Aesthetica 1
2 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 3
4 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 5
6 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 7
8 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 9
10 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 11
12 Aesthetica
Aesthetica
THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE
www.aestheticamagazine.com
Issue 90 August / September 2019
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
SPATIAL EXPERIMENTS
ILLUSORY NARRATIVES
SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY
Parley for the Oceans sheds light on an age of plastic consumption
Unseen bends the rules through an inventive series of exhibitions
Max Pinckers examines the role of alternative facts in the media
Ute and Werner Mahler explore borders in post-war landscapes
Welcome
UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49
Editor’s Note
On the Cover Alessio Albi is a master of fine art portraiture, finding dramatic lighting in both interior and exterior landscapes. Each moment has been well-considered, with an intuitive sense of direction and perspective. The resulting images are emphatic, confident and instantly recognisable (p. 114).
Cover Image: Photographer: Alessio Albi. Model: Isabella Bubola. Courtesy of the artist and Trevillion.
There has never been a time in human history when things have been so interconnected. The climate crisis is connected to the economy, which is in turn connected to trade and tariffs, and so on and so forth. We are living in an age of alternative facts, fake news and misinformation. We are more divided than ever before, and politicians use populism to disintegrate battles won for justice and equality. Watching programmes like Years and Years or The Handmaid’s Tale fills me with fear because I think: are we really that far from this? Could these dystopian fictions become reality? Inside this issue, we bring you the latest from Parley for the Oceans. This is a fantastic non-profit organisation that is serious about eradicating single-use plastic and saving the seas. It has teamed up with artists, fashion brands and designers worldwide to make positive change. There is no need to buy water all the time; carry an empty bottle. The same goes for coffee cups. We could cut down on landfill waste considerably through these simple measures. Looking further back, it has been 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler have a retrospective coming up at Fotomuseum Den Haag, which looks at their work in the former GDR alongside more recent pieces. The show is compelling because surveillance was part of everyday life for these photographers. It’s interesting to note the similarities between then and now, given the level of voyeurism and observation in today’s world. We must ask important questions about privacy and boundaries. The following photographers are featured inside this issue: Kyle Thompson, Kyle Jeffers, Sebastian Weiss, Rebecca Reeve, Studio Brasch and cover photographer Alessio Albi, alongside our annual feature, Next Generation, completed in partnership with London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. This is your opportunity to see the breadth and scope of new work being produced today. Finally, Nina Wiedemeyer, Curator from the Bauhaus-Archiv, gives us the last words. Cherie Federico
Aesthetica 13
104
66
92
76
60
32
86
42
14 Aesthetica
26
48
contents
Art 26 Taking Responsibility Parley for the Oceans tackles the issue of single use plastic, collaborating with high-profile artists and designers such as Adidas and Doug Aitken.
32 Dramatic Architecture Sebastian Weiss' images spark dialogues with buildings; glass and concrete come together in fluid structures that stretch into clean blue skies.
42 Changing Definitions A selection of 100 contemporary sculptors push the boundaries of materials, from concrete and metal to neon, plant-life and data algorithm.
48 Pockets of Colour Kyle Jeffers produces elegant and playful images within industrial surroundings; ladders, crates and cranes feature heavily in vibrant environments.
60 Spatial Experiments Photographers at Unseen Amsterdam test uneven ground with bold, abstracted compositions that explore both manmade and natural landscapes.
66 Forms of Recluse Solitude is increasingly prevalent within today's age of isolation. Kyle Thompson expresses this sense of disconnect through desolate worlds.
76 Looking Outwards Rebecca Reeve comments on our increasingly urban existence, transporting viewers to the wide, open expanses of America's national parks.
86 Illusory Narratives Max Pinckers' Margins of Excess series investigates the notion of truths and subjective realities. The images sit somewhere between fact and fiction.
92 Intimacy with Nature This issue of Aesthetica marks the sixth instalment of the Next Generation, an annual collaboration with London College of Communication, UAL.
104 Unlimited Possibilities Studio Brasch creates clean, utopian rooms that boast Wes Anderson-esque colour palettes; new spaces rendered through CGI and digital design.
114 Striking Depictions Shafts of light. Distorted facial features. Shadows falling across skin. Alessio Albi's portraits draw attention to the body with mesmerising intensity.
124 Social Documentary Ute and Werner Mahler grew up in the GDR; their photographs provide a searing reflection on the country decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Exhibitions
Film
Music
130 Gallery Reviews This edition includes coverage of Richard Learoyd at Fundación MAPFRE, as well as the European premiere of John Akomfrah's Precarity at BALTIC.
134 New Identities Shola Amoo’s fictional debut,The Last Tree, is a semi-autobiographical account that follows a young man as he is relocated to South London.
136 Interpreting Grief Sui Zhen's new album, Losing, Linda makes use of avatars, or “digital doppelgängers," tapping into the language of online platforms and realities.
Books
Artists’ Directory
Last Words
138 Icons of Progress Gold has long existed as an economic and social placeholder for wealth and power. Lisa Barnard's latest photobook looks at capitalism and labour.
154 Inside this Issue Shape and texture are key considerations for this edition's artists; they experiment with a range of patterns, surfaces, finishes and consistencies.
162 Bauhaus-Archiv Nina Wiedemeyer discusses the international legacy of the school and its wider reproductions as part of the 2019 centenary commemorations.
Aesthetica Magazine is trade marked worldwide. © Aesthetica Magazine Ltd 2019.
The Aesthetica Team: Editor: Cherie Federico Assistant Editor: Kate Simpson Digital Assistant: Eleanor Sutherland Junior Content Writer: Jack Needham Staff Writer: Olivia Hampton
Advertisement Enquiries: Jeremy Appleyard (0044) (0)844 568 2001 advertising@aestheticamagazine.com
ISSN 1743-2715. All work is copyrighted to the author or artist. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher. Published by Cherie Federico and Dale Donley. Aesthetica Magazine PO Box 371, York, YO23 1WL, UK (0044) (0)844 568 2001 Newstrade Distribution: Warners Group Publications plc. Gallery & Specialist Distribution: Central Books. Printed by Warners Midlands plc.
Advertising Coordinator: Jeremy Appleyard Marketing Coordinator: Hannah Skidmore Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira Production Director: Dale Donley Operations Manager: Cassandra Weston Designer: Laura Tordoff Technical Coordinator: Andy Guy Marketing & Administration Assistant: Sophie Lake Contributors: Sarah Allen, Alexandra Genova, Diane Smyth, Beth Webb, Charlotte R-A, Gunseli Yalcinkaya. Reviewers: Kyle Bryony, James Mottram, Daniel Pateman, Matt Swain, Grace Caffyn, Sarah Jilani, Hunter Dukes, Tamara Suarez Porras, Christopher Webb, Annabel Herrick, Diego Von Lieres und Wilkau Saavedra.
Artists’ Directory Enquiries: Katherine Smira (0044) (0)844 568 2001 directory@aestheticamagazine.com Subscriptions: subscriptions@aestheticamagazine.com (0044) (0)844 568 2001 General Enquiries: info@aestheticamagazine.com Press Releases: pr@aestheticamagazine.com Follow us: aestheticamagazine.com facebook.com/aestheticamagazine twitter.com/AestheticaMag pinterest.com/AestheticaMag instagram.com/AestheticaMag
Aesthetica 15
Second Home Serpentine Pavilion by SelgasCano as it originally appeared in Hyde Park, 2015. Opening June 28, 2019 at La Brea Tar Pits.
news
Beyond Aesthetics SECOND HOME SERPENTINE PAVILION A maze of organic, chrysalis-like shapes. A psychedelic hub embedded in a grassy bank. The Second Home Serpentine Pavilion, an 866 square foot structure, is the creation of SelgasCano – a venture between Spanish architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano that has made its mark with buoyant creations. An intricate construction spreads across the land with tunnels made from glowing iridescent materials. The structure uses daylight as its muse before transforming into an illuminated and colourful spectacle in the nighttime. Whilst this could easily become the latest selfie destination – like a Do Ho Suh installation or, indeed, Olafur Eliasson's new viewer-responsive show at Tate Modern – a slew of public talks around important issues such as sustainability and equity are designed to give the experience more depth. Further to this, there are a number of film screenings at the intersection of science and art. Events include David Lynch talking about mediation; Netflix and the World Wildlife Fund hosting a screening of the Our Planet series narrated by David Attenborough and a performance by rapper Octavian. In this way, the pavilion taps into the ultimate dream-making machine that is Hollywood. The project is also a teaser of sorts ahead of the opening of London-based co-working space Second Home’s first USA location later this year in Los Angeles that is being dubbed a “slingshot for creative entrepreneurs.” Designed
16 Aesthetica
by SelgasCano, it is set to host some 250 teams and organ- “An intricate lacework isations in a lush jungle of thousands of trees and plants of colourful shadows across a 90,000 square foot urban campus on the site of spreads across the the former Anne Banning Community House, designed tunnel with the help of in the 1960s by architect Paul Williams. Besides restoring ribbons and iridescent the existing building, SelgasCano adds 60 single-storey plastic materials, garden studios, meeting rooms and community spaces, all using daylight before wrapped in the designers’ signature translucent acrylic, as transforming into an well as oval-shaped, mustard yellow roofs. illuminated spectacle The installation at La Brea Tar Pits, which sits on active at nighttime.” asphalts, marks the first Serpentine Pavilion debut in the United States – having been shown first in London’s Hyde Park in 2015, as pictured above. The multicoloured Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) membrane stretches over a steel frame and invites visitors to explore the various shapes through a play between light, colour, transparency and materials. There are various entrances to the tunnel and chambers, including a hidden corridor between the structure’s outer and inner layers before converging into a spacious central area. The Pavilion is situated on prehistoric tar pits, which have preserved the bones of many mammals La Brea Tar Pits and from over 10,000 years ago. Exuberant as the location Museum, Los Angeles and its structure may be, the installation manages to link Until 24 November design and nature as one ecosystem, because one cannot exist without the other, at least not in this case. pavilion.secondhome.io
Searching for Truth DRILL: HITO STEYERL
“The centrepiece of Hito Steyerl’s survey at the Park Avenue Armory – the largest of its kind for the German-Japanese artist thus far in the United States – is a massive threechannel video.”
Park Avenue Armory, New York 20 June - 21 July Steyerl's works are also included in the Venice Biennale Arte, until 24 November. armoryonpark.org
Hito Steyerl, ExtraSpaceCraft, 2016. 3-channel HD video, environment, 12 min, 30 sec. Installation view, from Kunstmuseum Basel. Image courtesy of the Artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo: Marc Asekhame.
In being discursive – and thus mirroring Steyerl’s genreDrums, brass and voices reverberate across Wade Thompson Drill Hall – the cavernous 55,000 square foot space bending practice straddling art, philosophy and politics that once hosted America's National Guard’s Seventh – the work also at times seems disorganised, jumping jarRegiment, a militia that joined the Union Army during the ringly between its disparate parts. Part of the point, however, American Civil War. The centrepiece of Hito Steyerl’s survey is precisely Steyerl’s stubborn refusal to stick to a single at the Park Avenue Armory – the largest of its kind for the perspective. The narrative of our times is simply too comGerman filmmaker and artist thus far in the USA – is a mas- plex for that. Instead, the artist encourages us to question sive three-channel video display situated in the centre of the hidden power structures behind the new technologies an illuminated floor. The perennial school shootings that that permeate our lives and the political nature of transacplague America are part of a meandering narrative that also tions. As she reminds us at the start of the piece: “History is takes in the National Rifle Association gun lobby, national the art of highlighting whatever is hiding in plain sight.” Seven other installations created since 2013 fill rooms urban violence and the Armory’s own architecture. Historian Anna Duensing, armed with a flashlight which on the first floor. The City of Broken Windows, which Steyerl she points at various portraits of eminent military figures or began last year, connects artist–activist Chris Toepfer, who bullet holes created during shooting exercises in the base- places painted canvases in the holes left by broken windows, ment, provides a tour of the opulent Armory built by New with researchers training Artificial Intelligence to identify the York’s elite (the Roosevelts and Stewarts were amongst the sound of shattering glass. The work undermines the “broken many illustrious families with members of the Seventh Regi- windows” theory that suggests small signs of disorder are ment.) The Yale University Concert and Precision Marching conducive to greater amounts of crime. Videos in Hell Yeah bands make choreographed appearances, whilst activists in- We Fuck Die (2016) show scientists abusing robots to test cluding the National Die In’s Nurah Abdulhaqq and Sandy their endurance. In Is the Museum a Battlefield? (2013), the Hook school shooting survivor Abbey Clements, discuss artist tells of the bullet which killed her friend – PKK milgun violence. A score by Jules Laplace and Thomas C. Duffy litant Andrea Wolf. The manufacturer of the bullet was a punctuates their precarious discussions, the tones matching sponsor of the Istanbul Biennial and the Art Institute of Chicago, both places where Steyerl’s work has been exhibited. data points on mass shootings or gun production.
Aesthetica 17
Mona Kuhn, AD6883, 2014. © Mona Kuhn, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
news
The Female Gaze HER GROUND: WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHING LANDSCAPE Last year, the Peruvian government officially recognised "Pallequeras" – female mineral sorters who pick through stones discarded by their male peers on the slopes of mines. This huge movement enabled the women to participate for the first time in formal, regulated gold business transactions rather than relying on the black market. Such rife gender politics are just one aspect of Lisa Barnard’s The Canary and the Hammer, a photographic exploration of gold as a measure of the economy but also the greed and political power in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In an orotone of the Peruvian town of Filomena, perched in the coastal highlands, Barnard literally incorporates fair-trade gold leaf from mining company Sotrami in the print on Japanese mulberry washi paper. Her investigations also show how the precious metal has become an indispensable component of engineering and electronics, as well as a mechanical tool to tackle wider health and environmental problems. Barnard joins seven other women photographers in a group show, which explores tensions between genre and gender as they examine mankind’s role in a given area and the broader environment as a whole. Scarlett Hooft Graafland, who trained as a sculptor and launched her career as a performance artist, produces surreal scenes against the backdrop of desolate landscapes à la Gabriel Orozco but filled with subtleties and apparent contradictions. In
18 Aesthetica
fact, the Dutch artist often collaborates closely with locals “Barnard joins for sculptural interventions and performances in places like seven other women Bolivia’s salt desert, the Canadian Arctic or the shores of photographers in a Vanuatu. This practice yields images like burka-clad Yemeni group show which women carrying long white balloons as they walk on the explores tensions beach. “The people living in these remote places – who are between genre and so much closer to nature than most of us – are very helpful gender as they examine in creating the scenes with props that are available,” she has mankind’s role in a explained to Fotografiska, which has organised a major solo given area and the exhibition in the Stockholm venue (open until 8 September.) broader environment Dafna Talmor’s Constructed Landscapes slice and splice as a whole.” colour negatives of unrelated surroundings to create photographs of an imaginary place in a pensive metaphor for the rootlessness of globalised identities. Space, time and memory collapse in the transient spaces. The manicured public and private green areas in Corinne Silva’s Garden State, meanwhile, reveal how the very act of gardening is a political one that shapes highly contested lands now home to 22 Israeli settlements. Here, the spreading fronds of a palm tree become a metaphor for territorial encroachment. Other works turn to abstraction, such as Mona Kuhn’s She Disappeared into Complete Silence where a single figure is Flowers Gallery, London set against a modernist glass and mirror structure by Joshua Until 31 August Tree National Park. At times refracted or fragmented, the resulting images are disorienting and hallucinatory. www.flowersgallery.com
Astronomical Heights SHOOTING THE MOON exploration. In this print, an astronaut floats outside his “Spectators have their spaceship. The visual language is one borrowed from eyes, cameras and photojournalism or film, without referencing a particular binoculars pointed moment in time or artistic inspiration. Instead, it solicits a toward the sky, intent response grounded in wider American consciousness. on being witnesses to Ansel Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, history in the making. dramatically positions a shimmering white circle against the It was captured just background of snow-tipped mountains. The image was taken four days before the during a six-month assignment for the Interior Department spacecraft landed through western parts of the USA. The story goes that Adams humans on the moon was speeding down a highway in New Mexico after a fairly for the first time on unsuccessful day of shooting when he spotted an “inevitable July 20 1969.” photograph” out of the corner of his eye, slammed on his brakes and rushed out of the car. He could not get a hold of his Weston exposure meter quick enough. The setting sun threatened to dim the white crosses in a graveyard within moments – the image gone forever. So he took a chance and calculated the luminance based on the intensity of the moon. A number of museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, are presenting similar shows about the Museum of Fine landings. They come ahead of the first manned missions in Arts Houston five decades, taking place by 2024. The USA space agency Until 2 September also plans to send the first woman as part of the project, as well as the first sustained human presence, all by 2028. www.mfah.org
Garry Winogrand, Apollo 11 Moon Launch, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969. Gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
Half a century has passed since man first set foot on the moon. To celebrate such a giant leap forward for mankind, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston has pulled together a selection of 40 photographs from its expansive collection, ranging from documentary images of NASA’s moon missions to cinematic interpretations of lunar phases. Within this groundbreaking show is a range of works that traverse different media and techniques, altogether evoking a sense of wonder and achievement whilst collecting a series of voices. Hitoshi Nomura’s “Moon” Score demonstrates differing qualities of light depending on its movements across the night sky. Cassandra C. Jones’s Wax and Wane stop-motion film is a welcome animation of the moon’s progress above various landscapes and natural backgrounds. Highlights of the exhibition, however, are found in Garry Winogrand’s Apollo 11 Moon Launch, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969 (pictured below.) Spectators have their eyes, cameras and binoculars pointed toward the sky, intent on being witnesses to history in the making. It was captured just four days before humans landed the first spacecraft on the moon on 20 July, 1969. All but one woman face away from the camera, casting long shadows on the ground. The show also features a 20x24 Polaroid print from David Levinthal’s Space, in which he stages mass-produced vintage American toys to create futuristic visions of space
Aesthetica 19
Concrete Tent in Abu Dhabi by DAAR, 2017. Photo by John Verghese.
news
Architecture Takeover CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL For the third edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, international participants are collaborating with local communities to produce new work as part of a discursive look at how the built environment can encourage exchanges or increase socioeconomic inequalities. There is a special focus on the interdisciplinary nature of architecture, which is especially appropriate as it coincides with the EXPO Chicago fair that launches the fall art season each year. Chicago sits at the crossroads of the Great Plains and the Great Lakes, and as such the flows of people, goods and capital have defined its urban development. These concerns are very much at the forefront of the biennial, which advocates for a more inclusive, equitable and shared future in the field. Spread across more than 40 sites and organisations throughout the city, it’s the largest exhibition of contemporary architecture, art and design in North America. The central venue, the Chicago Cultural Center, showcases projects by more than 80 participants from over 20 countries. Contributions range from Wolff Architects’ efforts to address social inequities and the erasure of indigenous heritage in places like their native South Africa; a repository of threatened heirloom seeds harvested by traditional Palestinian farmers; Ola Hassanain’s focus on policies affecting women in public places in Khartoum, and Doh Ho Suh’s ethereal sheer fabric structures replicating building
20 Aesthetica
and objects down to their most minute, intricate details. “Spread across Danish artists Gamborg / Magnussen’s field of 10,000 more than 40 sites cabbages and fully functional outdoor garden kitchen and organisations serve as a gathering spot for locals in the Garfield Park throughout the city, neighbourhood. Meanwhile, Theaster Gates examines the it’s the largest politics of urban planning in his social practice installations exhibition of centred around varying notions of black space and the contemporary potential of the “life within things.” At the pier, Ilya and Emilia architecture, art Kabakov’s Ship of Tolerance makes an appearance, its sails and design in composed of stitched paintings selected from those created North America.” by hundreds of local schoolchildren from different ethnic and social backgrounds after workshops on tolerance. The project ends with the wooden boat’s launch into the sunlight. Various editions of the installation have taken place across the world since 2005, from Egypt to Venice and Moscow. On the sidelines of the Biennial and a drive out of the city, a light-based art intervention by Luftwerk (Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero), in collaboration with Iker Gil, projects a grid of neon laser beams and patterns across Farnsworth House, designed by Mies van der Rohe in the mid-20th century. The piece, premiered at the Mies- Chicago Cultural Center designed Barcelona Pavilion in February, includes the site- 19 September - 5 January specific minimalist soundtrack created by Oriol Tarragó that reflects on the house’s underlying geometries which echo its chicagoarchitecture biennial.org topography in a river floodplain.
Diverse Curation ING DISCERNING EYE
Suzanne Moxhay, Entrance III. 32cm x 42cm. Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photorag. Courtesy of the artist.
“The aim of the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition, which is now Van Noten and Vogue. Meanwhile, Hodes, who is Professor of “With a unique sense calling for entries, is to both inspire and support those who Fine Art at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts of curation based are creating a positive impact – making the world a little London, brings a wealth of knowledge firmly situated in the upon accessibility and diversity of opinion, better for everyone. It’s our belief that progress is always wider language of fine and decorative arts. Wise, former Associate Culture Editor for The Sunday the exhibition (now possible and we empower people to realise their ambitions at the highest level – in art and in business,” says Malgorzata Times, heads up the critical sphere with Penrose, Chairman open for entries) Kolakowska, UK CEO, ING. Established in the UK in 1990, the of the Discerning Eye. Having been in the role from 2007 invites six selectors to Discerning Eye is an educational charity dedicated to encour- to 2018, Penrose has been recognised for his contributions share their expertise aging an understanding and appreciation of art, stimulating and offers passionate words about the scope of the organi- from a range of debate about the purpose of culture within society. Having sation: “What appeals so much to me about the ING Discern- backgrounds.” teamed up with global financial institution ING in 1999, the ing Eye Exhibition is that it presents the work of artists – both unknown and the established – working in every discipline, organisation has supported over 2,500 practitioners. With a unique sense of curation based upon accessibility in all styles and at varying levels of execution, to the widest and diversity of opinion, the exhibition invites six selectors of audiences. The pieces can be challenging, but essentially to share their expertise from a range of backgrounds. For they are engaging, accessible and affordable. Something, it 2019, this includes Collectors Kwame Kwei-Armah and Tim has been said, for everyone. Importantly, the art on show Rice; Artists Gill Button and Charlotte Hodes and Critics John is domestic in scale. No installations here to be dismantled Penrose and Louis Wise. Kwei-Armah is the Artistic Director and stored in a warehouse awaiting a second airing, but art of the Young Vic and he has served as Chancellor of the to be taken home and hung on the wall.” The partnership between ING and the Discerning Eye is one University of the Arts. His cultural counterpart, Tim Rice, is a lyricist and librettist who rose to fame in the 1990s as a of the longest-standing arts sponsorships in the UK, span- ING Discerning Eye is open result of a partnership with Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is one ning over two decades. To submit, practitioners are invited to for entries until 27 August. of only 15 artists to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and enter up to six works across painting, drawing, print, sculpture, a Tony Award. Button offers an individual perspective as a photography and film. With no digital pre-selection, the pro- www.thediscerningeye. well-revered practitioner who has worked with Gucci, Dries jects are selected through physical submission only. artopps.co.uk
Aesthetica 21
art
10 to See RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS THIS SEASON
This edition of Aesthetica includes shows that examine the human condition. From a new installation of Turner Prize-winning Mark Leckey to Tim Walker's most expansive retrospective to date, these shows span multiple media and themes to expand the viewer's perception.
1
Bruce Nauman, Rooms, Bodies, Words Museo Picasso Málaga | Until 1 September
www.museopicassomalaga.org For Bruce Nauman’s (b. 1941) first major exhibition in Spain in a quarter century, nearly 100 works span the breadth of a practice that has defied categorisation or definition. The show includes a number of sculptures, installations and neon lights as well as videos, silkscreen prints and photographs. In each of the projects, the renowned American artist throws caution to the wind, inviting the viewer to accept the unfamiliar through bold, colourful environments. Audiences are cast into sensory disarray through alarming, disconcerting worlds.
2
Then and Now: Life and Dreams Revisited
3
Hey! What’s Going On?
4
GetxoPhoto
5
Tim Walker: Wonderful Things
Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm | Until 27 October
www.walthercollection.com The 20th century ushered in profound cultural and socio-economic changes in China as it shifted from closed communism to the modern era. Here, echoes of this painful evolution are found in the rapid rise of Chinese experimental art over the past three decades. Seminal works are featured by 31 of the country’s leading contemporary artists, many of them longtime residents of Beijing’s East Village, including performance artist Zhang Huan, photographer and filmmaker Yang Fudong and photographer Rong Rong.
Fondation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz, Rencontres d'Arles | Until 22 September
1
www.mrofoundation.org Marvin Gaye's 11th studio album What's Going On? (1971) delivered a message of love intended to transcend cultures and identities. From the cover art to the nine songs it included, it was a testimony for acceptance. This is the attitude of Fondation Manuel RiveraOrtiz's latest show. It includes photographs of the Black Panthers by Stephen Shames in collaboration with party co-founder Bobby Seale, as well as Matthew Casteel’s portraits of cars as owned by American veterans – which double as mobile homes for some.
International Image Festival, Basque Country, Spain | 4 - 29 September
www.getxophoto.com What does it mean to live in a transhuman world where man and machine can – and might – become one? Are we hurtling towards an age of interconnectivity or separation? The 13th edition of GetxoPhoto, titled Post Homo Sapiens, examines the bio-ethical challenges presented by advanced scientific and medical developments in the digital age through photography, video, installations and documentary works under the guidance of Curator Monica Allende. Featured artists include Juno Calypso, Maija Tammi and Matthieu Gafsou.
V&A, London | 21 September - 8 March
www.vam.ac.uk For the largest survey to date, Tim Walker (b. 1970) delves into the V&A’s extensive collection of historical objects to create 10 new major photographic projects. Walker’s journey across a “palace of dreams” sees him visit the museum’s 145 public galleries, as well as the roof of the 12-acre South Kensington site and the underground Victorian passages. Found treasures like a 15th century illuminated manuscript, Indian miniature paintings and bejewelled snuffboxes inspire large-scale photographs where, for the artist, “beauty is everything.”
22 Aesthetica
2
3
4
5
Aesthetica 23
art
6
9
7
8
24 Aesthetica
10
6
Once. Again. Photographs in Series
7
Julian Rosefeldt, In the Land of Drought
8
Alex Prager, Silver Lake Drive
Getty Museum, Los Angeles | Until 10 November
www.getty.edu The passage of time leaves marks on our faces, our bodies and the places that surround us. Long-running photographic series on this subject, including contemporary works, form the basis of this show. Alfred Stieglitz’s portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe reveal the evolution – and devolution – of their romantic relationship. Seamus Murphy examines the hardships of an Afghan family living under Taliban rule. Donna Ferrato documents a woman’s progress after leaving an abusive relationship. This is a searing vision of humanity against the clock.
NGV, Melbourne | Until 29 September
www.ngv.vic.gov.au The follow-up to Julian Rosefeldt’s (b. 1965) Manifesto (2015) – which included Cate Blanchett playing 13 different characters – taps into the primal existential fear of our time: what comes after human activity has decimated the Earth’s flora and fauna? In the Land of Drought depicts scientists in white lab coats examining the archaeological remains of a civilisation that has rendered itself extinct. The project was shot using a drone, scanning Germany’s Ruhr area and abandoned film sets nestled in the Atlas Mountains.
Foam, Amsterdam | Until 4 September
www.foam.org In Alex Prager’s (b. 1979) hyper-real world, protagonists – often women – are stuck in a land of saturated colours. They satisfy complex narratives of life and death, power and control. These are open-ended photographic stories, often set against the backdrop of the self-taught artist’s hometown of Los Angeles, birthplace of Hollywood, the ultimate dreammaking machine. Prager’s most recent film, La Grande Sortie, closes the show with a journey of emotions from ballerina Emilie Cozette during her performance at the Opéra Bastille.
9
Mark Leckey, O’Magic Power of Bleakness Tate Britain, London | 24 September - 5 January
www.tate.org.uk Tate Britain’s galleries morph into a life-size replica of a British motorway bridge on the M53. It is inspired by Mark Leckey’s (b. 1964) hometown: Wirral, Merseyside. This nostalgic and impressive installation features a folkloric audio play inspired by Leckey's pre-adolescent past. Other new works accompany the Turner Prize-winning artist's groundbreaking Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1990) and Dream English Kid 1964-1999 AD (2015), examining the melding of popular culture with technology, as well as the intersection of class systems.
10
Visa pour l'image Festival of Photojournalism, Perpignan | 31 August - 15 September
wwww.visapourlimage.com Celebrating 31 years of photojournalism, this year’s edition of the renowned Visa pour l’image festival focuses on freedom of the press in places like Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Russia – areas where it is perhaps most threatened. There’s a survey of Patrick Chauvel’s 50 years spent on the frontlines, Olivier Coret and Éric Hadj’s essays on France’s Yellow Vest protesters, Lorenzo Tugnoli’s images of the devastating conflict in Yemen and Kirsten Luce’s depiction of the animal suffering at the hands of wildlife tourism.
1. Bruce Nauman, Black Stones Under Yellow Light, 1987. Blocks of black marble, yellow lights, 38cm x 500cm x 600cm. Collection "la Caixa". Arte Contemporáneo. © Courtesy of Collection "la Caixa", Arte Contemporáneo, © Bruce Nauman, VEGAP, Málaga, 2019. 2. Cang Xin, To Add One Meter to an Anonymus Mountain, 1995, © The artist. Courtesy the artist and The Walther Collection. 3. DANCING IN THE STREET / LES 60 ANS DE MOTOWN. Marvin Gaye, mid 1960s. Courtesy of Universal. 4. Juno Calypso, Rosemary’s Room, 2018. From the series What to do with a Million Years. Courtesy of GETXO Photo. 5. Duckie Thot, Aubrey’s shadow. Fashion: Saint Laurent. London, 2017. © Tim Walker Studio. 6. Milton Rogovin, Yvonne and Daughter Sonya, 1985. Gelatin silver print. Image: 17.2cm x 17.2cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. © Milton Rogovin. 7. Julian Rosefeldt, In the Land of Drought, 2015-17 (still). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased with support of the 2017 NGV Curatorial Tour donors, 2018. © Julian Rosefeldt. Image courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE. 8. Desiree, from the series The Big Valley, 2008. © Alex Prager. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul. 9. Mark Leckey (b.1964), Dream English Kid, 1964-1999, AD 2015 (still). Courtesy of the artist, © Mark Leckey.10. Lake Victoria, Slowly Dying. © Frédéric Noy. Courtesy of 2e-Bureau.
Aesthetica 25
art
Taking Responsibility Parley for the Oceans A NON-PROFIT ORGANISATION TAKES CHARGE OF OCEAN HEALTH THROUGH MAJOR COLLABORATIONS WITH ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS, PROMOTING PLASTIC-FREE LIFESTYLES.
If the oceans die, so too does humanity. Our time on Earth community have in forcing change? Cyrill Gutsch, founder would be over. Even so, there are more threats to marine and of non-profit organisation Parley for the Oceans, believes coastal health than at any other time in history. The pioneer- that culture has a “very big responsibility to the environing biologist and explorer, Sylvia Earle, put it succinctly: mental cause.'' For years, Gutsch co-ran a successful design “No ocean, no life. No blue, no green. No ocean, no us.” The firm but when he learned in 2012 about the realistic chance seas are a vital part of the global ecosystem. A Greenpeace that the oceans would die within his lifetime, he felt an urreport, 30×30: A Blueprint For Ocean Protection (April 2019), gency to reinvent the company’s purpose and take action. Now, Gutsch’s focus is addressing the major threats towards produced as part of a year-long collaboration, spelled out exactly how this extinction would unfold: “High seas marine our oceans. “When starting Parley, we knew that we didn’t life drives the ocean’s biological pump, capturing carbon at want to be a protest organisation that shames or blames the the surface and storing it deep below – without this essential industry,” he says. “We wanted to move the responsibility to service, our atmosphere would contain 50% more carbon di- the creative population. To ourselves. Owning the problem means true leadership.” Parley’s central ethos is that the oxide and the planet would be uninhabitably hot.” And yet destruction marches on. Almost 80 per cent of power for change lies in the hands of the consumer. The the damage comes from land-based sources, according to impetus to shape the consumer mindset lies in the hands UNESCO, which include anything from urban development of creatives. It is not only scientists and policy-makers but and construction, discharge of nutrients and pesticides to “artists, musicians, actors, filmmakers, fashion designers, jourmining and fisheries. This pollution has contributed to a nalists, architects, product inventors” who have the tools to number of low oxygen areas known as dead zones, where mould the world. “We have learned that powerful ideas and most marine life cannot survive, resulting in the collapse of visions can turn opponents into partners,” he adds. In embarking on this venture, Gutsch was aware of the many ecosystems. There are now close to 500 dead zones, equalthreats to ocean survival; new pollution hazards compete ling in total the surface area of the United Kingdom. Across the globe, governments are waking up to this disas- with old ones and time is running out. Human overpopulater and are making commitments to help pull us back from tion and overconsumption continues to increase and plastic the brink of collapse. Following the 30×30 report, Green- waste has been choking the oceans since 1950s, according peace called for countries to work together towards a UN to research by Greenpeace, an estimated 12.7 million tonnes Global Ocean Treaty by 2020 that would pave the way to of plastic, a truck-load a minute, ends up in our oceans each year. Activist Greta Thunberg tweeted recently: “The problem protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Outside the world of politics, what role does the creative of plastic pollution in the ocean is even worse than anyone
26 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 27
28 Aesthetica
Image: © SOMA.
“The threats to ocean health are myriad, but so too are solutions. As such, Parley has collaborated with a range of brands and partnered with a number of high-profile designers and artists to accelerate the impact of a fast-growing global movement.”
Previous Page: Doug Aitken, Underwater Pavilions, 2016. Installation view, Avalon, Catalina Island, CA, Pacific Ocean. Courtesy Line: MOCA Los Angeles and Parley for the Oceans. Image: Shawn Heinrichs.
Left: Adidas UltraBOOST x Parley. Courtesy of Adidas.
feared. There’s actually more microplastic 1,000 feet down one of the ways she pushed green policy into the spotlight. than there is in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Meanwhile, Now, more clothing brands are following suit, such as Stella the emerging threat posed by deep-sea mining “risks severe McCartney, who uses “regenerated” cashmere and only uses viscose that can be traced to “the forest it came from” to and potentially irreversible environmental harm.” The factors contributing to ocean health are myriad, but ensure that it is sustainably and responsibly managed. Collaborations like Parley and Adidas show that putting so too are solutions. As such, Parley has collaborated with a range of brands and partnered with a number of high-profile the Earth’s health at the forefront can mean big business. designers to accelerate the impact of its global movement. Forbes magazine reported that if Adidas hit their target of Out of over 500 companies who expressed interest in work- selling five million pairs of Ocean Plastic shoes, the brand is ing with the organisation, Parley’s first major partnership was set to make more than a billion dollars trying to solve one of with Adidas, who, in 2016, committed to using only recycled the world’s biggest problems. “We knew that if we could conplastics in their products by 2024. Later that year, the brand vince Adidas to commit long term and become the blueprint of a new economy and the proof of concept of our strategy, unveiled its first products made from Parley’s Ocean Plastic. This patented material – which is made from upcycled we could change the whole industry,” says Gutsch. Outside of fashion, Parley is tackling the ubiquitous and marine plastic waste recovered by Parley during clean-up operations in coastal areas of the Maldives – is designed destructive plastic water bottle. A million are bought around to reduce the use of virgin plastic. Gutsch expands: “Plastic the world every minute, and as their use soars, efforts to keep lost the trust. It became a symbol of the toxic age we created. them from clogging the ocean are failing. Parley has teamed Together with our partners we are driving what we call the up with Soma to produce a reusable water bottle made from ‘Material Revolution’, which will end the use of harmful and the equivalent of two plastic bottles and a proportion of every sale goes to support initiatives of the Parley Ocean exploitative materials and production methods.” It was first used in the form of new kits for football teams Plastic Programme. “Plastic is a design flaw,” says Gutsch. Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, as well as the first Ultra- “We cannot fix it overnight, but we can all take steps to create BOOST Uncaged Parley running shoe. Three years on from change. Shifting mindsets and behaviours is as important as the initial launch, Parley and Adidas have produced a range creating new systems. We all have a role to play. This bottle of items, including yoga and tennis clothes, all made from is another reminder of that fact and the beginning of a new recycled yarn. The use of Parley’s Ocean Plastic is part of its collaboration in the movement for solutions.” Parley has also harnessed the skills of fine artists. Doug “AIR strategy,” which means to “avoid, intercept and redesign.” Environmental activism in fashion was once the reserve Aitken (b. 1968) produced a large-scale installation called of few, like punk pioneer Vivienne Westwood, whose T-shirts Underwater Pavilions in partnership with The Museum of Conemblazoned with the words “Climate Revolution” were just temporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) that consisted of three
Aesthetica 29
Image: © SOMA.
geometric sculptures made from carefully researched ma- exposing yourself to an artist, you enter such an encounter terials which work in harmony with the seascape. The eerie with an open mind. You want to be provoked, even shocked." However, environmental activism and awareness through structures were moored to the ocean floor off the coast of southern California in 2016 and were mirrored to “reflect the good design is not only the reserve of Parley. As part of underwater seascape and create a kaleidoscopic observa- Cooper Hewitt’s sixth Design Triennial, a new exhibition on tory for the viewer” and were large enough so that swimmers view at the Cube Design Museum in the Netherlands until 2020 celebrates the history of creative collaboration with could move through them. It was an altogether huge feat. The designs were intended to put “the local marine environ- nature. The work of 62 international design teams is presentment and the global challenges around ocean conversation ed, showing partnerships involving scientists, engineers, phiin dialogue with the history of art” by calling on the viewer losophers and advocates for social and environmental justice. to participate in its protection. Aitken notes: “When we talk It highlights designers’ strategies to “understand, remediate, about the oceans and we look at the radical disruption we’ve simulate, salvage, nurture, augment and facilitate.” “Nature offers a timely look into how designers are tackling created within the sea, we’re not quite aware yet how much it is going to affect us and our lives on land. The ramifica- the environmental and social challenges confronting hutions of that are immense. This is one thing which cannot be manity,” Caroline Baumann, Director of Cooper Hewitt, states. exaggerated.” The temporary underwater sculptures, which “This is not just an exhibition, this triennial is a call to action.” were hailed as a “new frontier for art”, are due to reopen to Highlights include an algae-based plastic jacket designed the public in a new location soon. The intent is to encourage by Charlotte McCurdy that helps absorb carbon and the disa sense of wonder. “With such important artworks suddenly play of a new material named Lithoplast, which was made by living underwater, there is no escape,” adds Gutsch. “One has Shahar Livne by mining petroleum-based plastics. The work that Parley and other creative organisations and to dive down to be part of the conversation. Once you are individuals are doing makes it clear that the design world is down there, you fall in love with this magic blue universe.” Aitken also lent his talents to a new Parley project called an essential part of the solution to ecological collapse. The Ocean Plastic Bags. Aitken, alongside Walton Ford, Jenny once-rigid division between disciplines – art, science, fashHolzer, Pipilotti Rist, Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel and Rose- ion – seems arbitrary in a world where the complex issues of marie Trockel, created designs for a reusable tote bag made the day need, more than ever, a collaborative approach to from roughly five plastic bottles collected from remote is- solutions. As Thunberg attests: “It is still not too late to act. It lands by the Parley team. The sale of each bag funds the will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take clean-up of 20 pounds of marine plastic waste. The concept fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where merges creativity with design and, for Gutsch, shows the we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceilpower that artists have to create a strong message. “When ing. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking.”
30 Aesthetica
Right: Doug Aitken, Underwater Pavilions, 2016. Installation view, Avalon, Catalina Island, CA, Pacific Ocean. Courtesy Line: MOCA Los Angeles and Parley for the Oceans. Image: Shawn Heinrichs.
Words Alexandra Genova
www.parley.tv
Aesthetica 31
art
Dramatic Architecture Sebastian Weiss
“I like to think of the city as a theatre of life. Every day, dramas and comedies are performed on a stage. We are all part of this public performance.” Sebastian Weiss is an architectural photographer who sparks dialogues with buildings. Glass and concrete come together in fluid structures that branch and curve into bright blue skies. Seen from a variety of angles, the exteriors seem to move like bodies – actors to be gazed upon, critiqued and interpreted. The chosen structures range from supermarkets and garages to slick office buildings; however, every building carries the same underlying charisma regardless of its complexity or geographic location. From Lisbon to Beijing, the climates become almost indiscernible – the towers rise upwards as the central subjects. Weiss has won several accolades in recent years, including the IPA International Photography Awards, Px3 Prix de la Photograhie de Paris and the FAPA Fine Art Photography Awards. www.le-blanc.com.
Sebastian Weiss, from the series Chinese Blue. Mandarin Oriental. Location: Beijing, China. Architect: OMA, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Rem Koolhaas). © Sebastian Weiss.
32 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 33
Sebastian Weiss, from the series Chinese Blue. Bumps housing. Location: Beijing, China. Architect: SAKO Architects. Š Sebastian Weiss.
34 Aesthetica
Sebastian Weiss, from the series Dramatis personae. Stade Jean-Bouin. Location: Paris, France. Architects: Rudy Ricciotti. Š Sebastian Weiss.
Aesthetica 35
Sebastian Weiss, from the series Chinese Blue. CCTV Headquarters. Location: Beijing, China. Architect: OMA, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Rem Koolhaas). Š Sebastian Weiss.
36 Aesthetica
Sebastian Weiss, from the series City of Light. MAAT, Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia. Location: Lisbon, Portugal. Architect: AL_A. Š Sebastian Weiss.
Aesthetica 37
Sebastian Weiss, from the series Chinese Blue. Bumps housing. Location: Beijing, China. Architect: SAKO Architects. Š Sebastian Weiss.
38 Aesthetica
Sebastian Weiss, from the series Dramatis personae. Tours Aillaud. Location: Nanterre (Paris), France. Architects: Émile Aillaud. Š Sebastian Weiss.
Aesthetica 39
Sebastian Weiss, from the series City of Light. MAAT, Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia. Location: Lisbon, Portugal. Architect: AL_A. Š Sebastian Weiss.
40 Aesthetica
Sebastian Weiss, from the series City of Light. Gare do Oriente. Location: Lisbon, Portugal. Architect: Santiago Calatrava. Š Sebastian Weiss.
Aesthetica 41
art
Changing Definitions 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow SCULPTURE’S NEW TALENTS CONSIDER THE BOUNDARIES OF THE MEDIUM AND ITS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT, WORKING WITH DATA AND ELECTRICITY, METAL AND SOUND.
Marcel Duchamp’s (1887-1968) brilliantly absurd Fountain (1917) forever changed the definition of art through found materials. Over the next century, Louise Bourgeois (19112010) expressed childhood traumas and sexuality on a grand scale with Cell (Eyes and Mirrors) (1989-1993) and giant steel spider Maman (1999). Light and space practitioners like Robert Irwin (b. 1928) and James Turrell (b. 1943) challenge how we see and perceive. Mona Hatoum (b. 1952) questions the inequities behind her own outsider status as the exiled daughter of Palestinian refugees. In Light Sentence (1992), walls of industrial wire mesh lockers and a single moving lightbulb create staggering geometric shadows. Gallerist Kurt Beers (BEERS London) selects contemporary sculptors that are carrying the same torch of radical change, confronting concepts with renewed audacity. He’s the author of 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow, released this September by Thames & Hudson. In perusing the pages and their lush photo spreads, it is clear that the definition of sculpture has evolved dramatically in recent decades, including works that play with intangible concepts: what we cannot see or hear. Jonathan Schipper, for example, turns time into an artistic muse. Cubicle (2016) comprises an orchestrated office space. Various mundane objects – such as printers, scanners and keyboards – are attached to strings, running through a hole in the wall. The strings pull the items at a rate of one millimetre per hour, until they meet their inevitable demise. Similarly, a drum set – built out of drywall and reclaimed hardware – slowly crumbles whilst played in Scott Carter’s 16th on Center (2012). These projects highlight the fragility of
42 Aesthetica
materials, alluding to the impact of human destruction. Philippe Allard has been wholly inspired by land art, specifically Robert Smithson’s seminal Spiral Jetty (1970) which involved moving thousands of tonnes of basalt rocks. However, instead of turning to the natural world, Allard manipulates the urban landscape for dystopian creations that foreground humanity’s impact on our surroundings. For Parasitings (2014), masses of yellow buckets pour out of the windows of an abandoned brick building in Montreal; endless and senseless protrusions that disrupt and upend commuters' expectations and day-to-day journeys. Beers provides a platform for some of the most promising emerging and even largely unknown sculptors to reach a wider audience. In doing so, the publication takes a broad view of “sculpture” beyond three-dimensionality. It’s one that includes the likes of Emanuel Tovar or Donna Huanca, for whom performance is a moving structure. A violinist uses a handsaw to play the instrument in Tovar’s A Groove in the Nothingness (2016), where the violin pieces represent creation, destruction, death and, ultimately, beauty. Critics, art historians and advisers, such as Hammer Museum Senior Curator Anne Ellegood and Artforum Editor David Huber, formed a jury that chose around 50 practitioners. The other half came from more than 4,000 people who applied through an open call. In all, 59 men, 38 women and three non-binary artists born in 38 countries are featured. It’s a follow-up to another book Beers put together in 2014, 100 Painters of Tomorrow. Next in line is photography, including artists that consider the pervasive use of new technologies.
Aesthetica 43
44 Aesthetica
Haroon Mirza, A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatography Transcriptions in Surround Sound, 2015. Installation view at Museum TInguely, Basel. ©2015 Museum TInguely, Basel. Photo: Bettina Matthiessen.
“Creating this book, made Beers ‘fall in love with sculpture all over again.’ He points to the ingenious ways in which practitioners are tackling the most pressing issues of our time, including manmade environmental destruction.”
Previous Page: In the middle of nowhere. Alex Chinneck for IQOS. Photography: Marc Wilmot. Left: Rachel Ara, This Much I’m Worth [The SelfEvaluating Artwork], 2017. Neon, recycled server room equipment, electronics, computers, IP cameras, 420cm x 160cm x 90cm. Courtesy of Anise Gallery. www.2ra.co/tmiwfull.html
Creating this book, Beers expands, made him “fall in love Whitney Biennial and Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial. As social with sculpture all over again.” Throughout the process, he media platforms change how artists are being recognised points to the ingenious ways in which practitioners are tack- and activists challenge museums’ sources of funding, fairs ling the most pressing issues of our time, including manmade and biennials play a critical role in determining current environmental destruction. Rachael Champion produces artistic output. For its inaugural edition, Yorkshire Sculpture idealised miniature ecosystems. Rachel Pimm plays with the International (open until 29 September) has invited Phyllida Barlow CBE to be the “provocateur” – asking questions about idea of the natural world through overtly artificial forms – films, mock-anthropological displays, screen-printed ban- the “anthropological act” of making objects. Contributions ners and assemblages. Green polyurethane foam, neon and by over 20 artists from 13 countries build upon Yorkshire’s worldwide reputation for sculpture with organisations such towel construct almost playground-like structures. Artists like Rushdi Anwar, Kader Attia and Tuan Andrew as the Henry Moore Institute and The Hepworth. The London Nguyen address trauma and the multi-layered, complex Design Festival (LDF), which returns 14 to 22 September, nature of identities in a globalised world. Anwar, who has drew more than half a million visitors in 2018. Each edition worked in refugee camps in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, sits at the intersection of design, sculpture and architecture, manipulates a variety of materials, finding common threads introducing such critical pieces as Zaha Hadid’s polished that link people of varying backgrounds. Art may not suffice concrete Urban Nebula (2007), Jaime Hayón’s giant The to stop violence, he says, but “it is a powerful tool as a Tournament (2009) chessboard in Trafalgar Square or the curving tube that was Alison Brooks’ The Smile (2016). platform to generate awareness, courage and empathy.” Subversion is key for Alex Chinneck, who was commissioned Olaniyi R. Akindiya and Hiromi Tango are also amongst those taking an artist–activist approach to societal concerns. for LDF 2015 and also appears in 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow. The healing potential of the creative process is central to The artist makes a habit out of turning objects' physical Tango’s practice, which often involves large textile structures. properties. In an installation for the seaside town of Margate, Akindiya’s huge freestanding, net-like structures incorporate entitled From the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes, video, photography, sound and performance. They rely on the façade of a derelict four-storey house curves outward audience participation. He has also formed the non-profit and appears to melt into the pavement. In another surprising group ARTWITHAKIRASH, which provides financial aid to illusion – ironically titled A Spoonful of Sunrise – a giant zipper on a building causes the concrete to fold over like children in Nigeria, through community development. These groundbreaking approaches are part of what Beers cloth, revealing a blank lit interior that mimics the changing dubs a “new renaissance” in sculpture. The text provides hues of the sky. In the Middle of Nowhere is a similar piece, a bridge to key leading art fairs or festivals such as the which unzips an installation to reveal a glowing source of Venice Biennale, Art Basel, FIAC, Frieze, Biennale of Sydney, light. Chinneck, who Beers describes as “something of a
Aesthetica 45
Haroon Mirza, A C I D G E S T, 2017. Modified Marshall cabinet speakers, LED lights, bespoke media device and XLR4 cables. Dimensions variable. Installation view: Haroon Mirza: A C I D G E S T, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 21 July, 2017 - 20 May, 2018. © Pérez Art Museum Miami. Photo: Oriol Tarridas.
magician,” has also caused buildings to float, bricks to melt Texas, where it has been billed as the “most ambitious” public Right: In the middle of nowhere. Alex Chinneck commission since Elmgreen & Dragset’s Prada Marfa (2005). for IQOS. Photography: Marc Wilmot. and grandfather clocks to tie into a single knot. Rachel Ara, who won the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2016 with Eight black marble boulders arranged in a circular pattern the groundbreaking piece This Much I’m Worth (The Self- reminiscent of ancient megaliths produce electronic sound Evaluating Artwork), makes the cut here for capitalising on and light sourced from solar panels. A “mother” stone that “her frustration with the hidden issues and agendas of the sits outside the formation has a separate set of arrays that modern world to disclose, confront and create dialogues charge batteries, which in turn power a sound and light around misinformation, conspiracies of silence, the composition activated during each full moon. The piece is normalisation of violence, injustice and the economy.” That the second in Mirza’s Solar Symphonies series. Artists like Mark Whalen and Troika were picked based on same digital sculpture displays its own value in real time in a neon doomsday clock-like structure. Her background their arresting social media posts on Instagram and other in the tech industry allows Ara to use data and complex platforms that are subverting the traditional gallery space. algorithms to come up with the numbers, which also draw on Troika, a trio consisting of Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer and the work’s social media footprint and real-life reactions. It’s a Sebastien Noel, create seemingly impossible installations tongue-in-cheek critique of the art world’s obsession with the often based on complex mathematical systems. Their Dark bottom line and the inequalities faced by women, as well as Matter (2014) takes on three different shapes based on the neon’s prevalence in the sex trade. A V&A Artist in Residence, viewer’s perspective. The black flock piece at times appears Ara has also been featured in the Financial Times, and will to be a circle, a square or a hexagon. In this way, the artist be exhibiting at LDF and Copenhagen’s Ok Corral, after collective says it probes “the coalescence of seemingly appearing in the Vienna Biennale and at Seoul’s National irreconcilable opposites – nature and technology, the virtual and the real, the human and the non-human.” Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Ultimately, Beers says, the book is about “opening a Haroon Mirza works predominantly with electricity and sound. This July, he received an Honorary Doctorate from dialogue” and “challenging what is traditionally considered Words University of the Arts London alongside Aesthetica Director to be sculpture.” For readers, this is about idea generation, Olivia Hampton Cherie Federico, amongst other world-renowned designers sharing in global discussions about what art can be and who and practitioners. A disconcerting buzz of electrical currents gets to decide. As Beers continues: “I remember the first time often sets the scene for Mirza’s sculptures. Straddling the I saw a piece by David Altmejd in the flesh, my skin tingled, 100 Sculptors of digital and analogue divide, he uses objects like turntables my hair rose – a wicked smile crossed my face.” With releases Tomorrow is published and speakers, photovoltaic panels, video and LED lights – like 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow and major events like London by Thames & Hudson. referencing his years as a DJ. Since April 2018, Stone Circle Design Festival and Yorkshire Sculpture International, 2019 has been on view in the high desert grasslands of Marfa, is an exciting year for discovery and artistic inspiration. www.thamesandhudson.com
46 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 47
art
Pockets of Colour Kyle Jeffers
Kyle Jeffers (b. 1998) is based in Hamilton, Canada, where he is currently studying for a BA in photography. Though only at the start of his career, Jeffers is already producing a multitude of elegant compositions in which the body is wrapped around industrial structures, draped over crates or gripping to ladders. Picking up on small strips of oranges, greens, blues and purples within manufactured locations, Jeffers builds up textures through costume, props and layouts. In doing so, he elevates scenes with alarm-like vibrancy. The images draw the eye in the same way that a road sign might glare from a motorway, or traffic lights might pull attention from concrete jungles. He notes: “Colour and shape come together contentedly within otherwise mucky or muted landscapes.” The result is a selection of sculptural images that dance around speed cones, cranes, bunkers and warehouses. @kylejeffers_ | www.kyle-jeffers.com.
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
48 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 49
50 Aesthetica
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 51
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
52 Aesthetica
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 53
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
54 Aesthetica
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 55
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
56 Aesthetica
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 57
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
58 Aesthetica
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 59
Image © Kyle Jeffers. Courtesy of the artist.
art
Spatial Experiments Unseen Amsterdam THE RENOWNED DUTCH FAIR RETURNS, PROVIDING A SPACE FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS THAT ARE TESTING UNEVEN GROUND THROUGH BOLD, ABSTRACTED COMPOSITIONS.
Founded in 2012 by Foam Fotografiemuseum, creative agency Vandejong and arts organisation Platform A, Unseen has quickly gained a reputation for a cutting-edge approach to lens-based media. It has since evolved into a recognisable brand within the photographic world, providing key events in the international calendar. As an umbrella organisation, it encompasses an online platform, a bi-annual magazine, a programme of collaborative events, an independent charity, and, perhaps most importantly, an annual fair in Amsterdam accompanied by exhibitions at renowned institutions such as Stedelijk Museum, Huis Marseille and Melkweg. For its 2019 edition (taking place 20-22 September at the Westergas creative complex), Marina Paulenka has joined as the Artistic Director, taking over from Emilia van Lynden after her two-year run. In accepting this role, Paulenka departs from the Organ Vida International Photography Festival, which she co-founded and ran in Zagreb, Croatia, for 10 years. Organ Vida captured the world’s attention in 2018 with an edition devoted to women artists. Entitled Engaged, Active, Aware – Women’s Perspectives Now, the festival created visual dialogues about post-capitalist turmoil and rising right-wing extremism, negotiating initiatives such as #MeToo with the female gaze. Catapulting an already-respected festival into the big time, Paulenka won a Lucie Award for Best Curator / Exhibition of the year. She asked important questions about how women must again fight for rights. She shed light on a range of issues such as sexual assault, domestic violence and human trafficking, whilst introducing the world to a number of important emerging artists as part of the wider process.
60 Aesthetica
This passion for social justice, questioning the role of technological advancements and the effects of digital culture, rings true in Paulenka’s vision for Unseen. “Photography is changing all the time, and we discuss its boundaries on a practical, technical, but also philosophical level. Unseen sheds light on artworks backed by deep research and concepts, experimenting with the medium and flirting with different techniques, including installation, video, sound and performance. I see the future of the festival as a responsible and intelligent entity that, by its programme and production, represents an important centre and driving force in which different social practices, art and market are encountered.” Unseen positions itself as being “at the forefront of contemporary photography,” specialising in artists whose work has not been widely seen – due to being at the start of their career or because they’re located outside the established centres of the industry. This year, the festival features 53 galleries from Iran, India, Argentina and Ghana. The curated programme, meanwhile, includes a three-day talks programme organised in collaboration with London’s V&A and LagosPhoto, one of Africa’s first international festivals. “It is incredibly important to include voices outside of western countries. We cannot stay within safe bubbles,” says Paulenka. “Different countries bring new issues and concerns of which we must make ourselves aware. That is the beauty of diversity in artistic approaches – sharing ideas.” “With this in mind, there are some more political projects included,” she continues. “For example, ROLF Art, Buenos Aires, is presenting Marcelo Brodsky, who went into the
Aesthetica 61
62 Aesthetica
Inka & Niclas, The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth III, 2012. Courtesy of the artists.
“Unseen positions itself at the forefront of photography, specialising in artists whose work has not been widely seen – due to being at the start of their career or because they're located outside the established centres of the industry.”
Previous Page: Untitled 1, from the series Hive, 2017 © Andrea Gruetzner and Robert Morat Galerie.
Left: Untitled, from the series Passiflora, 2017. © Mari-Leen Kiipli and Kogo Gallery.
Stadsarchief and made pieces around the Provo movement of the 1970s. Similarly, they’re including emerging talent Celeste Rojas Mugica, whose father went into exile. In her work, she investigates the ways in which memory is constructed, as well as recent Latin American history. She uses photography and archives as spaces of reflection, in which the limits of fiction and documentary are questioned.” Paulenka adds that it’s not always possible to split artists and issues by country, given the different identities, generations and influences at work in each nation. Looking over the fair and the 300+ practitioners involved – via the fair, the book market it hosts, the associated exhibitions and onsite projects, and development initiatives such as the ING Unseen Talent Award, and the Unseen Dummy Award – she says many artists are considering the tension between virtual spaces and reality. Many of the names are also expressing a close concern with nature and the impact of the Anthropocene. This is where many of the countries pull together thematically, representing the vision of an impending environmental apocalypse, and a symbiosis between different forms of life. “There are worldwide issues connected to the time in which we live,” she points out, “which reflect our collective and general state of mind.” “I think practitioners are moving on from a lot of collages and constructed photography dealing with the medium itself to some new ways of visual approach and storytelling – researching topics deeper than the surface,” she says. “I don’t see why conceptual or fictional work cannot be engaged with real-world issues. I think young practitioners are incredibly aware of the planet and that comes naturally with the raising awareness of the climate crisis.” This is, after all, something
that threatens all of humanity. It is a constant reminder and quiet component behind many of the photographs. Paulenka points to Andrea Grützner, Inka & Niclas and Mari-Leen Kiipli by way of example – young artists who hail from Germany, Sweden and Estonia respectively. They share similar concerns – the language of images, the interplay of photographic and physical reality, and issues of our everyday landscape under threat. “Grützner’s compositions deal with the emotional and visual perception of spaces,” Paulenka explains. “She seeks both familiar and disconnected subject matters, asking questions about the memory of places and our orientation of designed interiors. She finds and creates photographs as well as objects that oscillate between image-making and painting. She explores ideas of documentary, surrealism, abstraction and visual irritation.” Indeed, Grützner’s featured images showcase a subtle journey through colour and form. The HIVE series is shot throughout Melbourne RMIT’s New Academic Street, a large area of the University currently undergoing major reconstruction and transformation. The artist notes: “The education buildings are designed to provide a common ground. For me, these maze-like rooms are a metaphor for orientation and alienation. Eclectic interiors draw links to retro computer games that require the player to advance from level to level. Through manipulations, I respond to physical spaces with double exposure techniques, which allows me to reveal the uncanny. I like to question how architecture can have a performative power, and to what extent it can determine wider human behaviour.” Similarly, Mari-Leen Kiipli presents larger solo projects that combine two-dimensional images with video and installation,
Aesthetica 63
Inka & Niclas, SAGA I, 2009. Courtesy of the artists.
focusing on the cognitive qualities of space. She closely as well as the impact on, and responsibilities of, institutions, observes specific environments and the function of the curators and collectors witnessing the change. “Since body’s memory within them. Kiipli produces transparencies photography is constantly evolving, it is necessary to adapt and reflections, using slow-motion HD videos on translucent it both technologically and contextually,” she says. “Today screens and semi-transparent mirrors that propose a new curatorial strategies are being developed with the aim of using digital media, reframing the idea of the exhibition. It multitude of perspectives from within the same rooms. Inka and Niclas Lindergård (Inka & Niclas) meanwhile, are is important to think how to produce and present artworks in an award-winning artist duo who “bring new life to landscape online and virtual spaces in another, offline world.” To achieve this, Unseen invites experts to discuss how photography,” Paulenka notes. “They arrange objects and use coloured lights, thereby offering a different perspective through digitalisation aesthetics are globalised. Paulenka on the relationship between humans and nature.” There is a continues: “We are questioning: do we like the same things certain amount of autonomy in this process, asking deeper now? Is the market open for the majority? Within these panels, questions about interventions with the planet. “In the works we want to bring artists’ voices to discuss this image-sharing they are exhibiting at Unseen, the natural world is off-kilter, platform and how they see themselves in this virtual world.” The programme also includes pieces by students from and the landscape has become fluorescent. The idealised aesthetics in these utopian and bright landscapes are post- prestigious Dutch institutions KABK, HKU and Rietveld, as produced with Instagram filters. They are addressing our well as from the Charles Goes Arles collective; in addition it experience, making us aware of not only beauty, but also the includes an event planned in collaboration with the Docking Station photography platform and the city partner Arias to culture that is creating a sense of visual tourism.” Leading on from this, social media is something Paulenka discuss food production and its impact on the natural world is keen to explore further, noting that museums, galleries – an issue-led event along the lines of the Unseen x LSE and magazines all need to find a way to engage with day held during Photo London this year, which comprised Instagram and the new opportunities that it presents in terms academics and artists to discuss gentrification. “I believe in the critical potential of artistic production, and of circulation, representation and discussion. She notes that she’s “interested to see how practitioners move from social that art not only reflects the society in which we live but can networks to physical galleries,” but adds that at Unseen, stimulate contemplation, critical knowledge and positive “we’re also thinking through how to curate online “because changes,” explains Paulenka. “I consider art to be, besides other things, a social practice that in our mutual interaction we are now developing our new digital platform.” In fact, one of the strands up for discussion in the Living creates our imaginings of reality. I think photography is a Room at the festival is the way in which modern technology powerful tool in communication and visual literacy. Many of has changed how images are made, shared and experienced, the remarkable works have emerged as retrograde.”
64 Aesthetica
Right: Untitled 5, from the series Hive, 2019. © Andrea Gruetzner and Robert Morat Galerie.
Words Diane Smyth
Unseen Amsterdam 20-22 September unseenplatform.com
Aesthetica 65
art
Forms of Recluse Kyle Thompson
Loneliness has long been explored and depicted in the art world, from Edward Hopper’s infamous diner painting Nighthawks (1942) to Gregory Crewdson’s wintry photographic series Cathedral of the Pines (2013-2014). Solitude is a facet of the human experience, and, in today’s hyper-digitised climate, it is increasingly recognised as a widespread emotion. Kyle Thompson (b. 1992) produces photographs that depict such feelings. His series are often placed within gloomy Oregon forests. Just like Crewdson and Hopper, location is a key detail. The images are shot within self-consciously empty environments, which allow for an uncomfortable quietude. Amongst the deep green palettes, performative self-portraits further express stillness, silence and distress. Thompson notes: “My main recognisable features are obscured, creating an anonymous figure that can feel both impossible to identify, yet easy to relate to.” www.kylethompsonphotography.com.
Kyle Thompson, Untitled, from the Slovakia series. Courtesy of the artist.
66 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 67
68 Aesthetica
Kyle Thompson, Home, from the Ghost town series. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 69
Kyle Thompson, Tunnel, from the Open Stage series. Courtesy of the artist.
70 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 71
72 Aesthetica
Kyle Thompson, Displacement, from the Somewhere Else series. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 73
Kyle Thompson, Overpass from the Open Stage series. Courtesy of the artist.
74 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 75
art
Looking Outwards Rebecca Reeve
Rebecca Reeve started the Marjory’s World series during a residency in Everglades National Park, which led to an exploration of a number of national parks across the USA. The concept draws inspiration from a ritual described in The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (1995). Reeve explains: “In the Netherlands in the 1600s – during the wake of the deceased – it was customary to cover all mirrors, landscape paintings and portraits with cloths. It was believed this would make it easier for the soul to leave the body behind. This ritual provided me with both a literal and contextual frame to shoot the landscape – a portal from domesticity into wilderness.” Building on this idea, Reeve photographed curtains in the landscape, sourcing used fabrics from the local areas in which she was working. The images comment upon our increasingly urban existence – a sense of disconnect from the natural world. www.rebeccareeve.com.
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #26, (Marjory's World) (detail). Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
76 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 77
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #37, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
78 Aesthetica
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #36, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
Aesthetica 79
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #28, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
80 Aesthetica
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #25, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
Aesthetica 81
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #30, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
82 Aesthetica
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #27, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
Aesthetica 83
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #32, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
84 Aesthetica
Rebecca Reeve, Untitled #31, (Marjory's World) Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery.
Aesthetica 85
art
Illusory Narratives Max Pinckers EXAMINING THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY TO QUESTION THE NATURE OF ACCEPTED TRUTHS AND SUBJECTIVE REALITIES, THE IMAGES SIT BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION.
Max Pinckers’ Margins of Excess – a photographic series most recently exhibited as part of Belfast Photo Festival’s 2019 edition themed Truth and Lies – focuses on the stories of six characters based in North America. All of them received nationwide attention in the press because of their attempts to realise a dream, but were presented as frauds by mass media. These included Rachel Dolezal, a civil-rights activist who was born white but believes herself to be African American – and Richard Heene, who reported that his six-year-old son had been carried into the skies of eastern Colorado in a 20 foot-wide, flying saucer-shaped helium balloon. A: Your work speaks to the post-truth era. In fact, you were travelling in the USA when the dialogues about fake news reached a climax. How did this affect you? MP: When I began Margins of Excess in July 2016 – together with my wife Victoria Gonzalez-Figueras – the term “fake news” wasn’t around yet, and the idea of post-truth wasn’t as common as it is today. Although the series wasn't conceived as a project about alternative facts, during the production, I did look at some of the alternative news locations but I chose not to keep these threads in the work as I felt it would undermine the emotional power of the protagonist's personal stories, which express extreme idiosyncratic versions of reality. The intention was not to make a documentary that was accusatory of either the mainstream USA media or the people that I interviewed, but rather to point out that personal truths are sometimes in conflict with general shared ideas, and that when attempting to tell these stories in the form of images,
86 Aesthetica
we may come closer to a representation in which both are plausible. In relation to fake news, it does seem that true power lies in the transformation of politics into a strange theatre where nobody knows what is accurate or false, keeping any opposition constantly confused. This has ushered in an age of hyper-individualism, where people’s personal and subjective beliefs are more important to them than facts that may refute them. Yet, it's important not to forget that truth of course does exist. We just seem disconnected and confused about the form in which we receive this information. A: Can you describe the different types of imagery in the book and the strategies used to differentiate them as part of a larger, interconnected series? MP: The protagonists are represented in the form of a portrait, sometimes accompanied by shots of their personal living spaces or details of interiors, archival photographs or news footage. They are embedded in various registers of text: a headline and an entire press article from a newspaper source (on grey paper), a first-person quote overlaid onto an image, and a four-page interview in the form of a monologue. Entwined within this structure are image sequences that do not directly relate to the life of the protagonists in a documentary sense, but rather contribute to the narrative as imaginary associations. Because the stories deal with how people attempt to materialise their intimate dreams and desires, they provided the space for me to use my own imagination in visualising these fantastic narratives with symbolic photographs made whilst on the road in-between visits.
Aesthetica 87
88 Aesthetica
From the series Margins of Excess. © 2018 Max Pinckers.
“The narratives of six protagonists are not divided into clearly defined chapters, but flow over into each other as if zapping on television or flipping through a magazine, interrupted by sensational news tales that deal with different interpretations of authenticity. ”
Previous Page & Left: From the series Margins of Excess. © 2018 Max Pinckers.
A: Can you provide an example of one of the protagonists and how you embedded further layers of meaning? MP: Herman Rosenblat (1929-2015) was a Jewish-American author known for writing a fictitious Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence (2009). In Rosenblat’s account, his future spouse threw him apples whilst he was held in a German death camp. In relation to this, I photographed an orange being thrown over a fence. I have the freedom to manipulate the representation of these stories since they are rooted in imagination anyway. The choice of this fruit is simply because an orange is more beautiful against the bright blue background of the sky (and also references John Baldessari’s Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line, 1973). This narrative strategy is key to understanding the intention behind the work, where there doesn’t need to be a binary opposition between what is “real” and what isn’t. Margins of Excess provides a continuous fluctuation between different hierarchies of truths and their relativity towards each other, coming to terms with reality rather than attempting to rationalise and objectify it. A: Why did you decide to focus on six characters? MP: In documentary photography especially, the single subject tends to dominate the photographer’s intentions and approach, overshadowing the reflexive nature of the work (especially when dealing with sensational subjects or stories). By combining different layers, the reader is required to reflect on the connections between them, instead of being absorbed in the individual stories. The narratives of six protagonists are not divided into clearly defined chapters, but flow over into each other as if zapping on television or flip-
ping through a magazine, interrupted by sensational mininews tales that deal with different visual interpretations of authenticity. For example, Jay J. Armes’ section is preceded by a television news report of a Virgin Mary statue at Saint Mary’s Church in Indiana reportedly crying with tears running down the statue’s cheek. The Heene family sequence flows over into an early UFO hoax from 1953 in which a monkey is mistaken for an alien. Ali Alqaisi’s narrative skips from the US military accidentally dropping an atomic bomb on US soil, to the first cloned military dog, “Specter.” A: Many of the images are self-aware, both as entities that exist between fact and fiction and as wider symbols or tropes. Can you speak a little more about this? MP: I experienced the USA as one big cliché, an exaggeration of its own stereotype. It is a place of pure superficiality derived of substance (like coffee without caffeine, alcoholfree beer or butter without fat), like a photograph. I began working with young actors in New York City and Hollywood to produce pieces that could be used as empty templates, or a kind of “stock photojournalism” – empty containers of the perfect trope, employable in whichever context for whichever tragic event. Classic examples that the media applies after terrible events are close-ups of people embracing each other, or portraits of spectators crying. These images have a huge emotional impact on the readers as they can easily identify with them, much more so than images of the actual transgressive event. Works like these, made with actors, are woven throughout the book. They seem to weep in our stead like an ancient Greek choir. The cover of the book bears one such image, made on Trump’s inauguration day.
Aesthetica 89
From the series Margins of Excess. © 2018 Max Pinckers.
A: Interpretive texts are excluded from the book and installation. It means that the significance of some images remains hidden. Why did you make this decision? MP: Text is mostly used directly in relation to visuals where it is necessary to move the narrative forward. I like to embrace the multitude of meanings inherent to photographs, which continually change depending on the context and time they appear in, and who looks at them. Many of the sequences in the book have distinct references and reasons for being constructed, although I prefer not to disclose this. Much of the pleasure of delving into a complex body of work lies in the reward of noticing and understanding its meaning. Much of this is in the detail. There are clues and references in the various texts that relate to certain images, but that are harder to find. For example, in an interview, Ali Alqaisi describes that he had his bathtub removed because it gives him anxiety, having been waterboarded 17 times during his time at Abu Ghraib prison. Just 16 pages prior there is an image of a void in Alqaisi’s bathroom where his bathtub used to stand, next to which a second image depicts a Middle Eastern-themed diorama exhibit from an American military museum. It displays a collection of plastic water bottles under a flatscreen that reads “in war, nothing is as it should be.” A: This approach, and the layers of information, is the exact opposite of today's mode of instant gratification. How does it produce a different type of critical reader? MP: I’m interested in how there’s a necessity for documentary to be reflexive about its own constructions. That we as documentarians should try to communicate to our readers that they should not just take for granted the (visual)
90 Aesthetica
information that they consume, but critically reflect on what currency this may have in our visual economy. In an age of endless newsfeeds, clickbait, narcissism, bite-sized infotainment, personalised advertising, confusion, and simplistic good versus evil narratives, documentary should embrace the complexity and ambivalence of the reality with which it tries to comprehend. But I also find it important that my work expresses itself in an aesthetic form that is accessible to anyone, and functions on different levels of interpretation, without being too hermetic or self-referential. A: Since 2010 you’ve had over 100 exhibitions, won over seven awards and published eight books. What’s next? MP: In 2014, I went to the Archive of Modern Conflict in London, where I encountered a collection of original documents from the British Ministry of Information relating to the Mau Mau emergency crisis in Kenya in the 1950s. Kenyan freedom fighters took arms against the colonial administration. The events leading up to Britain's exit from Kenya have become part of a carefully curated history. This includes a skewed representation of the Kenyan fight for independence through a well-oiled propaganda machine of imperial rule. (According to the Kenya Human Rights Commission, an estimated 160,000 Kikuyu were placed in concentration camps and 90,000 people were executed, tortured or subjected to violence). For the past four years, as part of a PhD project at the School of Arts / KASK in Ghent, I have been collaborating with Mau Mau veterans who are now over 80 years of age, creating reenactments in which they claim their roles as victims instead of perpetrators. The reconstructions confront the spectres of colonial oppression.
Right: From the series Margins of Excess. © 2018 Max Pinckers.
Words Sarah Allen
www.maxpinckers.be
Aesthetica 91
art
Intimacy with Nature Next Generation
Next Generation is an annual collaboration with London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. This issue of Aesthetica marks the sixth instalment – featuring seven new talents entering the photographic sphere. Nature is a vital component to this year’s selection, with practitioners demonstrating a sensitivity to the seasons, and their relation to the human experience. As the climate crisis seeps into widespread attitudes, agendas and emotional wellbeing, so too are upcoming graduates taking footsteps back into the analogue world. Pale orange petals, burnt red leaves and delicate white daisies are scattered throughout the compositions, with skin and clothing blending into the environments. Shadows and sunlight melt into one another, drawing attention to the passing of time and the movements from summer to autumn. Implicit tensions are rife – bodies are obscured and hidden amongst woodlands and abandoned houses. www.arts.ac.uk/lcc.
Beatriz Oliveira, from Slow. Portugal, 2019.
92 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 93
Left: Clare Hoddinott, Reverie, 2019. Digital C-Type print. 42cm x 59.4cm. Right: styled and photographed by Ryanna Allen; model: Asia Barnes. Courtesy of the artist.
94 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 95
Left: Untitled, from the series Almost Blue. Š 2019 Carola Cappellari. Right: Marvin Tang, from the series The Colony. Courtesy of the artist.
96 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 97
Left: Untitled, from the series Almost Blue. Š 2019 Carola Cappellari. Right: Beatriz Oliveira, from Slow. Portugal, 2019.
98 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 99
Left: Untitled, from the series Almost Blue. Š 2019 Carola Cappellari. Right: Marvin Tang, from the series The Colony. Courtesy of the artist.
100 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 101
Left: Manu Ferneini, from A Bigger Room. Courtesy of the artist. Right: Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee, Serai (Lemongrass), from the series Vessels, 2018. Š Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee / A.I. Gallery.
102 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 103
art
Unlimited Possibilities Studio Brasch
“A lucid dream is when the sleeper becomes aware of both the waking world and the dream with which they’re still entwined. When this happens, they gain some control over the narrative, characters and the environment.” With the rise of CGI and digital set design, such imaginative spaces have become a reality. These images are the product of freedom of imagination and creative tools. Through open-ended design platforms, microverses have been built. Clean, utopian rooms boast translucent surfaces, unused furniture and Wes Anderson-esque palettes. Pastel pink walls glow against crisp white lights; astral rocks and sand dunes mingle with contemporary product design. Studio Brasch – launched by Anders Brasch-Willumsen – is an interdisciplinary studio which works across fine art and conceptual projects, as well as brand campaigns, visual communication and direction, having produced projects for Apple, Rimowa, B&O and Remy Martin. www.studiobrasch.com.
Image by Studio Brasch.
104 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 105
106 Aesthetica
Image by Studio Brasch.
Aesthetica 107
Image by Studio Brasch.
108 Aesthetica
Image by Studio Brasch.
Aesthetica 109
Image by Studio Brasch.
110 Aesthetica
Image by Studio Brasch.
Aesthetica 111
Image by Studio Brasch.
112 Aesthetica
Image by Studio Brasch.
Aesthetica 113
Image by Studio Brasch.
art
Striking Depictions Alessio Albi
Shafts of light. Distorted facial features. Shadows falling across skin. These close-up portraits draw attention to finer bodily details – capturing them with mesmerising intensity. Faces are half-hidden, concealed amongst deep greenery, shrouds of smoke or glasses of water. Identities remain camouflaged through intelligent composition. Though intimate in proximity, the images retain a sense of anonymity and intrigue. Eyes stare out from the frame, with a penetrative, meaningful gaze, creating direct focal points and demanding the attention of onlookers. Alessio Albi (b. 1986) is a master of fine art photography, finding dramatic lighting in both interior and exterior landscapes. Each moment has been well-considered, with an intuitive sense of direction and perspective. All subjects are brought to life through heightened colours and sharpened palettes. The resulting images are emphatic, confident and instantly recognisable. www.alessioalbiphotography.com.
Photographer: Alessio Albi. Model: Isabella Bubola. Courtesy of the artist and Trevillion.
114 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 115
116 Aesthetica
Photographer: Alessio Albi. Model: Jeske Van der Pal at Monster Management. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 117
118 Aesthetica
Photographer: Alessio Albi. Model: Alyda Grace at Monster Management. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 119
120 Aesthetica
Photographer: Alessio Albi. Model: Angelina Michelle at MP Management Milano. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 121
122 Aesthetica
Photographer: Alessio Albi. Model: Niko at Brave Models Management Milano. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica 123
art
Social Documentary Ute Mahler & Werner Mahler THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC WAS A COUNTRY RULED BY SURVEILLANCE AND CONSTANT MONITORING; THESE PHOTOGRAPHS PROVIDE A WINDOW INTO A PAST ERA.
Ute Mahler (b. 1949) and Werner Mahler (b. 1950) grew up in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949-1990). Together with five other photographers, they founded the Ostkreuz photo agency in 1990, named after the S-Bahn station – the busiest traffic hub in Berlin. Now, Fotomuseum Den Haag is showing a major joint retrospective of their work from the 1970s to the present-day, highlighting groundbreaking reports and social documentaries from a range of different collaborative series. The most recent images from Kleinstadt (2015-2018) depict landscapes and provincial towns all over Germany, taken in the decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
tions perhaps cannot imagine how one could live in such a country, where we could not officially say what we thought. In addition, a large part of the world was closed off to us – so there was a lot that remained hidden or concealed. One of the tasks of photography is to document the underpinnings of events in a certain period in time. When we took pictures in the 1970s and 1980s, we would never have imagined that one day the GDR would not exist. At that time, we wanted to show life as we experienced it – just as it was. Today, the images act as documents from a vanished country. In this way, they are given a renewed sense of purpose.
A: Your practice is built upon a simple idiom: “Do not A: The agency you co-founded – Ostkreuz – refers to a create, recognise and interpret a situation.” Can you train station in Berlin. Figuratively, it alludes to an intersection where people can set out in any direction. Why expand on this and how it relates to your work? UM & WM: We do not stage any of our pictures. We start did you start this agency and what opportunities did it with a documentary approach and show – through subjec- present – both commercially and artistically? tive photographs – what we have found. In this way, we dis- UM & WM: In 1990, we, alongside Sibylle Bergemann, cover a sense of reality. It is our reality, however. History Harald Hauswald, Jens Rötzsch, Harf Zimmermann and Thomas Sandberg, founded the agency. We had different becomes tangible when it’s told about real people. styles, but we all wanted to work in the documentary field A: The Fotomuseum Den Haag retrospective takes place – to earn money with photography but also to be able to 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Do you think realise or own artistic projects. Today we are made up of 23 these images have a renewed sense of significance given members. The youngest member is 23, the oldest is 70. Half of them are women. The agency is a forum for us to create this important historical date? UM & WM: 30 years is a long time, and we live in a fast- conversation, but it is also a business venture. It was clear to paced world. One forgets. The generations after us might us from very early on that we were stronger together. In the find it hard to understand the complex workings of the GDR, GDR, when the collective was praised as an ideal, we were as memory begins to move into the past. These new genera- all lone fighters. In this new society where individuality is
124 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 125
126 Aesthetica
Kleinstadt, 2015-2018. © Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler.
“Much was forbidden to photograph – including army barracks, police stations and borders. The mood in the country, however, could easily be documented in a number of open spaces: public or private festivals and marches.”
Previous Page: Kleinstadt, 2015-2018. © Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler. Left: Birna, Reykjavik, 2009. From the series Monalisen der Vorstadt. © Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler.
so important to so many people – coming together is the key. The name “Ostkreuz” is also a symbol of departure and movement into new territories and landscapes. A: What photographers does Ostkreuz represent now and what kinds of works are they creating? UM & WM: We mainly work in documentary in the magazine sector. However, every five years, we come together to respond to a common topic or theme – creating a book and exhibition. Of the seven founding members, there are still three in the agency; we are at an age when we are taking care to process our own archive. We have a responsibility to a bygone era. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, we took pictures of what was important to us. The accuracy of these is much more crucial today. The GDR is often presented in feature films, books or reports. These accounts are often very simplified, without wider nuances. The quality of the photographs from this period – and what they communicate – is an important issue for all of us in the agency. A: How did the governmental surveillance of the GDR affect your practice – both in the past and up until the present? How did it influence you as artists? UM & WM: The official media published an alternate reality. They only showed images of a society they desired – a collective ideal. Officially, optimism was called for – cheers and joy. They excluded the real problems from media coverage. We, as artists, took on the task of pointing out these issues in real-time. Everyday life was very much in conflict. We were world champions in using metaphor to depict these intricacies, but exhibition attendees could very well decipher the
symbols. Our collective visual memory is shaped by images. That's why we felt this wider sense of responsibility. There were 17 million GDR citizens, so there are 17 million different views on this time in history. We only show our perspective. A: When you were photographing in such precarious landscapes, were there ever any images that you had to omit or abandon based on their content / subject matter? Were there places you couldn't go? UM: For many areas you needed a permit or an order to take pictures. Much was forbidden to photograph – including army barracks, police stations, borders, railway stations. The mood in the country, however, could easily be documented in a number of open spaces: public or private festivals, marches, or generally in day-to-day life. We did not take these pictures as part of a commission. They were not intended for publication. We took them to be exhibited, or to be shown to friends or colleagues. Our pictures were hung in many galleries, but we earned money with fashion photography. We often alluded to elements of the GDR in these commissions, taking models onto the street, taking very serious portraits. Some of these never got printed due to our wider motives. Our portrayals of women did not correspond to the wider state ideals. Those in charge wanted to see the models looking happier and more optimistic. A: In the Ostzeit series – taken with Ostkreuz members Maurice Weiss, Sibylle Bergemann, Harald Hauswald – you included portraits from a May Day Parade in Berlin in 1980. You knew that some of the individuals might be Stasi members. How did the images explore hidden
Aesthetica 127
Kleinstadt, 2015-2018. © Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler.
emotions or agendas? How do they depict a society built around concealment? UM: Everyone knew that people were spying for state security. But nobody knew who. It could be anyone. We lived and breathed with this knowledge. In 1980, I stood at a May Day demonstration just below the grandstand. The demonstrators cheered at the government, which was on a podium above me. I got the impression that all the attendees were in agreement and were happy about it. Whilst editing the pictures, I discovered other faces in the crowd. That confirmed to me that you must look closely for what might be hidden.
walls. More interesting, however, are the symbolic boundaries amongst these. In Kleinstadt ("small towns”) we discovered many signs that populations were dwindling – people were leaving. There were areas which were being shut down or only being used privately. This also pointed towards a sense of development. People are moving to big cities. Entire regions are losing their young people because there is no work; smaller infrastructures are being destroyed. In these images we capture empty houses and closed blinds. They are icons of emptiness and abandonment.
A: How you feel that surveillance has evolved since the fall of the GDR into a globalised culture – where people willingly offer up information about themselves through social media and online identities? UM & WM: Everyone has the power to decide what they want to say and where they say it. It’s their decision to offer up their thoughts into the world. But you have to think about what can be done with that private information. It is amazing how many political or cultural figures tell the public the most intimate things about themselves. This shows naivety.
A: How has the German landscape changed during the breadth of your career? Do you feel that in the suburbs and communities that you document there is still the memory of socialist regimes? Do you return to the same towns to see how they have developed? UM & WM: For the Kleinstadt project, we travelled to over 100 small towns across Germany from 2015 to 2018 and selected photos from 40 cities for the book. For us, these trips were also a discovery of west Germany. The point was to look closely and find pictures that illustrate the problem of depopulation, not necessarily linked to east Germany.
A: Many of your images – especially in the new Kleinstadt series – feature walls, windows, fences and blinds. How do your works explore borders? Is there a sense of shutting the viewer out or separating that which is private and that which is public? UM & WM: Boundaries are one of our main topics. In 2010 and 2011, in the project Wo die Welt zu Ende war ("Where the world came to an end"), we drove along the inner-German border. We found remnants of watchtowers, fences and
A: What do you have planned for 2019 and beyond? UM & WM: Right now, we are answering your questions from a little café in Vidin, a city in Bulgaria, on the banks of the Danube. Looking forward, our next project is about documenting various rivers in Europe – considering their social, ecological, political, economic and historical significance. It is here on the Danube that we’ll make a start on this, and it will certainly occupy us for the next few years. Hopefully it will be developed into a book and an exhibition.
128 Aesthetica
Right: Wo die Welt zu Ende war, 2010-2012. © Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler.
Words Kate Simpson
www.ostkreuz.de fotomuseumdenhaag.nl/en
Aesthetica 129
exhibition reviews
1The Silence of the Camera Obscura RICHARD LEAROYD
Fundación MAPFRE's Casa Garriga Nogués Exhibition Hall boasts a sprawling 10-year retrospective of Richard Learoyd, curated by SFMOMA’s Sandra Philipps. Containing 51 pieces spanning a decade, the show covers a staggering amount of ground in what is not only a sublime revisitation of Learoyd’s oeuvre, but a timely refuge from the constant flow of digital imagery in the outside world. Using a camera-obscura-based dye destruction positiveto-positive photographic process, Learoyd creates dreamy, larger than life impressions of meticulously arranged subjects, straight from reality to print – a method which imbues the photographs with a remarkable physicality and an almost mystical presence. Surrounded by the monastic silence of the gallery, disturbed only by the muted creak of wooden floorboards and the distant hum of electric ventilation, these works exert a magnetic pull on the viewer,
arresting his gaze and demanding a surrender of the senses. Whilst Learoyd’s still lifes are deliberate and considered, his portraits are treacherously raw and unadulterated in their emotion. They stand in contrast to the painstaking photographic process behind them and the long history from which they draw. Recurring female models sit reflectively, presented in soft and melancholy, Vermeeresque light, whilst two stunning homages to Ingres and Lucian Freud, After Ingres and Julie Horizontal, are truly masterful projects through both form and execution. There is something extraordinary about experiencing Richard Learoyd’s photographs in person, as much a product of the images’ distinctive gravity as of the surreal observation of the human condition they present. The Silence of the Camera Obscura is monumental, providing audiences with a sweep of rare, unabashed brilliance.
Words Diego Von Lieres and Wilkau Saavedra
Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona & Madrid 5 June - 7 September fundacionmapfre.org
2 In a Dream I was in Kuwait A GROUP SHOW
Kuwait has cultivated a unique culture that stretches far figures in tufted wool, and imitational designer handbags beyond its natural borders. This comes to the fore with In that parody capitalist structures in traditional settings. Shaker’s work, many focused on what he calls a my dream I was in Kuwait, an exhibition challenging sociopolitical injustices, cultural identity and mental health “genderless human,” represents feelings of loneliness, through photography, painting and sculpture. Headed loss and social media anguish. In one image, named The by the Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre, the Wait, a figure dressed in a black garment wades into waistshow is presented in two timely forms and introduces high seas whilst its mirror image stands at the shore. In debut pieces from six emerging Kuwaiti practitioners. another, We See Everything, portrays the isolated lives of The first strand (June to August) showcases burgeoning smartphone addicts through acrylic on canvas. The second strand (September to November) includes creators Amani Al-Thuwaini, Mahmoud Shaker and Zahra Marwan, who explore our shared notions of societal norms, the painted portraits of Ahmed Muqeem, who blends the excess, family, marriage and luxury. Marwan translates hyper-realistic with the surreal. Finally, photographer complex and personal matters of global injustice into Naseer Behbehani captures snapshots of modern delicate, watercolour illustrations. Al-Thuwaini’s critique masculinity and pillars of strength in contemporary family of materialistic changes of practices in the Middle East households whilst Khaled Al-Najdi focuses on elevating is depicted in embroidered motifs that visualises female everyday figures, leading to moments of self-reflection.
Words Jack Needham
Scoletta dei Battioro, Venice 15 June - 28 November www.ascckw.com
3 The Warmth of Other Suns STORIES OF GLOBAL DISPLACEMENT
How does a place live within us long after we have left and what traces of our passage remain there? With more than 65 million people now displaced across the world, this question is at the heart of a new exhibition at the Phillips Collection. It is concerned with migrations. Installations, videos, paintings and documentary works by 75 artists from countries like Algeria, Bangladesh, Ghana and Syria tackle these issues, often with prescient urgency. In 2008, Francis Alÿs arranged children from either shore of the Strait of Gibraltar – which separates Europe from Africa by a mere nine miles at its narrowest point, between Spain and Morocco – head out into the water whilst holding up toy boats. The work, Don't Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the Rivers is one of the pieces on show at Philipps. Meanwhile, Griselda San Martin documents another attempt at human connection, albeit not a staged one, in
130 Aesthetica
a series about Friendship Park. The area is the only official meeting place on the USA–Mexico border, where relatives can speak with one another through openings in the fence, though such occasions have been curtailed in recent years. Portraits like Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and his Mother (1930) illustrate how portraits preserve memories of those left behind – in this case the painter’s mother, who died in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide. The range of works and media may be broad and, at times, seemingly disparate, but the exhibition succeeds in its critical aspiration to give a face, a name, a beating heart to those who have been displaced. Perhaps there is no better setting for a show like this one – straddling social and political issues – than Washington. The state is at the height of a migration crisis and an American president's sabre-rattling at its southern neighbours.
Words Olivia Hampton
Phillips Collection, Washington DC 22 June - 22 September www.phillipscollection.org
1. Melanie, 2015. Fotografia única en paper Ilfochrome, 147.3cm × 121.9 cm. © Richard Learoyd. Courtesy of the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. 2. Mahmoud Shaker, The Wait, from the series Waves Between Us. Courtesy of the artist. 3a. Glenn Ligon, Double America, 2012. Neon and paint, 36 x 120 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Agnes Gund. 3b. Adrian Paci, Centro di permanenza temporanea (Temporary Detention Center) (still), 2007. Video, colour, sound; 4:32 min. Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann Repetto, Milan/New York.
2
1 3a
3b
Aesthetica 131
5a
4b 5b
132 Aesthetica
6
4 Palm Springs, The Family Visit – The Niece, 2018. © Erwin Olaf. 5a. John Akomfrah, The Unfinished Conversation, 2012. Three channel video installation, 7.1 sound, 45 min 48 sec. © Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photography by Toni Hafkenscheid. 5b. John Akomfrah, Peripeteia, 2012 Single channel HD colour video, 5.1 sound 17 minutes 28 sec. © Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery. 6. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, Calfornia, 1936.
4
4 Women
ERWIN OLAF
Erwin Olaf (b. 1959) celebrates a long-standing collaboration with Hamiltons Gallery through an accumulation of his work. The collection spans 40 years and three cities: Berlin, Shanghai and Palm Springs, including pieces that have never been shown in a gallery setting before. Olaf’s flair for highly stylised, dramatic mise-en-scene is best represented in his Palm Springs series (2018), which confines his glamorous female characters to the domestic sphere amidst familial disputes. Yet these subjects seem poised and contemplative – on the precipice of taking action. This is best seen in the showstopper Ellen (2013). The subject invades two halved settings at once with one leg firmly planted forward. Denouement appears to be dangled in front of the viewer then quickly snapped away. It was through the Palm Springs series that Olaf expanded the setting from within his Berlin studio to the alien
landscape in Riverside County; After the Bushfire (2018) marks the first time he sought natural light. Despite the experimentation with colour and setting, one theme runs through all the works: the visceral impact of female vulnerability. Whether it’s tear-filled eyes (Irene Portrait, 2007), the clutching of a glass of milk (The Family Visit, The Niece, 2018) or an exposed bare back (Keyhole 5, 2012), Olaf explains “It is very inspiring to work with the sensitivity of women – I love the emotion layered under the skin.” Showcasing a well-considered approach to diversity, from LGBTQ+ culture to a representation of wide-ranging ethnicities, Olaf’s subject choice reflects modern day values some 30 years prior to the birthing of the current zeitgeist. Swinging seamlessly between tragedy and humour, the exhibition does not patronise nor appear contrived – it’s an emblem of empathy and the wider human condition.
Words Annabel Herrick
Hamiltons Gallery, London 14 May - 16 August www.hamiltonsgallery.com
5Ballasts of Memory JOHN AKOMFRAH
Ballasts of Memory is an extension of John Akomfrah's (b. 1957) early inspirations: “The figure that really caught my attention was Andrei Tarkovsky. The film that did it for me was Mirror (1975). It feels like [it’s at] the border of cinema – when you start off trying to understand what the limits of something are.” This show pushes against the boundaries of visual representation, communicating deeply ingrained issues: colonialism, migration and the climate crisis. Through three rooms of video installation, BALTIC’s exhibition is complex and ambitious – a testimony to “why history matters,” as Akomfrah notes. Moving seamlessly between archive footage, montage and meditative landscapes, it includes three captivating works. Psyche (2012) digs into a variety of sources, presenting the emotions of anguish and grief through a selection of distorted and tormented portraits. The Unfinished Conversation (2012) expands on
the life of cultural theorist and political activist Stuart Hall (1932-2014), who is best known for writing on state power. The European premiere of Precarity (2017), however, is the main event. It introduces the story of Charles “Buddy” Bolden, who was institutionalised in Louisiana, 1907, due to his struggle with schizophrenia. “King Bolden” was a seminal figure attributed to the origins of jazz music in New Orleans. The story of his “disappearance” from society is traced across three spellbinding video channels; he stayed within the state asylum until he died in 1931. All of the protagonist’s ghostly movements maintain a quiet sadness as he haunts jazz bars, ferries, stately homes, asylum corridors and, finally, agonisingly, a graveyard. Hiding underneath the images are the sinister legacies of racism and displacement. Precarity is mesmerising – a deeply moving portrayal of a life near-removed from public record.
Words Kate Simpson
BALTIC, Gateshead 6 July - 27 October www.baltic.art
6 Looking Back
TEN YEARS OF PIER 24 PHOTOGRAPHY
Looking Back, one of two collection shows commemorating Pier 24’s 10th anniversary, is a reunion with the greats. The selection includes Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi in one room, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother in another. Situated under San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, the location is a labyrinth of 18 galleries, each devoted to a different artist or theme, best navigated at a slow wander. There is no interpretation; exhibitions are designed to be experienced through images alone, rather than through reading labels. Looking Back reads as a history of photography. It aptly opens with Diane Arbus’ Untitled, the acquisition of which founded the collection in 2003: a series of arrestingly complex black-and-white portraits of individuals with developmental disabilities. About Face, Pier 24’s fourthever exhibition, is revisited in another gallery as a room of gazes: over 40 faces guide viewers across the room.
Viewers move from a modest photobooth portrait of a young Marilyn Monroe, to a large-scale Zanele Muholi self-portrait with its piercing gaze and velvety-deep blacks, to an unforgettable pairing of Irving Penn’s Truman Capote and Fazal Sheikh’s Pramila Satar (“Lover”). A standout moment is a reinstallation of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s mural print The Last Supper: Acts of God. Across five panels, life-size wax figures are assembled around a table in reference to Da Vinci. The original work, first created in 1999, suffered extensive water damage when Sugimoto’s New York City studio flooded in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy. The artist considered this the final mark on the work, with cascading warps of ripples and discolouration marring the gelatin silver surface. Presented alone, the piece draws viewers into a hushed contemplation, an ambiance carried throughout the expansive and thoughtful exhibition.
Words Tamara Suarez Porras
Pier 24, San Francisco 1 July - 30 April www.pier24.org
Aesthetica 133
Still from The Last Tree. Courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.
film
New Identities THE LAST TREE A truly remarkable story sits at the heart of The Last Tree, Image is multimedia fiction, so it’s part performance art, part “Though The Last Shola Amoo’s handsomely crafted fictional debut. The film documentary,” he says. “I don’t think that I would have got Tree is rooted in social follows Femi, a young black man whose halcyon days at a to The Last Tree without A Moving Image because my early realism, Amoo bucks foster home in Lincolnshire end abruptly with the arrival of work contained a very loose, improvisational foundation. I the traditional, muted and often harsh his birth mother. In the alien surroundings of South London, gained a lot of confidence from that experience.” Though The Last Tree is rooted in social realism, Amoo aesthetics of the genre Femi grapples with a new identity and a strained relationship bucks the traditional, muted and often harsh aesthetics of for something far with his mother Yinka (Gbemisola Ikumelo). The film is a semi-autobiographical account of Amoo’s the genre for something far more instinctual and ethereal. more instinctual and experiences, although he’s reluctant to reveal which parts of Working with long-time cinematographer Stil Williams, ethereal. He builds The Last Tree belong to his own story: “I like that people don’t he builds dreamlike worlds from familiar landscapes but dreamlike worlds from know what parts of the story specifically come from my own crystallises the painful reality of Femi’s transition through familiar landscapes.” life or the lives of friends who have been through similar the performances of a staunch group of young breakout actors. “We wanted to use documentary realism when it experiences. What you see is an amalgamation of the two.” The depiction of South London is undeniably grafted from came to how we were approaching performance, but a level Amoo’s own heritage, such is the authenticity of both its of stylisation with the three worlds. A lot of what you see bruised and chaotic yet vibrant depiction onscreen. “It’s an comes from following a narrative from Femi’s perspective, artistic space without knowing that it is. It’s rugged, but it so you have license to make certain moments super-realistic. strikes a fine line between being very real and very cultural.” That’s why it has such a hypnotic quality at times.” It’s an astonishing achievement that pushes Amoo to the Amoo is an adept visual artist and moved into featurelength filmmaking in 2016 with A Moving Image, his multi- forefront of a new generation of homegrown filmmakers who Words disciplinary take on gentrification in Brixton. It’s a creative are tackling contemporary issues and marginalised voices Beth Webb response to an issue that still swells through South London, with a fresh yet assured cinematic angle. Through Amoo’s harming local communities in the name of a swift profit. The astute visual storytelling, The Last Tree will be remembered film feels like a means of catharsis for Amoo, but it also for capturing what it means to be British at a time when the Released 20 September. helped to establish his voice as a filmmaker: “A Moving country is grappling with a new identity all its own. www.picturehouses.com
134 Aesthetica
Longing for Home TRANSIT hope earns Georg a priority ticket on an upcoming voyage “Digital technology is to Mexico, a promised escape that leaves him temporarily absent, interiors are stranded in the overrun port city. Georg fills the days by outdated but beautiful doting on the small son of a recently deceased comrade even in their modesty, whilst his mother works, and silently pining over an elusive and the costumes woman who crosses his path on more than one occasion. seem borrowed Weidel’s narration runs throughout, giving a literary from decades past, quality to the film that at times feels overbearing, especially only straying into when it mutes what few monologues the female characters contemporary design are afforded – Petzold having chosen to relay their stories with the uniforms of through a male gaze instead. When the voice-over does the faceless soldiers. ” cease, a tender, more powerful weight can be felt. In one particularly quiet scene, Georg repairs a transistor radio for the little boy, the pair sweetly bound by the task-inhand. When the radio sparks to life, a song from Georg’s childhood offers the only real hint of who he truly is. Though set in a war zone, this is a character study that charts the emotional repercussions of displacement. Violence is left largely off-screen. Soldiers are faceless and forgettable, their real power shown through the huddled existence of the Words people that Georg interacts with. Transit concludes with a Beth Webb popular Talking Heads song. “We’re on the road to nowhere, come on inside.” Through his steady display of trauma, loss and solidarity, Petzold too has composed an anthem for the Released 18 August. misplaced, embodied in a stoic, mesmeric performance. www.curzonartificialeye.com
In Transit. Image: Marco Krüger. © Schramm Film.
Based on Anna Seghers' prize-winning novel from 1944, German filmmaker Christian Petzold brings WWII into the present-day with Transit – a romantic portrayal of creeping loneliness in occupied France. It’s difficult to place the exact era to which the film belongs; Petzold avoids any hints of dystopia and is reluctant to furnish his adaptation with modern fixtures. Digital technology is absent, interiors are outdated but beautiful even in their modesty, and the costumes seem borrowed from decades past, only straying into contemporary design with the uniforms of the faceless soldiers who march the streets of Paris, where the film begins. Franz Rogowski plays Georg, a man who – like many – is on the run from the Nazi-esque troops ravaging the country in what is hauntingly referred to as a “spring clean.” His mission: to deliver the letters of an admired leftist writer named Weidel, who serves as the narrator for the film. In Rogowski, Petzold has found a winning lead, an unconventionally attractive wanderer whose broad, strong features belie his gentle nature. His placid eyes and slightly curled upper lip portray a surliness that falls away when he speaks, leaving the impression of quiet longing. In a near-Shakespearean twist of mistaken identity, Georg finds himself adopting the life of Weidel after learning on his journey from Paris to Marseille that the writer has committed suicide. Weidel’s reputation as a gifted voice of
Aesthetica 135
Sui Zhen. Courtesy of WILK.
music
Interpreting Grief SUI ZHEN Sui Zhen is sitting on the floor of her childhood living room, of feminine experience that each of these figures represent in “Both records use the taste of Lamington – a nostalgic Australian confection – the present technological landscape.” avatars, or ‘digital In Weinman, often dubbed “the mother of the internet,” doppelgängers’ to sweet in her mouth. The family home this Melbourne-based artist grew up in is now empty, save for the bags she’s been Zhen sees “a kind of subversion of the archetypical feminised engage with the filling with her late mother’s clothes, a “SOLD” sign planted digital assistant.” Bina48 is also an echo of real-life women, digital world. On this in the driveway. “We’ve been sorting the clothes today – my one being Rothblatt’s wife, Bina Aspen Rothblatt. “Bina48 new album, Zhen sister, and a couple of our oldest friends from school for feels like an attempt to time capsule someone and in turn cites muses such as moral support. They have special memories in this house make a living clone using AI – a simulacrum. I suppose it is Lynda Weinman – this approach that I am making a comment on. Both figures real-life founder of too, so it was a comforting way to approach a difficult task.” Zhen – born Becky Sui Zhen – was in Japan, undertaking represent archives of living people – they are their own living pioneering e-learning an artistic residency when she received news of her mother’s memories. My Linda is just another interpretation of this idea.” site Lynda.com.” Zhen’s Linda is embodied literally, in the album’s cancer diagnosis in 2016. At the urging of her family, she saw the residency through. The album she made there – Losing, artwork and accompanying music videos, by a maskLinda – is a continuation of the themes Zhen explored in her wearing choreographer, Megan Payne. It’s a charming last album, 2015’s Secretly Susan, namely: the digital life. But folly – unsettling, clever and sweet simultaneously. “I think news of her mother’s illness came just a week after the artist everything I do is with a touch of humour and sadness, so your left for Japan. “And so, whilst I continued my questioning of reaction feels apt. I also think people project [onto Linda]; I’m technology and its impact on the human experience, I did so enjoying all the reactions and interpretations so far.” Losing, Linda is about “trying to pre-empt the feeling through a lens of impending loss.” Both records use avatars, or “digital doppelgängers” to of loss,” says Zhen. It’s a meditation – delivered with an engage in discourse around the digital world. On this new automation-like timbre in places – on mortality, memory, Words album, Zhen cites muses such as Lynda Weinman – real- identity and the multiplicity of existence that digital life has Charlotte R-A life founder of pioneering e-learning site Lynda.com – and created. “These thoughts are on my mind as I am confronted Bina48, a humanoid robot created at the behest of American with the task of closing my mother’s online existence. How entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt. “I like to think about the kind does someone cease to be across all these platforms?” suizhen.bandcamp.com
136 Aesthetica
An Empowering Record FREDA JAMES that spotlights local creatives. LA is a goldmine for talent, but “‘I feel like the spaces to share that art in can be really limited. I happen to music industry is have a backyard at my apartment, so I wanted to put it to use.” slowly becoming James first began singing when she moved to New York, a more self-aware college drop-out with her eye on the Big Apple. “I started of its perpetuated freestyle-singing with my guitar-player friend Jason. Within inequalities toward a year we had some songs in the works and decided to play women. I think it’s a show. It was right around the time people were doing live vital to be louder streaming so we got a whole bunch of wine and told all our about this, to friends to come squeeze in our East Village apartment and advance the cause.’” we just played acoustically. It was wild and loud – I’m sure the recording still exists somewhere online.” When it comes to process, James does “a little bit of everything,” playing guitar and keyboard (“by ear, to write down song ideas”) before bringing a friend in to handle production. She’s currently learning to use Ableton, “so I’m hoping to actually get better in terms of producing exactly what’s in my head. Seeing other women in the industry producing is definitely inspiring.” James plays with an allfemale band when she does live shows, a conscious decision Words on her part. “I feel like the music industry is slowly becoming Charlotte R-A more self-aware of its perpetuated inequalities toward women. I think it’s vital to be louder about this, to advance the cause. I also collaborate with these women – Andrea soundcloud.com/ Perdue, Priscilla Boullion – and I grow from them." fredajames
Image: © James Bianchi.
Freda James’ new single – Just Like Wind – has an electric kind of warmth. Soft jazz flutes add a zephyr glitter to the song’s synth-y dance-funk, whilst James sings in a sweet, vaguely smoky alto of destiny, fate, romantic potential. “The chorus melody just came to me one day and it felt powerful,” says James. “Seasons were shifting as autumn was morphing into winter in New York. I wanted a song that sonically reflected the excitement of new love, and Jeremy [producer, of Chrome Sparks] knew just what to do.” Just Like Wind is taken from James’ new EP, A Woman Alone – a promising collection of independently released R&B pop. Beyond a handful of previous singles, the Floridaborn singer-songwriter is a relative newcomer, formerly of New York and now residing in Los Angeles. “I actually just celebrated two years in LA. I’ve been fortunate to have stumbled into a humble and creative bunch of musicians and music lovers here. I guess I’ve got a foot in the dance music scene, as a result of my own desire to dance. I’ve got some friends that are amazing selector DJs, always finding rare vinyl records. I can dance to funk and groove and boogie and anything in that ‘world’ genre all night.” James also contributes to her local scene, opening up her home to host a “bi-monthly art party” called Family Room. “It’s a super chill BBQ-style event where we serve vegan food and drinks and, when the sun goes down, an art showcase
Aesthetica 137
Lisa Barnard, from The Canary and The Hammer, MACK, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.
books
Icons of Progress THE CANARY AND THE HAMMER Gold is a barometer by which we monitor economic stability, whilst a hammer signifies our ruthless desire for progress. This is at least the premise underpinning photographer and critic Lisa Barnard’s latest book, The Canary and the Hammer. Shot across four years and four continents, the publication – prompted by the global financial crisis in 2008 – examines the role of gold as an economic and social placeholder for wealth and power. It is laid out as a research document divided into seven chapters, each focusing on a particular facet of its lore, ranging from the brutal world of mining to the sexual politics of the industry, which has a huge role in waste. Throughout, the text weaves together archive material, social and political commentary and Barnard’s personal images to chronicle the complexity of gold and its representation in today’s uncertain times. “Gold is the perfect material to show the complexity of the economic landscape,” the photographer explains. “It reflects our larger understanding of capitalism, hegemonic systems and labour." According to Barnard, who takes on a Marxist reading, civilisation is shaped by the tools available to produce goods and services: labour, technology and natural resources like oil and gold are assigned value depending on their role in society. “Nature doesn’t exist as a set of prefabricated values, its potential has to be identified, mapped, secured and legitimated at every step from raw material to finished product,”
138 Aesthetica
she says. Whilst gold has gone through many different value “Gold is a barometer systems – such as political power and religious status (the by which we monitor Incas called it the “sweat of the sun”) – one of its most vital economic stability, modern iterations is its role in technology. whilst a hammer Often concealed in the heart of household electronics, signifies our ruthless the metal is an integral part of most of the appliances we desire for progress. consider fundamental. The publication gives the example This is at least the of a standard cathode-ray tube TV that contains around 5.6 premise underpinning grams of gold per unit. Look slightly further afield and read- Lisa Barnard’s latest ers can see that the camera and tripod used by NASA on the book, The Canary moon landing was also plated in gold. and the Hammer.” The more we hack away at the Earth’s fragile and depleting resources, the less certain they become (as Barnard says, we are hammering away at a mine with no idea of what comes next). Highly toxic e-waste is the fastest growing source of pollution in the world – as it stands, there’s 7.2 million tonnes of it in China alone. “The speed at which images are exchanged and the rapid nature in which we are destroying the land are indicative of the toxic and polluting qualities of globalisation,” she continues. The catastrophic impact of technological ad- Words vancement on the environment reflects “the cyclical nature Gunseli Yalcinkaya of exploitation and the boom and bust of capitalism,” and gold is a prime example of this. In mythology, the wax on Icarus' wings melts from flying too close to the sun; readers MACK Books are prompted to hope that we don’t do the same. www.mackbooks.co.uk
Seeking Coexistence NEW NORDIC HOUSES or privately-owned land. The same applies to architecture; “Known for its harsh the emphasis on sustainability and eco-friendly materials climate and dark is completely ingrained. For example, Alvar Aalto’s Villa winters, living in Mairea (1939) in the Finnish woodlands is supported by the Nordic countries timber poles and raffia-wrapped pillars, intended to mirror is challenging, and the tree trunks seen outside the many windows. the book does well in Bradbury also discusses physical effects on the ground – describing the many literally treading lightly around grasslands. “The ambition to ways that architects touch the earth lightly leads to innovative structural solution, have adapted interiors such as raising homes above ground level on slim, support- to create homely ing pillars to reduce the impact of the building, whilst land- counterbalances to scaping is also kept to a minimum.” Open-plan living spaces the cold outdoors.” also play a part in this way of thinking. “The composition of the structure sits in tune with the topography, but, more importantly, it seeks a considered and thoughtful connection.” Windows, doors and openings framing key views and living spaces within flow freely onto terraces, decks, courtyards and verandas. “There is a careful dissolution of solid boundaries between indoors and out,” he continues. Nordic architecture has become somewhat fashionable in Words the last decade, and whilst this is probably symptomatic of Gunseli Yalcinkaya society’s fascination with minimalism, it’s important that we do not simply regard it as an aesthetic trend but a crucial learning tool. The world is in crisis so there has never been a Thames & Hudson more crucial time to rethink our responsibility to living. www.thamesandhudson.com
Weekend House, Sildegarnsholmen, Norway. Architect: Knut Hjeltnes Sivilarkitekter. Completed: 2016. Image © 2019 Meirenntusenord.
It’s commonly believed that we’re living in the Anthropocene, a new geological age whereby humanity’s impact has been so great that warrants a geological epoch all its own. It’s more important now than ever to reflect on our relationship with nature so that we can find ways to coexist. New Nordic Houses – written by Dominic Bradbury – does just that. Divided into four chapters – Rural Cabins, Coastal Retreats, Town Houses and Country Homes – the publication looks at some of the most pioneering structures in the Nordic region, from traditional Scandinavian homes with fireplaces, saunas and window seats to remote artists’ studios and hideaways. Known for its harsh climate and dark winters, living in the Nordic countries is challenging, and the book does well in describing the many ways that local architects have adapted interiors to create warm, homely counterbalances to the cold outdoors. We are all familiar with the Danish term "hygge" that (buzzwords aside) embodies this principle, evoking familiar images of cosy fireplaces and wooden colour schemes. Perhaps more importantly, however, Bradbury characterises Nordic architecture as being symbiotic with surrounding environment. “Nature plays a profound part in shaping the art and culture of the region, and its architects exhibit a vital respect for the organic world,” he says. This overarching respect is even embedded in the region’s social infrastructure, with initiatives like the “right to roam” in any public
Aesthetica 139
shorts | features | vr & 360Ëš york, uk | www.asff.co.uk Book Now & Save 35% on Tickets Code: ASFF35 | Ends 31 August 2019
140 Aesthetica
Photography: Kolja Eckert & An Nguyen. Model: Mara Lafontan. Courtesy of the artists.
6 10 november
film reviews
1
The Brink ALISON KLAYMAN
Seven years after the success of her documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012), Alison Klayman presents a portrait of another politically controversial figure – though this time in the far more troubling shape of former Chief Strategist to the White House, Steve Bannon. The Brink follows Bannon as he attempts to mobilise far right parties across the globe whilst he and his small team keep a close eye on the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, described, at one point, as the “most important midterms in our lifetimes.” We see cameos from Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini and a whole cast of other predictables as Bannon conducts his European whistlestop tour in the hope of gathering momentum behind a new political order he christens “The Movement.” But whilst Ai Weiwei was controversially – and unwillingly – exiled from his homeland in 2015, The Brink
2
follows a man whose recent passage into the political mainstream has severely weakened his original appeal as the dissenting “outsider” from the neoliberal power structures (which he still spends an inordinate amount of time denouncing with the strained air of a pseudo-political theorist.) We see a man who dreams about occupying the aggressive, underdog position once again. Some critics have found the recent obsession with Bannon at best unhelpful and at worst dangerous – see the reviews of Errol Morris’s American Dharma (2018), for instance. Whilst it’s true these films give Bannon the exposure he craves (“there’s no bad media,” he declares tritely at one point), Klayman’s take on the former Goldman Sachs employee at least manages to convey just how empty his rhetoric is. Far from being on the brink of a global revolution, “Sloppy Steve” is closer to obscurity.
Dogwoof www.dogwoof.com
ABC in Sound LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY
Last screened by the London Film Society in 1936, engender new forms, rather than merely facilitating their László Moholy-Nagy’s Tönendes ABC, or ABC in Sound reproduction. The artist manually etched the audio strip (1933), had been presumed missing for decades. Part of of film stock with visual images, then re-photographed a double-bill exploring a creative relationship between them. This vertical column of black-and-white graphics optics and acoustics in film, the under-two-minute – geometric patterns, abstract textures and alphabetical movie was spliced together with Oskar Fischinger’s letters – runs down the screen’s right side, generating Early Experiments in Hand Drawn Sound (1931). It was an electrical hum that alternates in volume and tone subsequently catalogued under the latter’s title and depending on the image’s qualities. The artist ponders a correlation between drawn "lost" when acquired by the BFI in 1951. The rediscovery of the Hungarian polymath’s work last year, as National features and their aural outcomes, particularly evident Archive Curators Bryony Dixon and William Fowler in a series of human profiles. “I wonder what your nose researched early 20th century studies into optical sound, will sound like?” he asked, after sketching a friend. Recently restored as part of the international Bauhaus now fully reveals his contribution to film art. The unearthed short displays the imperative – stated centenary celebrations, and available on BFI YouTube in Moholy-Nagy’s essay “Production-Reproduction” and BFI Player, this is one of Moholy-Nagy’s most in 1922 – that modern technologies be maximised to radical film works and is essential viewing.
3
Words Christopher Webb
Words Daniel Pateman
BFI www.player.bfi.org.uk
Opus Zero DANIEL GRAHAM
Willem Dafoe is a rare talent in world cinema. He's just as comfortable in The Florida Project as he is in Aquaman. Perhaps the biggest surprise with Opus Zero is that it has taken him this long to embrace the Mexican cinematic revolution. Typically, Dafoe isn’t collaborating with the big guns – the del Toros, the Iñárritus or the Cuaróns – but with first-time filmmaker Daniel Graham, a former line producer on Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux. Like Reygadas’ work, Opus Zero is a poetic, truthseeking piece that grapples with life’s eternal questions. Dafoe plays Paul, a composer who arrives in the small village where his father has just died. Whilst he’s reworking a symphony by a Scandinavian composer, you sense he’s in a creative black hole. Why is he here? “To finish something and then to die,” comes his enigmatic reply. “Eternal death is waiting.”
Divided into two parts, followed by a brief coda, Canto Uno belongs to Dafoe’s character. Curiously able to communicate with the locals through a “convenient” earpiece device that translates between English and Spanish, he becomes obsessed by the disappearance of a woman from years earlier. In the second half, Paul takes a back seat as we’re introduced to a documentary film crew looking for stories from this rural retreat. For a first film, Opus Zero is modest in its scale but large in its intellectual ambitions. Throwing out ideas into the stratosphere, it abandons traditional forms of narrative for a more philosophical study of existence. Although Graham loses some impetus due to the switch in focus when the documentarians come to the fore, it remains visually astute. In Dafoe he has an actor who brings gravitas to just about everything he touches.
Words James Mottram
New Wave Films www.newwavefilms.co.uk
Aesthetica 141
Aesthetica Art Prize submit your work Win ÂŁ5,000 & Exhibition
All Media. Any Genre.
Deadline 31 August 2019
www.aestheticamagazine.com/artprize Image: Yael Portabales, The Lady of the Strainer.
142 Aesthetica
music reviews
1
The Practice of Love JENNY HVAL
Jenny Hval’s seventh album is unlike any of the cerebral, folky pop that the Norwegian artist has created to date. An ode to the natural world and its unknowable depths, The Practice of Love feels like an otherworldly and overtly spiritual awakening. It provides a seismic shift on both a personal and sonic level, even for listeners. Hval’s focus on nature, seen first on the 1980s-tinged opening track Lions feels particularly poignant alongside the climate crisis reshaping the world and our place as humans in it. Against a flutter of synths and a pounding breakbeat we hear: “Look at these trees / Look at this grass / Look at those clouds / Look at them now / Study this and ask yourself: Where is God?” As with the rest of these eight tracks, Hval questions meanings in an off-kilter, stream-of-conscious style that provides no concrete answers but a whole lot of mood and reverb.
2
The soul searching continues on High Alice, which switches things up with trippy, sax-heavy bossa nova that lands somewhere between Lewis Carroll, Blood Orange and 1990s trance. Later, the mood softens on the tropical pop soundscape Ashes to Ashes and Ordinary, a swirling composite of spoken word, ethereal vocals and monastic chimes. Whilst each of these songs is unique, Hval’s thematic thread (plus a dash of nostalgic sonic references) keeps the album feeling cohesive. The Practice of Love is miles away from a collection of mere love songs. However, the natural world is clearly a rich thematic area for Hval to excavate in such an experimental and intimate manner. Although the topics are heavy, the album falls short of nihilism. Rather, it speaks to a deep fascination with the endless wonder of our (often ordinary) and celebrated existence.
Words Grace Caffyn
Sacred Bones www.sacredbonesrecords.com
Never Not Nothing BLACK FUTURES
As wild modern rock band promotional endeavours go, Black Futures has orchestrated one of the most compelling in recent memory. Whether you see overly theatrically promo antics as crass or not, appearing to willingly kidnap taste makers and making them listen to your music is undeniably ambitious. With its trademark legion of hazmat besuited cronies, the band has carved an unforgettable visual presence even before this debut. Wild intro N.N.N lures listeners into a false sense of security with deep and rich 1980s production expanses, causing drawn breath from the second one, but ultimately, it acts as a rousing bait and switch, leading to something much more noisy. The remaining 10 songs are mostly vast assaults of noise and beating guitar, matched with sarcasm-swathed lyrics. And the messages throughout, despite the aggressive chords, are undoubt-
edly positive ones: calls to arms for the disaffected and alienated, encouraging and bolstering for the malaise ridden. On Tunnel Vision, Black Futures paints a vibrant ode to life on earth, an appreciation of all things creative, and ultimately the underlying passion to destroy it all in an ever-unstable modern world. Me.TV features Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie. The inspiration is abundantly clear. At points Black Futures nudges towards the experimental: Body & Soul is a static-addled maze, littered with Speak & Spell electronic vocals, and Youthman is almost EDM in its sped-up rhythm, and nod to second album Goldie. Whilst some of the lyrics and subject matter are a little on the nose, it is well meaning, and there are enough off-kilter festival singalongs on Never Not Nothing to make any neo-psychedelic alternative rockers happy.
Words Kyle Bryony
Music For Nations www.musicfornations.co.uk
3
Hell Is Here HIDE
HIDE is an electronic duo based in Chicago, comprising fine artist Heather Gabel and percussionist Seth Sher. Together since 2014, the pair create sample-based tracks using a combination of field recordings and various pop culture / media. Following on from 2016's Black Flame EP and 2017 debut album Castration Anxiety, Hell Is Here continues similar themes of raw vulnerability and explores the discomforting sound textures of drum machines, sub bass and angst-ridden, aggressive vocals. Gabel and Sher have opted to further question the perception of musical context and serve up a reminder that feelings of anxiety, pain and discomfort are equally as important as those of resolution. With this in mind, opener Chainsaw throws down a clear marker for what is to follow: an uncompromising and cacophonous wall of taut, nervous energy, brutal
electronica and angry vocals. It takes a moment to recover but it compels the listener to continue listening. 999 possesses the same disturbing elements and a sinister vocal sample that declares “when you depersonalise another person, it seems to make it easier to do things you shouldn’t do.” By comparison, SSSD is positively melodic, though no less primal with repeated lines about self-destruction and sound effects resembling gunfire. Somewhat ironically, Everyone’s Dead is one of the more upbeat moments along with the pounding 1/2 Trash which pauses momentarily midtrack before resuming the pulsating stomp that carries a mood of confrontational darkness throughout. Without doubt, the sound of HIDE is an acquired taste but one that repays repeated listening and one which connects in ways that only the most honest music can.
Words Matt Swain
Dais Records www.daisrecords.com
Aesthetica 143
144 Aesthetica
book reviews
1
Modern Women Artists: Lee Miller AMI BOUHASSANE
Lee Miller (1907-1977) led a relentlessly cosmopolitan life. She knew Max Ernst and Paul Éluard, and counted Jean Cocteau, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso amongst her friends. As a teenager in America, her face plastered the cover of Vogue. Miller moved to France in 1929, working with Man Ray as a model / apprentice. Soon she had her own studio in New York, where she photographed a young Joseph Cornell and the first African American opera, its libretto penned by Gertrude Stein. Marrying an Egyptian businessman, Miller began again in Cairo. Here she shot landscapes, enclosed by empty picture frames. The voids mirrored the state of her heart. When the marriage ended on amicable terms, after an affaire de cœur with the surrealist Roland Penrose, Miller flourished as a war correspondent. She covered the Blitz and its aftermath; captured the liberation
2
Words Hunter Dukes
Eiderdown Books www.eiderdownbooks.com
Endeavors TADAO ANDO
“Like all human creations, buildings are destined to deteriorate and disappear,” explains Japanese architect Tadao Ando (b. 1941). The self-taught Pritzker Prize-winner is renowned for a unique design philosophy, engaging with geometry and light in response to surrounding landscapes. “I would like to make buildings that will last forever – not from any material or stylistic point of view, but that will remain etched in the heart.” The concept of enduring architecture is central to Endeavors. The comprehensive guide highlights structures across Asia, Europe and the USA, offering an in-depth look at Ando’s practice through interviews, essays and drawings. From private residences to museums, it gives insight into both realised and conceptual projects. Each case study is illustrated by compelling images that immerse the reader in a world of clean lines.
3
of Paris; documented the shaved, humiliated heads of females. Miller settled, finally, in Sussex, but did not idle, reinventing herself as a legendary cook. Written by Miller’s granddaughter, this slim volume introduces the photographer’s life, including images that have rarely been seen. The writing captures the spirit of an individual and her age in macroscope. When Bouhassane reproduces Man Ray’s conflation of the Sabbatier effect with solarisation, two distinct ways of overexposing photographs, she misses an opportunity to disentangle the techniques. Even still, the book’s thesis, that Miller thematises the objectification of female forms, does engender discussion. Does objectification mean women literally reduced to objects, as in Miller’s image of a severed breast, plated on flatware? Or is it a formal process: the body aestheticised in fashion magazines?
Examples include the Church of the Light, Osaka. Its simple, untouched walls are devoid of ornament, displaying only a cross-shaped incision on the façade. The symbol of the church penetrates the darkness, whilst the interplay between light and concrete evokes a sense of the spiritual. Ando ascribes a deep importance to the physical experiences generated by his work, with the connection between humanity and the Earth at the forefront. “I have faith in their power to energise places and people far beyond their material existence,” he says. Other defining works include those on the island of Naoshima. Establishing a dialogue between art, architecture and place, the buildings – often found underground – respond to the natural environment. This approach has afforded a complete transformation; the region now welcomes visitors from across the world.
Words Eleanor Sutherland
Flammarion www.editions.flammarion.com
Seeing Science MARVIN HEIFERMAN
On 22 April 2017, more than one million demonstrators considering how far image-making is integral to new gathered for Earth Day events in Washington, DC. discoveries. At the same time, it considers how visual Snapshots of protesting science workers went viral. culture has responded to, challenged and drawn from Their urgent message addressed the fact that research inquiries to educate and inspire the world. The publication juxtaposes images made by technicians, and freedom of inquiry are politically contingent and need collective stewardship. Science is, and has always artists, photojournalists and the entertainment industry been, made possible by a range of factors. Tracing how – traversing biomedicine, robotics and astrophysics. The photography has played a key role in communicating result is a kind of witnessing of ideas as they develop the relationship between science and society, Aperture’s in the lab. The book also reveals how, even as scientific new volume illustrates how images not only visualise, photography is called upon for verification, its lines of inquiry have always been shaped by past social norms: capture and prove findings, but also popularise ideas. Historically, it has always been iconic, startling or from Victorian ethnographers’ documentation of “exotic” controversial subjects that made it into the media: colonial subjects, to 1970s glamour shots of NASA’s atomic bomb clouds, astronomical phenomena, our female astronauts. This collection reveals to us that, as own anatomies. Marvin Heiferman’s book expands humans, we project our own biases onto what we see – the definition of science photography beyond this by but we are also capable of looking further afield.
Words Sarah Jilani
Aperture www.aperture.org
Aesthetica 145
146 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 147
148 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 149
150 Aesthetica
Aesthetica 151
152 Aesthetica
Art. Architecture. Design. Fashion. Photography.
Aesthetica
THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE
www.aestheticamagazine.com
Issue 90 August / September 2019
SPATIAL EXPERIMENTS
ILLUSORY NARRATIVES
SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY
Unseen bends the rules through an inventive series of exhibitions
Max Pinckers examines the role of alternative facts in the media
Ute and Werner Mahler explore borders in post-war landscapes
UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
Parley for the Oceans sheds light on an age of plastic consumption
Subscribe & Save 40% 12 months from £20.95 + p&p. Available in both print and digital formats.
www.aestheticamagazine.com/subscribe Aesthetica 153
artists’ directory
KRIS MERCER UK-based Kris Mercer is an award-winning painter with an eclectic taste for abstract expressionism and the possibilities it presents. Her series delve energetically into colour and shape through kinetic, accidental brushstrokes. Dripping and pouring paint onto the canvas, she is passionate about chance and incidence as artistic tools. Mercer’s work is held in private collections in Europe, Australia and the USA.
www.krismercer.com I Instagram: @krismercerart
CHO, HUI-CHIN
ANNE-MARIE GIROUX
Through a practice primarily concerned with painting and sculpture, Londonbased Cho, Hui-Chin demonstrates a deep interest in the amalgamation of materials. Distorted subject matter and abstract motifs intertwine in each piece – a figurative depiction of the artist’s integrated cultural upbringing. Cho is a winner of the Cass Art Painting Prize and the Steer Medal and Prize.
Montréal-based artist Anne-Marie Giroux’s practice focuses on creating highly poetic and conceptual projects through painting, sculpture and installation. The artist seeks to create a correlation between body, material and movement, “drifting” from shape to colour with fluidity.
www.chin.art | Instagram: @chohuichin
154 Aesthetica
www.anne-mariegiroux.com
Image: After Tokihiro Sato 2.
Anna Isabella Sandberg
Carla Groppi
Anna Isabella Sandberg is an international artist based in Northern Sweden. She works in a rare printmaking technique called monotype, making her own brushes and tools. Sandberg revels in experimentation, creating abstract landscapes with mythic undertones – many inspired by the Great Northern Forest of Sweden. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo show at Galleri Granen, Sundsvall. www.aisandberg.com | Instagram: @aisandberg_art
London-born artist Carla Groppi works from photographs, film and TV stills, translating small images into large-scale charcoal and pastel drawings. She has won numerous awards including The Hugh Casson Drawing Prize at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Groppi's works have been exhibited worldwide and are held in various private and corporate collections. www.carlagroppi.co.uk I Instagram: @carlagroppi
Elica Masuya Elica Masuya is a multimedia artist based in Tokyo. The creation of her high-definition videos involves travelling to specific locations to document particular actions and, regardless of perceived success or failure, share the results with viewers via installations at various exhibitions throughout Japan and Europe. www.elicamasuya.com I www.vimeo.com/elicamasuya
Photograph: © Florian Amoser
chae lee London-based Chae Lee believes that painting is an expression of individuality – through a layout of shapes and colours that reveal a personal philosophy. Her works tap into the study of spatial experience, including psychological sensations and visual perception. Lee recently exhibited at the Chelsea College of Arts MA Fine Art Summer Show. www.artchae.com I Instagram: @art_chae
Fragmentin & Renaud Defrancesco
Giulia Berto
Displuvium is a research project that examines the human desire to control the natural environment through controversial practices such as cloud seeding. The surface of the installation – inspired by a Roman atrium – receives rainfall. When does this seemingly natural phenomenon reveal itself as an artificially-created downpour? View the project: vimeo.com/323682277. www.fragment.in I www.renauddefrancesco.ch
Dublin-based Giulia Berto is an Italian photographer intent on exploring intimate spaces and personal stories. Anchored to domestic or natural landscapes, the images tether viewers to human narratives revolving around everyday objects. Berto graduated from the International Center of Photography and has been widely recognised for her work. www.bertogiulia.com I Instagram: @berto.giulia
For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com
Aesthetica 155
artists’ directory
Jae Young Park
Karla Kantorovich
Jae Young Park’s Woolscape series considers duals aspects of minimalism and realism. Almost meditative in its depiction of interwoven strands, the works question what it means to be an individual – each strand of wool takes the foreground as being part of a tightly-knit structure. Upcoming shows include Art Asia 2019, SCOPE Miami Beach, Gallery KNOT and the Jumee Kim Gallery. m.blog.naver.com/melppang I Instagram: @jyp_artist
Karla Kantorovich was born in Mexico City and lives in Miami. She works with paintings, fibres and assemblages, leaning into the importance of texture and dimensionality as a way of exploring renewal. She notes: "I integrate all kinds of disregarded materials, with broken pieces sewn back together in a new way." Recent exhibitions include the Florida International University 2019 MFA Exhibition in May. www.kantokarla.com I Instagram: @karlakanto
Kasra Karimi
Katharina Goldyn
Kasra Karimi is a London-based filmmaker, photographer and painter, originally from Iran. After creating the multi-award-winning short film A Pinprick of Light, Karimi has recently returned to photography with multiple new series including Melancholistic. Inspired by arthouse cinema, the compositions play with the human condition and dramatic natural landscapes. www.kasrakarimi.co.uk I Instagram: @kasrak_film
Katharina Goldyn graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław with a doctorate in painting and is a currently a professor of drawing and painting at Studio Zeiler in Munich. Her brightly coloured works fuse traditional imagery with new age visual semiotics. An award-winning artist, Goldyn's recent shows have included participation in the Woman's Essence concomitant exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennale in May. www.goldyn.de
Kris Cieslak
Liane Engstrom
Kris Cieslak's latest series Beautiful People is inspired by influential icons – activists and cultural figures making a positive impact on the planet. The featured works, Big Kiss and Erykah Badu, express beauty and hope in a world of war and violence. Cieslak was born in Warsaw and is currently based in London; he has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout Europe. www.kriscieslak.com
Drawing on information from various scientific fields, Liane Engstrom’s paintings question the meaning of perspective – navigating microscopic and macrocosmic realms. The bright works are at once familiar and surprising, drawing the viewer in through large, sweeping brushstrokes and minute details. Based in Cleveland, the artist practices painting, printmaking, murals and writing. www.lianeengstrom.com | Instagram: @leesodyssey
156 Aesthetica
Lynden Cowan
Patrick Hurst
Lynden Cowan specialises in oil paintings of natural and urban landscapes. Realised through highly-detailed imagery, her works take viewers on a visual and textural journey through a variety of contemporary Canadian scenes. Cowan notes: "I hope that in depicting the natural beauty around us, we may engage more in the issues of climate change." www.lyndencowan.com I Instagram: @lyndencowan
UK-based sculptor Patrick Hurst draws upon a connection to the wider world, crafting abstract artwork for both interior and exterior spaces. The objects are often reflective, creating juxtapositions of colour, form and finish. With Hora Vitrum, Hurst seeks a common ground between individuals in a divisive era. The piece is part of the summer exhibition at the Royal Society of Sculptors in London until 14 September. www.patrickhurstart.com | Instagram: @pathurst
Sarita
Steven heaton
Franco-Swedish artist Sarita is working on a new language of design, connecting Nordic birch to painted abstraction. Her studio is located in a forested area of Sweden, where she explores the textures and shapes of local raw materials. The resulting sculptures are an expression of balance between nature's manifestations and the artist's meditative brushstrokes. www.saritaarte.com | Instagram: @sarita.arte
Composed from Silence is a solo exhibition – a collaboration between artist Steven Heaton and art historian Sara Riccardi. Alongside paintings, block prints and mixed-media works are sketchbooks, tools, sources of inspiration and excerpts of recorded conversations, allowing the viewer to see the inner workings of the creative process. At Saul Hay Gallery, Manchester, 4-27 October. www.stevenheaton.com I www.artacross.co.uk/composed-from-silence
U. Lee-Johnson
Yingying Shen
U. Lee-Johnson is a South Korean-born, New York-based abstract artist inspired by the merging of geometry and nature. In her recent While Sailing series of paintings, she depicts the "flight paths" of boats – combined with figures from fractal mathematics. She notes: "The contrast between the natural and mathematical fractals creates a tension." Lee-Johnson has exhibited work in London, New York and Puerto Rico. www.ulee.us
A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, YingYing Shen examines the moment of conflict between single-frame photography and "real life" composition. Emerging from an environment of critical thinking and experimentation, Shen's portraits offer a new visual language where fiction is layered like a monologue. Originally from Beijing, she currently lives in London. www.alvashen.com I Instagram: @shen_yingying_photography
For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com
Aesthetica 157
artists’ directory
Abbie Kozik
Alfred Freddy Krupa
Abbie Kozik believes that happiness can be captured in the appreciation of colour. With over 30 years’ experience in graphic design, she translates a keen eye for composition and form into eyecatching paintings that play with shape as subject matter. Originally from Honolulu, Kozik is currently based in Denver. The work shown here is entitled Kitchen Sink, no.3. www.abbiekozik.com Instagram: @abbiekozik
Multidisciplinary artist Alfred Freddy Krupa is considered a pioneering force in the New Ink Art movement, for which he has gained international recognition. He combines the formal and reductive techniques of the East with Western expressionism. In doing so, the artist evokes both delicacy and bold movements across paper. Krupa's works are part of a number of collections including the Tate Library’s Special Collections. Facebook: alfred.f.krupa
ana junko
ana schmidt
Spanish photographer Ana Junko explores the interplay between light and darkness as a visual language. In the Hymn to Silence series, she explores "thoughts about time". Long exposure techniques offer deep shadows and soft distortion, creating a feeling of silence and mystery in monochrome landscapes. Junko notes that the series "transmits my personal vision and sensations". www.anajunko.com
Bilbao-based Ana Schmidt paints realistic depictions of the urban landscape. Navigating manmade spaces to discover subjects of intrigue, she then records these detailed reflections of modern life. Schmidt has exhibited widely, including the Venice Biennale. As a winner of The Columbia Threadneedle Prize, her City of Shards exhibition is at the Mall Galleries, London, 17-22 September. www.schmidtana.com
Anne Louise Blicher
Antonella Cusimano
Anne Louise Blicher is a Danish printmaker and oil painter who examines the inner potential of objects and materials. Negotiating environmental concerns as well as innovative design, Blicher produces works across two and three dimensions. Each piece crosses vertical and linear horizons, searching for empathic responses to the landscape. www.alblicher.net Instagram: @alblicher
Influenced by interweaved forms and the flow of liquids and gases, Antonella Cusimano produces algorithmic patterns that draw upon natural structures. Multidimensional and ethereal, the overlapping textures make up a matrix of interrelating forms. Her latest work, The Kimono Project, is an extension of these interests, combining the freedom of fabric and movement of the body. www.antonellacusimano.com
158 Aesthetica
Beatriz Santacana
Blake O’Donnell
Beatriz Santacana is a Havanabased sculptor, painter and muralist. The Homunculus series depicts humanity at moments of change and interaction; the pieces reflect lone or group figures at times of conflict and regeneration. Santacana has won numerous awards and participated in over 30 exhibitions, most recently at the 13th Havana Biennial. www.beatrizsantacana.com Instagram: @EstudioTallerSantacana
Dublin-born Blake O'Donnell identifies as a painter, sculptor and installation artist, drawing from a range of interests and experiences with multiple media. The featured painting evokes movement in its lines and overlapping colours, revelling in spontaneity. O'Donnell has exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Scottish Academy. He lives and works in London. Instagram: @blake_odonnell_
Chan Suk On
chris byrnes
Chan Suk On holds a master's degree in Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As an editor and photographer, she is inspired by the nuances of daily life. Art Manual addresses the question of whether concepts need to be explained. By folding, bending and photographing old texts about cameras, the artist considers the meaning of outdated guides through sculptural forms. httpschansukon.com
Australia-based Chris Byrnes is passionate about experimenting with the tangible, unpredictable nature of film. Each handmade image is an investigation into landscapes and mark-making – considering the journeys that we make in life and the artistic gesture of photography. The work shown here is from the Colours of Iceland series for which Byrnes used a Pentax Spotmatic camera and pinhole cap. Instagram: @lady_camera_obscura
daniel staincliffe
Ethem Cem
Daniel Staincliffe is a British multimedia artist currently based in China. His latest project engages with the Buddhist practice of life release. The artist’s method involves applying non-toxic ink to sea creatures intended for human consumption, allowing each one to move freely on a canvas. The resulting prints and videos are unique records of movement; the animals are then released back into their natural habitat. www.danielstaincliffe.com
Designer and director Ethem Cem focuses on audio-visual installations at the intersection of science, art and technology. Based in Istanbul, he is inspired by structures and forms from a range of styles and eras. The artist's latest project, Hex, aims to give viewers an "experience" into the stylistic world of art deco. www.ethemcem.com www.vimeo.com/ethemcem Instagram: @ethemcemb
Fiona Yu
Geraldine McLoughlin
Fiona Yu is studying Art Criticism and Studio Art at NYU. She is interested in the complexities of abstraction – incorporating ideas and concepts from psychoanalysis and existentialism. As an artist, she utilises various methodologies to explore notions of the self through bold and expressive paintings. In addition to university studies, Yu is currently working at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. www.fionayu.site
Geraldine McLoughlin originally studied contemporary art and textiles, but has since been captivated by the qualities of glass. With a studio and workshop – as well as being a member of the Contemporary Glass Society and Plain Arts Salisbury – she creates pieces for both internal and external display. The works play with light and colour through reflection and refraction. www.geraldinemcloughlin.glass
greta rybus
Helena Louzina
Greta Rybus is a full-time freelance photojournalist specialising in editorial portraiture and travel. Of primary interest is her subjects' everyday relationships with their natural environs. She has worked on various projects in Senegal, Panama, Norway and the USA. Rybus holds a degree in Photojournalism and Cultural Anthropology and is currently based in Portland, Maine. www.gretarybus.com Instagram: @gretarybus
Helena Louzina produces abstract paintings that draw from surrealist influences. Allowing a sense of freedom in imagining shapes and forms, she lets the subconscious come to the surface – bold blocks of colour speak to the viewer on a visceral level. Louzina is based in Yekaterinburg and has exhibited work in Moscow and Paris. The work shown here is entitled Les Mélodies Japonaises. www.artquid.com/zotova
For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com
Aesthetica 159
artists’ directory
holly o'meehan
Impressions by Elise
Holly O’Meehan is an emerging artist based in Australia. Her process-driven practice combines numerous ancient craft techniques in an effort to “hero the handmade”, with particular focus on crochet, clay and ceramics. Reflecting the maker's hands in materials, O'Meehan explores the current critique of such crafts within the contemporary art scene. www.hollyomeehan.com.au Instagram: @pollygeorgebyholly
London-based Elise Mendelle's paintings are about capturing a particular thought, feeling or gesture. The artist urges viewers to look beyond the brushstrokes to anticipate or imagine a narrative associated with each portrait. The works provide a storyboard of human behaviour and emotion, and have been exhibited in Rome, Venice and London. www.impressionsbyelise.co.uk Instagram: @impressionsbyelise
janet keates
Jen Blatt
UK-based Janet Keates is a painter intent on capturing the natural beauty of changing light and passing days. Though she enjoys exploring numerous subject matters, Keates returns to the environment as both a challenge and a joy – reconnecting to the inspiring power of landscapes and wildlife. The work shown here is entitled Stark Beauty. www.sotegallery.biz/janet-keates.html
Film photographer Jen Blatt explores the perception of change and exposure to the elements. Undergoing the same human experiences as she does, her film is subject to airport X-ray machines, humidity, and the sea. The resulting images bookend her travel photographs, giving a before-andafter glimpse of a journey: a visual record of intangible change. www.analog-travelog.com
Jiří Kamenskich
Juliet Petrarulo
Czech artist Jiří Kamenskich is interested in the ecological and archeological dimensions of our relationship to the landscape in the Anthropocene. The sculpture shown here is entitled 1m 3, and is based upon a discarded lid from a plastic bottle found when Kamenskich excavated 1m3 of earth. It was reproduced in polyurethane foam and has a volume of 1m3. www.jirikamenskich.com
Juliet Petrarulo is deeply fascinated by early memories and their depiction. She uses acrylic, pastel and oils to uncover layers of narratives, places and characters in dreamlike scenarios. The autobiographical works shown here, Running in the Field and Shadow Under the Tree, are part of the Childhood Dreams series. Petrarulo lives and works on the Isle of Man. Facebook: Juliet Petrarulo Art
Blood or Sea, 2019. Part of the Blue in the Agrow Abyss series, accompanied by poetry.
160 Aesthetica
Keisuke Takeda
loz taylor
A graduate of Musashino Art University, Keisuke Takeda is a painter wholly inspired by poetry. His projects are focused on bringing words and lyrical metre into the visual realm. These expressions have been presented in numerous solo and group shows. In 2018, he exhibited a major series in Osaka inspired by T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Born in Japan, Takeda currently lives and works in the UK. wizdomtooth0318.blog.fc2.com
UK-based artist Loz Taylor creates digital and acrylic works that explore human nature through engagement with speculation, competition and risk, as well as how we behave in order to shift the odds more in our favour. Upcoming exhibitions include the New Artist Fair at the Old Truman Brewery, London, 13-15 September. Instagram: @storedimages
M. Florine DÉmosthÈne
Mollie Turnbull
M. Florine Démosthène was raised between Port-au-Prince and New York. She earned a master's degree in Fine Arts from Hunter College (CUNY). She has exhibited widely in the USA, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. Démosthène is a recipient of a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, an Art Moves Africa Grant and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. www.florinedemosthene.com Instagram: @florinedemosthene
In the Modern Distortion series, Mollie Turnbull explores the aesthetics of colour in relation to portraiture. Each composition considers the concepts of human connection and empathy in an age of hyperrealism. She notes: "There are multiple versions of identities that exist online. My works ask: which is a true representation?" Turnbull won the 2019 Aesthetica York St John Degree Show Award. Instagram: @mollierosephotography
Niharika Rajput
OVUUD
Niharika Rajput is a wildlife artist based in New Delhi. She uses sculpture and installation to investigate environmental damage. In the age of the Anthropocene, Rajput's works depict the sophisticated mechanisms of nature. She is particularly passionate about bird conservation, depicting rare and unique forms endangered by modern society. www.niharikarajput.com Instagram: @paperchirrups
Philadelphia-based Benjamin Gillespie is a lighting and furniture designer, drawing from a rich experience of carpentry, metalwork and engineering. His company OVUUD evolved from the desire to produce something simple yet intriguing whilst utilising new lighting technology. The handmade pieces expand the definition of what lamps can be – how they look and how they function. www.ovuud.com I Instagram: @ovuud
Philippa Jane Anderson
Shona Keir
UK-based Philippa Jane Anderson's practice provides an emotional response to the concept of ruins – decay, fragmentation and passage of time – primarily related to the decline of manufacturing industries. Central to this interest is an intuitive application of paint to canvas, layering ink, gesso and acrylic. These works are palimpsest of landscapes in decline. www.pja-fine-art.com Instagram: @pja_fineart
Shona Keir traverses nature photography and abstract painting. The former includes exploring New York's Central Park to capture the relationship between urban and organic life; the later is a discovery of colour and the subconscious. For Keir, the process of working is itself a key inspiration; feelings of peace and contentment allow her to forge diverse expressions of her art practice. www.shonakeir.com Instagram: @shonakeir
spadge hopkins
teti
With a background in product design and automotive engineering, artist Spadge Hopkins works predominantly with light and shadow, and the intricacies of line. Most often realised in copper, the sculptures are a celebration of movement and personality – with negative spaces further enhancing the viewer's imagination from all angles. www.spadgehopkins.co.uk Facebook & Instagram: @SpadgeArt
Teti rethinks the possibilities of fine art through fragmentation and experimentation. She investigates the process of internal reflection through a kind of "synthesis" of colour and light. The artist's works are at play with visual aesthetics. Based in Minsk, Teti has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in London, Paris, Zurich, Rome, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, amongst others. www.works.io/julia-teti
For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com
Aesthetica 161
Woman wearing a theatrical mask by Oskar Schlemmer and seated on Marcel Breuer’s tubular-steel chair, c.1926. Photo: Erich Consemüller, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © Dr. Stephan Consemüller.
last words
Nina Wiedemeyer Curator of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung
162 Aesthetica
Today the Bauhaus is known for elegant, elementary forms, like the cantilever chair by Marcel Breuer or Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, of which countless re-editions have been made. However, the Bauhaus was less a place of production than a school. In just 14 years, between the World Wars, it challenged artistic conventions and developed new ideas which continue to inspire us today. original bauhaus highlights the various forms of appropriation which contributed to the spread of ideas and designs. For each of the years the school existed, the exhibition examines 14 key objects. It presents 100 years of production and reconstruction. original bauhaus, the centenary exhibition of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, is at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, 6 September - 27 January. www.bauhaus.de/en.
Aesthetica 163
Book now Members free #CindySherman Charing Cross Leicester Square npg.org.uk
Untitled Film Still #58 (detail) by Cindy Sherman, 1980. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
164 Aesthetica