in the culture. But not in the artworld. Rich and not so much, we’ve got our heads straight up our own conned asses.

Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, oil on canvas, painted on 9 March 1932. Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd. 2010

Stepping out into the New York artworld today is a study in déjà vu. A For Sale sign hangs outside what was once the Max Lang Gallery on 10th Avenue, while on 24th Street Mary Boone advertises the red dots scoring her sold-out show. The Chelsea Art Museum’s building has filed for bankruptcy protection, but the Whitney Museum is breaking ground 13 blocks below. The primary market remains sluggish, yet big collectors are flocking to auction houses, despite the generally higher cost of doing business there. The art market is at once tanking and thriving – normally an irreconcilable set of circumstances. It’s as if the artworld time-travelled to 1988 and saw a black cat cross its path not once but twice. The last major art-market slump – we’ll conveniently ignore the present recession’s 30 percent drop in prices (reached in mid-2009), since reportedly these remain 87 percent higher than 2005 levels – was in 1989, about 18 months after ‘Black Monday’ – 19 October 1987 – when stock markets crashed worldwide. An art-market lag of 12 to 18 months behind the economy has since become an article of faith, yet some reports from the first half of 2010 – such as total worldwide figures for artworks sold and record-breaking prices at auction – suggest that the art market has recovered well ahead of our general economic woes. At least for now. Once again, the artworld’s wealthier players are back to benefiting from what The Wall Street Journal called ‘a flight into tangibles’. As the WSJ goes on to say, investors presently distrust equities and are looking to sink money into blue-chip art. To quote one prominent dealer, buyers ‘are terrified of cash that pays 0% at the bank and is threatened by the “great inflation” lying one to two years ahead’. The current preference among the cultured superrich for blue-chip art over liquidity is summed up by an exchange Cheyenne Westphal, head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s, had with a Los Angeles collector, a conversation reported by the author of the WSJ

Gary Simmons, Holiday, 2010, pigment, oil paint & cold wax on canvas

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london calling

empty vessels

Here in London it’s the post-art fair lull, and I’m exchanging idle gossip with one of our Scottish writers. He’s wondering who I think will win the Turner Prize, but I keep getting stuck on odd bits of minor institutional criticism: does Dexter Dalwood squeak past the under-fifty rule (born 1960, you see)? Is it appropriate to shortlist an artist (Dalwood again) for a solo show he’s been given at another branch of the Tate galleries? And don’t get me started on that business of the Otolith Group being an Arts Council ‘regularly funded organisation’ that will receive almost three times the Turner

have gathered 50 or more (the anomaly was the fourth, in 1995, made up of only 24 artists, but that edition was special, a triumphant crowning of the then-emerging stars of Young British Art – Hirst, Hume, Ofili, Wallinger, Taylor-Wood, to name only the most famous). BAS1 was born out of the strife and controversy that characterised much of the public debate on art during the 1970s. Its job was to reassert some sense of coherence and consensus about Britain and art in Britain, by establishing something that might be representative of what was going on in ‘British art’ in the broadest sense. By contrast, Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff (the British Art Show is organised by Hayward Touring) was able to joke at the press briefing that BAS7 could more modestly be called just ‘a’ British art show. Such hesitance and uncertainty says something about how our big national institutions understand their role at the moment: they’re pretty confused. At their inception, events like the Turner Prize (set up in 1984) and the British Art Show were attempts to reclaim some legitimacy for contemporary art in Britain at a time when both government and public were either indifferent or downright hostile towards it. Paradoxically, as the public attitude towards contemporary art has softened and as the political boostering of arts and culture has become orthodoxy, the sense of purpose that these events once set out with feels like it has slowly seeped away. Just another Turner Prize. Just another British Art Show… words

Prize money in grants anyway. Although, intriguingly, Andrew Nairne, executive director for arts strategy at the Arts Council, is one of the Turner Prize judges… Let’s just say it’s a cynical, demoralising conversation. It’s not that I find it unsavoury, but rather that it brings out a creeping weariness in me: what is the cultural purpose of the Tate’s annual prize jamboree? How is that purpose, whatever it is, reflected in the decisions the institution makes? And how should we, on the outside of the institution, respond? Are we all just going through the motions? Does no one ask why? Later I get an email from an artist who’s in the British Art Show 7, now open in Nottingham. One of their works has been rejected, on the grounds that it would be far too controversial and generate bad publicity, which would overshadow the show (which tours Britain) on its inaugural outing. It seems to be a case of nervous bureaucrats not wanting anything to go wrong, not wanting any pseudo-scandal headlines, not right now, not when public funding for the arts is being put through the wringer by the new coalition. As Martin Herbert notes in this issue’s review of BAS7, the first British Art Show, in 1979, presented more than 100 artists. This edition features fewer than 40. Most of the shows 34

ArtReview

J.J. Charlesworth

Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe there’s a good reason for continuing to put on national-level shows of art being made today. Maybe these artists are really very good (and of course, many of them really are). Or maybe such events are now dead men walking, giving shape to little more than the self-justifying logic that career ladders always need a top rung. In his review of BAS7, the Guardian’s Adrian Searle mused that ‘the coming economic cuts might mean that big shows like this no longer even happen, let alone tour’. But however good BAS7 is, it’s nothing if not a very partial account of current British art, even if that partiality attempts, covertly, to insinuate that these artists have a certain indescribable, cutabove-the-rest je ne sais quoi. Conversely, the Turner’s opaque selection procedure now appears arbitrary and incapable of accurately reflecting the most innovative, the most interesting developments in current work. Big shows need good reasons to exist, and there was a time when neither the Turner nor the BAS took place. Regardless of cuts, it’s time to rethink the purpose of these big institutional events. Things break down. Things get remade.

Dexter Dalwood, Lennie, 2008, oil on canvas. Photo: Sam Drake and Lucy Dawkins, Tate Photography. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery, London

Do the British Art Show and Turner Prize still make the most noise?

the painted word

Shipwreck the viewer Why art criticism is all at sea – and why, for artists, that’s a good thing

words

the long association of the RA with marine art washed into the viewing experience, connecting works separated by lacunae of medium, period, scale and intention. The metaphorics of the sea bound these disparate shows together more than the arbitrary indictments of the art press ratings system that had initially coupled them, with the ocean haunting the shows as an ancient and unreckonable elsewhere. I was put in mind of philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s seminal 1979 essay ‘Shipwreck with Spectator’, which identifies the centrality of the seafaring metaphor in human attempts to make sense of the passage of existence. We talk of sea changes, of being all at sea, cut adrift, etc. Blumenberg’s thesis invokes the presence of a theoretical spectator throughout the history of these watery metaphors – from the Ionian natural philosophers through to the twentieth century – who observes the metaphor of the perilous sea voyage from shifting vantage points. Sometimes they are on dry land, at other times right in the drink with the hapless sailors. In fact, the word ‘theory’ itself

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ArtReview

Nigel Cooke

derives from the Greek word theoria, a term used in fourthcentury Greece to describe an overseas journey undertaken by an individual (known as the theoros, meaning ‘spectator’) whose task was to report back from some remote oracular centre (maybe a religious festival, art fair or biennial), sharing and spreading knowledge of what lay beyond the shore with whatever art journal or listings magazine had commissioned him/her. Importantly, the theoros was transformed into a kind of stranger upon returning home, freshly endowed with a wise impartiality as a result of the voyage, a skill useful in grading an exhibition on a scale of one to five stars. On making the trip to this island of polarised shows replete with storms and giant crustaceans, the vision and attention of this sea-bound critic – the spectator at the intellectual shipwreck of the art experience – forged a testy dialogue with my own responses. The fact that artgoers – especially artists – have this unknown spectator keeps knowledge bracingly at sea, permanently on the brink of being lost to the deep. And as Blumenberg points out, a sailor prefers anything to still waters, even a storm. The value of criticism is that it gives one a push to get out onto bigger waves: whether you make it to dry land, or share anything valuable when you get there, is up to you.

Joana Vasconcelos, Doroteia, 2007. Photo: Atelier Joana Vasconcelos. Courtesy Haunch of Venison, London, New York & Berlin

In an artist’s more paranoid moments, the art press can seem like the work of one panoptic super-spectator, speaking from a distant land of critical judgement. The artist may never venture there in person (except perhaps in a monthly column), nor meet this über-viewer, but can consult the charts when looking for decent shows around town. Time Out serves them up weekly – it even offers a star-rating system to help you work out the hot from the not. In one recent issue, two reviews – the bestand worst-rated shows – were yoked together on the page. The twist was that the galleries were Central London neighbours. As a result, the spectrum of the rating system was suddenly a little island you could journey to after all, with the two extremes of the super-spectator’s judgement captured on one site. The locale: Piccadilly, with the back-to-back arrangement of the Royal Academy and Haunch of Venison. The ‘exhibition of the week’ honour and four stars went to Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos at the latter gallery, while at the RA, poor old John Singer Sargent’s sea paintings fared rather worse, managing only one star. Reservations about the Sargent and the Sea exhibition – the bourgeois tourism of the subject, the mediocrity of the treatment when devoid of the human figure – were transformed by the fact that the Vasconcelos show next door appeared to have a maritime theme, too. It was embedded marginally, however, and in much more surreal objects – gargantuan glazed ceramics of lobsters and crabs covered with netlike crochet. The Sargent seascapes began to feel like the setting for these monsters, the beauty of the scenes now feeling ominous, like the calm before a storm. Female figures in the alcoves of Haunch of Venison appeared more like recently netted mermaids or sirens than a rethink of statuary. Did they seem so because of the Sargent show? The super-spectator may have polarised these two qualitatively; conceptually, ‘theme creep’ was inexorable too, as

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The Shape of Things

Tattoos A pernicious, nagging quality of late capitalism is the way it continually suggests that you should be yourself – that there is something inside you which is different from what is inside anybody else and which makes you you. I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’ve started going to the gym. And in the changing rooms I can’t help noticing people who’ve decided to try and get a bit of that interior identity on their exterior by wearing a tattoo. I’m especially puzzled by the tattoos that are discreet enough to be hidden in normal life – small designs on a calf, a shoulder blade, a buttock. What’s the point? So, just as I do when I’m puzzled by any kind of design, I turn to Adolf Loos to find a name for my pain. Loos’s essay ‘Ornament and Crime’ (1908) is an angry, funny, vicious, hopeful, depressed tirade against nineteenthcentury bourgeois culture. In it, the Austrian architect canters through topics including the eroticism of the crucifix, the relationship of economics to labour, the choice of boots by the Austrian army, toilet-door graffiti as the measure of culture and the following bizarre fusion of ethnography, ophthalmology and paediatrics: ‘At the age of two, [a child] sees like a Papuan, at four, like a Teuton, at six like Socrates, at eight like Voltaire. When he is eight years old, he becomes aware of violet.’ All of this Loos marshals into a call for an unembellished design of stark morality and absolute truth that, Loos declares, could deliver emancipation on an epic scale: ‘Soon the streets of the cities will glow like white walls! Like Zion, the Holy City, the capital of heaven. It is then that fulfillment will have come.’

corporate design languages and so on. They become another language, as far from – and as unable to deliver – ‘truth’ as anything that Loos battered with his text. Which doesn’t stop us believing that some sort of aesthetic of truth is out there. Take, for example, one of the central targets in Loos’s essay: the tattoo. He writes, ‘The Papuan tattoos his skin… He is no criminal [because he is primitive]. The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate’. Loos goes on to say that ‘those who are tattooed but are not imprisoned are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats’ and, extrapolating from this amorality, that ‘if a tattooed person dies at liberty, it is only that he died a few years before he committed a murder’. The contemporary return of the tattoo spread from subculture to mass culture with amazing speed. From Hells Angels and the freaks of the underground to the innocent flesh of boy and girl groups, the tattoo has leaped from the margins to the high street. Perhaps the tattoo has achieved this cultural ubiquity as a response to the very conditions – of the untruth and unreality of culture – that Loos claimed it to be a symptom of in 1908. The contemporary tattoo explicitly revives words

In fact, Loos argues that fulfillment should have come already, if only the world had taken him seriously: ‘I had thought to introduce a new joy into the world: but it has not thanked me for it’. Indeed, his modern-life-is-rubbish rant is shot through with self-pity at his own failure to transform Austrian culture and anger at the institutions he despises for their conservatism – the ‘hobgoblins who will not allow it to happen’. Reading it now, it’s the thrust and vector of Loos’s polemic that’s significant, rather than the examples he cites, or indeed the main target of his diatribe: ornament. In the century since ‘Ornament and Crime’, the economics and politics of aesthetics have changed. And while the kind of unadorned modernist aesthetics Loos championed have become central to high-design culture, they have not delivered the Travis Bickleesque rain to wash the trash from the streets that the architect predicted. In fact, those aesthetics lost their revolutionary impetus as they were dissolved into broader taste cultures,

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SAM JACOB

primitivism as an attempt to recuperate truth through the authenticity of the primitive, the criminal and the degenerate. Set against the smooth skin of corporate culture, it is a way of conjuring a sensation of truth – of realness. In this strange condition, Loosian sentiment is expressed through an antiLoosian technique – a perfect explication of the complexity of meaning within contemporary design. If we follow this strange feedback loop of the primitive, industrial, postindustrial tattoo, we might find its current conclusion in the texts, patterns and symbols inked into David Beckham’s skin. Here tattoos act as a form of self-branding in both the primitive and the postindustrial sense. Beckham’s skin is the place where his body becomes corporatised – turned back into the unreality of image rather than its ‘real’ biology. Truth is always slippery, and even more so when addressed though the language of objects, whose meaning cannot always be fixed or trusted. Loos’s ‘Ornament and Crime’ might not be the roadmap he intended it to be, but it continues to alert us to the fact that objects and environments are means of feeling our way through the complex moralities of culture.

Guerra Vanzetti, Loos Tribal project, 2010, from Design Criminals: Or a New Joy into the World, 2010, MAK Vienna

Ornament or crime?

Terry Allen Tony Berlant Tony Bevan Deborah Butterfield Rebecca Campbell Richard Deacon Mark di Suvero Gajin Fujita Charles Garabedian David Hockney Ben Jackel Nancy Reddin Kienholz Per Kirkeby Imi Knoebel Leon Kossoff Guillermo Kuitca Jonathan Lasker Jason Martin Enrique Martínez Celaya Michael C. McMillen Gwynn Murrill Alice Neel Ken Price Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin Alison Saar Sean Scully Joel Shapiro Peter Shelton Don Suggs Tom Wudl Juan Uslé Rogue Wave Artists William Brice Estate Frederick Hammersley Estate Kienholz Estate Fred Williams Estate

Alice Neel, Joey Scaggs 19 67, oil on canvas 8 0 1 ⁄ 8 x 35 7⁄ 8 in. ( 203.5 x 91.1 cm ) Copyright The Estate of A lice Neel

Walid Raad Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut) (detail), 1987-present. Courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; and Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg and Beirut.

Walid Raad Whitechapel Gallery

Miraculous Beginnings 14 October 2010 – 2 January 2011

whitechapelgallery.org

design

Coop de Ville

For an increasing number of people, urban life isn’t complete without a designer henhouse. But what are these ‘performance smallholders’ really playing at?

urbanites seems to be a misty, romantic one. Even if it does produce real carrots, it coexists quite happily with an appetite for expensively sourced rusticanalia (trugs, apple crates, besom brooms) and distrust for the necessarily less picturesque realities of the contemporary countryside. “Looking at villages and people who live in the countryside, you find both an appreciation of the minutiae of daily lives and an understanding that a nostalgia for lost methods is not sustainable”, explains Veronica Sekules, director of the Culture of the Countryside project, based at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. The project has used world artefacts from the centre’s collection to promote discussion at a local level, in the process drawing as broad as possible a portrait of contemporary rural culture, taking in everything from anaerobic digester words

partner – built an allotment for a school on Arnold Circus in East London. Since graduating, his focus has been on finding realistic ways to help people grow vegetables in a city – he’s wired racks of plants up to automatic irrigation systems using rainwater from the guttering, and built ambulatory greenhouses small enough for a terrace and self-sufficient enough to compensate for the most apathetic urban gardener. Photos of his research projects shown during September’s London Design Festival generated a notebook full of enthusiastic feedback. Just as the apparently insatiable appetite for cookery books and shows seems to have done nothing to calm either the obesity crisis or the market for ready meals, it’s hard not to wonder what, exactly, the real impact of all this city mudshovelling will be. The vision of the country that so enthrals the

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Hettie Judah

systems to interpretations of the weather by surfing fanatics, performance art and the question of how to help coastal communities cope with dramatic erosion. Sekules is philosophical about rural evolution: “Cultural change is a given – humankind is good at adapting. We have an idea of what we’re going to lose; but there might equally be a lot of things we’ll gain.” Against this pragmatic vision of the changing countryside, the design products that cater to the new urban rusticity seem like props for a mythologised retelling of rustic culture, one repackaged to accommodate ninehour workdays, environmental guilt and two foreign holidays a year. It’s performance smallholding – and in repackaging the rustic experience in containable chunks, it rather quaintly permits urbanites to suspect that they are somehow better at doing the countryside than the country-dwellers are themselves.

Jochem Faudet, Grow Your Own. Photo: Angela Moore

The reappropriation of the tag ‘homegrown’ to refer to any crop that isn’t distributed in miniature Ziploc bags seems to have tipped the balance on the city-goes-country craze, marking its transition from a whim on the part of post-KateMoss-at-Glastonbury wellie-wearing North Londoners into a full-on cultural phenomenon. Fruit picking, butchery, tweed fetishism, chutney making, guerrilla gardening, chicken husbandry, apple juicing, vegetable growing, beekeeping, the wearing of waxed jackets outside the confines of Fulham, barter, harvest festivals and unironic Women’s Institute references – it seems that our inner cities are being consumed by a tide of naturally composted organic filth. The design world is busy popping out more-or-less serious propositions that cater to the new Good Life-ers. Last year Omlet, the people behind the Eglu chicken houses, launched the Beehaus, a hive with modernist pretensions aimed at urban apiarists. Higher-rolling chicken fanciers can roost their feathered friends in an ovoid ‘garden sculpture’ called the Nogg, carved out of cedarwood and boasting fox-proof locks and an adjustable skylight. Nogg’s producers are promoting the coop – which accommodates a maximum of three hens – at a price considerably north of £1,000. One assumes that their target consumer is not chasing the chooks just to save on their egg budget. It’s not only the fogeys and the faddists who are getting in on the act. I was cooked a vivid lunch recently by RCA design graduate Jochem Faudet, who – together with his studio

What to see this month by

FIONA BRADLEY

Director, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

1 Tacita Dean Common Guild, Glasgow 20 November – 5 February www.thecommonguild.org.uk Katrina Brown has been running this great project – small shows by big artists – in Douglas Gordon’s house in Glasgow for the past four years. She’s worked with Tacita Dean before, and I think this exhibition will focus on photographs and drawings. Film is what we associate Dean with, but the works she makes which aren’t filmic speak so lucidly to those that are. I’m interested in seeing an artist who’s at the top of her game showing in such an intimate setting, as well my first opportunity to see Dean’s Craneway Event (2009), which will be screened at Scottish Ballet on 17 and 18 December as part of the exhibition.

2 Never the Same 4 Vija Celmins: River (Possible Television and Futures, Disaster, 1964–66 Probable Pasts) Camden Arts Centre, London 16 December – 20 February www.camdenartscentre.org Artist-curated group shows often manage to speak of what’s happening in the present in an idiosyncratic but uncommonly clear way. This one is curated by Simon Starling, an artist I’ve long been interested in, whose plan is to reinstall works from previous Camden exhibitions alongside, we’re told, ‘images, ideas and forms projected as a possible future programme: the probable past and possible future of Camden Arts Centre momentarily coming together in an unstable present.’ This seems to speak very eloquently of how Starling makes his own work, while using that of others.

I’m fascinated by the idea of seeing these early Celmins works: 20 paintings and two sculptures, relating to found objects and television. In particular, it’s an interesting time to look at how the media shapes our response to war, to compare how it operates now with how it looked in the 1960s. Plus the Menil is a great venue, and I look forward to seeing Celmins, whom I know primarily through her star and ocean works, in a more political mode.

3 Massimo Bartolini: COR South London Gallery To 12 December www.southlondongallery.org Bartolini is an artist whose eclectic, wideranging practice I like very much. Here he’s working in collaboration with choreographer Siobhan Davies on what’s being called a ‘performative sculpture’ involving lamps: it exists on its own and then, every so often, is animated by a performer. I’m looking forward to seeing him working outdoors and in the new Fox Garden: the redevelopment of the SLG has been astonishing, I think, and exemplary in how to retain character while building new functions into a gallery space.

44 ArtReview

Menil Collection, Houston 19 November – 20 February www.menil.org

5 Miroslaw Balka Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Abadía de Santo Domingo, Silos 26 November – 25 April www.museoreinasofia.es Balka’s work is always both intensely political and intensely beautiful; for me, he never seems to put a foot wrong. And I like the idea of inviting him to do a show at this monastery, as well as in the institution. He makes such resonant work in a white cube, so focused on the body and aware of space and how it interacts with art, that whatever he does in such a charged environment is likely to be really interesting.

from left: Tacita Dean, Painted Kotzsch Tree Series (detail), 2008, paint, six damaged August Kotzsch albumen prints, c. 1875, courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London; Vija Celmins, Burning Man, 1966, oil on canvas, 51 x 57 cm, private collection, New York, photo: Eric Baum, New York, © the artist

top five

A New Concise Reference Dictionary

Dd Daedalus to dystopia

Daedalus Contemporary Greek artist. Known for his skilful creation of a wooden cow in which his patron, Pasiphaë (the wife of a Greek shipping magnate), concealed herself so as to be sexually penetrated by a real bull. daffodil A beautiful flower with a primal yellow form. Painted by Vincent van Gogh, who also painted irises and sunflowers. dance See dance of death. dance of death Many high social functions, held in both state and private art institutions, may be (privately) described by the use of this term. darkness The absence of light has metaphorical significance in many cultures, and is therefore the means to create a locused emotional discourse in respect of either a metarelational stasis unity or an unbecoming praxis disunity. The showing of artists’ videos in near darkness is a summary process of this index of represence; a locusment of technology redundancy which exists, with teleological significance, for exaggerated theatrical effect only. Thus it is a strident presentational affectation of locus causality with the likelihood of some handbag theft occurring. Davy’s grey A greenish-grey pigment, made from powdered slate, iron oxide and carbon black. Granular and transparent, it is sometimes difficult to handle because of its tendency to clump. death Although artists often kill themselves, each other or other people, it remains unusual for them to be actually killed for making bad art. The conclusion to be drawn from this, that art is not actually that important, tends to be an insulting one to artists. Historically artists have gained dignity by being disallowed to practice, and thus perish through loss of livelihood. See cuts. deconstruction See pun. delirium See dementia. dementia See delirium. demons Evil spirits, or the servants of Satan. See cuts. demonstrative rhetoric Coded or uncoded signalling imploration behaviours intended to draw attention to the artist being erudite, learned and so cognisant with theory tendencies as to expect reciprocating critical approval responses. See Byzantine, vulgarity, rhetoric, theoryorgyism. deposition The taking down of Jesus Christ from the cross. derision Term used in respect of certain cultural imprecation contexts, in which derisive insults are a value norm. Common on the Web, but also in (popular) newspapers and 46

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(unpopular) magazines. Includes, paradoxically, important publications and broadcasters who claim a status interest in the values of high culture. For example, instead of saying that ‘X’s installations are, perhaps, indeterminate in respect of their theoretical positionings’, they might, with dry intention, say that ‘X is a twat’. The matter is complicated because, certainly in respect of X, the universal consensus is that her work definitely is that of a complete twat. See degenerationism, dumbing down, Modernism, hypocrisy, fascism. détournement See dance of death. deviance Deviancies in contemporary art tend to be omissive; that is, they are made conspicuous in the same way that it is deviant not to have a tattoo on one’s body. diary A common art installation trope, referencing approved validation formulas. diorama A common art installation trope, referencing approved validation formulas. disbelief See cuts. disco A common art installation trope, referencing approved validation formulas. dissociation An abnormal mental state in which the subject’s perception of phenomena may differ remarkably from that of others. See film critic. documentary A common art installation trope, referencing approved validation formulas. dominance Aggressive behaviour, often ritualised. Usually ceases when the threatened individual is seen to submit and agree that the art previously stated as disliked is in fact excellent (or even wonderful). Domination occurs through clothing ostentation, symbolic meals, etc. donor A patron or benefactor of gifts, bequests or sponsorships. By these means donors gain delivery from the plague, enjoy victory in war and achieve release from captivity in military defeat, etc. drawing Sophisticated and intelligent conceptual art practice in which marked lines on flat paper are made to correspond with a visually perceived external reality. Duchamp American artist. Transvestite. Known for the conflicted hypersexuality of his art practice; its emphasis on hairless genital partialism and compulsive autoeroticism has made him popular. Played chess, a game with an intense psychological quality of deception and introspectiveness which in some respects is analogous to the intimate identity displacings of autoerotic transvestism. Duchamp also employed the recursive pun, by which he compounded his genderings and regenderings of dissociative sociosexuality. Paradoxically, although Duchamp has many followers, very few of them are transvestite or play chess, and consequently they lack proper understanding of his work. Academic followers are invariably sexually inactive, and thus lack any understanding whatsoever. See erotica, parnomasia. dumbing down See cuts. dysfunctional The opposite of functional. Dysfunctional is generally regarded as the more interesting. dystopia See cuts.

words

Neal Brown

dispatches

Consumed

03

$199.95

The pick of things you didn’t know you really needed. Words Oliver Basciano

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£20

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£20 01 This DVD anthology of six films by John Latham from the 1960s and 70s makes one appreciate the monographic practicalities of the medium. Beyond the films – characterised by a 16mm stop-motion technique that instils a freneticism to various static materials, from coloured paper to the pages of Lisson Gallery director Nicholas Logsdail’s childhood set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica – there is also production footage, documentation of archive performances and a series of personal commentaries from the likes of musician David Toop and the artist’s two sons. www.lissongallery.com 48

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€4,990 05

02 Graphic designer Chrissie Abbott’s collages represent the stuff that dreams are made of. Innocent dreams, not sexy fantasies: dreams about armies of weirdo cats nuzzling up to each other in crystal-flecked landscapes. Yep, those kinds of dreams. More important (for her), it’s also led to commissions ranging from art direction for singer Little Boots’s releases to illustration work on New York Magazine and the Guardian. For the Jaguar Shoes collective she has image-Googled long and hard to deliver this rather fanciful mug. www.jaguarshoes.bigcartel. com

03 Occassional AR contributor Ari Marcopoulos’s photos are characterised by their lack of artifice. He describes his work as something that ‘just stands for life lived’. For Marcopoulos, that life has included the 1970s New York art scene and, in more recent times, those of rappers and skateboarders. Now he’s sharing his knowhow by collaborating on the production of a camera carrier with Incase. Coming with a limited-edition book of previously unpublished images, it’s apparently designed to ‘allow Ari to access his equipment as quickly as possible, never missing a shot’.

04 My first thought was: wouldn’t your arms get hot? And then: who cares? I’m always hot. Particularly when it looks like my chair is travelling at the speed of light. Combining Plexiglas tubing and neon, this model is designed by Manfred Kielnhofer, an Austrian artist whose practice deals with the performative possibilities of light. While it may not be the most comfortable place to have your Arctic Kiss (see no. 08) at the end of a long day’s work, it certainly makes a statement. Not sure what kind of statement. ‘I’m in charge of the Death Star’? www.kielnhofer.at

www.goincase.com

Consumed

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Price 05 on request

07

Price on request

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£120 05

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£1,598 05 This portfolio of nine prints, in an edition of 25 from Cheim & Read, centres on Lynda Benglis’s performative photographic portraits, parodying images of the 1970s female pinup. Included, for example, is the infamous self-portrait of the artist, naked bar a pair of sunglasses, wielding a flesh-coloured dildo; an image that Benglis distributed by booking advertising space in a 1974 issue of Artforum. This image – like all the photographs included here – has a serious, strongly realised political intent, while simultaneously maintaining a cheeky irreverence. www.cheimread.com 50

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£22.99 05

06 Each sentence of the ten sonnets found within Raymond Queneau’s 1961 work Hundred Thousand Billion Poems can be swapped for any other, allowing myriad (the title gives away the exact number) poems to be presented in just ten pages (each line is printed on a separate strip). This table by recent Royal College of Art design graduate David Amar takes its influence – and name, Raymond – from the sometime surrealist poet, but doesn’t have quite that many variations in the potential arrangements of its aluminium and tulipwood flatpack components.

07 If you’ve ever been to the Auditório Ibirapuera in São Paulo, this curvaceous slab of chocolate may look familiar. That’s because both were designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer. For the brown stuff, Niemeyer collaborated with chocolatier Samantha Aquim, who comes from a wellknown Brazilian family of restaurateurs, to give form to this 77-percent blend of cocoa beans, sourced from the country’s eastern Bahia region, the end product of which comes in its own presentation box and holdall. Sweet.

08 Financial pains in your arts? Christmas round the corner? Either way a drink would be handy. What with Dom Pérignon and Absolut both releasing limitededition bottles – the former a collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation, the latter a new faceted design – it would be rude not to. AR will be having the best of both worlds with an Arctic Kiss. No, you don’t have to behave unhygienically with Bjork – just mix 2oz vodka and 3oz of Dom Pérignon’s very fine Champagne, raise a toast to this year’s Absolut Art laureate Rirkrit Tiravanija and drink. Then repeat.

www.aquimgastronomia.com.br designproductscollection. rca.ac.uk

www.domperignon.com www.absolut.com

dispatches

digested

It’s what we think you should swallow, or spit out

John Pawson: Plain Space By Alison Morris

Louis: Night Salad By Metaphrog Although he looks innocent enough – in fact, with his round featureless and hairless head atop a Plasticine-sausage body, he probably couldn’t look any more like the guileless babyman hero of numerous children’s books (Bod in particular springs to mind) – the titular hero of this graphic novel lives in the land of the weird. Louis’s ‘job’ appears to involve doing something unpleasant to pineapples using the effluent from a chemical works in his back garden, and Night Salad (the fifth Louis book) begins when our hero accidentally poisons his companion – a sort of robot bird – and sets out to find a cure. Once he gets going, we’re off on a voyage that flickers between Louis’s unreal world and a realm of even stranger dreams. These days we’re bombarded with animations or graphic novels that claim to amuse kids while offering a metanarrative to please adults. But few actually fulfil these promises as effectively as this Scottish duo’s hand-painted book. Mark Rappolt Metaphrog, £9.99/$14.99 (hardcover)

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In some ways, this monograph on John Pawson, published on the occasion of a retrospective at London’s Design Museum, comes as a bit of a disappointment to those who admire the English architect’s ultraminimalist practice. The book, you see, has stuff in it – pictures, plans and illustrations that serve as ornamentation to words (of which there are a decent amount – four essays’ worth). Pawson, however, doesn’t really do ‘stuff ’: his buildings offer no accommodation to decoration or objects, preferring clean blank surfaces and carefully spaced fittings. (To be fair, a book of immaculate empty pages might not be as informative.) Pawson’s approach has won him commissions varying from Calvin Klein’s flagship stores to the Monastery of Novy Dvur in the Czech Republic (the Cistercian monks were apparently inspired to hire Pawson by a visit to the CK store on Madison Avenue). That said, and as evidenced by the book’s abundant photographic documentation (the architect insists on recording buildings at every possible angle inside and out, and in every possible light, as a way of understanding the consequences of design decisions), Pawson’s work is not sparse or inhuman, but, rather, emits an unexpected intimacy by offering an empty stage (though not a totally neutral space) that happily foregrounds the human users of his designs. Oliver Basciano Phaidon, £45 (hardcover)

Is It Safe? By Luc Tuymans Luc Tuymans isn’t necessarily a painter’s painter. He’s not one for obsessing over his medium’s history or the lineage and semiotics of a particular style of paint handling or juxtaposition of colours: indeed, the five series documented in this hefty monograph – made between 2004 and 2008, and each introduced by the artist himself – demonstrate his lack of interest in diverging from the muted, washed-out aesthetic he’s made his own. Instead, as essays by Pablo Stigg and Gerrit Vermeiren, and an interview between Tuymans and his assistant Tommy Simoens concisely outline, the artist’s real interest lies in the esoteric subjects he homes in on, from Condoleezza Rice to ballroom dancing. Tuymans has spoken of his interest in falsely representing the world, citing inspiration from Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), and his use of cinematic references (the book’s title is a line from the 1976 film Marathon Man) and low-resolution Polaroid and, latterly, iPhone photos as sources emphasise a practice that celebrates the impossibility and falsity of representation, painterly and otherwise. OB Phaidon, £39.95 (hardcover)

digested Vanity Fair By William Makepeace Thackeray Art by Donald Urquhart

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary By David Sedaris Through his regular contributions to The New Yorker and National Public Radio, and collected writings such as Barrel Fever (1995), Naked (1997) and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008), David Sedaris long ago established himself as one of the most deft and humorous observers of man as a social animal. More important, he’s one of few contemporary writers who use humour as a tool for social critique, while producing writing that is genuinely funny and genuinely revealing about how people react to the world. In this collection Sedaris tackles familiar territory, though this time he’s observing animals as though they were social men and women. Presumably he’s doing this so that, like Aesop, he can present subjects that have to overcome their natures (and a reader’s preconceptions about their natures) as well as the stuff that society throws at them. And so we are treated to lessons on the social implications of combining an owl, a family of singing leeches and a hippopotamus’ rectum, on things an alcoholic mink will do for a drink and on why you should beware a rabbit with a stick and a newfound sense of authority. Despite that last, this is no Animal Farm (1945). Indeed, Orwell would have hated it. It’s probably safe to assume that he would have regurgitated his infamous disapproval of Rabelais – ‘an exceptionally perverse, morbid writer, a case for psychoanalysis’ – had he been around to read Sedaris. Ironically he would also have been listing the very secrets to the American writer’s success. At his best, by revealing and (passively) analysing himself, Sedaris encourages his readers to perform a similar operation on themselves. Squirrel Seeks… is set up to facilitate the same, but the animals, while amusing, seem as though they’re getting in the way a bit. Mark Rappolt Little, Brown, £12.99/$21.99 (hardcover)

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Sam Francis: Lesson of Darkness By Jean-François Lyotard Notions of blindness or darkness would appear to be antithetical to the bright, lushly abstract paintings of Sam Francis. These, however, are precisely the themes developed by philosopher Jean-François Lyotard in a poem responding to 42 paintings by the American artist. First published in British magazine Blank Page in 1993, the poem is republished, alongside the previously unseen French original, in an elegantly designed volume that offers both a singular response to an artist’s work and a contribution to a critical rethinking of painters – such as Francis’s friend and fellow American in Paris Joan Mitchell – who were working in the immediate fallout of Abstract Expressionism, outside of New York. Faced with Francis’s Blue Center (1953), Lyotard imagines a man gazing at the light on the ocean from a San Francisco hospital room, before encouraging us to witness the blank white spaces creeping all over Francis’s canvases in the years to come. On 1978’s Dynamic Symmetry: ‘You come too late, after the party. The event of colours is over, the lights are going out over the great abandoned tables’. Laura McLean-Ferris Leuven University Press, £35/€39.50 (hardcover)

Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848), a satire featuring a cast of pleasure-seeking individuals, contains a rather lovely example of the medium being the message. Rawdon Crawley, imprisoned for debt, waits to be rescued and bailed out by his wife, the novel’s antiheroine, Becky Sharp. He finally receives word from her: ‘he opened the letter rather tremulously. It was a beautiful letter, highly scented, on a pink paper, and with a light green seal.’ Inside there is nothing but trivia, excuses and vapid selfishness. She won’t be coming to save him. Four Corners continues its Familiars series – new editions of classic literature designed by artists – with Donald Urquhart’s take on Vanity Fair, and it is Becky’s stationery which is the inspiration for the book’s luxuriant cover. In our age of Kindles, iPads and suchlike, books such as these are a reminder of the tactile, sensuous elements of reading, and inside Urquhart has created several illustrations that focus solely on Becky (nearly all of the illustrations feature a bow), stylistically informed by 1930s Hollywood. Becky, rendered in Urquhart’s distinctive illustrative black linedrawing style and loopy text, is a dark-mouthed femme fatale in the vein of Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo. In one illustration, we see her central flaw as a total image: a mopey madam dramatically sulking as the words she utters float above her in girlish black script: ‘Oh how much gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers, and dance before a booth at a fair’. Wishing you all an excellent time in Miami! LMF Four Corners Books, £16.99 (hardcover)

MEDITATIONS ON ART HATE SERIES No 1. The Proximity of Buchenwald to Weimar, and Picasso to Burger King By Neal Brown The city of Weimar was the focus of the German Enlightenment and is where the writers Goethe and Schiller developed the literary movement now known as Weimar Classicism. The city was also the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement, founded by Walter Gropius. The artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, and Lyonel Feininger all taught in Weimar’s Bauhaus School. Weimar has thus been, historically, a renowned centre of the highest of high culture. In 1937, the Nazis constructed the Buchenwald concentration camp, only five miles, point to point, from Weimar’s city center. Between 1938 and 1945, the Nazis imprisoned some 240,000 people in Buchenwald. Although not an extermination camp like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka, at least 56,000 Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners and prisoners-of-war were starved, tortured or worked to death as slaves in the camp. In early 1938 a metal sign stating Jedem das Seine was placed over Buchenwald’s main entrance gate. It literally means ‘to each his own”, but figuratively ‘everyone gets what he deserves.’ It was designed by Franz Ehrlich, a former master pupil at the Dessau Bauhaus, and a Buchenwald inmate. Ehrlich, who had studied with Moholy-Nagy, Klee, Kandinsky and Josef Albers, designed the letters in the manner of his teacher, Joost Schmidt, and the Bauhaus masters. The camp commander ordered it to be installed in the camp gate so as to be readable from the inside. Jedem das Seine was a typical propaganda phrase of the time. The saying is two thousand years old and its origins can be traced back to Roman times. The Nazi SS interpreted ‘to each his own’ as legitimising a perceived right to humiliate and destroy others. It is similar to Arbeit macht frei, the slogan placed above the entrances at other Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and the Theresienstadt. In German, Arbeit macht frei means ‘work brings freedom.’ The phrase Jedem das Seine is still used commonly as a proverb in German-speaking countries. Several modern advertising campaigns in the German language, including advertisements for Nokia, REWE grocery stores, Burger King, and Merkur Bank have caused controversy after using the phrase Jedem das Seine or Jedem den Seinen. An ExxonMobil campaign in 2009 (ExxonMobil is the brand owner of Esso, Exxon and Mobil), advertised Tchibo coffee drinks at the company’s Esso stores with the slogan ‘Jedem den Seinen!’ These advertisements were withdrawn after protest, and Esso said its advertisers had been unaware of the association with Nazism. Tchibo – one of Germany’s biggest chains – said the ‘unfortunate’ slogan would be removed from 700 petrol stations and that the company had ‘never intended to hurt feelings’. Esso said the advertising company that devised the campaign were ignorant of the phrase’s historical significance. In 2010 an art exhibition entitled Art Hate was presented at Galleria Art Hate London, England, comprising work by a number of artists, including Billy Childish, Jimmy Cauty, Neal Brown, Harry Adams, Jamie Reid and Charlotte C. Young. A central work was a metal sign that made reference to the Auschwitz version of Arbeit macht frei. A spokesperson for the artists said that they used it in full knowledge of its historical significance, and that they ‘appropriated its use as a pristine example of dishonest sloganeering, without intending any kind of disrespect to those who had perished or suffered as a consequence of Nazi atrocities.’ The spokesperson said that the artists ‘did not seek to attempt to understand everything about other’s pain – that it is not possible to do so.’ The spokesperson went on to say that ‘it is the artists’ intention to use humankind’s most absolutist examples of human cruelty as a reference point from which to extrapolate other meanings which, by definition,

must be lesser ones. One of the meanings they wish to explore is the feeling, or emotion, of hatred. Art Hate’s silence on genocidal suffering, with regard to Arbeit macht frei, is a form of respect.’ The Art Hate spokesperson said that the artists were ‘interested in the literal and metaphorical proximity of Buchenwald to Weimar, and the implications of this for understanding the many expressions of hatred relative to the practice of art, and the relationship of this with institutional power.’ The spokesperson added that, ‘These artists are interested in the historical context of hatred, such as the relationship of art (especially modernism) with fascism, the history of advertising and the history of propaganda, and how these are governed by the interplay of social, commercial and political directiveness, resulting in deception and confusion. Art Hate artists are interested in the complicit relationships people and institutions may have with forms of hatred, and the abuse of language, and the near universality of hatred (and its various related sub-categories such as anger, stigmatised exclusion, triumphalist revenge, jealousy, etc), in the making and presentation of art. Certain conclusions may drawn from this in respect of contemporary art.’ The spokesperson said that the artists practice ‘an extreme sincerity of purpose, using the presentational devices of wild play, and about which they are fearlessly unashamed.’ The artists were quoted as comparing their work with Picasso’s Guernica, and saying that ‘in our opinion Guernica is a bad, stupid painting, which is so much more about Picasso than about anyone else’s suffering as to constitute an alienation. We wish to avoid such a psychology in our dealings with this very serious subject. We prefer the approach taken by Francisco Goya in his Disasters of War series and their humorous texts, and we have enormous respect for Hans Haacke. But we do, of course, wish to follow our own path, not anyone else’s.’ They also described their fascination with the intimate relationship of art to weaponry, as seen in what they called ‘the ornate murder weapons’ in the Wallace Collection, as well as certain displays at the Imperial War Museum. In 2010 a notable art critic discussed Art Hate in a private letter to one of the artists, Billy Childish. Publication of the text was allowed on condition that the critic’s identity was not revealed, as an association with Art Hate could be misconstrued. It seems to me that you allow yourselves a heartening idealism in respect of ideals of truth in art. Your sincerity is commendable. The misunderstanding and obstacles you have, and will, encounter are a proof of the significance of what you are trying to achieve, although in due course your efforts will surely be acknowledged. In the context of increasingly desperate debates about the value of art, and ‘regeneration through culture’, it seems to be lost that essential prerequisites for artistic value are qualities like valor and nobility of spiritual purpose. The epitome of spiritual purpose - and the opposite of hate – is, of course, love, which seems to be a quality you have in abundance, and indicates a bright hope for the future. I thank you. [citation needed] NOTE: This article may not meet the general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (September 2010)

*Subject to availability

CASS ART gifT vouCheRS Now AvAilAble iN A limiTed ediTioN box SeT (iNCludeS fRee gifT*) viSiT ANy CASS ART SToRe iSliNgToN | hAmpSTeAd | Soho | KeNSiNgToN | ChARiNg CRoSS

www.CASSART.Co.uK

The DOOSAN Artist in Residence program is pleased to present DOOSAN Residency Artists for the first half of 2011 : Kira Kim, Song sik Min, Yoon Young Park. This program was launched in 2009 along with DOOSAN Gallery New York, a non-profit gallery managed by DOOSAN in South Korea. The residence program provides living quarters and studios for a six-month period. The DOOSAN Gallery and the Artist in Residence program in New York are dedicated to the discovery and support of young Korean artists with the goal of giving artists an opportunity to share their work with a broader audience.

Top Kira Kim Super heroes as Monster 2009 painted wooden sculpture installation view 19.7x19.7x11.8 in/ 50x50x30 cm each

Bottom Left Song sik Min A Carpenter’s House 2007 Oil on Canvas 51.3x76.4 in/ 130.3x194 cm

Bottom Right Yoon Young Park Until the end of the World 2006 installation view size variable

110 ArtReview

feature:

As ever y motivational speaker knows, there is no ‘I ’ in ‘team’. There are, however, plent y of ‘ I ’s in

Susan Hefuna

’s

ar tworks. But that doesn’t mean it’s all about her.

wo r ds : m A R K R A PP O LT p o r t r ait : ro b e rt n e t h e r y

has spent the past two decades producing a large number of works that feature the word ‘I’ – normally in its Arabic incarnation, ana – at their centre, Susan Hefuna is an artist whose identity is surprisingly tricky to locate. For if that love of the personal pronoun might at first suggest a form of narcissism, it’s absolutely not the kind of reflexive narcissism Narcissus knew. Take her monograph Pars Pro Toto (2008); at almost exactly the midpoint, it features an interview between Hans Ulrich Obrist and the late Senegalese writer Tayeb Salih, who had built a reputation as one of the masters of contemporary Arabic literature. While there’s no doubt that Hefuna has a strong interest in literature, at no point in Obrist and Salih’s conversation – which appears to start in the middle rather than the beginning (Q. So who are they, the architects?) – does either party make any direct reference to Hefuna’s work. Similarly generous, the artist’s Manafesto (2008), produced for the Serpentine Gallery’s Manifesto Marathon of that year, consists of a series of 200 postcards, branded on one side with a Manafesto logo, onto which she invited random passersby selected at various London locations to write a word or sentence that they thought might make the world a better place. These range from matters of local interest – ‘We need more Tubes’ and ‘No student fees!’ – to matters of more universal interest – ‘Everyone should help people in need’ – to utopian sentimentalism – ‘Always sunshine and green trees’ – and statements of a more personal nature – ‘Need to change myself’. Although given that there are no clues as to who this ‘self’ might be, the last is only personal in a limited sense, particularly since the accumulated statements were finally read out as a call and echo by a pair of actors. Given that Hefuna’s initial contribution to this project was to propose that it should enshrine the ‘I’ (by embedding ana in the title), it’s somewhat surprising to find that it tells us little or nothing about Hefuna herself. So here are some facts: Hefuna was born to a German mother and Egyptian father. She leads something of an itinerant life that encompasses Germany, America, Egypt and, more recently, Japan. Her work spans drawing, sculpture, photography, video, costume-making and performance, and has been exhibited at the Louvre (2004), the Sharjah Biennial (2007), New York’s ArtReview

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Hefuna has managed to transform the basic logic of grammar – to make the first person singular stand for a first person plural New Museum (2008) and the Venice Biennale (2009), as well as in a number of commercial gallery spaces. But even now, all you really know about her is that her parents were born on different continents, that this might account for her interest in identity, that she likes to travel (perhaps because of her mixed ethnicity) and that she is not in the habit of expressing herself via a single medium (perhaps she’s indecisive). Although she has said that all her work comes down to drawing of one sort of another. Take Manafesto, for example. While it may appear random and chaotic, to Hefuna’s eyes it reveals a structure through which one might understand a community. Partly because, according to the artist, the kinds of wishes people expressed seemed to correspond to the area in which they were interviewed, and partly because the work allows a city, via its inhabitants, to express itself. But above all because the postcards gave a certain structure to the city, even if that structure was developed by the artist as an individual, through the decisions she made about where to stand and who to stop. Like much of Hefuna’s work (take the video ANA/ICH, 2006, in which 81 people from the streets of Cairo say “ana , for instance), Manafesto executes a delicate operation of simultaneous molecularisation and atomisation – in social terms, of the group and the individual. This dynamic is nowhere more present than in Hefuna’s drawings. Earlier this year, in both a group show at the Kunstmuseum Thun (in which Hefuna exhibited alongside Bharti Kher and Fred Tomaselli), and a solo show at London’s Rose Issa Projects, Hefuna presented a collection of works on tracing paper, each one of which is titled either Cityscape or Building, which seemed to represent a series of abstracted grids, or molecular structures, in forms distorted to varying degrees. It was clear, from the arrangements of points (objects without dimension) and lines (accumulations of points given a dimension), that the works were about connections, but they gave no clue (beyond their titles) as to what was being connected with what. But the sheer volume of such works, which Hefuna creates almost obsessively in regular retreats each year (often in New York), appears to represent an essential desire to connect, to map the world around her and thus to communicate a given state of affairs. Although the fact that Hefuna draws, redraws and then draws again suggests a state of affairs that is contingent at best.

This will to structure finds its most obvious articulation in an ongoing series of works that take the mashrabiya – a decorative wooden screen used in traditional Islamic architecture to regulate the light coming through windows while also hiding the interior life of a building (including its unveiled women) from the exterior life of the street. The ongoing Woman Cairo series features a mashrabiya in which the words of the title, together with the year of the work’s manufacture, as registered in both the Islamic and Gregorian calendars (1429 and 2008, for example), are featured through a series of clever twists and rotations of the hand-turned dowels that form the screen. It’s as if a wall had been genetically modified to produce its own graffiti. Furthermore, if you’re unfamiliar with non-Western forms of measuring time, the assertion of presence (or the present date) seems to evoke the past (what happened in 1429, you might wonder), particularly since the mashrabiya, and the nonindustrial nature of its manufacture, so strongly evoke another age. It’s a cultural slippage of which Hefuna is acutely aware. Where she reads Arabic, I see little more than a pattern. Similarly, a mashrabiya might seem a charmingly decorative object to me, while to an Arab woman it might seem a boundary or limit of expression. When I first saw the word ana embedded in one of Hefuna’s screens, I wondered who this woman that the artist

feature: Susan Hefuna

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feature: scott king feature: Susan Hefuna

appeared so obsessed with might be. And even though it seems to refer to Hefuna, should I pronounce the word, it instantly refers to me. Through some strange alchemy, Hefuna has managed to transform the basic logic of grammar – to make the first person singular stand for a first person plural. In the face of these particular screens, everyone is I. But that’s not to say that Hefuna is some sort of straightforwardly radical socialist; indeed, it’s difficult to prove that she has a particular politics at all. Recalling a workshop she conduced at the all-female Zayed University in Abu Dhabi in 2004, Hefuna states that the primary differentiation between the various abaya-clad students was which designer bags accompanied them. As a result, the workshop culminated in the production of a series of exaggeratedly idiosyncratic bags. If this was designed to highlight a certain limit on the ability of the Emirate’s women to express themselves, the project wasn’t a campaign for self-expression without any limits at all; it was instead merely extrapolating from the status quo. Crucially, rather than creating a bag for themselves, each student was instructed to design a bag for someone else. As much as the project was about self-assertion, it was also about denying the self in order to allow someone else to be revealed. Pushed to its limits, of course, and contrary to its initial appearance, such a scheme means that no one reveals herself. It becomes a kind of daisy chain in which everyone reveals someone else. There’s a similar kind of blind generosity at work in the Vitrines of Afaf (2007), exhibited at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery. The sculpture features a series of personally significant objects – flags, car badges, trays, ornaments, etc – donated by the wives, sisters and mothers of local workers (Afaf is a name given to women whose identities are not made public) and exhibited in the kind of portable glass and aluminium vitrine used in shops all over the Egyptian capital. And like earlier projects, it both reveals and conceals its participants.

Perhaps this strikes to the core of Hefuna’s work. Yes, it revolves around the ego of the artist, historical clichés about the male gaze and the lonely life of the misunderstood creative genius. Perhaps there’s even an übermenschlich strain. But if, like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Hefuna seems to be saying that ‘man is something which ought to be overcome’, it’s only in order to foster a more open and generous spirit, one in which the individual and the collective can be happy in a shared economy of me, me and me. Susan Hefuna is in residence at the Serpentine Gallery’s Centre for Possible Studies, London, and her work is included in Contemporary Eye: Crossovers, at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until 6 March. The exhibition 7 x ANA is on view at the Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna, until 13 March, and Mapping Wien: A Project by Susan Hefuna, is on show at Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna, until 8 January. The gallery will also host a solo presentation of Hefuna’s work in the Art Kabinet section of Art Basel Miami Beach, 2–5 December

works (in order of appearance) Postcards from Manafesto, 2008, produced on the occasion of the Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2008 Cityscape, 2004 (installation view, Fare Mondi, Venice Biennale, 2009), watercolour on paper, each 45 x 4 x 38 cm. Photo: Claudio Franzini. Courtesy Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin Woman Cairo, 2008 (installation view, Kunstmuseum Thun, 2010), ink, wood, 261 x 212 cm. Courtesy Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin Dream, 2009 (installation view, Art Dubai, 2009), wood, gouache, 200 x 500 x 500 cm. Photo: Russ Kientsch. Courtesy Third Line, Dubai

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Future Generation Art Prize Shortlisted Artists Ziad Antar / Fikret Atay / Fei Cao / Keren Cytter Nathalie Djurberg / Simon Fujiwara / Nicholas Hlobo Clemens Hollerer / Runo Lagomarsino / Cinthia Marcelle Gareth Moore / Nicolae Mircea / Ruben Ochoa Wilfredo Prieto Garcia / Katerina Seda / Guido van der Werve Nico Vascellari / Jorinde Voigt Artem Volokytin / Emily Wardill / Hector Zamora www.futuregenerationartprize.org

30 October 2010 – 9 January 2011

PinchukArtCentre

pinchukartcentre.org Partner of PinchukArtCentre

feature:

Referencing slapstick cinema, ar t histor y and the annals of totalitarianism,

Adrian Ghenie

’s paintings

find ways of confronting a ‘centur y of humiliation’.

wo r ds : Ja n e N e a l

66

ArtReview

dramatically in recent years: there has been a sudden increase in scale and a more confident, at times aggressive, handling of paint. Although the thirty-four-year-old Romanian now works predominantly on a scale of 2 x 3m or bigger, four years ago, when his paintings were first exhibited internationally, they were fairly small (usually well under one metre square) and featured delicately rendered, intriguing mise en scènes of twentieth-century dictators in peculiar and often darkly humorous circumstances: Hitler and Lenin hanging out by abandoned swimming pools (Ironic History I, 2006), or Hitler in front of Lenin’s tomb, teaching his little dog to sit (Ironic History II, 2006). The works play to the age-old tendency to ridicule once-feared figures of authority through banalisation, humour and caricature from a position of safety: in this case, the future, where a grown-up Ghenie can exact revenge for the fear his parents and grandparents were subjected to in their youth. The paintings also reveal one of Ghenie’s key sources of inspiration: the slapstick of early cinema, most notably Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Indeed, Ghenie’s preoccupation with his paintings’ relationship to cinema finds expression in both subject and form as he translates motifs such as pie fights into paint and attempts to recreate the quality and atmosphere of early black-and-white film, with its punctuation of intermittent, cross-screen lines and flickering light. The influence of these old films has become increasingly apparent since the scale of his canvases increased to mimic the format of screens found in small, provincial film theatres. In his studio earlier this year, Ghenie tells me that, back in 2006, “I was actually more concerned with finding ways to combine my fascination for recent and ancient history, while still making works that were relevant to a contemporary audience”. The resulting paintings were part of a series entitled If You Open It You’ll Get Dirty (2006), featuring grey tomblike structures half-buried by flurries of ash, collected in the shadows of underground chambers. The initial reading of the work suggests an epochal volcanic eruption – Pompeii, say – but there is also a latent political dimension to the paintings, a connection being made between the destruction of a great civilisation and what happened to Eastern Europe under communism, when all the colour and vibrancy of this culturally rich region was smothered and greyed under an ideological dust. While Ghenie obviously draws inspiration from history – notably that of Europe over the past 60 years – he rejects attempts to label him a ‘history painter’: “People have talked about me being a ‘history painter’, but I’m not – not in the nineteenth-century Romantic sense. Yes, I might have nostalgia for a golden age of painting, but my work takes me on much darker journeys into our collective imaginings of other stories – real and fictionalised. I’m simply trying to paint my vision of those times – a giant curiosity.” This “giant curiosity” of Ghenie’s involved his reading up on psychoanalysis, particularly ideas of the collective unconscious, and experimenting with Jungian exercises to try to remember all kinds of ‘ordinary’ scenes and objects that might take on ‘extraordinary’ significance, such as the specific angle from which a room is viewed, or the presence of a lamp in a corner. The artist became fascinated with how the subconscious can merge physically encountered images with those received from cinema and television, so that both lived and virtual experiences become

ad r ian g h e n ie ’s p r ac t ic e h as c h an g e d

part of our memory banks. Towards the end of 2006 and into 2007, as Ghenie’s work took on explicitly psychological themes, it became tonally darker too: “As soon as I changed the motive and the scale of my work and started to explore the collective unconscious, I became the subject, like Flaubert’s line: ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi’. I have in my brain a double life, constantly between two worlds.” Shadow of a Daydream, as the ensuing series of works from 2007 came to be known, owes much to Ghenie’s first long stay in Berlin. While the work contains references to Europe outside Germany, and to America, it is the period of Berlin in the 1940s that dominates these paintings in terms of subject matter, although some of the references can be subtle. Hitler and Eva Braun can be found in one work, That Moment (2007), but their identity is obscured by their sitting partway inside a coffinlike box, their heads and shoulders hidden in the shadow of the casket’s open lid. The clue to their identity comes in the form of the Discobolus Palombra, a Roman copy of the lost Greek sculpture of the discus-thrower, which stands prominently and incongruously in the painting, and which Ghenie discovered was coveted and eventually purchased by Hitler from its Italian owners. In The Nightmare (2007), meanwhile, a sleeping Ghenie is watched over by the spectre of Hitler. This painting is the most explicit in terms of imagery and in some ways the most straightforward, even though the scenario is the most fantastical. The object of Ghenie’s fantasy might be peculiar to him, but the scenario – a ‘bogeyman’ creeping up on people as they sleep – is familiar to all. In 2008 Ghenie produced The Flight into Egypt, a series that merged his fascination for the collective unconscious with his interest in early cinema and its impact on both society and painting as a whole. In the darkly evocative Babe in the Wood (2008), which plays to a small-town film-screen format, it seems at first glance as if the child is centred in the clearing of a wood, poised on an ominous-looking platform. Closer inspection, however, reveals the wood to be walled in by a sinister-looking shack, leaving the viewer to determine whether the child has emerged from this strange, forested ‘room’ or is about to be sucked into it. “Most people share the experience of having

feature: adrian ghenie

dreamed they were abandoned in a wood”, says the artist, “maybe because we’ve all seen so many of the same films”. That’s possible, but Ghenie also plays on the common dream of passing through a series of rooms, as if propelled by some unseen force. He perceives this process as a descent from the upper levels of consciousness into the depths of the subconscious. “The first room contains images and offers situations familiar to many, but the successive rooms or deep subconscious hold a person’s darkest private fears.” Ghenie slides back from his discussion of Jungian psychoanalysis to the role of the cinema in shaping the twentieth century. “If you think about it”, he says, “the ritual of going to the cinema in the 1930s was religiously observed. Never before or since has a whole generation of people observed the same images and seen the same stories together at the same time. Now, through television, we have so much choice – we can watch a myriad of different programmes on our own – but then there was this unique moment of shared experience. And what did people see? For the most part they went to see slapstick – so actually, what the audience was witnessing on a regular basis was ritual humiliation. Think of the typical scenario: the ‘nice, middle-class lady’ in her fur coat, minding her own business, only to be hit in the face out of the blue by a custard pie. When you really think about it, it’s quite unpleasant… And you know the strangest thing – it’s almost like a precursor to the rise of fascism. This was meant to be funny, but for millions of ordinary people who were simply minding their own business throughout Europe, life was about to change in the most shocking and unexpected way. They were about to be humiliated and destroyed – and the rest of the world couldn’t believe it and didn’t seem to have really seen it coming. Maybe the directors and actors could feel this – even before it began to become known.” Some of Ghenie’s most important works to date – Nickelodeon (2008), Laurel and Hardy (2008) and a number of what he describes as his pie-fight studies, commissioned for the 2008 Liverpool Biennial – directly reference early cinema. Nickelodeon features a bedraggled group of men and women. Though expensively dressed in fur, the figures are in a sorry state, desperately trying to wipe off the cream dripping from their faces. It is disturbing on many levels, but when viewed in light of the 68

ArtReview

prominent role played by Jewish émigrés in the creation of neighbourhood movie theatres, known as nickelodeons (and from which the US cartoon channel took its name), the scene becomes a chillingly brutal metaphor for the realities of anti-Semitism. “I was struck by how powerful the scene becomes when you translate the black-and-white film into the medium of paint”, says Ghenie. “For one thing it becomes static, so you are forced to look at this one scene for much longer; for another, the colours and medium of paint lend the subject a weight and force it formerly lacked in celluloid. The experience becomes actual, physical.” More recently Ghenie has been delving into the world of the obsessive collector. One figure in particular has lastingly captured his imagination: Hermann Goering. The artist points to a work hanging in his studio, The Collector 2 (2008), depicting the Luftwaffe commander-in-chief holding paintings in both hands while looking longingly at another. “There he is surrounded by everything he could literally get his hands on – but he still wants more”, says Ghenie. “He’s sacrificed his humanity for his obsession.” Goering’s face is painted a shade of puce: a sick colour,

“A lady in her fur coat, minding her own business, only to be hit in the face out of the blue by a custard pie – when you think about it, it’s quite unpleasant”

feature: adrian ghenie

and intended to be read that way. The violent reds and angry purples are strongly suggestive of a slaughterhouse, and there are deliberate nods to Bacon’s screaming popes. “As I was painting this”, he continues, “I wondered what a contemporary collector would do if they found themselves in such a powerful position and could help themselves to anything they wanted in the name of ‘confiscating it for the good of the people’. Don’t you think if they were passionate enough they’d be tempted to do the same?” And what of the artist? Ghenie’s amusing yet derisive selfportrait as a decidedly unhip onstage Elvis suggests that the young art stars occupying a space in the lives and courts of the new super-rich have become ‘acts’ in themselves. The artist’s portrait as a figure of shuffling ridicule makes it clear this is not a position Ghenie himself is comfortable occupying. This discomfort is intensified once you know that the self-portrait is also an homage to the artist’s father, to whom Ghenie bears an uncanny resemblance. An Elvis impersonator in his youth, Ghenie senior never understood the words he sang or really grasped the Presley phenomenon, but Ghenie felt his father would nonetheless have enjoyed the 15 minutes of fame this work now brings him. Despite that revelation, the artist would rather the motivations behind the painting remain more veiled than explicit: “I don’t want to give the viewer everything”, he says, “but when people look at my work, I want them to think about what they’re looking at and to feel something. I’m not a history painter, but I am fascinated by what happened in the twentieth century and how it continues to shape today. I don’t feel an obligation to tell this to the world, but for me the twentieth century was a century of humiliation – and through my painting, I’m still trying to understand this.” New work by Adrian Ghenie will be on show at SMAK, Ghent, from 3 December to 27 March, and at Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, from 27 January to 12 March

works (in order of appearance) Pie Fight Study II, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 55 x 59 cm. Collection Hammer Museum, Los Angeles The Dada Room (detail), 2010, mixed media, 320 x 600 x 500 cm. Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp Laurel and Hardy (detail), 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 200 x 85 cm (Laurel) © the artist. Courtesy Haunch of Venison, London, New York & Berlin The Nightmare, 2007, oil and acrylic on canvas, 148 x 200 cm. Collection Blake Byrne, Los Angeles Nickelodeon, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 230 x 420 cm. Collection François Pinault Foundation Laurel and Hardy (detail), 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 104 x 200 cm (Hardy). © the artist. Courtesy Haunch of Venison, London, New York & Berlin The Collector I, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 200 x 290 cm. Hall Collection, New York & Düsseldorf Selfportrait, The Devil, 2010, oil on canvas, 48 x 40 cm. Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp

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International contemporary art fair september 2011 Lyon-Fr. www.docksartfair.com

GENAY NEUVILLE-SUR-SAÔNE SAINT-GERMAIN-

MONTANAY

AU-MONT-D’OR CURIS-

FLEURIEUAU-MONT-D’OR SUR-SAÔNE ALBIGNYPOLEYMIEUXROCHETAILLEESUR-SAONE AU-MONT-D’OR COUZONSUR-SAÔNE AU-MONT-D’OR FONTAINESLIMONEST

LA TOURDE-SALVAGNY

DARDILLY

CAILLOUXSUR-FONTAINES

SATHONAYVILLAGE

SAINT-ROMAINSAINT-MARTIN

SATHONAYAU-MONT-D’OR FONTAINESCAMPRILLIEUX-LA-PAPE SAINT-DIDIERCOLLONGESSUR-SAÔNE SAINT-CYRAU-MONT-D’OR AU-MONT-D’OR AU-MONT-D’OR

HERITAGE + DISCOVERY

CALUIRE-ET-CUIRE

CHAMPAGNE-

CULTURE + CREATIVITY

AU-MONT-D’OR

JONAGE

VAULX-EN-VELIN

MARCY-L’ETOILE CHARBONNIERES-

VILLEURBANNE

ECULLY

LES-BAINS SAINT-GENISLES-OLLIERES TASSIN-LA-DEMI-LUNE CRAPONNE

DECINES-CHARPIEU

LYON

FRANCHEVILLE

CHASSIEU

SAINTE-FOY-

BRON

LES-LYON LA MULATIERE

ELECTRONIC + MUSIC

FASHION + EXHIBITION

OULLINS SAINT-FONS

SAINT-GENIS-LAVAL

DANCE + CONTEMPORARY ART + BIENNIALS

IRIGNY

CINEMA + EVENT

SAINT-PRIEST VENISSIEUX

PIERRE-BENITE

FEYZIN

CORBAS

VERNAISON SOLAIZE

ATELIER POSTE 4

CHARLY

GRIGNY

GIVORS

Greater Lyon: a buzzing metropolis, a space for creation, and a place bursting with imagination, which today plays an active role in promoting culture and creativity. It backs the Lyon Contemporary Art and Dance Biennials, coordinates European Heritage Days events, supports Lumière 2010 and the Grand Lyon Film Festival, and is wholeheartedly committed to encouraging art in public spaces. CULTURE + CREATIVITY – or how major events help a whole city to shine on the international stage.

www.grandlyon.com

MEYZIEU

MIONS

International contemporary art fair Lyon-Fr.

Award Montblanc // Docks Art Fair

Edito In September 2011 the third edition of Docks Art Fair will take place, bringing together 40 international galleries for a contemporary art fair that is based around a set of unique principles. Unique, because it gives the public a chance to discover and learn about the current creative work of the selected galleries, through the presentation of a solo presentation by an emerging artist at every booth. Unique, because Docks Art Fair is attached to the Biennial of Contemporary Art of Lyon, by date as well as geographical situation in the Confluence, a newly developed district in Lyon, and a symbol for the 21st century. Finally, unique because the region (Rhône-Alpes and the surrounding areas) is rich in structures dedicated to contemporary art (museums, art institutions and art schools), a fact that has allowed Docks Art Fair to take up a leading role in the international contemporary artistic scene. Docks Art Fair enters a synergy with all these other organisations and offers to Lyon and its region the opportunity to become a dynamic place in the contemporary art market, and taking its place in the schedule of international contemporary art fairs.

Docks Art Fair and Montblanc have come together for a second year to organise the Montblanc Docks Art Fair Prize, honouring the work of a gallery and the talent of one artist. The Montblanc brand has long been associated with artistic creation, the art of writing, of expression and performance. This intellectual dimension is at the core of the brand, and applies not only to its product but to its communication in the broadest sense. Montblanc has been involved in many artistic forms, such as classical music, opera, contemporary painting and, more recently, cinema and photography.

Committee The new members of the selection committee are Georgina Adam Art Market Editor at Large, The Art Newspaper Isabelle Bertolotti Conservator of MAC of Lyon, Curator

Montblanc supports numerous projects in these various artistic realms, particularly through its Cultural Foundation, which has made a yearly award to illustrious art sponsors since 1992, in 11 different countries, including France, the home of the brand. It’s therefore natural that Montblanc should sponsor the prize at the Docks Art Fair, which distinguishes the best in contemporary artistic creation. The prize is awarded by an international selection committee to one of the artists presented at the fair.

Barbara Polla Gallery owner Switzerland Analix Forever Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo President of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turino, Italy Richard Leydier Editor in chief magazine artpress Pascal Neveux Director FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur

What’s up,Docks? 01 01. Luc Mattenberger represented by Analix Forever Luc Mattenberger is one of those artists who explore the creative, aesthetic, functional, sexual, emancipatory and poetic dimensions of the machine. Usually, however, he does not confront spectators with the workings of his ingenious contraptions, preferring instead to simply suggest their extraordinary potential. But not with this piece. Mattenberger’s Moonrise is involved in a long, slow physical engagement with the mountain. In fact, Mattenberger locates the object in terms of its poetical function, as a machine for representing the moon, and thus relates it to the myth of an eternal new beginning. Imagine it as a brave shepherd, bent under the weight of its effort, to ensure that the lunar star is indeed present for us each night. At the top of the mountains of the Valais, where the landscape is not so unlike what can be seen through a telescope pointed at the moon, anything seems possible. A solitary creature comes out of nowhere and makes the moon shine, then disappears, only to perform this task once again. This nocturnal miracle occurs with extreme slowness. Luc Mattenberger acts the demiurge, appropriates the solar myth of Sisyphus, reverses it, locates it in the Valais and in the night. And so Moonrise does its tireless work, with constancy, in the silence of the mountain, in the opaque darkness of the peaks. Never has a machine been so moving, nor the mountain so impenetrable, or the moon so enigmatic. Luc Mattenberger, Moonrise, 2009 Courtesy: l’artiste et Analix Forever, Genève

02 02. Olivier Nottellet represented by galerie martinethibaultdelachâtre “Few materials to read happy ruins” Olivier Nottellet propose a sequence of mental images, invisible but possible. Between a barbell half catched by its reflect, a camera which confused itself with his paper print, a faded fire on a playing table, giant cursors on agreen line, so many elements to activate on the back of big black paintings, enigmatic, dynamic and paradoxically melancholic landscapes. Between plays and thoughts a work in tension for a spread and complex attention. Olivier Nottellet, view of the booth at Docks art fair 09 , Award of IAC Rhône Alpes (acquisition of artworks for their collection) Courtesy: M & T La Châtre

03 03. Nina Fowler represented by Galerie Dukan&Hourdequin I’ve long admired the work of Nina Fowler both as a technician and, although it might seem a strange choice of phrase, as a conceptual artist. Her technical facility could position her work at the center of the academic tradition but it seems to me that her choices and the application of technique site her work in a much more contradictory experimental locus. The portrayal of iconic faces of twentieth century ‘Pop’ culture is nothing new in the Fine Arts – obviously Warhol looms large but more recently, from Elizabeth Peyton via the various so called YBA’s to the Italian Francesco Vezzoli, famous and infamous faces from mass media pantheons of celebrity are scattered through the contemporary art world. However, with Fowler the bar is raised. The virtually autistic application of detail in execution is applied to an archeological approach to famous faces from the past…

04

04. Jean-Antoine Raveyre represented by Galerie Bernard Ceysson Jean-Antoine Raveyre can not really be considered as a photographer. He not only masters perfectly the technique of Photography, but he uses it to give likelihood and credibility to his pieces. His photographs certify to the spectator that what he is looking at really happened, the moment has been caught and recorded. Jean-Antoine Raveyre stages and shows us theatrical, or even cinematographic, performances, because everyone of his pieces engages a narrative and discursive process in our mind, from which no one can escape. Bernard Ceysson 2008 Exhibition in gallery Bernard Ceysson Paris/23 January – 8 March 2011. Exhibition in gallery Bernard Ceysson Luxembourg/European Month of Photography/May – June 2011.

John Maybury 2009 Foreword from “Valentino’s Funeral” artist book by Nina Fowler Edited by Dukan&Hourdequin Nina Fowler_Courtesy: Dukan&Hourdequin

Some news from artists shown at DAF 09.

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06

05. Virginie Bailly represented by Galerie Transit

06. Michel Aubry represented by Galerie Marion Meyer

Impressions from my various stays in China (2006 and 2008) spurred on a series of works in the line of the Troubler les lointains series, in which colour and line become image through the gesture, the power of the brushstroke. Through the essays ‘Vide et plein, le language pictural chinois’ of the Chinese philosopher François Cheng I became engrossed in traditional painting and calligraphy. “Also, the painter seeks to capture the internal lines of things, and to record their interrelatedness: hence the importance of the brushstroke. But these lines of force can only come into existence on a white background which is Emptiness (the Void). Emptiness (The Void) is therefore created on the canvas, in between the elements and through the stroke itself.”

Michel Aubry was born in 1959, he lives and works in Paris. His work has developed over thirty years with the same exigency. In the 80s, he has set up a work of “translation” that allows him to create a bridge between Sardinian musical masters and the world of contemporary sculpture. This passage from one world to another is also characteristic of the work of the 90s with the whole range of Mise en musique (basically translated by transformed object into music), those of Gerrit Rietveld furniture and those costumes created by functional Constructivist artists. The stand-in double remains at the heart of the film work undertaken by the artist since the 2000 with the Répliqûres, sequences of, inter alia from La Grande Illusion by Jean Renoir and with the film about art schools visit undertaken by Eric von Stroheim. The figure of Stroheim embodies the interest of the artist Michel Aubry, create an autonomous world who can fit into any situation. This ability is simply the total commitment of a life in a work.

What is Emptiness and what is the significance of Fullness ? Through my paint strokes I attempted to capture the tension field between both in pastel and paint. I translated the power of Chinese gesturality and its ‘esprit’ (‘spirit’) to a Western content and form. Virginie Bailly Courtesy: Galerie Transit

Michel Aubry, exhibition view La Loge Fantôme, 2010 Courtesy: Marc Domage

 
 
 
  


 
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Mogashan (2010) - © Aurélie Pétrel et olivierhouggalerie






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Aurélie Pétrel is a visual artist who lives and works in Rhône-Alpes. A graduate of Lyon School of Fine Art, she creates photographic installations of sculptural inspiration. Aurélie captures the point at which time is suspended, hanging in the balance, anchored by the evanescent yet solid thread of life. Her works featured in the Regards croisés Exhibition held recently in the Rhône-Alpes Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.

08 08. Julien Beneyton represented by Galerie Olivier Robert

Elise Cam creates artworks in which the materialism marks the pregnancy of the works on ground. Their “flat” presence is stronger as the plastic quality is privileged. To put, to compress, to hammer, to pile the process of every construction catch eyes closer to the ground, on the contrary, a large number of drawings at walls propose multiple flight points. What’s position for observing, in which perspective ? The public roves, looking for the overall plan and see the possibility of a site in a quite heterogeneous which never dictates the road to take. Elise Cam will be exhibited at Olivier Houg Galerie, with “Level”// From November 19th 2010 to January, 8th 2011 and is part of the exchange between Moscow biennial and the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-arts of Lyon Elise Cam, Sans titre, 2010, mixte media, Courtesy: Olivier Houg Galerie

(…) 2010 “Collection 3” , Fondation Salomon, Annecy 2010/11 Resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (Netherlands) 2011 Solo show, Galerie Olivier Robert, Paris Solo show, Maison des Arts de Malakoff, Malakoff Human Brothers Richard Leydier Extract from text in the Julien Beneyton’s monographic catalogue, 2006 Julien Beneyton, Mauritanie, La petite pêche – acrylic on wood – 230 x 400 cm 2010 Courtesy: Galerie Olivier Robert

What’s up, Docks ?

Thierry Raspail, artistic director of the Lyon Biennale, has chosen Victoria Noorthoorn to curate the 11th edition of the Biennale de Lyon.

© Cristiano-Sant’Anna

07 07. Elise Cam represented by Olivier Houg Galerie

Beneyton paints, among other things, people that societies in so-called developed countries (in Paris, New York, Warsaw…) do not want to see or barely tolerate: bums, homeless people, young Blacks and Arabs, rappers whose music Julien listens to constantly, etc. But while today’s subversives claim to defend social categories (abstract by nature), he chooses to paint individuals. Beneyton responds to the hackneyed clichés of critical art with an endeavor to re-humanize, by giving faces back a name and a personal history. His paintings are portraits that result, above all, from an encounter, a discussion with the model, then a photo shoot if the person agrees to it. The many photographs serve as sketches for the painting. The artist accumulates details that will be clues to the subject’s personality.

Victoria Noorthoorn, aged 39, is a freelance curator based in Buenos Aires. She has worked as Projects Coordinator of the International Program at MoMA, New York; as Assistant Curator of Contemporary Exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York; and as Curator of Malba-Fundación Costantini in Buenos Aires. In 2004, she began working as a freelance curator on exhibition projects in Buenos Aires, Santiago, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Cali, Pontevedra and New York. She conceived and installed the permanent collection of the new branch of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Neuquén, Argentina (2004); was Chief Curator of the 29th Pontevedra Art Biennial (2006) in Spain; collaborated on the presentation of Argentinian artist León Ferrari at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007) – which won the Golden Lion – and co-curated the Ricardo Garabito retrospective (2007) at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires. She also curated the exhibition Beginning With A Bang! From Confrontation to Intimacy. An Exhibition of Argentine Contemporary Artists 1960 / 2007 at The Americas Society, New York (2007). In 2008 she co-curated the 41st Salón Nacional in Cali, Colombia, with Colombian artists Wilson Díaz, José Horacio Martínez, Oscar Muñoz and Bernardo Ortiz. The event comprised 17 exhibitions by local curators and three major international exhibitions: Questioning the Image, Presentation and Representation, and Participation and Poetics. In association with Chilean artist and exhibition curator Camilo Yáñez, Noorthoorn won the international competition to select the artistic directors of the 7th Mercosul Biennial, held from September to November 2009 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The duo invited eight Latin American artists (Erick Beltrán, Lenora de Barros, Marina De Caro, Roberto Jacoby, Artur Lescher, Laura Lima, Mario Navarro and Bernardo Ortiz) to study ways in which artistic practices can impart structure to the operating system of the biennial-as-institution. Noorthoorn is currently preparing a retrospective of the artist Marta Minujín for Malba-Fundación Costantini, which opens in November 2010 in Buenos Aires.

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feature:

Weaving unpredictably bet ween the worlds of ar t and graphic design,

King

of fers anarchic

ripostes to cultural mores

wo r ds : O l i v e r B a sc i a n o

78

ArtReview

Scott

two sets of glass-fronted double doors leading to the fine art department at Hull College of Art in the north of England. On the windows of these doors, the students used to fly-post notices of upcoming exhibitions or gigs that they were staging. They did, that is, until Scott King – then on the graphic design BA and irked by the in-crowd mentality of the other faculty, but bored with the corporate ambitions of his own – tore them all down and replaced them with a series of notices apparently issued by the college authorities, proclaiming ‘No Posters Allowed on These Doors (This Is Not a Poster)’ and ‘No Information Allowed on These Doors (This Is Not Student Information)’. A fracas between the art students and the college’s administrators ensued, which King, rightly rather pleased with himself, observed from afar. This early student work displays competing facets of the artist’s career. His foregrounding of minimal blocked typefaces on a single bright neon background bagged him a job art-directing Terry Richardson’s i-D magazine in the early 1990s. The position, however, left King frustrated at the commercialism of the design medium, and increasingly interested in communicating ideas of his own rather than those of others. On leaving the magazine after three years, in 1996, King set up a variety of pranks partly indebted to the Situationists’ sense of satire and the ridiculous, but also including knowingly obvious pastiches – such as the 1998 screenprint Meanwhile in a Large Central London Apartment the Telephone Is Ringing… with historian Matthew Worley, featuring a conversation between socialite Tamara Beckwith and the Red Army Faction’s Ulrike Meinhof – to the eight-issue run of CRASH!, a publication slipped (prior to gaining permission, at least in the first instance) inside the pages of men’s lifestyle magazines. CRASH! lampooned the crass idealism of Cool Britannia and the ‘lad’ culture of the time. Slogans, depicted in King’s bold capitalisation, rallied for ‘Prada Meinhof’ and ‘Death to the New’, while antagonistic affronts to popular British figures (‘Death to Chris Evans’ or ‘David Baddiel Is the Rent Boy of the Bourgeoisie’) proliferated. King’s relationship to pop culture is opaque – he clearly loathes hype, but nonetheless does not wholly reject the culture it promotes. The artist takes commissions from select clients: posters for the band Earl Brutus (Earl Brutus Say Cunt, 1999), for example, or the cover he designed (along with Wolfgang Tillmans) for the 2003 Pet Shop Boys remix album Disco 3 and its related singles. King’s approach to this culture is Warholian in its celebratory, unironic use of motifs from popular consciousness, but he satirises the growing dependence on frivolous commodity, which comes at the price of any sense of social identity. In a series of sculptural works from 2008, King dressed busts of Lenin and Marx in the iconic accoutrements of Diana Ross or Roy Wood (from the glam-rock band Wizzard), reflecting a world in which the faux sincerity of I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (1973) means more to people than, say, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ (Marx, 1875). Another motif to be found in King’s work is terrorism – not just the retrospective glamour of the Baader-Meinhof/Red Army Faction imagery potted throughout his practice (the gang’s faces merging with those of various iconic portraits, from Cher to the Mona Lisa), but the Islamic and Irish Republican varieties as well, together with rogue, individual acts of domestic aggression. A 2006 work on paper, for example, A Brief History of Terror, uses

large colour-coded dots to map London’s history of attacks, ranging from red for the Angry Brigade’s militancy of the 1970s to yellow for the Tube and bus suicide bombings of July 2005. Nowhere does the artist condone the terrorists’ actions; in fact, King offers little commentary at all, just a cool presentation of events as statistics or through diluted cultural imagery. Rather he seems to be using terrorism to attempt to fracture our viewing process, jolting us to see beyond the corporate imagery, and in the process to recognise its existence, and to question and be angered by its uses in a commodified world. King’s lifestyle-magazine CV, together with the fact that his practice often employs a humorous tone, has meant that his work has not been taken as seriously as it deserves to be within contemporary art circles. Fast-forward to 2010, however, and King is being invited by Hans Ulrich Obrist to take part in one of the Serpentine Gallery’s annual talk and performance marathons, this time concentrating on mapping. Here, collaborating again with Worley, King was invited to create a publication to run alongside the event – after the pair’s proposals for a touring ‘Taliban Library Van’ of extremist literature was rejected. The final result was equally calculated to provoke. A Better Britain (2010), written in the style of a funding pitch for various public art projects, each one more absurd than the last, played on the political interventionism that has characterised UK arts funding over the past ten years. Lauding Britain’s ‘cultural heritage’ of art and pop

feature: scott king

ArtReview

81

feature: scott king

King burlesques the idea that the arts can save postindustrial urban areas

music, the duo suggested a series of giant ‘iconic’ sculptural realisations of the bent tubular bell featured on Mike Oldfield’s 1973 Tubular Bells album to tower over the centres of the country’s poorest towns. Such scarily-close-to-reality silliness continues with a proposal to remove Nelson from his column in Trafalgar Square and replace him with a version of Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North (1998), the mocked-up result being a fascistic monolith reminiscent of the dictatorial follies of Turkmenistan. King burlesques the idea that the arts can act as some kind of saviour for depressed postindustrial urban areas and lobs bitter asides at those artists – naming Gormley and Anish Kapoor – he sees as having profited from that culture. Kapoor is one the victims of a new body of work that King is developing, involving minimally presented typed and framed fake quotations. In one of these, Kapoor is falsely quoted making the ludicrous claim that Temenos, his enormous 2010 commission for Tees Valley Unlimited, will cut car crime and domestic abuse in the area. The series also includes Guy Debord supposedly decrying ‘weapons of mass bureaucracy, and the faceless troops that wield them’. That said, and exhibiting a characteristic dichotomy in his practice, King himself undertook a public art commission in 2008, creating a slogan to adorn a hoarding erected around a residential building site opposite Tate Modern. Bearing the phrase ‘Temporary 82

ArtReview

Eyesore’, the work, funded indirectly by the site’s developers, served as a rebuke both to the artist’s own patron and, one can imagine, the work’s institutional neighbour. With its two punchy words – and screaming neon orange background – the phrase questions the speculative nature of residential property development and, by extension, the anchoring role cultural bastions such as the Tate play in these schemes; not to mention the artist’s own role in ‘covering up’ the whole business. King’s practice is punk and anarchic in spirit, grabbing our media-frazzled attention spans with his distinctive mix of visual pleasure, punchy and distinctive design, and – most recently – commercial and government rhetoric, and using it to play with and undermine received wisdom and cultural mores. He’s the mocking court jester for contemporary times.

works (in order of appearance) Temporary Eyesore, 2008 (installation view, Bankside, London). Commissioned by the Architecture Foundation, London. Courtesy Herald St, London Taliban, Lucerne Drive, Whitstable, Kent, June 2010. Courtesy, Herald St, London Let’s Talk About Me (Paradise), 2005, digital print on paper Angel’s Column of the South, 2010, photocopy print, dimensions variable. Courtesy Herald St, London Marxist Disco (Cancelled), 2008 (installation view), Kunstverein Munich. Photo: Wilfried Petzi Diana (at the Frontier), 2008, plaster bust, acrylic paint, ostrich feathers, sequin collar The Trial Continues, 2008 (installation view, Bortolami, New York)

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proud to be a part of

A l e x A n d er CA l d er , Fl amingo, 1974 / photo: Audia

The MerchAndise MArT ArTchicAgO.cOM ne XTArTFAir .cOM

Artist intervention:

BIC Monochromes and BIC Stereochromes by Ignacio Uriarte

Black

Green & Black

Black & Blue

Green

Blue

Red & Green

Blue & Red

Red

ArtReview

85

Klassische Moderne und Gegenwartskunst 10.– 13. März 2011 Messe Karlsruhe www.art-karlsruhe.de

ORGANISED BY

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feature:

Is the pioneering British Minimalism of

Rasheed Araeen

finally

receiving the at tention it deser ves? A longtime collaborator ref lects on the ar tist’s struggle for recognition

wo r ds : R i c h a r d Dy e r

Tate Britain mounted a small exhibition of recently acquired works by Pakistani-born British artist Rasheed Araeen, including Zero to Infinity (1968–2007), 3Y + 3B (1969) and Rang Baranga (1969). It was an exhibition that publicly, if modestly, acknowledged that Araeen was indeed – as the artist had claimed for many years – one of only a few British contributors to Minimalism during the 1960s. Indeed, as if by way of belated apology, a wall text in the exhibition stated precisely that. This late acknowledgement by the British art establishment of Araeen’s contribution to the history of contemporary art has come at the end of a lifelong struggle for recognition, not only of his own work but also that of other artists who are excluded from the official history of British postwar art due to the fact that they migrated to Britain from other countries. Born in 1935, Araeen left Karachi for London in 1964 and has lived there ever since, beginning writing in 1975 (and, in 1978, publishing the art journal Black Phoenix, the precursor to Third Text, the scholarly journal he established in 1987). He’s since had solo exhibitions at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, in 1987, at the South London Gallery (1994) and at the Serpentine Gallery (1996). His career as a minimalist, however, began almost as soon as he moved to London. Sculpture no. 1, comprising four metal I-beams painted the colour of rust and placed directly on the floor, and Sculpture no. 2 (both 1965) were conceived in response to his encounter with the work of Anthony Caro. Although Caro’s radical Modernism 96

ArtReview

broke innovatively with the traditions of British sculpture, he could hardly be said to be a minimalist, continuing as he did established traditions of hierarchical composition and lyrical curvilinear form. Caro’s contribution to the history of contemporary art was to liberate sculpture from its plinth – placing it on the floor of the gallery or on ‘tables’ – and to construct the work from separate elements welded together, in a manner akin to the construction of an early cubist collage by Picasso or Braque. Furthermore, Araeen’s breakthrough into and personal take on Minimalism, and his innate grasp of its language, was not only informed by his reaction to Caro but also by this former civil engineer’s familiarity with structures and materials such as girders, struts, latticework and the like. The minimalist movement, which emerged in the US during the early 1960s, was not widely known in Britain until 1968, three years after Araeen’s first minimalist sculpture was conceived. Sol LeWitt’s work, which demonstrates a close formal relationship to Araeen’s, was not shown in the UK until the spring of 1969, in the seminal Tate Britain (then simply Tate Gallery) exhibition The Art of the Real: An Aspect of American Painting and Sculpture 1948– 1968, and Araeen had not seen this work at the time of making Sculpture no. 1 and no. 2. During this period, in works such as Zero to Infinity (1968–2007), Araeen didn’t settle for discrete and static

objects: indeed, he dismantled that notion altogether. What at first appears to be a minimalist sculpture, comprising multiple boxes with diagonal cross struts, in fact only becomes an artwork via the viewer’s participation: the sculpture can be endlessly reconfigured by the audience, creating new and original sculptures. This radical introduction of the participatory intervention of the viewer – also emerging in other art movements of the time, such as Viennese Actionism, Fluxus and Allan Kaprow’s ‘happenings’, which Araeen was certainly aware of – challenged core notions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century contemporary art. Although Araeen’s minimalist sculptures stand as individual works of art in their own right, this interactive aspect of his practice is often overlooked. His photoworks have often been favoured instead (one, Bismullah, 1988, was acquired by Tate as early as 1995). This may be due to the fact that they fit more easily into the paradigm of work which artists from ‘ethnic backgrounds’ are expected to produce, ie, work dealing with their ethnic origins and identity. Araeen also produced many other artworks that were principally based on the participation of the audience, such as Chakras (1969–70), where the audience created the sculpture with the artist by throwing orange discs into the water. Araeen’s sense of frustration at the inability of the British art establishment to comprehend that a Pakistani, Indian, Afro-

feature: Rasheed Araeen

Undoubtedly his struggle to alter perceptions of contemporary art history has distracted from a full appreciation of his own artistic practice Caribbean, African or ‘Other’ artist could contribute to the history of contemporary art eventually drove him to establish Third Text in 1987. I have worked with him at Third Text (as assistant editor) since 1992 and have therefore had the opportunity to discuss in depth with him his views on the history of postwar British art. At first the journal championed the work of these hitherto-excluded artists, but it soon developed a more critical position, from which it questioned the whole official history of art and the domination of the West in constructing that history. Writing and artmaking, however, haven’t been the only vehicles for Araeen’s thinking. Having begun a parallel career as a curator with The Essential Black Art in 1978, he curated the groundbreaking 1989 exhibition The Other Story at London’s Hayward Gallery. It showed the work of British artists who had been ‘written out’ of art history due to their ethnic origin. This drew an extraordinary degree of blatantly racist rhetoric from the rightwing art press, while Brian Sewell wrote in The Sunday Times that it was impossible for an artist of African or Asian origin to make contemporary art, and that their production was either the continuation of an exhausted indigenous tradition or a secondrate copy of Western art. Araeen is now working on part two of this project, which will take the form of a book (now in production) and an exhibition with the working title The Whole Story, which will seek to present a more encompassing vision of postwar British art, exhibiting all of the significant artists contributing to postwar British art history together, regardless of ethnic origin. Consequently, we will see artists such as Frank Bowling, Avinash Chandra, Uzo Egonu, David Medalla, Ronald Moody, Francis Newton Souza and Aubrey Williams exhibited alongside Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Lucian Freud and Patrick Heron. Undoubtedly Araeen’s involvement with the struggle to alter perceptions of what constitutes contemporary art history has distracted from a full appreciation of his own artistic practice. Though he may regret this, Araeen unquestionably felt he had no choice but to turn from his own practice to what he perceived

as a fundamentally necessary task. His work should be viewed in the context of the work of widely acknowledged artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, John McCracken and Sol LeWitt, because although Minimalism has principally been constructed, historically, as an American movement, it was also significant to the development of British postwar art. Araeen’s artistic practice in the 1960s and 70s was certainly central to this, in that his rejection of the ‘pictorial’ and ‘expressionist’ aspects of sculpture embraced a new notion of the artwork as demonstrated in the medium of painting in the work of his contemporaries such as William Turnbull. Now that the art establishment would have us think that race has become a ‘nonissue’ in the artworld, with the rise of contemporary artists of African and Asian origin such as Chris Ofili, Yinka Shonibare, Anish Kapoor and Isaac Julien, it’s worth remembering that Araeen’s generation did not have such an easy time. Work by Rasheed Araeen is included in Modern British Sculpture, at the Royal Academy, London, 22 January – 7 April

works (in order of appearance) Rang Baranga, 1969, painted wood, 183 x 61 x 46 cm. Tate Collection 3Y + 3B, 1968–9, painted wood, 183 x 244 x 13 cm. Tate Collection Zero to Infinity, 1968/2003/2007, painted wood, 100 cubes, each 50 x 50 cm. Tate Collection Sculpture no. 1, 1965, painted steel, 213 x 183 x 30 cm Sculpture no. 2, 1965/1987 (installation view, Hayward Gallery, London, 1989), painted steel, 122 x 122 cm all works courtesy the artist

ArtReview

99

19–23 January 2011 Modern British & Contemporary Art Business Design Centre Islington London N1 Tickets & information 08448 480 137 Please quote LAF56 www.londonartfair.co.uk

feature:

In his latest series of landscape photographs,

Dan Holdsworth

seems to be manipulating the viewer to the same extent that he has manipulated his images.

wo r ds : m a r k r a pp o lt

ArtReview 101

feature: DAN HOLDSWORTH

(2010) is a series of 21 large-scale (226 x 177 cm) c-prints documenting a mountainous terrain that is, for the moment, home to Iceland’s receding glaciers. The landscape is presented in negative, where everything is black (most strikingly the sky) or white (most strikingly the earth). Or perhaps that should say: where everything that should be black is white and everything that should be white is black. More often than not, the odd colour does seep in – things get a bit blue, a bit magenta – but when that happens, it’s in the sinister manner of a Gulf of Mexico-style oil slick. Albeit beautiful, rather than an ugly, greasy mess. And that’s pretty much that in terms of the facts of this matter. Errr… OK, I’ll admit that I couldn’t help colouring those socalled facts a bit, but that’s something we’ll come to later. It’s Holdsworth’s fault anyway. On one hand, the illuminated striations of each landscape in this series make it look as particular and individual as a fingerprint – make us aware that we are looking at a photograph of a specific place; on the other, each landscape appears to be so alien, so lacking in atmosphere (in the literal sense that in the flat black ‘sky’ in Holdsworth’s work, all traces of the collection of gases that surround the earth, that allow us to breathe and make this world home, have been erased), that it could have been shot on

DAN HOLDSWORTH’S BLACKOUT

another planet. And let’s face it, when we think of, say, the Martian landscape, we’re not thinking about how the sunlight hits the cliffs that border the Mare Cimmerium. We’re thinking of little more than a vague red-brown. Accordingly, these photographs seem to erase their specificity almost as insistently as they lay it out. Indeed, I’m going to venture something a little more grandiose, because if Holdsworth made these works grand in scale, I feel a sympathetic desire to make them grand in meaning. (Yes, I accept that pumping up artworks is what art critics do when they write features about works of art, but they don’t always do it because the artwork makes them.) I want to add some gravity, to collect the kind of associations that will create an atmosphere in the space of the one his black sky has so successfully rubbed out. It’s as if I feel the need, as a viewer, to say, ‘Let’s not get too negative’. Or perhaps I’m just responding to a law of physics – nature abhors a vacuum, and I’m rushing to fill in Holdsworth’s blackuum. But enough about me. Here we go. The grandiose. It’s as if Holdsworth gets straight to the essence of what makes a photograph intriguing to look at: the fact that it is evidence that something very particular is present at a very particular time (and this is why it was worth mentioning those receding glaciers earlier on); and its simultaneous exhortation to think that the subject is more than its ArtReview 103

feature: DAN HOLDSWORTH

104 ArtReview

feature: DAN HOLDSWORTH

surface, more than simply the information we see. Consequently, Holdsworth’s works invite us to deny their very nature (as indexes of facts and data that offer a definitive statement about what their subject is); they are like a series of X-rays revealing skeletons, or some sort of essence of a thing, onto which all we want to do is add a little flesh so as to make ourselves feel a bit more comfortable. Indeed, Holdsworth’s works might serve as a definition of that most contradictory of terms: ‘science fiction’. I couldn’t help noticing that the landscapes in Blackout are remarkably similar to the lunar landscapes imagined in Fritz Lang’s final silent film, Frau im Mond (1929). (Far from coincidentally, Iceland was one of a number of locations at which NASA conducted its geology field trips during the 1960s in preparation for its lunar landings.) Often credited as the first serious science-fiction movie (and with giving birth to the idea of counting down to a rocket launch), Lang’s film deploys a painted set depicting mountain ranges against a dark (but in this case starry) sky and what we might now call Holdsworthesque effects of intense light and shade. Unlike Frau im Mond, Blackout is about more than the simple and clichéd visual equation of exploration to a process of bringing light into darkness. Rather it celebrates the dark unknown (which has an interesting side effect when it comes to writing about the

works: everything I assert, I want immediately to deny); as much as the series illustrates the process by which nature carves out a landscape, it illustrates the supernatural process through which we dream one up. And if Lang followed the rule of thumb when creating an believable alien world – the credibility of an alien environment involves concessions to a certain degree of familiarity (aliens that look like insects, moons that look like North Atlantic islands, etc), otherwise people might conclude that you’re simply making it all up – then Holdsworth appears to state the reverse: it’s only believable if there’s space for a bit of invention. Just as much as he’s manipulated these images, we’re keen to manipulate them, too. Blackout is on view at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, until 20 February

works (in order of appearance) Untitled Nos. 9, 17, 13, 01, 23, 06, from the Blackout series, 2010, c-prints all works Courtesy the artist and Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad & Geneva

ArtReview 107

W

e are a young, London based, Fine Art Brokerage looking for experienced art brokers/sales professionals to sell rare and collectable works from artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Alexandra Nechita.

© Eamon O’Kane, 2010

Crawford art Gallery

We are looking for well presented, motivated sales professionals, who understand that selling fine art is about meeting and exceeding the expectations of the client. Ideally you will have experience in selling high end art, although this is not essential. Please send your CV by 6 December 2010 and tell us why you should be considered.

EAMON O’KANE

TwenTieTh of April SixTeen eighTy nine UNtil 22 JANUAry Crawford art Gallery | emmet PlaCe | Cork | Ireland | +353 (0)21 4805042

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Une Idée, une Forme, un Être – Poésie/ Politique du corporel 25th September – 28th November 2010 Opening: Friday, 24th September 2010, 6pm Ai Weiwei Regina José Galindo Teresa Margolles Gianni Motti Eftihis Patsourakis Pamela Rosenkranz Martin Soto Climent Loredana Sperini Alina Szapocznikow

Displaced Fractures – Über die Bruchlinien von Architekturen und ihren Körpern 11th December 2010 – 20th February 2011 Opening: Friday, 10th December 2010, 6pm With a.o. : Phyllida Barlow Tacita Dean Emilie Ding Klara Lidén Ulrich Rückriem Kilian Rüthemann Oscar Tuazon Klaus Winichner

Opening hours Tues / Wed / Fri 12 pm – 6 pm Thurs 12 pm – 8 pm Sat /Sun 11am – 5 pm. Thursdays 5 pm – 8 pm, entrance is free of charge. New address for exhibition visits migros museum für gegenwartskunst / Hubertus Exhibitions Albisriederstrasse 199 a, 8047 Zürich The migros museum für gegenwartskunst is an institution of the MigrosKulturprozent. migrosmuseum.ch hubertus-exhibitions.ch migros-kulturprozent.ch

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listings: museums and galleries

Listings Museums and Galleries UNITED KINGDOM, LONDON Albemarle Gallery 49 Albemarle Street London W1S 4JR T +44 (0)20 7499 1616 F +44 (0)20 7499 1717 [email protected] Doig Faulkner Gatherer Thompson 12 Nov - 4 Dec Alexia Goethe Gallery 7 Dover Street London, W1S 4LD T +44 (0)20 7629 0090 www.alexiagoethegallery.com POP HYMNS Group Exhibition 26 Nov - 21 Jan 2011 Art Sensus 7 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1BB www.artsensus.com T +44(0)20 7630 9585 Nick Walker ‘In Gods We Trust’ 13 Oct – 27 Nov BLAIN|SOUTHERN 21 Dering Street London W1S 1AL T +44 (0)20 7493 4492 www.blainsouthern.com Mat Collishaw Creation Condemned 13 Oct – 17 Dec Carl Freedman Gallery 44a Charlotte Road London EC2A 3PD www.carlfreedmangallery.com T +44 (0)20 7684 8890 Fergal Stapleton 25 Nov – 15 Jan 2011 Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art 123 Kennington Road, London SE11 6SF T +44(0)20 7735 8292 [email protected] www.daniellearnaud.com Nicky Coutts: Millions Like Us 5 Nov - 19 Dec Haunch Of Venison 6 Burlington Gardens London W1S 3ET T +44 (0)20 7495 5050 www.haunchofvenison.com Nicolas Provost Stardust 30 Nov – 29 Jan 2011

Herald Street Gallery London E2 6JT T +44(0)20 7168 2566 [email protected] Nick Relph 6 Nov - 17 Dec IBID Projects 35 Hoxton square London N1 6NN T +44 (0)20 7998 7902 [email protected] Rallou Panagiotou 20 Nov - 8 Jan 2011 L-13 Light Industrial Workshop 31 Eyre Street Hill Clerkenwell London EC1R 5EW T +44 (0)20 7713 8255 www.L-13.org Billy Childish: Works on Paper 17 Dec - 30 Jan 2011 MARSDEN WOO GALLERY 17 – 18 Great Sutton Street London EC1V 0DN T +44 (0)20 7336 6396 www.marsdenwoo.com Sara Radstone Promised Land 11 Nov to 22 Dec Rose Issa Gallery 269 Kensignton High Street London W8 6NA T +44 (0)20 7602 7700 [email protected] www.roseissa.com Susan Hefuna December Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House, Piccadilly London W1J 0BD T +44 (0)20 7300 8000 www.royalacademy.org.uk Treasures From Budapest to 12 Dec Simon Lee Gallery 12 Berkeley Street London W1J 8DT T +44(0)20 7491 0100 [email protected] www.simonleegallery.com João Penalva 8 Dec – 29 Jan 2011

Stephen Friedman Gallery 25-28 Old Burlington Street London W1S 3AN T +44 (0) 20 7494 1434 F +44 (0) 20 7494 1431 [email protected] Huma Bhabha 23 Nov – 15 Jan 2011 Timothy Taylor Gallery 15 Carlos Place London W1K 2EX T +44 (0)20 7409 3344 F +44 (0)20 7409 1316 Adam Fuss: Home and World 17 Nov - 8 Jan 2011 Mai-Thu Perret (The Viewing Room)

Modern Art Oxford 30 Pembroke Street Oxford OX1 1BP T +44(0)1865 722 733 [email protected] Thomas Houseago What Went Down 11 Dec – 20 Feb 2011 The Common Guild 21 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow G3 6DF T +44 (0)141 428 3022 www.thecommonguild.org.uk [email protected] Tacita Dean 20 Nov – 5 Feb 2011 United States, New York

Whitechapel Gallery 77-82 Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX T +44 (0)20 7522 7888 [email protected] Claire Barclay: Shadow Spans Gallery 2 26 May - 2 May 2011

ANTAR DAYAL STUDIO INC Villa Rondini, 1341 Maria Ygnacia, Santa Barbara, CA 93111, USA T +1 805-965-5988 Open By appointment [email protected] villarondini.com Ongoing through 2011

Vilma Gold 6 Minerva Street London E2 9EH T +44 (0)20 7729 9888 F +44 (0)20 7729 9898 [email protected] William Daniels 9 Oct - 5 Dec

David Zwirner 525 West 19th Street New York, NY 10011 T +1 212-517-8677 Open Tue-Sat 10-6 [email protected] www.davidzwirner.com

UNITED KINGDOM Dundee Contemporary 152 Nethergate Dundee DD1 4DY T +44 (0)138 290 9900 www.dca.org.uk Jonathan Horowitz 27 Nov - 20 Feb 2011 Focal Point Gallery Southend Central Library Victoria Avenue Southend-on-Sea Essex SS2 6EX www.focalpoint.org.uk T +44 (0)1702 534108 Anja Kirschner and David Panos ‘The Empty Plan’ 22 Nov - 1 Jan 2011 Ikon Gallery 1 Oozells Square Brindleyplace Birmingham B1 2HS T +44 (0)121 248 0708 Len Lye: The Body Electric 24 Nov – 6 Feb 2011

DOOSAN Gallery 533 West 25th Street NewYork, NY 10001 [email protected] Open Tue-Sat 10-6 Sang-ah Choi to 18 Dec L.A. LOUVER 45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, California 90291 T +1 310 822 4955 Open Tue - Sat: 10–6 Mon: by appointment [email protected] lalouver.com William Brice: Drawings 1960 - 1985 18 Nov- 30 Dec Michael Werner Gallery 4 East 77th Street, New York, NY 10075 T +1 (212) 988-1623 www.michaelwerner.com [email protected]

ArtReview 111

listings: museums and galleries

THE Pace GALLERY 32 East 57th Street T +1 (212) 421 3292 Tues-Frid 9:30– 6 Sat 10-6 www. thepacegallery.com Robert Irwin: Way Out West to 24 Dec

Galerie Rodolphe Janssen 35, rue de Livourne 1050 Brussels T +32-2-538 08 18 www.galerierodolphejanssen.com David Ratcliffe to 23 Dec

THE PACE GALLERY 534 West 25th Street T+1 (212) 929-7000 Tues – Sat 10 – 6 Lucas Samaras: Poses to 24 Dec

S.M.A.K Citadelparc 9000 Gent T+32(0)9 240 76 01 www.smak.be Adrian Ghenie 3 Dec - 27 Mar 2011

THE PACE GALLERY 545 West 22nd Street T+1 (212) 989-4258 Tues- Sat 10 – 6 Hiroshi Sugimoto: The Day After to 24 Dec

think.21 Rue du Mail 21 Brussels 1050 T +32 2 537 87 03 www.think21gallery.com

AUSTRIA Galerie Grita Insam An der Hülben 3 / Seilerstätte 1010 Wien www.galeriegritainsam.at Susan Hefuna 19 Nov - 8 Jan 2011

Tim Van Laere Gallery Verlatstraat 23-25 2000 Antwerp T +32 (0)3 257 14 17 www.timvanlaeregallery.com Henk Visch to Dec 4 Gelatin 9 Dec - 22 Jan

GALERIE HUBERT WINTER Breite Gasse 17 A-1070 Wien T +43 (0)1524 09 76 www.galeriewinter.at

Xavier Hufkens Rue Saint-Georges 6 - 8 1050 Brussels T +32 2 6396730 www.xavierhufkens.com Sterling Ruby to 11 Dec

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Mirabellplatz 2, 5020 Salzburg T +43 662 881 393 www.ropac.net Marc Brandenburg (main gallery space) 27 Nov to Jan 2010

Zeno X Gallery Leopold De Waelplaats 16 B-2000 Antwerp T +32 3 216 16 26 www.zeno-x.com Michael Borremans to Nov 27

Belgium

DENMARK

Galerie Almine Rech 20 Rue de l’Abbaye B-1050 Brussels T +32 26 485 684 www.alminerech.com Taryn Simon/John Giorno to 18 Dec

LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Gl. Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk Winter 2010: Anselm Kiefer

Galerie BaronianFrancey 2 rue Isidore Verheyden 1050 Brussels T +32-25 12 92 95 www.baronianfrancey.com Robert Crumb to Dec 31

GALLERI NICOLAI WALLNER Ny Carlsberg vej 68 OG 1760 Copenhagen V Peter Land Joachim Koester to 15 Jan 2011 FRANCE DOCKS ART FAIR Lyon www.docksartfair.com Sep 2011

Galerie Almine Rech 19, rue de Saintonge 75003 Paris Tel +33 1 45 83 71 90 www.galeriealminerech.com Gavin Turk - En FAce to 18 Dec John Giorno - Eating the sky to 18 Dec Galleria Continua Le Moulin (Paris) 46, rue de la Ferté Gaucher 77169 Boissy-le-Châtel Seine-et-Marne T +33 1 64 20 39 50 www.galleriacontinua.com “Sphères 3” 23 Oct - 11 Jun 2011 Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin 76, rue de Turenne & 10 Impasse St Claude , 75003 Paris T +33 1 42 16 79 79 www.galerieperrotin.com Paula Pivi/Jin Meyerson 11 Nov - 23 Dec

JOHANN KÖNIG GALLERY Dessauer Straße 6-7, 10963 Berlin www.johannkoenig.de Manfred Kuttner to 8 Jan 2011 me Collectors Room Berlin me Kunst GmbH Auguststraße 68 10117 Berlin www.me-berlin.com Ouyang Chun – Painting the King to 9 Jan 2011 VW (VENEKLASEN/WERNER) Rudi-Dutschke-Str. 26, 10969 Berlin T+49 30 81 61 60418 [email protected] www. vwberlin.com Open Mon– Fri 10-6 , Sat 11-6 Markus Lüpertz: New Paintings Opening 18 November Greece

Galerie ThaddAeus Ropac 7, rue Debelleyme 75003 Paris T +33 1 42 72 99 00 www.ropac.net Liza Lou to 20 Nov Cory Arcangel/Ali Banisadr 24 Nov – 24 Dec

Frissiras Museum 3 Monis Asteriou Plaka, Athens T +30 2103 234678 or +30 2103 316027 www.frissirasmuseum.com

LE GRAND CAFE Centre d’Art Contemporain Place des Quatre z’horloges F 44 600 Saint-Nazaire T +33 (0)2 44 73 44 00 www.grandcafe-saintnazaire.fr Hans Op de Beeck to 2 Jan 2011

GRIMM FINE ART Keizersgracht 82 1015CT Amsterdam www.grimmfineart.com Recent British Sculpture from 27 Nov

MYRVOLD > MYWORLD PIA MYRVOLD 15 rue Sambre et Meuse 75010 Paris By appointment. T +33607968552 www.pia-myrvold.com

i8 Gallery

GERMANY CAMERA WORK AG Kantstraße 149, 10623 Berlin www.camerawork.de DEUTSCHE GUGGENHEIM Unter den Linden 13/15 10117 Berlin T +49 (0)30 20 2093 www.deutsche-guggenheim.de Color Fields to 10 Jan 2011

Holland

iceland

Tryggvagata 16 101 Reykjavik www.i8.is Ignacio Uriarte to 23 Nov ireland IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) Royal Hospital, Military Road Kilmainham, Dublin 8 www.imma.ie [email protected] T +353-1-612-9922 The Moderns to Apr 2011

ITALy ARTISSIMA 17 Turin www.artissima.it BRAND NEW GALLERY Via Farini 32 20159 Milano T +39-02-89.05.30.83 www.brandnew-gallery.com Anton Henning to 22 Dec Cardi Black Box Corso di Porta Nuova 38 20124 Milan T+39 0245478189 www.cardiblackbox.com The Art of Camo - Group show Dec- Jan 2011 Collezione Maramotti via fratelli cervi 66 Reggio Emilia T +39 0522 382 484 www.collezionemaramotti.org Kara Tanaka to 31 Jan 2011 Fondazione Prada Via Antonio Fogazzaro, 2 20135 Milan T+39 02 54670515 www.fondazioneprada.org John Baldessari to 31 Dec Galleria Continua Via del Castello, 11 53037 San Gimignano T +39 0577 94 31 34 www.galleriacontinua.com Kiki Smith/ Michelangelo Pistoletto/Pascale Marthine Tayou to 29 Jan GALLERIA PACK Foro Bonaparte, 60, 20121 Milan T +39 02 86 996 395 www.galleriapack.com Matteo Basilé - this humanity to 15 Jan 2011 MAXXI- Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo Via Guido Reni, 4A 00196 Rome T +39 06 32101829 www.maxxi.beniculturali.it Various, see website for details MiArt Milan Apr 8-11 2011 www.miart.it

Pinacoteca Agnelli Via Nizza, 230 10126 Turin T+ 39 011 0062713 www.pinacoteca-agnelli.it China Power Station to 27 Feb

Galerie Urs Meile Rosenberghöhe 4 6004 Lucerne, Switzerland T +41 (0) 41 420 33 18 F +41 (0) 41 420 21 69 [email protected] www.galerieursmeile.com Ai Weiwei to Dec 18

Hong kong Tang Contemporary Art - HK Basement, Hollywood Centre, 233 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan T+ 852 2544 9918 / 9919 tangcontemporary.com UNMASK: Shopping-I Open 24 Nov through Dec

Riccardo Crespi via Mellerio n° 1 20123 Milano T +39 02 89072491 www.riccardocrespi.com Maria Laet to 12 Dec

MIGROSMUSEUM FüR GEGENWARTSKUNST /Hubertus Exhibitions Albisriederstrasse 199a CH – 8047 Zürich www.migrosmuseum.ch

monaco

turkey

Monaco modern art 27 av Princesse Grace 98000 Monaco T+377.92.16.71.17 www.monacomodernart.mc Philippe Pastor

SAKIP SABANCI MUSEUM 1Sakıp Sabancı Cad. No:42 Emirgan 34467, Istanbul T +90 212 277 22 00 www.muze.sabanciuniv.edu

AYE GALLERY Room 601, unit3, Yonghe garden, yard3, Dongbinhe road, An ding men, Dongcheng district, Beijing 100013 T +86 (0)10 8422 1726 Open Tue – Sun 10-6 ayegallery.com Liu Wei’s New works Dec - Feb 2011

SPAIN

BRAZIL

japan

ARCOmadrid Madrid www.arco.ifema.es 16 -20 Feb 2011

Casa Triangulo Rua Paes de Araujo 77 04531-090 São Paulo T +55 11 31675621 www.casatriangulo.com

KAIKAI KIKI GALLERY Motoazabu Crest Bldg. B1F, 2-330 Motoazabu, Minato-ku,Tokyo 106-0046 T +81-(0) 3-6823-6039 www.gallery.kaikaikiki.co.jp Twitter.com/G_Kaikaikiki_Jp

Galería Elba Benítez San Lorenzo 11 28004 Madrid T+34-91-308 04 68 www.elbabenitez.com GALERIA HELGA de ALVEAR c/ Doctor Fourquet 12 28012 Madrid T +34 91 468 0506 www.helgadealvear.com Helena Almeida to 30 Oct Katherine Grosse to 9 Jan 2011 MUSAC – Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Castilla y Leon Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 24008 León T +34 987 09 00 00 www.musac.es SWITZERLAND GALERIE BERTAND & GRUNER 16, rue du Simplon, 1207 Geneva T+41 22 700 51 51 www.bertrand-gruner.com

Galeria Fortes Vilaca Rua Fradique Coutinho 1500 05416-001 São Paulol T +55 11 3032 7066 www.fortesvilaca.com.br Galeria Luisa Strina Rua Oscar Freire 502, 01426000 São Paulo/SP T +55 11 3088 2417 www.galerialuisastrina.com.br Casa Triangulo Rua Paes de Araujo 77 04531-090 São Paulo T +55 11 31675621 www.casatriangulo.com Galeria Nara Roesler Avenida Europa 655 01449-001 São Paulo t +55 11 3063 2344 www.nararoesler.com.br CUBA Galeria Habana Subasta Habana 2010 ed. Cuban Art & Decorative Arts Sala Taganana, Hotel Nacional de Cuba Calle O esq. A 21, Vedado, Ciudad de La Habana

China

South africa 34FINEART Second Floor, The Hills Building, Buchanan Square , 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock [email protected] T +27 21 4611863 www.34fineart.com Then / Now - Group exhibition 9 Nov - 4 Dec Australia Niagara Galleries 245 Punt Road 3121 Melbourne Australia T +61 3 9429 3666 www.niagara-galleries.com.au Muster 23 Nov – 18 Dec Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16-20 Goodhope Street Paddington 2021 Sydney, Australia T +61 2 9331 1112 www.sherman-scaf.org.au Contemporary Art For Contemporary Kids to 18 Dec ArtReview 113

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Rear View December

Reviews Books The Strip On the Town Off the Record

ArtReview 115

REVIEWS:

UK British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet

Various venues, Nottingham 23 October – 9 January

The first British Art Show, held in 1979, featured 112 artists: the trend has been broadly reductionist ever since, with the current manifestation yoking together 39 participants. If survey shows on this condensed scale begin to look like they might support themes, BAS curators are rarely so foolhardy as to announce any, and BAS7’s are no exception. Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton instead privilege the poetic over the programmatic: their subtitle, taken from a 1906 H.G. Wells novel in which a comet visits and transforms a dystopian earth via a greenish fog, gestures expansively towards time, recurrence and beclouded moments of change. (One should, nevertheless, see such literary semiobscurantism as characteristic of our cultural moment.) A long view suggests that history consists of nothing but transitional moments. Perhaps, however – and the art forwarded here often suggests it – some moments are more transitional than others. Few except outright contrarians are going to argue overmuch with BAS7’s list of artists, which has shaken out not only in the curators’ brainpans but in the pages of art magazines and in biennials, in prize shortlists and on the schedules of European kunsthalles over the past half-decade. Eloquently oblique newbies like Becky Beasley and Juliette Blightman? Check. Air-mile accumulators like Tris Vonna-Michell and Emily Wardill? Yup. Turner Prize-approved pros like Wolfgang Tillmans and Roger Hiorns? Uh-huh. Regal old farts like Alasdair Gray (whose lovely, anecdotal portrait drawings are knowingly placed next to Charles Avery’s Gray-esque bulletins from invented lands) and, in the shape of Sarah Lucas, an untoppled holdover from British art’s previous triumphalist phase? Present and correct. It’s actually nice to have one or two examples of vexatious clubbishness to wrinkle one’s nose at. Nevertheless, airily installed across three venues – Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary and New Art Exchange (and later touring to London, Glasgow and Plymouth under the aegis of its organisers, Hayward Touring) – BAS7 does its job: it makes this look like a vivacious moment for art made in Britain or by Britons. Yet its strength is not so much in brash confidence as in, almost paradoxically, a collective expression of anxiety and incompleteness, an accumulation of reflexive fluxions. For extended stretches, certitude fissures beneath our feet – whether in the imploding history lesson of Duncan Campbell’s filmic documentary collage about Northern Irish firebrand activist Bernadette Devlin (Bernadette, 2008); the barely-there urban and rural field recordings accumulated in Luke Fowler’s quivering film A Grammar for Listening (Part 1) (2009); or the articulately voiced bruised idealism in Ian Kiaer’s conflation of weary-looking neominimalist canvases and scatterings of floor-bound objects (from blank circular name tags to architectural models) with supplementary references to estranged Soviet architect Konstantin Melnikov. Miscommunication underwrites Nathaniel Mellors’s genre-pureeing film – arthouse sitcom? – Ourhouse (2010), in which, echoing Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema (albeit minus all the sex), an outsider figure named ‘The Object’ controls speech-acts in a country pile. Painting, here, leans towards a space outside of language altogether, whether through Milena Dragicevic’s knotty conjunctions of portraits and appended objects or glimmering refractions of being-in-the-world: Phoebe Unwin’s semiabstractions, for example, are ghosted by those of Howard Hodgkin. One might contend that passing through all this and feeling it stack up is like watching something big and indistinct shearing foggily away, and something else being tentatively birthed: the latter conjecture exemplified by works like Spartacus Chetwynd’s The Folding House (2010), a dirty-modernist, Rietveld-esque platform fashioned from old windowpanes that pragmatically posits a future constructed from wreckage. One might also contend that this is a seriously pretentious way to interpret an art exhibition. Whatever: BAS7 is sufficiently spacious and controlled, mapless and nudging to precipitate the lapse. Martin Herbert 116 ArtReview

Nathaniel Mellors, Ourhouse, 2010. Photo: Alexander Newton

reviews: UK

Studio Schwitters, 2010 (installation view), loudspeakers, table, computer, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Max Wigram Gallery, London

Something out of nothing. The space of the big wall of Max Wigram’s gallery is filled, top to bottom, with a dense arrangement of large greyish worn-metal loudhailers. They’re the sort that might call the masses to the factory or the football stadium, or preside over political rallies or prison camps. Wired together, this giant speaker-wall is connected to an amplifier and a laptop, on whose screen appears a sequence of maybe meaningless words or strings of phonemes – ‘rakete’ ‘rinnzekete’, ‘beeeee’, ‘bö’, ‘fö’, ‘böwö’, ‘fümmsbö’, ‘böwörö’, ‘fümmsböwö’, ‘böwörötää’. A cool, uninflected male voice enunciates these through the speakers, filling the bare space of the gallery, but seemingly addressing the windows that face them and the bustle of Bond Street outside. The speaker array is Czech-born artist Pavel Büchler’s; the word-stream is German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate, the sound poem he developed and performed regularly between 1922 and 1932. Büchler has taken this revered work of the revolutionary European avant-garde and reprocessed the text via a German speech synthesiser. Büchler’s act of digitisation, producing a voice from parts of Ursonate’s published transcript, has the effect of stripping out the expressive cadences, rhythms and crescendos of Schwitter’s original spoken-word performance, preserved in a once-lost recording (and now happily residing in the digital memory of the Internet). Büchler’s art is itself a sort of minimal poetry; minimal because it refuses itself any aesthetic or formal excesses or indulgences that would take it beyond the already existing objects and materials of the everyday; poetry because it is always in a highly specific encounter between otherwise simple elements that Büchler generates an unlooked-for effect. In this case, however, Studio Schwitters turns another artwork back into raw material, taking Schwitters’s avant-gardist assault on the inauthenticity of language but critically erasing any trace of the speaking, expressing body and inverting the relationship between speech and text. In an interview, Büchler suggests that ‘art is a protest against the authority of language’. Studio Schwitters multiplies the problem, instead fusing text and speech with a modern technology that allows no room for the vocal, bodily excess that haunts the space between the original transcript and Schwitters’s recorded voice. Today’s technology is bodiless – the laptop just doesn’t care whether it is making sense or not. These huge battered bell-shaped megaphones are an antique technology, recalling an earlier era in which the amplified human voice correlated to the mass-organised, politically mobilised societies of the twentieth century. With just this small technical shift, Büchler manages to evoke a whole territory of questions regarding what it means to be addressed as a subject, to be presented with manifestos and calls to action, in a society that no longer has leaders who want to lead, nor people who want to be led. And if, for Büchler, art is a protest against the ‘authority of language’, then Schwitters’s avant-garde denunciation here becomes a melancholically impotent orator, speaking from nowhere, to nobody, about nothing. Yet Büchler’s deft intertwining of political and artistic utopias, against their closure in the present, suggests that the most poetic transformations are those that conclude in political ones. J.J. Charlesworth

Pavel Büchler Studio Schwitters

Max Wigram Gallery, London 13 October – 13 November

ArtReview 117

REVIEWS: uk

Vicky Wright

The Informants Guardian XLI, 2010, oil on panel, 96 x 76 cm. Courtesy the artist and Josh Lilley Gallery, London

118 ArtReview

The first thing that strikes you about Vicky Wright’s paintings is the very peculiar brushmarks she uses to build up her portraits. They look like fibrous strips of organic matter, cross-sections of rhubarb, perhaps. Painted in muted tones of mushroom, grey and mauve, and jutting out at various angles, they create the illusion of peeling back layers of human skin to reach some unknown and not very pleasant bodily matter. The Guardian series of portraits (all works 2010) – all painted on the backs of wooden panels – are apparently based on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrialist families such as the Tates and De Beers. With flayed skin and bulbous heads, these are not flattering commissions for your countryhouse portrait gallery. In most works, a finely painted eye (rarely two) peeks out from the volumes and painterliness; they are eerily lifelike. Many of these eyes have an animalistic quality, as if copied from history paintings of warhorses or other anguished and melancholy creatures. The press text mentions Wright’s interest in Mikhail Bakhtin and Rabelais, and you can see how these paintings might be a grotesque parade of aristocrats, denuded of their status and brought down to a universal, abject humanness. But Josh Lilley Gallery, London there are art-historical references from the genre of portraiture here too, from the sixteenth-century Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s 13 October ­– 8 December fruit-and-vegetable heads to Francis Bacon’s deformed figures, via Surrealism and Cubism, and more recently the photographic collages of John Stezaker. A couple of the paintings appear to condense miniature landscapes within the portrait’s contours: Guardian XLV seems to contain a soaring Renaissance landscape, Guardian XLIII features a series of miniwaterfalls; while others are Escher-esque in their interlocking planes of impossible architecture. Or maybe they are Rorschach tests that reveal more about me than about the sitter. There’s a peculiar motif in some of the Guardians, most obviously in the large hinged triptych Caput Mortuum (‘worthless remains’). It’s a ghostly, vaporous brushmark – what the artist calls an ‘essence’ – that seems to act as the visual catalyst for all the metamorphosis and alchemy alluded to in Wright’s paintings. In Caput Mortuum, the essence cascades the length of three totemic bodies which seem to be constructed from precarious stacks of open manuscripts. If this is an altar, who are these mysterious, rather creepy pagan figures we are to worship? The exhibition is loosely based on a medieval illustration for the mythical Norse poem the Edda, which depicts a corrupt king whose body is symbolically invaded by parasitical spies. One could see all of Wright’s portraits as similarly infested by external forces, bodies decaying and becoming less human, more animal or landscape. These kings and merchants – society’s guardians – may once have been the only citizens with the means to immortalise themselves in portraiture, but they were not the most morally worthy; portraiture tends to gloss over any unsavoury means by which they attained their wealth. The Informants, then, is a very aggressive assault on historical portraiture and potent symbols of masculinity and power. But you suspect that Wright relishes the gritty details of her attack. Jennifer Thatcher

reviews: UK

WITH’s ‘life enhancement solutions’ are as conceptually slippery as the art faction itself claims to be. This artist-collective-cum-commercial-enterprise has developed some 50 ‘experiential offsetting’ packages to date. Whether 2007’s Justkidin’ (‘we create evidence that your family are an anti-social nuisance’) or 2010’s Serendipping (‘in the right place at the wrong time’), each benevolently marketed deed (executed for a fee on the client’s behalf) parodies the highly influential yet largely meaningless languages of media, politics and corporate communication. The collective has consistently flirted with art and design history, in ways that bring to mind both the influence of artists’ ideas on the mainstream and the conceits of particular artistic positions – a range of references from advertising to performance art, then. This new body of predominantly text-based works, however, appears slickly moulded from a wealth of familiar high- and lowcultural graphic languages borrowed back and forth across genres, between the gallery, institution and shop. The titular puns and aesthetically savvy designs of WITH’s solutions translate well online, at withyou.co.uk, with trademark symbols dotting each page like flies in the virtual ointment. And for the majority of its eight-year existence, WITH has invited the public to imagine specific contexts for exchange via the Web and installations of props. WITHSTORE_001 Off the Shelf: Promises, Intentions, Actions and Objects from the WITH Collective extends the gallery territory explored by the project and the commercial footprint of last year’s A New Fund for New Times – a temporary pyramid-scheme office in Artprojx’s former Knightsbridge shop, selling WITH multiples as increasingly risky hedge-fund-style art investments. While one WITHSTORE_001 has never needed to see WITH agents fulfilling their commissions – though it would make a great TV series – the process of negotiating the ‘documentation’ (from conceptual-art contracts to crime-scene photography) as product (and the performative rites of the transaction as client) emphasises the oddly weighted nature of each potential exchange. WITHSTORE_001, sounding like an artwork in storage and showcasing limited-editionism to full visual and commercial potential, appears the Big Brother other of the pop-up shop/ gallery phenomenon. For however aesthetically pleasing these clinically installed prints may be, their primary function is that of an agreement: elaborate IOUs that require faith and varying amounts of cash. This show is built on the tension between language and image, and the majority of the ‘pictures’ on display consist of words or symbols, save a Baldessari-esque wall of RGBcoloured photos of people in the street in the process of missing appointments (Some Meetings We Missed on Your Behalf in Zurich, London and New York, 2007–2009, 2010). In the Promises series (2010), perhaps the most bizarre point of associative crossover occurs at the curatorial meeting of concrete poetry and The Price Is Right: outsize playing-card motifs offering Pop-styled empty promises, and a list of future dates which WITH either ‘Like’ or ‘Don’t Like’ resembling an Ian Hamilton Finlay design for a platform game while also bringing to mind Bruce Nauman’s statement stacks: a ‘Brucie Bonus’ moment like no other. But while WITH’s experiential ‘solutions’ trade in the impossibility of verifying that they ever actually take place, they are nevertheless sometimes enacted. Having a glass broken on my behalf was an odder experience than one might imagine; me, in Rokeby, peering from behind a safety partition while a suited figure wearing a blacked-out motorcycle helmet wandered blindly until knocking a pint glass off a plinth. This performance consolidated WITH’s uncanny ability to situate the viewer in and out of the joke simultaneously. For all the deliberate artsy pretensions and precautions, it felt genuinely strange: like being given a private dance during a Blue Peter science experiment by an intoxicated Stig at the Frieze Art Fair. Rebecca Geldard

WITH

Rokeby, London 2 September – 2 October

We’re Really Happy for You, 2010, screen print on Heritage White Archival Paper, 84 x 59 cm, edition of 10. © the artist. Courtesy Rokeby, London

ArtReview 119

REVIEWS: uk

Jennifer Tee Local Myths

Falling Feathers (White), 2009 18 porcelain feathers, wooden octagram construction, black rope, 280 x 140 x 120 cm

120 ArtReview

Eastside Projects, Birmingham 25 September – 6 November

Jennifer Tee’s first UK solo show is subtle and intriguing, with works in an unlikely spread of media from ceramic, marble and textiles to graphics and photography. They each occupy space with a poise and presence usually associated with postminimalist sculpture, but there’s a lot more going on here: Tee has a way of cutting across installation, performance, graphics and photography, as well as historical time-zones. Without any didactic references, the works resonate with indigenous cultures across several continents. Eastside Projects is not some industrial-strength white cube, but a multifaceted intellectual venture embedded in a fractured yet evolving local urban culture. ‘Eastside’ is itself an extracartographic myth, a name with only urban narratives to give it substance. Tee, like other artists responding to the invitation to work here, will leave behind a work – a totemic 3.5m-high column of Carrara marble, into which is carved the legend ‘Local Myths’ (Local Myths, 2010). The term ‘myth’ today is horribly overdetermined, but here it finds some unexpected depth. The show is framed by large billboard images, one on the Eastside building frontage, the other serving as a backdrop within. Collectively entitled Star Crossed (2010), they feature black-and-white stills of a female dancer in an array of angular, choreographed poses, superimposed with geometric shapes that echo the shape and vibrant colour of hexagonal pieces of hand-dyed wool on the gallery’s floor. Above one of these is a mobile, with three suspended tourmaline crystals and ceramic birds in upward flight (In Origin, 2009). While they look at first glance like readymades, it becomes apparent the extent to which the objects have emerged from travelling, research, discussion and intense thought invested in some concealed narrative. The surface detail of the works evokes a tactile sensibility and interest in elemental materials outmoded in contemporary art; and their spatial distribution has something of the typographic – almost the hieroglyphic – about it. Two versions of the work Falling Feathers (2009) comprise 18 oversize porcelain feathers suspended from a wooden octagonal frame, each side strung with yarn. North American? Symbolic? Authentic? Some of these aspects are like anthropological finds: striking images that belong to some ancient symbolic order. On coming through the door, you find yourself at an oblique angle to a line of what look like tribal ceramic vessels, two of them displaying regular fresh flowers. These are coiled stoneware vessels, all from 2010, and range from containers of basic substances to funerary vases, with names such as Replacing, Healing, Hair, Heart, Liver, Ovary and Ancestral Sacrifice: titles impressed into the ceramic surface. Tee, evidently, is not afraid of durable metaphysical questions concerning the limits of human existence, and how natural materials were the means through which mythic belief and narrative have been materialised and become formative of a local economy. After a while, you become aware of walking in circles around the exhibition and, accordingly, of experiencing a mild feeling of ritual repetition. In peripheral vision, a photographic image of Tee’s left hand draws you back into cultural real-time, dispelling any sense of tribal romanticism. Yet ‘community’ is a subtheme here, made apparent in some of the works’ collaborative origins: the ceramics made with Jackson Li from Jingdezhen, the textiles with Sahara Briscoe from New York and the graphic design of the accompanying publication with Amsterdam-based Richard Niessen. Jonathan Vickery

reviews: Uk

Direct Serious Action Is Therefore Necessary, 2010 (installation view). Photo: Alan Dimmick

Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan

Direct Serious Action Is Therefore Necessary

CCA, Glasgow 2 October – 13 November

Rarely does interpretation feel more like a staged gesture than within the exhibitions of Tatham and O’Sullivan. In one of the more conventional texts accompanying this show, the artists present a question-and-answer session. There is, they suggest, no plain connection between the main elements of Direct Serious Action Is Therefore Necessary: the title doesn’t encapsulate anything specific about the objects within the space; nor does it relate directly to the signature image for the exhibition, a cartoon drawing of a snooty top-hatted man on a pony, aloofly carrying a standard that bears the words of the title. Similarly, the two large sculptural ‘worms’ – blocky, vividly decorated segments of a supposedly continuous entity that seems to be emerging from and disappearing into the gallery’s floor – do not relate easily to the black-and-white photographs of Glasgow also exhibited. Different levels of interpretation reframe the works: on the one hand you might imagine that they constitute a relatively cohesive strategy of ‘intervention’, while on the other – at the level of the content – they seem disparate and interrupt broader generalisations. The sculptures pass from initially seeming like modernist abstract forms, to evoking the more playful work of artists like Keith Haring, to being figurative works that could be taken for caricatures of the Loch Ness Monster. The photos could be generally evocative of the way black-and-white photos tend to pervade mythical accounts of an artist’s conception of a work, or be related to the comic aspect of the sculptures, where forms seem to be ‘peeping’ out from behind other forms. The photos are, as the artists state preemptively in their text, of Glasgow, which bears a relationship to the CCA and the Glasgow-based artists, but ‘Glasgow’ might also just be, ‘a trope [that] stands in for the idea of subject matter’. I’ve added some of my own associations to the passage above, but it ends with a quotation. In some ways my own activity as an ‘art critic’ has been circumscribed by Tatham and O’Sullivan’s erudite strategy. Previously, others have described this strategy as Brechtian: this term matches closely with their work being ‘staged’, ‘gestural’ and ‘interruptive’, but it also brings a certain baggage with it. Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’ was understood, particularly by Walter Benjamin, as having a clear political function. This political function rested upon a fairly solid notion of the intended audience, the proletariat. With general acknowledgement of multiculturalism, ushered in with postmodernism and postcolonialism, this formulation is no longer sustainable. Contemporary social science turns to methodologies such as participant observation to build up a richer understanding of individuals. Indeed, it would be interesting to know what the audience – particularly a nonspecialist audience – actually ‘makes’ of this show. But that through Direct Serious Action I am searching for this information, instead of offering you an abstract theory, seems to come back to many of Benjamin’s ideas relating to the meaning of ‘Brechtian’. Tatham and O’Sullivan’s exhibition, as obtuse as it could first appear, highlights the complex platform of ‘reality’ upon which meanings are constantly made and reinterpreted. James Clegg ArtReview 121

REVIEWS:

USA

The Space Between Reference and Regret

Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York 9 September – 23 October

The press materials for The Space Between Reference and Regret begin in canonical style, detailing John Cage’s thoughts on Robert Rauschenberg’s 1951 White Paintings: in their blank whiteness, the paintings defied their own optical autonomy by reflecting, quite literally on their canvas surfaces, the surrounding architectural site: shadows, reflections and the like. A precursor to Minimalism and conceptualism, Rauschenberg’s revelatory voids are here didactically represented by Heimo Zobernig’s recapitulated white monochrome Untitled (1993). Karin Sander’s Mailed Painting: Bonn–Gmünden–Berlin–New York (2007) trades in a similar self-reflexivity, but her monochrome canvas literally bears the brunt of its phenomenological encounters, and in that way it is very similar to Walead Beshty’s 2005 FedEx kraft box series of glass cubes, shipped and then displayed webbed with cracks. Shipped unwrapped and unpackaged to her New York gallery, D’Amelio Terras, Sander’s white canvas is marred by black skid marks and indents. Her other canvases, pocked with brown and grey, and evocatively patinated, are compelling sitespecific land-art prints – undoubtedly because the land in question is Friedrich Petzel’s personal Long Island home. With Gebrauchsbild left in Petzel’s backyard, and Gebrauchsbilder (both 2010) in his front yard, the gallery owner completes the work in a radically different way than the Cagean legacy might dictate: Cage’s ego-divesting aesthetic of silence rejected any notion of cultural hierarchy, and as such, it was intrinsically anti-institutional. In Sander’s case, the work embraces the institution, and renders it perversely equivalent to modernist painterly abstraction. Perhaps even more indicative of this exhibition’s critical complications, however, is Philippe Parreno’s Speech Bubbles (Red) (2010), which aggregates 2,000 red cartoonish speech-bubble balloons that hover just above visitors’ heads. First conceived in 1997 for a French union demonstration, the balloons’ shiny Mylar surfaces were left blank so employees could fill in their individual demands with markers. The work was used only once for that specific purpose, and in subsequent iterations it exchanges a credibly egalitarian politics for a compromised museum-and-gallery-approved one. The work’s avant-garde aims suffer as a result. Prized now solely for their exhibition value, the balloons are too rarefied for such plebeian mark-making. Parreno’s piece points to Claire Bishop’s oft-cited but very pertinent polemic about the limitations of such political and ostensibly democratic practices largely indebted to Cage. As it is in many ways with this exhibition, such pluralistic gestures are hindered by their specific site of reception. What sort of public participation is possible when the public is mainly cultural insiders? And perhaps more relevant here, how effective is institutional critique when the critique is institutionally prescribed? These sorts of questions aren’t new by any means, and in this instance, they aren’t raised in new ways. Evoking an ‘aesthetics of nothingness’ to try to exceed it, The Space Between Reference and Regret is a lovely but strangely bloodless elaboration on such a radical legacy. David Everitt Howe The Space Between Reference and Regret, 2010 (installation view). Courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York

122 ArtReview

reviews: USA

Matthew Day Jackson The Tomb & In Search Of

Peter Blum SoHo & Peter Blum Chelsea, New York 17 September – 13 November

Matthew Day Jackson kills himself quite frequently. Me, Dead at 36 (2010), a lifesize photograph of a shrouded corpse, is the most recent example in an ongoing series of images that represent the artist in lifeless repose. Blockman (2010), a skeleton based on a forensic rendering of the artist’s own, is composed of a stack of rapidprototyped Lucite blocks, each of which encases a spectral, geometricised section of the body. As one of many signature hybrid genres, such morbid self-portraiture is part of the artist’s self-mythologising. In Jackson’s two-venue exhibition at Peter Blum’s galleries in Chelsea and SoHo, objects appear – according to a looped 30-minute mockumentary (complete with commercials) entitled In Search Of (2010) – like “phantasms made real… a collective hallucination given flesh. Artefacts literally willed into being.” Or so the artist would like us to believe. The disparate elements of Jackson’s work seem less like the handmade products of a studio in Brooklyn and more like the booty of some futuristic excavation, the selection and assembly of which retains an institutional élan, as if the work of a scientist, curator, archaeologist or some other anonymous organising hand. The video itself offers a thinly veiled, conspiracy-laced fiction-as-science programme, the type that has enthralled American audiences for generations. Jackson’s fascination with technology and its destructive applications is his primary artistic conceit. The undergirding steel frame of Chariot II – I Like America and America Likes Me (2008–10) recalls Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic architecture, holding aloft the shell of a Corvette that was restored from a cousin’s crashed drag car. The glowing colours of the light spectrum that emanate from the underbody of the vehicle make it a chariot in the classical sense, though here it’s a case of Icarus meets Iggy Pop: a hotrod for cruising the highway to hell. Among the large-format collaged paintings on view, Enola Gay (2010), made from everyday home construction materials, depicts the empty cockpit of the bomber that launched us into the nuclear age. August 6th, 1945 (2010), the date of Hiroshima’s obliteration, depicts a bird’s-eye view of Hamburg – itself levelled by the Allies towards the end of the Second World War – in postapocalyptic, scarified blackness. Both seem to address the perils and potentials of technological evolution: the former being an ode to advancement, the latter a dirge to destruction. The SoHo exhibition contains a single work, Tomb (2010), which takes the 1494 funeral statuary of the Burgundian nobleman Philippe Pot as its inspiration: in place of diminutive monks stand giant astronaut pallbearers, CNC-milled from blocks of scrap wood. The glass coffin they carry contains the effigy of a corpse that is at once man, weapon and machine. It is the funeral procession for a shadowy leviathan, the skeletal remains of an astrological automaton. Jackson’s brand of stargazing necromancy has earned him the mantle of all-American rebel-romantic, and while no single element of his work fulfils the myth that the artist has created for himself, each part is a hypothesised enigma, a fragment of some future made via discreet excavations of the past. Steve Pulimood

Untitled (Interiors), 2001, 179 x 241 cm, chromogenic colour print, private collection, New York

ArtReview 123

reviews: USA

Tony Cox

White Trash Mystic

211 Elizabeth Street project space, New York 6 October – 5 November

Skateboarder magazine once asked Tony Cox whether his creative pursuits – the graphics and clothing, the sewing, the artmaking – were an important part of his ‘being a pro’ skateboarder. Cox replied, ‘For me, it’s a very important part, just representing the individual’. What I take Cox to have meant by this is that these pursuits were important not as a way of fashioning a more marketable persona, but as a way into one’s singularity, which can so easily expire in a world that breathes the thin air of marketing and sponsorship. So artmaking became meditation, a ritual way of keeping things in some kind of perspective, no matter how idiosyncratic. It makes sense then that Cox has voiced an affinity for non-Western religions and rituals, which he has observed on his extensive travels as a professional skateboarder, and which the many works in this calming show somehow evoke. The desire for some sort of spiritual bridge between East and West is a common one, but though Cox’s works – all delicately embroidered faces and totems that incorporate little bits of refuse, such as bottle caps and toothpicks and those odd plastic hangers that stores use to display socks – bear much of the innocence that motivates that desire, they don’t exhibit any of the irritating self-righteousness or cheap proselytising that so often accompanies it. One of Cox’s strongest works is a series called House of Transformation (2007–10), whose 12 panels hang in a 3-by-4 grid, double-framed so that one could view the panels’ backs. The series itself is more formalist than the many faces that Cox conjures out of thread and fabric, its panels largely composed of the kinds of decorative ribbons and papers that one pulls off bottles or cigarette packs. Out of these, Cox has fashioned a series of small totems and altars, none of which appears to have any specific referent in contemporary religion or spiritual practice, but all of which are unmistakable in their vocabulary as objects or designs meant to focus supernatural belief. That Cox shows us the backs of these pieces – as he does elsewhere, such as in Conscious B-Side (2010) – is a kind of Zen submission, a gesture at the relinquishing of control that promises transparency (‘Here’s how this was made’) while opening onto the opacity of mysticism (‘How is anything truly made?’). John Cage opened up this path, but as a corrective to the rule of composition that had reigned in Western aesthetics since the fifteenth century. Cox has no such ambitions. The bridge between East and West in these works is solely Cox’s own, a way of ‘representing the individual’ that has no designs on anything greater. It’s forged not out of any engagement with history, only with personal experience, and the difficulty of ever really knowing what that might be, or how to convey it to someone else. Jonathan T.D. Neil

House of Transformation, 2007–10 (installation view). Courtesy the artist

124 ArtReview

reviews: USA

Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler Khu, Act 2 of ‘Ancient Evenings’

Khu, 2 October 2010, performance still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York

Various venues, Detroit 2 October

In Khu (‘light of the soul’ in Egyptian cosmology), the second of seven planned performances based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings, Matthew Barney brought his prodigious facility with iconography and allegory to bear on the necropolis of American industry that is Detroit. Structured as a ritualistic procession by bus and barge through the city, the piece commenced in late morning at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a monument to the belief that culture cements civic permanence, and ended well after sundown at the Mordor-like wastes of a steel casting pit, where five male figures dressed in gold suits, à la James Lee Byars, stood atop the silos of disused preheating furnaces lashed by wind-driven rain. As in his films, Barney, who wrote the spoken and sung libretto, constructed a calibrated network of interlocking and overlapping references, from Byars – born in Detroit – and Harry Houdini – who died there – to the grand themes of resurrection and transformation treated in Mailer’s overly turgid text and often explored in his own work. Foremost among these intersections, the Egyptian god Osiris was represented by the smashed remains of the 1967 Chrysler Imperial – manufactured in the Motor City – from Cremaster 3. The piece was punctuated by moments of visionary and idiosyncratic beauty, some of which fused into pitchperfect revelations of the broader flows of history. For example, during a scene at an old factory by the River Rouge, Belita Woods sang a plangent aria inflected by Negro spirituals and blues (kudos to Bepler, who wrote the music), which both meditated on death and transfiguration, and evoked the deeply traumatic and synergistic fusion of African and North American culture. The highly choreographed, at times circuitous, itinerary through the city created a disorienting sense of déjà vu which mirrored the process of self-realisation that the soul undergoes in Mailer’s book; and it suggested that Detroit is a place of myth and historical transformation. However, much of the plot and the spoken dialogue channelled clichés from CSI television serials, as when Isis, here an FBI agent, presented the dismembered body of her brother, Osiris (see 1967 Chrysler above), as evidence in a federal investigation. Pacing was unmodulated and glacial; characterisations, stock: tough women and roughneck men underscored a now-stale trope of stereotyped sexuality in Barney’s work. Absent compelling narrative and character development, what drove Khu, as it has driven much of Barney’s work, was the unfolding and layering of his increasingly self-referential mythology. Only its narrow internal logic, and Mailer’s text, gave meaning to such wilfully arcane ceremonies as, for example, Isis’s peeing into the engine of the destroyed Chrysler (see Osiris and FBI agent above). Meaning was subsumed into Barney’s admittedly evocative and creative world, rather than opened to the broader significances of a highly loaded site. Joshua Mack ArtReview 125

REVIEWS: USA

Allen Ruppersberg

Allen Ruppersberg: No Time Left to Start Again

Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles 16 September – 6 November

There’s a disarmingly generous quality to Allen Ruppersberg’s recent work, from the installations of pop culture and found photographs from the Los Angeles artist’s personal collection, to the walls, stacks and boxes of Day-Glo posters that give phonetic shape to a poem such as Ginsberg’s Howl (1955) or issue advertisements and exclamations. Such works facilitate an inclusive environment, in part by collapsing classist markers for aesthetic taste (the artist confers as much worth to the laminated photo as the drawing, for example, and to a Duchamp or Elvis reference). They also solicit an engaged, almost synaesthetic spectator, who reads and sings the printed word, and upon viewing a photograph of an LP starts to hear its music. As a collector, Ruppersberg is a memorialist, and his extensive work with musician and artist obituaries, for example, attests to his awareness of the responsibility to tap his archival materials for collective remembrance. For Allen Ruppersberg: No Time Left to Start Again, his sixth solo exhibition at Margo Leavin Gallery, Ruppersberg assumes the mantle of reconciling himself – and the viewer – with certain cultural, biographical and urban hauntings. In Untitled (LA in the 70s) (all works 2010), a series of silkscreens layered with a loose, scrapbook logic, the artist maps out the 1970s art scene in era-specific yellows and greens and purples, pairing LA Metro descriptions of Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards with drive-by shots of restaurants and textual routes through artworld nodes (‘Bas Jan [Ader] knew Guy [de Cointet]’, ‘Guy knew Jack [Goldstein]’ and Jack, unsurprisingly, knew everyone). Ruppersberg affixes address labels of still more notables on one piece (Burden, Ruscha, Lamelas et al.); in another, he organises content around an advertisement for the Girls A-Go-Go-Go club; and over all three he layers a black-and-white (but figuratively sepiatoned) photograph given to him at the opening of his 1970 exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, which depicts his art buds hanging in Venice. No less nostalgic but considerably more complicated are the six pegboards that line the wall of the main gallery, silkscreened with archery targets and replica party flags (No Time Left to Start Again / The B and D of R ‘n’ R). These boards serve as display surfaces for laminated colour copies of images of musicians, newspaper obituaries and found photographs – a tailored selection of the approximately 1,000 copies that fill the cardboard boxes on the gallery floor. In a similarly designed installation last fall at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Ruppersberg allowed visitors to make their own selections of images and move around the pegboard hooks to suit the structures of these narratives (the artist himself reorganised the display twice over the exhibition run). In an unfortunate move, the piece at Margo Leavin offers no participatory component. Much of Ruppersberg’s work does not rely upon explicit interaction to produce its resonant, collective effects, but given how greatly a democratic ethos informs this piece and its Santa Monica consort, the lack of invitation to interact in this case is pretty disappointing. Tyler Coburn

Untitled (LA in the 70s), 2010, silkscreen on paper, 127 x 97 cm. Photo: Brian Forrest. Courtesy the artist and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

126 ArtReview

reviews: USA

Alberto Burri vigorously denied that his paintings were about the Second World War and the existential trauma and recovery of postwar Italy. Though making the decision to become an artist in a US prison camp, and abandoning the practice of medicine because he thought humanity too sick to survive, he said (common of modernist artists at the time) that his Santa Monica Museum of Art paintings were only about ‘form’. Nevertheless, eager either to Combustione: Alberto Burri and America 11 September – 18 December romanticise Burri or to tell a bit of truth, James Johnson Sweeney, director of the Guggenheim and early Cellotex LA 86, 1986, acrylic on Burri advocate, said in 1955 of the artist’s torched burlap, oil and pumice paintings that ‘out of wound beauty fibreboard, 195 x 127 cm, collection is born’, and so Burri became an artist responding to and representing the trauma of war. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), The key question of Combustione: Alberto Burri and America is still the old one: are Burri’s paintings New York/SIAE, Rome symbols of a universal, physical impulse towards ruin, or are they representations of the historical circumstances surrounding him as he began to paint in the late 1940s? The answer can accommodate both views. That Burri’s canvases recall the scorched earth of war suggests that the forces of destruction natural to human culture are, at their primal essence, also the tectonics of the earth, of volcanoes spewing gas and pumice, of tremors cracking the plaster surface of a residential wall. The physical inevitability of Burri’s materials, which would prove fertile ground for the Arte Povera artists who followed, can be linked to the seeming inevitability of war. With a majority of younger artists in LA pursuing purely conceptual practices, Burri’s yearnings for primal materiality might appear out of joint with the climate, yet this is exactly the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s aim in introducing Burri to LA. He worked quietly in the city, sharing residencies in Italy and LA for almost three decades. Cocurator Michael Duncan hopes Burri ‘can speak to new audiences tired of the natterings of mass-media celebrity culture’. Lisa Melandri, the other cocurator, likes the resonances between the hardscrabble desert that Burri loved and the paintings he presented to the world. Simply put, Combustione is an achievement in line with the Hammer Museum’s Charles Burchfield exhibition last year: a niche show capable of big impact. The show comes at an important time, too. With MoMA’s Abstract Expressionist New York currently reasserting the old story of the American dominance of modern art in the 1940s and 50s, figures like Burri and the artists of the European postwar period continue to lack proper appreciation in the United States. One feels that Burri, in canvases such as Mold (Muffa) (1951), is capable of making figures such as Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock look polite and naive. Burri both locks into the central story of Abstract Expressionism and stretches it forward not only into Arte Povera but also into the material basis of Minimalism. His canvases feel relevant, powerful and a perfect appetiser for next year’s Pacific Standard Time, a multivenue examination of LA’s idiosyncratic story, in which more figures like Burri, artists with unadvertised LA pedigrees, are likely to emerge. Ed Schad

Alberto Burri

ArtReview 127

reviews:

Europe

Takashi Murakami

Two years after controversial American superstar artist Jeff Koons let his big shiny dog loose in the Château de Versailles’s Hercules Salon, controversial Japanese superstar artist Takashi Murakami has parked a teenyweenied emperor in the Coronation Room, right next to controversial French superstar artist JacquesLouis David’s giant painting of Napoleon sticking the imperial crown on his own pointy head. Most regular folk reacted predictably: Non! said more than half the country, when polled (roughly the same percentage that had said Oui! to the French police’s dismantling of Roma camps a month earlier). Responses from contemporary art folk were hardly warmer. ‘Koons was a good choice, but I don’t see what Versailles has in common with the Japanese world of Murakami. If these collaborations are too forced, it harms both parties.’ This from curator Marie-Laure Bernadac, Château de Versailles who has just unleashed a Nan Goldin show at the Louvre. In Le Monde, Harry Bellet summarised the 14 September – 12 December show as ridiculous – this from a man who tried to bequeath his Wim Delvoye-tattooed bicep to the Pompidou Centre. The organisers were nonplussed and, frankly, offended. ‘Murakami’s works are joyous, and Versailles is a palace destined for happiness, joy and merriment’, Jean-Jacques Aillogon, president of the Château de Versailles, reproached. Of course the show is ‘provocative’; that’s the whole idea. How else do you beef up attendance and pay for much-needed restorations and ‘serious’ historical exhibitions? But hadn’t they softened the blow by excluding the darker elements of Murakami’s industrial Pop? Hadn’t they left out the shooting sperm lassos, breast-milk skipping ropes and Louis Vuitton logos? Sure, they included a six-foot sculpture of a blonde waitress with giant hooters and a skimpy skirt. Sure, they included The Simple Things (2008–9), cosigned by R&B star Pharrell Williams and featuring a ketchup bottle and a condom wrapper studded with diamonds. But that’s just fun, people, and Versailles, back in the day, was all about fun, happiness, joy and merriment. Heck, Louis XIV was a party animal. He loved hooters! He would have loved Murakami! He would have loved ketchup! ‘Why would Murakami want to show his work in a place as ugly as the Château de Versailles?’ This cheeky joke prefaces a clever editorial by Marc Jimenez in Le Monde. The philosopher uses it to ask: ‘Is this monument of classicism, embellished with a few baroque touches, built by Le Vau, Orbay and then Hardouin-Mansart, so intrinsically “beautiful” or inherently “ugly” that it can or cannot accommodate the “ugliness” or “beauty” of [Murakami’s art]?’ Don’t answer. Instead, put yourself in the shoes of the exhausted tourists wedged cheek by jowl in the royal enfilades, lost in a rococo reverie of marble, silver, tortoiseshell and gold, and then, suddenly, bam! Mr Pointy (2003–4), 25ft high. Bam! A manga-nised Salle des Guards – carpet, chandeliers, wallpaper, everything festooned and flowering. Bam! A queue of candy-coloured mushrooms and monsters. Bam! A fire exit sign. Fire exit sign? There were no fire exit signs during the ancien régime. What an absurd anachronism! Get it out of here! Overlooked in all this kerfuffle are any valid insights into the merits and meanings of Murakami’s superflattened world. Let’s redress this now: Murakami’s artworks, like his keychains, dolls and mousepads, are factory-made and flawless. Some are big. All are shiny. All are fun. Do they belong in Versailles? Sure. Old, new, high, low: it’s kitsch on kitsch, and it’s having a ball. Bam! Christopher Mooney

Yume Lion (The Dream Lion), 2009–10, aluminium and gold leaf, 191 x 127 x 110 cm. Photo: Cedric Delsaux – Salon d’Apollon, Château de Versailles. © 2009–10 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

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reviews: europe

La Carte d’Après Nature: An Artist’s Selection by Thomas Demand

The same meticulous attention to detail and passion for artifice evidenced in Thomas Demand’s own work pervades this inaugural group exhibition curated by the artist at the Villa Paloma, part of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. A journal published by René Magritte provided the German artist with the exhibition’s title, roughly translating as ‘The Postcard of Nature’. Even though there are a number of Magritte’s paintings in the exhibition, it is the images of the relatively unknown photographer Luigi Ghirri that continually stand out among the 18 artists’ works. Embedded in each photograph – there are some 55 here – is the very kernel of the conceptual premise of the entire exhibition: nature as artifice. For instance, Lago di Braies (1978) shows not an actual landscape but a series of postcards of a lake and mountain landscape setting on a stand in a shop. Not only has Demand provided an intriguing premise, but he has also lavished attention on the mode of presentation of each of the works he has selected. Notably, he’s designed and fabricated a substantial frame for each of Ghirri’s small photographs, appropriately serving as a lens to bring the image into crisp focus rather than turning the photograph into an object. A further collection of Ghirri photographs, the unfinished Marina di Ravenna series (1986), has been carefully slotted into an antique display case. Additionally, each of the framed Magritte paintings is hung on wallpaper whose pattern is constituted from a photograph of large deeply toned curtains used in Demand’s 2009 solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. And a series of small ceramic sculptures by Chris Galofaro, brimming with gaudily coloured spiky fauna, have been clustered according to their colour and contour and positioned on the shelves in a large antique display case borrowed from the nearby Oceanographic Museum.

Villa Paloma, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco 18 September – 22 February

La Carte d’Après Nature also includes a number of sculptures by Kudjoe Affutu, Saâdane Afif and Martin Boyce, and films by Tacita Dean, Ger Van Elk and Rodney Graham. This last artist’s Phonokinetoscope (2001–2), the only work in the exhibition to be allocated a separate room, comprises a five-minute 16mm film loop of Graham riding a bike backwards in a park – adding a hilarious performative dimension to the otherwise deadpan surrealism on display elsewhere in the exhibition. The predominant medium is photography, however, with Demand also selecting a number of his own photographs, including Hydroculture (2010) and Clearing (2003). But in many ways this feels unnecessary: so closely linked is Demand’s sensibility as an artist to the works he’s selected, his photographs are seldom far from your mind anyway. Set within the broader context of Monaco, the exhibition strikes a prescient note: once a place visited by the wealthy because of its beauty and heritage, the principality now resembles nothing less than a simulacrum of nature – with land reclaimed, new architecture continually in progress and plastic plants carefully placed around the landscape to cover up the resulting cracks. So while Demand’s exhibition is conceptually tight as an entity, it is also sensitively attuned to the specifics of the place. By staging La Carte d’Après Nature, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco – which, based on the evidence of this exhibition, is surely set to attract a committed international audience – has imaginatively made an asset out of what could have been an impediment. Alex Coles

Anne Holtrop, Floating Island – Spa, 2009–10, architectural model, digital images, 130 x 150 x 50 cm, 1:50. © the artist

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reviews: europe

Make Yourself at Home

The work in Make Yourself at Home, by ten artists or collectives from around the world, is clustered around the twinned issues of migration and hospitality. And given the mixed origins of the artists and the fact that an art gallery is never the most hospitable of places, the title might seem to reference the process of curating as much as it does contemporary geopolitics. It’s a feeling that finds its home in Danish collective A Kassen’s Endless Doner (2010): a doner kebab, shaped like the columnar Brancusi sculpture from which it draws its name, and located not in the Kunsthal but in a local kebab shop. Where it belongs. Or doesn’t, given that its grandiose art status will be wasted (literally) on the city’s meat-munchers. It’s a dumb work, yet its approach is quite refreshing when compared to the usual indexes for treating the subject of transmigration in art today – here represented by Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen Nigerian photographer George Osodi’s documenting of life with three Copenhagen-based host families. 4 September – 21 November Similarly simplistic is Olaf Bruening’s Head (2010), a wooden cartoon outline of a cranium filled with the repeated word ‘me’ and a solitary ‘you’ around which the other words cluster like white blood cells around an infection. It’s a cliché, but in its simplicity, it’s as direct as a Vegas billboard: indeed, it looks like the kind of armature to which you’d attach some neon lights or a firework display. The same might be said of Kader Attia’s Untitled (Ghardaia) (2009), a cityscape made out of couscous that looks a bit like the model map in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) but is supposed to represent the architecture of the M’Zab Valley in the Algerian desert (a typology that notably inspired the work of Le Corbusier, whose portrait presides over the edible town). The highfalutin’ way of looking at this work is presumably to cast it as an act of ‘reappropriation’, but now that I’m beginning to see dumbing down as a virtue, it seems better viewed as an illustration of how identity is consumable: how even the idea of ‘home’ is an act of consumption. It’s a view reinforced by Otobong Nkanga’s elegiac installation The Taste of a Stone (2010), which transforms an ordinary-looking rock into some kind of fetish object through documentation of the tales people spin around it (of love, fear, etc) – as if it were the ur-home and the ur-Rosetta stone. The centrepiece of the show is undoubtedly Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Home Sweet Home (2010), an accumulation of birdcages and houses raised on stilts like a fishing village, emitting various bird twitters and featuring West African statues of black figures dressed in modern dress dangling like so many scrota. Despite all that, the best way of describing the whole is ‘a mess’. Albeit a charming one. It’s more recognisably urban than Attia’s cityscape, and you could spend a while interpreting the signs and symbols Tayou’s work offers up. The iconography of cages, for example – the fact that they are empty (save for a recorded sound), the fact that the statues are based on status colons, statuettes which emerged during the early twentieth century and generally depicted white colonial agents in pith helmets, etc – but perhaps it’s more profitable simply to revel in its subtle (for the sound elements are not loud) cacophony. Recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that integration had failed. If she saw the work on show here, and particularly Breuning’s videowork Home 2 (2007), which follows idiot tourist Brian Kerstetter through Switzerland and the African continent, and around Japan and Papua New Guinea as he collides Western stereotyping with indigenous cultures, perhaps she’d realise that that’s because we’re making it too complicated. Mark Rappolt

Olaf Breuning, Home 2, 2007, DVD, 30 min 12 sec

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reviews: europe

New Realisms: 1957–1962

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 16 June – 4 October

New Realisms: 1957–1962: Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle is framed by the curatorial contention that the period between 1957 and 1962 represents an as-yet-uncodified turning point between abstract painting and Pop, creating the conditions necessary for the subsequent emergence of not only Pop but also Fluxus, Minimalism and conceptualism. Certainly these years witnessed significant cultural transformation (bookended by Elvis’s final appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and the near-simultaneous execution of Adolf Eichmann in Israel and the opening of the first Wal-Mart in the US), while in terms of art they were as remarkable for destructive intents as for creative ones. In attempting to capture the methods by which artists sought to ‘chart a viable pathway out of Pollock’, this Euro-inflected response to the po-faced formalism of Abstract Expressionism is undercut with a playful seriousness every bit as redolent of Dada and Duchamp as the exhibition’s curator – Julia Robinson – claims. The show brings together work by (among others) George Brecht, César, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Daniel Spoerri, Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, D.A. Pennebaker, Robert Rauschenberg and Warhol. Each in their way embodies what art historian Sarah Wilson once described as the ‘shift from the flea markets to the supermarket’, embracing an intellectual fascination with everyday life. As Sidney Janis wrote in 1962, on both sides of the Atlantic the New Realists represented, too, the change from the ‘angry young men of 1918’ to the ‘cool young men of today’. But as is demonstrated by the lacerated poster work of the affichistes Dufrêne, Hains, Villeglé and Rotella, the assemblages of Arman, Kaprow, Rauschenberg and Spoerri, and Fahlström’s twisted, Boschmeets-comic-books narratives, between 1957 and 1962 being ‘cool’ and being political were no more mutually exclusive than simultaneously critiquing and revelling in the banalities and absurdities of contemporary culture. Distributed across temporal rather than geographical or hagiographical borders, the exhibition is broken up mercilessly into even smaller yearlong subsections – allowing the artists involved to remain simultaneously associated and disassociated, and bringing out the era’s dynamism. Discrete categories give way to networks of individuals and multiple practices linked more by sightlines, parallel trajectories and moments of mutual recognition than by formal, historical or contemporary critical consensus. Those circuits melted away as fast as they had appeared, though not without throwing up several figures – eg, Claes Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Jean Tinguely and Yayoi Kusama – who either broke with or outmanoeuvred programmatic notions of realism shortly after emerging. Even so, that this half-decade is neatly undergirded with what might be regarded as significant artistic events and epochal artworks (represented here by both the works themselves and documentation: films, photos, notes and invitations), gives added credence to Robinson’s thesis. In the process, the exhibition reveals the major championing role played by small galleries on both continents, while illuminating the continuities and conflicts which characterised the period: Duchamp’s 1957 lecture at the American Federation of Arts, in Houston; the appearance of Tinguely’s 1959 Méta-matic Nº 17 at that year’s Biennale de Paris, followed by his working with Billy Klüver, Rauschenberg and Robert Breer on Homage to New York (1960); the era-closing The New Realists at Janis’s 57th Street gallery in 1962. This is no blockbuster of a show. Though large, confident and clever, it’s the very opposite of the kind of big, selfcongratulatory, self-consciously revelatory and deadening affairs these things so often are. For those less familiar with the artists, the work and the mythologies surrounding what came afterwards, it’s a real eye-opener. And for anyone who does know them, it’s hard to argue with New Realisms’s rediscoveries. Luke Heighton Oyvind Fahlström, Ade-Ledic-Nander II, 1955–7, oil on canvas, 190 x 211 x 4 cm, collection Moderna Museet, Stockholm

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reviews: europe

Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg: Meteorit ‘El Taco’

Four billion five hundred sixty-eight million years ago our solar system was born. The detritus of that creative act led to the creation of the asteroid belt, where even today chunks of metal orbit the sun in an area between Jupiter and Mars. Fifteen million years ago, a random collision in that zone sent a 112-metric-ton mass hurtling towards our young planet. On the way, it broke into smaller pieces, and one of these, weighing 1,993.8 kilos, came to rest in 2000 BC in a country eventually known as Argentina. Guillermo Faivovich and Nicolás Goldberg have recorded the meteor’s continued journey in their artists’ book The Campo del Cielo Meteorites – Vol. 1: El Taco, published on the occasion of this exhibition. To summarise: ‘El Taco’ was ‘discovered’ in 1962 (its presence had been noted centuries before), sent first to the Smithsonian in Washington, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main DC, then to the Max Planck Institute in Mainz in 1965, where it was measured, photographed, 25 September – 14 November documented and eventually sliced in half. One half was returned to Argentina – where it has been on public display in one form or another since 1967, but largely forgotten and entirely undocumented – and the other was sent back to DC, where it was promptly put into deep storage and hasn’t been seen since, though slim sections (removed in the 1960s) have been studied. While their general interest lay in all of the area’s meteorites, the artists’ curiosity regarding El Taco was piqued upon discovering only the one neatly sliced half of it, left outside rather unceremoniously in the garden of the Galileo Galilei planetarium in their hometown of Buenos Aires, slapped over with anticorrosion paint. A search ensued for the other part, leading to the detailed collection and documentation of this astonishing object’s terrestrial history, a history that reflects global political and social realities as well as scientific and philosophical development, reaching back to the time of the Pampas Indians and then the Spanish colonisers, and later into the history of modern US/Argentinean relations. For Portikus, Faivovich and Goldberg have reunited the two halves, placing the objects on the floor at a distance wide enough to walk through. This reunifying alone is already a poetic gesture – especially in this country, where the object was on show for this year’s Day of German Unity celebrations, on October 3, and more so because Mainz, where the meteor was divided, is only 42km away – but the magnetic pull of the masses themselves is something beyond poetry, gesture or even reason; to touch an object older than the Earth itself is something unfathomable. One side – the one that has been outdoors – is the colour of oxblood, nonreflective, smooth to the touch. The other is silver-grey with patches of what appears to be rust; it seems more jagged, but the flat surface of its separation scar is smooth, polished, reflective. The show and the vast amount of collected data and archival material raises questions about institutional responsibility, about art versus science, methods of exhibition, politics, history, international relations, exploitation… But frankly, however interesting the resulting debate, absolutely none of it matches the raw power of the object itself. Its presence at this institution is, for lack of a better description, a miraculous event whose every recorded step and scientific or logistical explanation makes it not less so but more so. Unfortunately, the thing about miracles is that they make everything around them seem insignificant. Amanda Coulson Going the Wrong Way, Estancia El Taco, Chaco, no date. Photo: Simon Starling

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ASIA Media City Seoul 2010 Trust

Seoul Museum of Art and other venues, Seoul 7 September – 17 November

Since its inception in 2000, Media City Seoul has evolved from a biennial dedicated to new media to a noteworthy, though smaller, alternative to the Gwangju Biennale, Asia’s leading event of its kind, which also takes place in South Korea. True to form, the sixth edition of Media City Seoul – entitled Trust – does not lack ambition, despite being restricted in scale. Showcasing works by 45 artists from 22 countries, the biennial expands over four locations: the Seoul Museum of Art and the museum’s Gyenghuigung Annex, the Museum of History and Simpson Memorial Hall, though the last two almost appear redundant. Trust is one exhibition put together by three curators – Clara Kim, Nicolaus Schafhausen and Fumihiko Sumitomo – who live on different continents, under the artistic direction of Sunjung Kim. Hence, it showcases top-notch international art and does fulfil the ‘local and global’ aspirations most biennials strive for. The flipside of this multiple curatorship, however, is a lack of coherence. Still, the first floor of the Seoul Museum of Art offers a very rich, versatile and consequential selection, uniting works that explore mistrust of (often authoritarian) governments. Among the many highlights are Sarah Morris’s mesmerising Beijing (2008), a video showing the daunting, perfectly oiled machinery behind the 2008 Olympics; Noh Suntag’s photos of an omnipresent radar dominating the Korean countryside (2004–7); and Miki Kratsman’s Targeted Killing (2010), a photographic series shot with the type of lens used by the Israeli Defense Forces in unmanned aerial surveillance, with the result that the subjects look like terrorists. Elsewhere in the biennial, the conceptual strength and compactness of the first section dissipates. The rather elastic way in which the theme is interpreted does not improve the situation. What follows is a succession of works that occasionally refer to the theme – as they please, without a real consideration of the conceptual framework of the exhibition. Antonio Caballero’s Latin American retro photo-novellas and Mark Bradford’s mixed-media collage of used street posters, for example, are farfetched deviations from the concept. Other pieces have been perfectly cast, however, such as Julika Rudelius’ well-known Forever (2006), a video portrait of older ladies who are not strangers to plastic surgery nor to the notion of self-deceit; or Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s widely acclaimed Primitive series (2009–10), which explores how the past haunts the present in a Thai village. Besides incoherence, the biennial’s multiple curatorship also leads to an unevenness in quality. Some of the works on display simply lack maturity, as is the case with Do Ho Suh’s tacky animation of faces gradually transforming into one another – which verges on being a cheap copy of Michael Jackson’s video for Black or White (1991) – or Yangachi’s esoteric Bright Dove Hyunsook, Gyeongseong (2010), a film about a woman identifying with birds and ghosts. Despite some structural flaws, this sixth edition does illustrate Media City Seoul’s successful transition from being a new media biennial to one that can compete with the big boys. Sam Steverlynck

Noh Suntag, The Strange Ball,  2004–7, pigment print, 80 × 110 cm

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REVIEWS:

Books w h i le ab so r b i n g t h i s fat ,

informative and compulsively readable biography of Caravaggio, I was led on more than one occasion to daydream our incorrigible pugilist into the wonderful world of contemporary art. Who would bear the brunt of his recidivistic wrath? Which poor undeserving (or deserving?) soul would be dealt a blow upside the skull? Forcibly enjoined, whether he liked it or not, to participate in a brawl at, say, Frieze? Alas, probably no one. Because as this biography amply demonstrates, Caravaggio was very much of his time. Were he to be of ours, it is doubtful that such unmanageable pride would manifest itself in the same way. (Altogether more plausible is the idea of dropping him into New York’s Cedar Tavern of the 1950s, where he and Pollock et al. would no doubt riot along famously.) Teeming with thuggish, pseudo-gallant knights, veritable gangs of painters, whores, pimps and sundry riffraff, Counter-Reformation Rome was anything but a proverbial jaunt through the park. In this sense, the sword-wielding Caravaggio was hardly an exception; what set him apart was the alacrity with which he indulged in violence and the frequency with which he was arrested for it. Indeed, a great deal of what we know about the 14 years Caravaggio spent in Rome, which he was famously forced to flee after killing a pimp in a duel, basically comes from his voluminous criminal record – that, and a couple of variously unreliable biographies written soon after his death in the seventeenth century. Much has been written about Caravaggio since the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi resuscitated him from obscurity around the middle of the last century. What makes Andrew Graham-Dixon’s biography different is the recent emergence of a series of findings, such as Caravaggio’s real birthdate, the why and wherefore of his defrocking as a knight of Malta and a cogent bit of detective work regarding a near-fatal altercation outside a Neapolitan tavern not

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

long before his death. Nevertheless, in accordance with the unyielding paucity of factual data about Caravaggio’s life, the subject of this biography, through no fault of its author, remains steadfastly elusive, occasionally hovering over its pages, but never deigning to actually inhabit them. Where Graham-Dixon particularly excels, however, is in the extrapolation of character and artistic motives from impressively well-researched context, such as in the Archbishop Carlo Borromeo’s stringent, no-frills Counter-Reformation approach to Catholicism in the Milan of Caravaggio’s youth, and how that primitive stringency might have shaped the painter’s realism. To the masterful creation of generally tenebrous context may be added incisive analytical descriptions of the artist’s paintings, and the admixture of intelligent exegetical interpretation (sacred) and the use of unconventional models, such as prostitutes and old men (profane), that composed them. Perhaps Graham-Dixon’s most significant contribution to an understanding of the life of Caravaggio is the perception of an infernal machinelike logic arcing over it. Rejecting the dominant belief that the rage and desperation of Caravaggio’s work were fuelled by his tormented homosexuality, the author conjectures an interest in women also (not to mention the possibility that Caravaggio was himself a part-time pimp). What at first seems to be an embarrassing bid to recover Caravaggio for some semblance of heterosexuality turns out to be a complex portrayal of the artist as a touchy and rage-prone man riddled with status issues and an ungovernable pride: the fatal flaw that set and kept the infernal machine of his own inexorable undoing in motion. Whence his torment. There’s a moral here. Maybe even a play. But before writing it, I would suggest reading this book. Chris Sharp

134 ArtReview

By Andrew Graham-Dixon Allen Lane, £30 (hardcover)

billed as ‘a stirring defense of our cultural commons’, looks at first blush like something embattled file-sharers might quote in court. Not quite, though Hyde is admittedly one of the planet’s most erudite advocates of intellectual generosity: it’s hard to read his muchloved 1983 book The Gift without accepting that the tree of art grows most lushly away from money plants. Common as Air updates that book for an age when, as global capitalism has gone into fierce overdrive since the fall of the Soviet Union, ‘many things long assumed to be public or common – from weather forecasting to drinking water, from academic science to the “idea” of a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ – have been bought up. Intellectual property, an idea Hyde sees as ‘not just new but historically strange’, is now so much part of our world that, thanks to lobbying on the part of the Motion Picture Association of America, there now exists a ‘Respect Copyright’ badge for American Boy Scouts.

Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership

By Lewis Hyde Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26/£18.99 (hardcover)

Had this historically been the situation, Hyde argues, our scientific and cultural traditions would be incalculably impoverished. His jeremiad against the trend is a history lesson. Hyde traces the history of the ‘commons’ back to common land in England – a resource that, nevertheless, was to be shared under strictures; once he does this, any casual student of nineteenth-century history will expect a modern-day parallel to be drawn with the era of the enclosures, when the commons were forcibly wrested into private hands, and sure enough, we get it. Next, and as a way of measuring how far things have drifted since, Hyde looks at where English liberty went: to America with the founding fathers, memorialised in the rhetoric of freedom propounded by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He recounts ‘founding pirate’ Benjamin Franklin sharing his findings on how to make a lightning rod and refusing to patent the woodstove he invented, preferring to ‘produce something for the common Benefit’. Later, Hyde wheels on Bob Dylan and the storehouse of folk music upon which he drew. Dylan, who’s subjected to adept musicological dissection here – Hyde is nothing if not rangy – is a solid example of the commons in action: he’d never have gone where he did without building on a tradition that itself is a palimpsest of mutating versions of ‘traditional’ songs. ‘Could a young songwriter arise in the same way today?’ asks Hyde, since musicians who borrow and adapt others’ music – often, nowadays, by sampling it – increasingly end up in court. At the same time, he accepts that ownership and copyright are spurs to creativity. I’m not sure I see a pecuniary model in Hyde’s sociable alternative, an ethics of ownership which values the community over the individual and in which ‘citizens will have to name and defend the “good” that enclosure is meant to serve’. But there certainly is a way of keeping creativity in a shared domain for those who want to: Creative Commons Licenses, which, legalising sharing, are increasingly being used to keep ideas noncommercial. This, then, is a book to be read with the theoretical arc of The Gift in mind, for the latter book racks up historical and global examples of scarcity arising from hoarding and an almost mystical replenishment coming from sharing. The author of Common as Air is older and, it seems, angrier – and he has more to be angry about – but the counterexamples he marshals leave one with a shred of hope that our shrinking public domain might find itself in common rather than corporate hands. Buy his book, and then lend it to a friend. Martin Herbert

reviews: books

she spins around on the spot to the sound of a siren, transforming, in a bright flash, from unassuming secretary into superhero. Over and over she runs through the trees, getting nowhere. Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–9) is an early appropriation videowork deploying footage from the Wonder Woman television show (1975–9), depicting the character in moments of perpetual spectacle. Now a canonical videowork that is referenced by a later generation of artists, such as Cory Arcangel and Johan Grimonprez, it has been singled out for extended art-historical consideration by T.J. Demos in the latest of Afterall’s One Work series. The original theme tune of the TV show (‘In your satin tights, fighting for your rights’) gives a pretty good indication of the difficulty in nailing down that character as an empowering feminist icon. On the one hand, her identity (an Amazonian princess, if memories of the show have dimmed) was the kind that artists such as Judy Chicago were drawing upon as celebrated heroines to be honoured in The Dinner Party (1974–9), and which Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen were exploring, from a different perspective, in their film Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974). At the same time, however, the character, played by the actress Lynda Carter, was an image of Pop pinup beauty, sporting a skimpy Americana outfit of red, white, blue and gold. It’s this problematic contradiction that sticks to the material in Birnbaum’s appropriation of it. Birnbaum came to feel that what was missing from film theory and artist’s video was the idea of using ‘television on television’, and it’s revealing to hear how the artist had to rely on friends working in commercial studios to gather the material to make her videoworks (home video recording from television was possible, but one could only record poor-quality black-andwhite images). Though Birnbaum takes an analytic approach, informed by the theoretical texts that were being printed in the British journal Screen, to her material in T/T:WW (isolating and repeating elements, for example), the film is literally dazzling, editing out moments of dialogue and plot in favour of spectacle and action, creating what Demos describes as a ‘phantasmagoria of explosions and hyper-sexual visuality’, and it’s this that gives the video a slippery quality that he is keen to explore. Though Birnbaum made T/T:WW from an avowedly feminist position, Demos believes that the concurrent critical writing on the work, from the likes of Benjamin Buchloh (the work exposes ‘the puberty fantasy of Wonderwoman’ feeding ‘a collective regression towards icons’ and ‘monolithic powers’), in fact ramped up the work’s critical treatment of its subject for fear of video’s indeterminate position. In fact, it was the bright smoky space between the figures of secretary and superhero that was of particular interest to Birnbaum – the moment in which the identity of the figure is unfixed. In Birnbaum’s words: ‘I’m a secretary – I’m Wonder Woman – I’m a secretary – I’m Wonder Woman’.

o v e r an d o v e r

Dara Birnbaum: Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman From our current perspective, it’s possible (if eternally awkward), argues Demos, to see this work as playing two tunes simultaneously, one celebratory, one critical, in a form of signal jam. Wonder Woman’s flashing and spinning embodies a seductive and enjoyable moment of posing and dissolution, yet we are able to find it ultimately critical. Indeed, the video ends on a decidedly critical note: a blue screen with text spelling out a sexy pop song inspired by Wonder Woman (lyrics: ‘This is your wonder woman talking to you/said I want to take you down/show you all the powers that I possess/and ooooohh/make it feel real good for you’). Or this can be read as a disappointing conclusion to the energy and potential present in the first half of the film, rather than as a comment on the figure as a whole. Demos argues that the shreds of excitement in the film should not be critically smoothed over in embarrassment, but rather should be seen as examples of affect. This may draw our attention to the manipulation of excitement and emotion in other parts of the media, wherein terms such as ‘fear’, ‘hatred’, ‘safety’, and ‘hope’, ‘change’, ‘fairness’, find themselves as more successful political tools than convincing arguments, and a politician’s ability to deliver a televised speech in a warm voice can appear more important than what they are saying. Still, something slips from our grasp, and as Demos acknowledges, this video endures because, even in this extended interpretation, something of this work has escaped us. Laura McLean-Ferris

136 ArtReview

By T.J. Demos Afterall Books, £9.95 (softcover)

Anglo-English Attitudes (1999), which collected essays and reviews written between 1984 and 1998, Working the Room gathers similar writings from Geoff Dyer’s past decade and covers everything from the photographs of Martin Parr and Trent Parke to the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald and W.G. Sebald; the impact on literature of D.H. Lawrence’s discovery of anal sex and the impact on art of Peeping Toms; lacrimation at the Olympic Games; and, finally, the big one: falling in love. The subjects highlighted above might suggest that Dyer’s diverse interests inevitably lead him to bed. But the real point is that these essays constitute a steady flow of love notes of a sort, culminating in the last, addressed to his wife. As you might gather, Dyer’s greatest strength lies in his fusing of formal criticism (displaying, despite the showboating, an acute technical and scholarly awareness) and informal anecdotes (talking about himself), rendering the former less forbidding and the latter less taboo within critical writing. It’s a technique best summarised by what Dyer admires about the photography of Richard Avedon – its knack of ‘contriving a way of stripping away contrivances’.

Working the Room

It’s clear also that in addition to such contriving, Dyer has spent the last decade engaged in a form of class war within the arts – arguing for the tearing down of hierarchies, primarily those which place documentary photography beneath art photography and nonfiction beneath fiction. And the kind of writing that will liberate is, well, the kind that’s like Dyer’s. Indeed, since much of what he admires in his subjects could equally be said of Dyer himself, you quickly suspect that the real subject of all the essays is not the person named in the title, but the person named in the byline. According to him, David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers (2009) – an account of the author’s experience of being embedded with a US infantry battalion during the 2007 ‘surge’ in Iraq – proves that ‘the chaos of events can be given narrative shape by scrupulous observation and shading’. The same might be said of Dyer’s account of being embedded in Paris fashion week, even if the only surges are the ones towards the front row of a catwalk show. Recalling the early days of his relationship with his future spouse, Geoff reveals that ‘I had talked about Burning Man pretty well nonstop from the moment we met… I always turned every other topic of conversation round to Burning Man and was interested in nothing but Burning Man.’ In keeping with that, the room he’s working is, despite what the contents list might lead you to believe, not a very big one. He keeps running into the same people again and again. There are officially two essays on D.H. Lawrence, but perhaps another six in which he is invoked or plays a critical role. Much the same can be said of Fitzgerald, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Rebecca West, while Jeff Wall and W.H. Auden gatecrash essays on photography; and generally the subject of one essay bleeds into the next (a result of the way the collection has been gathered rather than anything else). But – as we learn from his account of how he zeroed in on his future wife at a drinks reception – this is simply how Dyer’s mind works. There’s no doubt that Dyer is an exceptionally talented writer; there’s quite a bit of doubt as to whether he’s a great art critic. An early essay on Ruth Orkin’s photograph of VE Day in New York gets bogged down in vantage-point technicalities, while the exhibition-promoting puff on Idris Khan exhausts its subject pretty quickly (although perhaps that’s not Dyer’s fault). It’s probably not something he aspires to in any case, given that the art writings here are, with two exceptions, exclusively about photography, and for Dyer, photographs are optimally exhibited within the pages of a book – a surrogate literature. This is, above all else, a collection of essays about books. If individually they represent something of a mixed bag (were it not for a delayed train, I might never have completed the essays on jazz), collectively this is some of the best writing about the arts you’ll find. Mark Rappolt

By Geoff Dyer Canongate, £20 (hardcover)

The strip: MUSTASHRIK

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on the town: 15 October ArtReview Party, Almada, London photography IAN PIERCE

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1  Blain/Southern’s Graham Southern 2 Critic Neal Brown 3  Musician Nick Rhodes 4  Fashion designer Susanne Deeken and stylist Venetia Scott 5  Artist Alexandre da Cunha 6  Fashion designer Ben Grimes and stylist Beth Fenton 7 Blum & Poe’s Jeff Poe and friend 8  Peres Projects’s Margherita Belaief and Javier Peres 9  Artist Daniel Sinsel and Studio Voltaire’s Joe Scotland 10 Zabludowicz Collection curator Elizabeth Neilson and artist Haroon Mirza 11  Hauser & Wirth’s Neil Wenman and collector Richard Chang 12  Artist Alberto di Fabio, financier François Gutzwiller and art consultant Andreas Siegfried 13  Artists James Ireland and Susannah Douglas 14  Gallerist Massimo De Carlo 15  Hollybush Gardens’s Malin Ståhl and Lisa Panting 16  Almada/Automat’s Carlos Almada and Cecile Baird 17  Artist Bettina Pousttchi and Kunsthalle Zurich’s Beatrix Ruf 18  Artist Nigel Cooke 19  Outset’s Yana Peel and husband Stephen Peel 20  Gallerist Georg Kargl 21  Artist Simon Fujiwara with 6a Architects’s Stephanie Macdonald and Tom Emerson 22  Photographer Miles Aldridge and model Kristen McMenamy 23  Artist Ingar Dragset, fashion designer Han Chong and artist Michael Elmgreen 24  Artists Doug Fishbone and Karen Russo 25  Collector David Pun and Aicon Gallery’s Louise Donaghy

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Friday, November 5, 2010 10:11 Subject: off the record Date: Friday, November 5, 2010 10:10 From: [email protected] To: Conversation: off the record

The church is a strip club, Buckingham Palace a punk recording studio. There is open warfare in the suburbs. Public-sector workers stalk the streets, angry, powerless and alienated. Julia Peyton-Jones morphs into Toyah Willcox, lamenting, “Oh, John Dee, do you remember those days?” Yes, reader, the London artworld has turned into a twenty-first-century version of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, a film which was itself, confusingly, about taking sixteenth-century folk to the 1970s. It’s a wasteland out there that I dementedly wander, wearing my new austerity-era Oasis military-style button-front coat (90 quid). City, city, I can sometimes hear beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street the pleasant whining of a mandolin and the uncontrolled sobbing of a number of gallery outreach programmers now reduced to shopping in Lidl shops on Well Street and thumbing through second-hand copies of Victor Burgin’s The End of Art Theory. And yet turn the corner – not just metaphorically, but the actual corner of Savile Row and Clifford Street – and it’s an entirely different world. Fuck Jarman and his miserable gay nonsense, this is more Tinto Brass’s Caligula (with additional scenes by Giancarlo Lui and Bob Guccione). Talk about a blackbird flying into a room and finding your uncle watching sex shows. This is a world of huge new commercial spaces and secondary-market dealers hiring charming bar staff from Cecconi’s to mix your Bellini. Turning this particular corner involves throwing off your Céline sheepskin cape and dancing in your underwear in the new joint office/gallery space of Carl Kostyal while marvelling at the delectable art wares on offer before taking in museumlike shows at the cavernous new Hauser & Wirth. What on earth is going on? On the one hand it’s a rerun of the miners’ strike, with rats tearing through piled-up rubbish bags, arsonists attacking the local building society and Jeremy Deller asking redundant public sector workers to participate in a large-scale work at the Tirana Biennial. On the other hand it’s party time in Mayfair, with blue-chip art being hoovered up by chaps in finance thinly disguised in cropped Thom Browne suits. Luckily here in Britain we have those dapper boys from T.M. Lewin, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, telling us that this is in fact totally ‘fair’ and we had just previously misunderstood what ‘fairness’ was. And sitting at the bar in Hix wearing my Ports 1961 elbow-length leather gloves, who am I to argue? Dear reader, this scenario is the shift from ‘public’ to ‘private’ so presciently heralded in Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s Empire. Never read it myself, but as I understand it, basically what it boils down to is that previously one could get a job in a taxpayer-funded organisation and spend one’s time at jollies like the one long cocktail party that is Manifesta. The horn of Africa! But now this is all over and one has to get a job in the private sector spending one’s time at jollies like the one long chang-induced nightmare that is Art Basel Miami Beach. Meanwhile, out there in this long winter of participatory theatre in disused train sheds, George Osborne battles the theories of the late Milton Keynes. It is the time of transferable skills! It is the time of documentary strategies in contemporary art and deliberately poor copies of Chris Marker films illicitly shared with your friends as part of the aesthetic of resistance! And once all that’s done, it’s time to collapse into a Piggie Burger at Bar Boulud, emotionally battered from the sheer terrible complexity of it all, with the only shelter being the folds of one’s Giambattista Valli white padded coat. As the charming pyromaniac Mad almost said in Jubilee: “The world is no longer interested in heroes – pass me the poppers!” GG

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