ArtReview December 2013 by ArtReview

Alicja Kwade Michael Part – The Photographic Object Collecting – Miami Nice!

Martin Creed

The Kitchen

Work No. 1020 Ballet

512 W 19th St New York

Dec 12 – Dec 14

Gavin Brown’s enterprise

620 Greenwich St New York

Nov 8 – Dec 21

Hauser & Wirth

32 E 69th St New York

Nov 8 – Dec 21

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

258 Main St Ridgefield, CT

Sept 22 – Mar 9

HAUSER & WIRTH

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Alicja Kwade Pulse of Time 05 – 08/12/13 Art Basel Miami Beach Public Sector, Collins Park Presented by Johann König Berlin

15 November 2013 — 11 January 2014 27 Bell Street, London

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i8 Gallery Tryggvagata 16 101 Reykjavík Iceland info@i8.is T: +354 551 3666 www.i8.is

Yutaka Sone Sculpture 27 November 2013 25 January 2014

David Zwirner 24 Grafton Street London W1S 4EZ 020 3538 3165 davidzwirner.com

LATIFA ECHAKHCH THE sCEnE TAKEs pLACE novEmbEr 1 To DECEmbEr 14, 2013 mAAg ArEAL

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osCAr TUAZon opEnIng: THUrsDAy JAnUAry 16, 2014 JAnUAry 17 To mArCH 8, 2014 mAAg ArEAL

AnDrEw LorD opEnIng: FrIDAy FEbrUAry 14, 2014 FEbrUAry 15 To mAy 10, 2014 LöwEnbräU ArEAL

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SECRET CODES curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio

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Good Tidings As a global institution, ArtReview was delighted to read this past week about how the University of Birmingham’s student union had banned students at its club nights (yeah, if only the statement ended there) from wearing ‘racist’ fancy-dress costumes, such as sombreros and Native American headdresses. It was even more delighted to read the wise words of Vicki Harris, the union’s vice president of sport, defending the ban by saying: ‘Dressing up as Mexicans [is not] OK. It could be seen as imitation of a culture and relates to a stereotype about the race of that particular ethnicity group.’ Apart from the fact that the issue of respecting ‘cultural purity’ in a globalised world seems to be in the air right now, ArtReview’s just been to Frieze and FIAC, so it thinks it knows a fair (ha ha!) bit about imitating culture. Ho, ho, ho! ArtReview’s just pulling your leg. Everyone knows that no one loves an art fair more than it does. Indeed, the only thing it likes more than art fairs, following a hard few months slogging its way through power calculations (see last month’s Power 100) and flouncing through the aforementioned art fairs, is to return home for Christmas cheer in Vienna. First to the toilets of its favourite noodle bar (unlike at FIAC, there’s no sign here claiming that a random toilet cubicle is mysteriously ‘Reserved for exhibitors only’, which ArtReview likes to think contains a midget, a miniature bullwhip, a short length of garden hose, rubber gloves, two goldfish in a plastic bag and a Gypsy woman who can read the future – art these days is all about access), to splash on some Paco Rabanne 1 Million® from the Parfumautomat and put on its racially nonspecific Sexy Santa outfit, then to load up on mulled wine and krapfen at the Christkindlmarkt and finally to pass out under the Christmas tree at the Belvedere with its arms tightly clasped around the miraculously shapeless Franz West sculpture it took for ‘closer inspection’ earlier in the night. (The tree’s by artist Constantin Luser this year, in case you want to join in the ‘fun’.) As ArtReview has learned from crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford, it’s all OK as long as you make sure you’re in a drunken stupor at the time.

ArtReview could do with some of Rob’s magic, what with all the debates about how to embrace globalised culture that have been coming up over the past few months, not just at Birmingham University’s student union parties but in the artworld too. Both within the context of its power issue and without. “Does being part of a global artworld, where artworks are expected to maintain the same degree of relevancy whether they’re in a London museum, the middle of a desert in the Gulf region or a bazaar in China, mean that they have to be empty of any specific content?”, curators keep howling at it as they stagger beneath the weight of the champagne trays they’re schlepping to meetings in some art fair VIP lounge with their ‘patrons’. “Everyone wants to know their place in the world,” ArtReview says sagely. “Don’t worry about ‘content’,” it whispers, reassuringly patting them on the head and putting its pipe to its lips. “Just get them into a drunken stupor and everything will be OK. It’s what you’re here for.” For those of you who want less whispering and more details, ArtReview is generously publishing the latest instalment of this ongoing debate towards the middle of its magazine. At some point, however, the time for talking is over and the time for looking begins (as the nice people at Peep 69 on Davidgasse keep helpfully reminding ArtReview when it pops in to deliver one of its fortnightly lectures on the state of the global artworld). And so ArtReview has decided to put the ‘generosity’ its nearly new designers keep bragging about in relation to their almost new design of its magazine to the test. This issue sees the launch of the first in an ongoing series of extended monographic presentations for your delectation. And how ArtReview wishes it could have put an ‘s’ on the end of the last word in the preceding sentence. In any case, you’ve got your own troubles, but don’t miss the opportunity to get to know the work of Michael Part while you seek relief in the sanctity of your own private lavatory.

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov

32 East 57th Street New York November 2 – December 21, 2013

pacegallery.com

Dark and Light #5, 2013, oil on canvas, 92 1⁄8 x 76 3⁄8 " (234 x 194 cm) © Ilya & Emilia Kabakov

Raqib Shaw 508/510/534 West 25th Street New York November 8, 2013 – January 11, 2014

pacegallery.com

Paradise Lost

ArtReview vol 65 no 9 December 2013

Art Previewed 27

Previews by Martin Herbert 29

Martin Margulies Interview by Joshua Mack 54

Points of View by Maria Lind, Mike Watson, Jonathan Grossmalerman, Sam Jacob, J.J. Charlesworth, Jonathan T.D.Neil, Hettie Judah & Oliver Basciano 37

Simon Castets Interview by Tom Eccles 58 The Law and Its Ideas by Daniel McClean 62

Georg Lukács on the Turner Prize Interview by Matthew Collings 50

page 34 Vahap Avşar, Negative II, 1990, photograph, 100 × 70 cm. Courtesy the artist and Rampa, Istanbul

December 2013

Art Featured 73

Alicja Kwade by Kimberly Bradley 74

State of the Art by Niru Ratnam 88 Michael Part Interview by Mark Rappolt 95

Michele Abeles by David Everitt Howe 82

page 82 Michele Abeles, Transparencies, 2013, pigment print, oil on glass, 98 × 74 cm

ArtReview

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Art Reviewed 123

±1961: Founding the Expanded Arts, by George Stolz Gilles Barbier, by Robert Barry Jo Baer, by Terry R. Myers 9th Bienal do Mercosul, by Claire Rigby Yu Youhan, by Fiona He Going Where?, by Louis Ho

Exhibitions 124 Lutz Bacher, by Chris Fite-Wassilak Kate Owens, by Sean Ashton Patrizio Di Massimo, by Jennifer Thatcher Shannon Ebner, by J.J. Charlesworth Rob Pruitt, by Florence Waters Judith Hopf, by Pavel Pyś The World Turned Upside Down, by Helen Sumpter Jan Tichy, by Orit Gat Carol Bove, by David Everitt Howe Mark Leckey, by Jonathan T.D.Neil Josh Kline, by Laura McLean-Ferris Natalie Frank, by Ed Schad François Morellet, by Andrew Berardini Roxy Paine, by Brienne Walsh 12th Biennale de Lyon, by Oliver Basciano Kalliopi Lemos, by Martin Herbert Sam Durant, by Barbara Casavecchia Nic Guagnini, by Raimar Strange Meriç Algün Ringborg, by Jacquelyn Davis

Books 150 Pirates and Farmers, by Dave Hickey Ghostly Apparitions, by Stefan Andriopoulos Malicious Damage, by Ilsa Colsell Art as Therapy, by Alain de Botton & John Armstrong The View from… by James Franco 156 Consumed 157 THE STRIP 162 OFF THE RECORD 166

page 132 Rob Pruitt, TBT, 2013, acrylic on linen, 206 × 274 cm. Courtesy MDC, London

ArtReview

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Art Previewed

Strummin’ my six-string On my front porch swing Smell those shrimp they’re beginnin’ to boil 27

The Unevent ful Day Jim Woodall Alexander Page Luke Burton 28 Nov – 21 Dec 2013

56 – 57 Eastcastle St. London W1W 8EQ

www.carrollfletcher.com info@carrollfletcher.com

Previewed Jeff Wall Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich through 9 March Agnieszka Kurant Sculpture Centre, New York through 27 January Brice Dellsperger Air de Paris through 21 December

Charles Avery Pilar Corrias, London through 20 December Barnaby Furnas Monica de Cardenas Galleria Zuoz, Switzerland 7 December – 9 February Kader Attia Whitechapel Gallery, London through 1 October 2014

Art Basel Miami Beach 5–8 December Reinhard Mucha Luhring Augustine, New York through 11 January Vahap Avşar Rampa, Istanbul through 3 January

Beatriz Milhazes Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo through 21 December

1 Jeff Wall, A Donkey in Blackpool, 1999, transparency in lightbox, 195 × 244 cm. Collection Lothar Schirmer, Munich. © and courtesy the artist

December 2013

The Thinker (1986), a swirl of intimations In Kurant’s new film, with the working title A couple of issues ago, we quoted Jan Dibbets’s occasioned by a figure of indeterminate nationCutaways (2013) – a collaboration with film editor 1 assessment of Jeff Wall as a man who merely ality and status perched overlooking Vancouver Walter Murch, who worked on Apocalypse Now puts lightbulbs behind photographs. The with, it appears, a sword lodged in his back. (1979) and The Godfather: Part II (1974) – she analytical Canadian evidently bridled at the Wall, though, was only early rather than resurrects a handful of characters left on the reminder, and as a rebuttal – we’re speculating cutting-room floor in Hollywood films, combin– has swiftly organised a retrospective in Munich. anomalous in engaging with art’s potential to deceptively fictionalise. Is a fiction truly a fiction ing discarded footage with self-shot material Here, 20 admittedly backlit transparencies will if it is presented as truth, if it circulates as a to create a new narrative. unite various private collections of the trailblazrumour or phantom reality and reshapes the Cannibalising, rewriting and reshaping old ing photographic artist’s work in the Bavarian cinematic stories are the impulses, too, behind state capital. Produced in close cooperation with 2 real? Agnieszka Kurant wonders, asks and 3 Brice Dellsperger’s ongoing Body Double series tests. The young Polish artist has previously Wall, Jeff Wall in Munich mostly revisits the 1980s trained parrots to speak in an alternative of 30-odd films, begun in 1995 and extended and 90s: these were banquet years for his taut, language (Ready Unmade at the Frieze Art Fair, in his latest show, Bons Baisers d’Hollywood. In referential composing, fakery of the naturalistic 2008) and, using the services of a clairvoyant, these, a simple-sounding idea – remaking scenes and alloying of painterly, photographic and presented the news from 2020 in an edition (or sometimes entire films) from cinema using sculptural concerns, and so the show includes of The New York Times (Future Anterior, 2007–8). a cast of transvestites – proves an abundant benchmark works such as the Rodinesque

2 Courtesy Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope, San Francisco

3 Brice Dellsperger, Body Double 28, 2013, digital film, 2 min 46 sec, looped. © DR. Courtesy the artist and Air de Paris

ArtReview

theoretical seam, opening onto concerns of authorship, doubling, otherness and gender politics. The Frenchman is currently working on, or perhaps has just finished, scenes from Dressed to Kill – a long-term hobbyhorse – Carrie and Basic Instinct. Likely to remain consistent here, though, is Dellsperger’s constructed zone of fidelity and contradistinction, which speaks allegorical volumes about crossing over from one world to another, the performance of self, the playing of roles. Another route vis-à-vis art fiction: persuade that the outlandish is true by aesthetic forms of persuasion and by sheer inventive profusion. 4 It Means It Means!, Charles Avery’s collaboration with curator and writer Tom Morton,

is supposedly set in two spaces – Pilar Corrias’s an ontologically different realm, might take London gallery, and a totally fictive Museum of these works. And to accept the fact that some Art Onomatopoeia on ‘The Island’, the Borgesof them are invisible, or visible only to the meets-Compton Mackenzie isle populated by Island’s inhabitants. men and mythical beasts that the Mull-born A decade or so ago, painter and former Avery has been mapping via vivacious pencil 5 graffiti-bomber Barnaby Furnas would drawings, taxidermy-animal hybrid sculptures indicate truthiness by spraying blood-red paint and more since 2005. The latter show, evidenced through a tube across his canvases – paintings at Corrias in drawings, ‘features’ works by artists that, contemporaneous with the last Iraq War, ranging from Watteau to Tino Sehgal, with were full of mordant references to battles, Duchamp, Marina Abramović, Eva Hesse and American history and videogames, yet whose many others popping up amidships. Given that reanimation of history painting employed the the Island is structured according to philosophigenteel and slippery medium of watercolour. cal principles, naturally this doesn’t merely The Philadelphia-born artist is, present evidence represent a simple reflexive turn; we’re invited suggests, still drawn to huge historical arcs, to consider how Avery’s population, who inhabit to the potentials of dusty genres, to technical

5 Barnaby Furnas, Landscape 2, 2013, watercolour, acrylic, pencil and gesso on paper, 38 × 56 cm. Courtesy Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan

4 Charles Avery, Untitled (It Means It Means; Balla, LeWitt) (detail), 2013, pencil, ink, acrylic and gouache on paper mounted on linen, 113 × 83 cm (unframed). Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London

December 2013

innovation. Following his last London show at Victoria Miro, though, which took on Genesis’s narratives of the creation of the world and the aftermath of the flood, Furnas seems lately to have become diverted by landscape. Here, expect psychedelically bright vistas peopled, when people appear, by zonked biblical figures. 6 A bible story also underpins Kader Attia’s commission for the Whitechapel Gallery. In the UK, the French-Algerian artist might be best known for making a model of the Algerian town of Ghardaïa out of couscous. (Colonised by France in the nineteenth century, the place’s architectural qualities nonetheless influenced Le Corbusier’s concept of the Radiant City, so that in a sense colonisation swung two ways.)

Underknown histories and influences are a to interfuse Latin American and Western frequent preoccupation for Attia, who in this stylistics; this show finds the Rio-based painter show refers to the venue’s history as a former simmering natural forms in perky geometry library by building a floor-to-ceiling display and unadulterated colour. If that sounds like of bookshelves that in turn secretes a wunby-the-numbers Milhazes, evident here is a derkammer of books and artefacts relating deepened interest in layering and Op effects, so to the story of Jacob’s ladder. that the works proffer a level-shifting spatiality To return to psychedelic brightness: the that’s at once pleasing and fools the eye. As ever, 7 nine new paintings in Beatriz Milhazes’s it looks like art and it feels like carnival. latest show, O Círculo e Seus Amigos, finds the artist 8 No need to belabour the link to Art Basel – who claims Matisse, Mondrian and Brazilian Miami Beach, then – an event situated ‘at the modernist Tarsila do Amaral as her cornerstone nexus of North America and Latin America’, as influences – running a typically high temperathe organisers put it. In terms of Art Basel itself, ture. Milhazes, whose auction prices have soared there’s 258 galleries, 31 countries and the Miami in the last half-decade, breaking records for Latin Herald complaining about the lack of Florida American artists, has done as much as anyone galleries: so, business as usual at the 12th edition

6 Kader Attia, Holy Land, 2006, installation, Canary Islands. Courtesy the artist

7 Beatriz Milhazes, Igrejinha, 2012–13, acrylic on linen, 160 × 80 cm. Photo: Manuel Águas & Pepe Schettino. Courtesy Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo

8 Photo: Antonello. Licensed Under Creative Commons

ArtReview

MoDern & PoST-WAr BriTiSh ArT london 10–11 december 2013

Enquiries frances.christie@sothebys.com +44 (0)20 7293 5575 Register now at sothebys.com

of the fair, with subsidiary fairs including Scope and the Brazil ArtFair, and the customary round of talks and a films programme (with over 70 filmand videoworks) to fill up anyone’s downtime, should the tourist trappings not tempt. Up in relatively wintry New York, mean9 while, Reinhard Mucha is holding his first 10 solo show in the city for 13 years, Hidden Tracks. Winter will suit it. In the Düsseldorf-born artist’s vitrines for everyday objects, lined in dark felt, what’s inside is made hard to discern: a sort of frustration of the readymade. His installations and films have made railways a repeated motif, and imply at once connection and departure or separation; Mucha has used

the phrase ‘collective biography’ in conjunction with his work, which has as much to do with how objects that contain histories – chairs, desks, lights – might remain frustratingly mute. Here, in any case, we get the vitrines, with no perky geometry and no unadulterated colour. Vahap Avşar’s first solo American show, in 2011, featured a burned-out NYPD police car, as if devastated by a car bomb, and a collection of Turkish postcards made between the 1960s and 90s and censored by the authorities even when seemingly innocuous. It was called NONEISAFE and the message seemed clear. Oppression will breed violence, and neither controllers nor controlled will be safe from

danger. In a Turkey increasingly under the sway of Islamic and neoliberal interests, Avşar has a reputation as a bold provocateur, which makes his upcoming show a powerful prospect – at the same time, though, it’s hard to say which way he’ll jump, given that in recent years he’s moved from photorealist paintings of US troops sleeping in mosques to a video memorialising his completion of military service at age forty-five. That happened because Avşar left Turkey for the US, gave up art in his early thirties and cofounded hugely successful streetwear company Brooklyn Industries rather than starve in a garret. Remember, kids: there’s no one way to make political art. Martin Herbert

9 Reinhard Mucha, Lennep, 2009, aluminium, float glass, enamel painted on reverse of glass, oil paint print on bituminised feltbase (flooring), wood, felt, 133 × 337 × 48 cm. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

10 Vahap Avşar, Negative II, 1990, photograph, 100 × 70 cm. Courtesy the artist and Rampa, Istanbul

ArtReview

F U T U R E g R E A T S 2 0

Each March, ArtReview and EFG International present Future Greats, a guide to young or less-established artists that a panel of leading curators, artists and critics think will be making it big in the coming year. The artists listed here were all selected in the 2013 edition of the list. Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc Lutz Bacher Magnus Bärtås Jonathan Berger Hilary Berseth Ben Cain ‹ Benedict Drew * Michaela Eichwald Brock Enright Lauren Godfrey Samara Golden Natascha Sadr Haghighian Gabriel Hartley Sasha Holzer Daniel Jacoby Leopold Kessler George Little Pat McCarthy Paulo Nazareth Katja Novitskova Katrina Palmer JJ PEET Heather Phillipson Laurie Jo Reynolds Analia Saban Pablo Sigg Edward Thomasson Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli

* Pictured above is the first in a series of posters specially commissioned by ArtReview and EFG International from Future Greats artists, this one available exclusively with subscriber copies of the April 2013 issue of ArtReview.

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Points of View Maria Lind It’s time to go back to basics (and earrings) Mike Watson Italy scans the horizon for signs of hope Jonathan Grossmalerman Some advice on compiling future power lists

Sam Jacob Creativity? That’s just a business term…

Hettie Judah The Hanna-Barberians are at the gates

J.J. Charlesworth British art’s new establishment figurehead

Oliver Basciano Off-space No 17: Am Nuden Da

Jonathan T.D. Neil What is art? Nothing more than an asset, really. And what’s wrong with that?

Maria Lind It’s time to go back to basics (and earrings) There it hangs: a golden earring in the shape of a piece of miniature drooping armour, placed in a tiny hole in a slender triangular metal structure coming out of a corner of the room. The ‘lock’ is attached to the back of the pin; the whole thing hangs just as it would from an earlobe. The earring is alone, separated from its twin. In fact, the separation is temporary; the other earring remains with its owner, who will not use it until the two are reunited. The earring and its structure are installed in an official-looking building, one of the four main venues of the ninth Bienal do Mercosul, titled Weather Permitting and beautifully curated by Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy and her team in Porto Alegre. It is one of four works in the Bienal by the Mexico City-based artist Tania Pérez Córdova. All of them contain a borrowed object, which has temporarily left a significant part of itself, or its context, behind. They share the title Things in Pause. In addition to the earring, there is a sim card embedded in porcelain, a shirtsleeve severed from the shirt itself and inserted into pine wood, and a piano key on a journey of its own. After the exhibition the objects will be returned from whence they came. In case of a sale, the buyer is requested to find an equivalent object to incorporate into the framework devised by the artist. Pérez Córdova puts objects on hold, placing them outside of their quotidian existence as (temporary) art objects. In a way they are being put to the test, both as plain objects and as art. So what happened to the earring, a delicate and intimate object (belonging to the artist’s grandmother, I learn while reading up on the work), in this otherwise large-scale biennial exhibition? In addition to modestly electrifying the corner where it was installed, next to work

by, among others, Cao Fei and Mario Garcia Torres, Lost Gold Earring said something about how art can operate today: that objects and actions can commute between contexts, and that the transitions from homebase to artwork and back to homebase can allow for imaginative yet concrete associations. It is tempting to introduce the idea of the quasi-object into this query. The quasi-object is less psychologically charged than a transitional object, but nevertheless one that mediates between people. The quasi-object is not even an object, but neither is it a subject. And yet it participates in the constitution of the subject. When passed around, the quasi-object creates the collective – when it stops, the

With funding being the most prominent topic among colleagues today, it is crucial to spend more time with art itself subjective ‘I’ appears. A ball, for example a football, is the quintessential quasi-object, according to the philosopher Michel Serres. It is made for circulation, ‘weaving the collective’ while in motion. It remains ‘lifeless’, or not yet animated, as long as it is still. It has the potential of being both ‘being’ and ‘relation’, depending on its status. On closer inspection, the objects in Pérez Córdova’s work are to some extent quasi-objects. They simultaneously connect and decentre; they form the basis of distinct works in and of themselves and they partake in the mediation between a number of other external entities. In the bigger picture, it is very likely that art itself is a quasi-object.

December 2013

Having recently been invited to address some of the urgencies of the present in the sphere of curating at a symposium at the School of Visual Art in New York, art comes first on my list. Art as a quasi-object – a form of understanding that is more necessary than ever, as a horizon of the possible beyond the given. I have a distinct feeling that we need to return to art itself, to focus on artworks and art projects in the wake of art institutions becoming more and more obsessed with themselves, curating programmes being preoccupied with curating, and curating students becoming stuck in curatorial pirouettes or symbiotic collaborations. Not that art has disappeared completely, but it has been pushed into the background. This is problematic and yet understandable: in a place like Europe a paradigm shift has happened in terms of the conditions of production for both art and curating. The single most palpable feature of this is how funding structures have been transformed, largely without public debate. At the same time as the commercial art market is blossoming, public funding is decreasing, and at the same time the public funding that remains is increasingly instrumentalised. With funding being the most prominent topic among colleagues today, it is crucial to spend more time with art itself, inquiring what an artwork does. Not what it can do, but what it actually does: how it sits in a specific situation in society, and how it operates from there. Pérez Córdova’s golden earring and its commuting character, its relying on future events, has stayed with me. I even started to wear earrings again, after a 15-year pause.

Mike Watson Italy scans the horizon for signs of hope Five years into the economic crisis, a new reality has begun to dawn for the people of Italy. While the Thatcherite concept that the creation of wealth by the highest economic classes will eventually benefit the poor is highly suspect, the inverse notion – that a fall in the wealth of the rich will adversely affect the impoverished – is well grounded. This slow ‘trickle down’ of the economic misfortunes of the wealthy has broken its dams and deluged everyone here, from the aristocratic class to the higher middle classes to the working and illegal immigrant classes. In the artworld, a squeezed middle class meets with a bewildered aristocracy as both look at each other in search of a way out of a dire situation. As one Rome gallerist explained, the first three years of the crisis were dealt with best by those gallerists who had invested in the last years of the economic boom. They were able to benefit from relationships built in that time and continue selling to collectors who had not yet felt the full impact of the crisis themselves. Yet over time the money has dried up. Speculation two years ago that a major Milanese gallery would move to Rome has turned around, as both C02 and Furini Arte Contemporanea relocate away from Rome (to Turin and Arezzo, respectively), while the Gallery Apart, Frutta and T293 have all vacated Rome’s historical centre to seek cheaper rents. This is a situation reflected across Italy, with academic departments cutting staff and foundations greatly reducing their programmes. Conversations around programming and potential collaborations frequently end with both parties (curator and gallery, artist and

museum, etc) looking at each other and asking where the money will come from. With virtually no state funding for the arts, and Rome’s council in serious debt, the situation in Italy’s capital is a grave warning of what’s to come. At the grassroots level the seriousness of this crisis is now being felt like never before, as the natural lull in activity over the summer, which usually gives way to a frenzied restart of work activity, has instead plateaued. The appropriate description of the art scene would be of a piece of

The art scene is a piece of tumbleweed rolling across a barren landscape with no one present to witness it. It keeps turning, but to no effect. Its sole achievement is its own motion tumbleweed rolling across a barren landscape with no one present to witness it. It keeps turning, but to no effect. Its sole achievement is its own motion, which is one of conversations between players who are all equally perplexed about what to do next. The recently opened ten-year anniversary show at Rome’s Monitor Gallery provides opportunity for reflection on precisely this question. Monitor’s decade in Rome’s centre has seen the biggest historical boom and bust in the local and national art scene ever witnessed. A gallery committed to showing international and Italian artists – Graham Hudson, Rä di Martino,

Ian Tweedy and Guido van der Werve, among others – marked its anniversary with a solo show by the young Italian Antonio Rovaldi. The exhibition comprises photos of the horizon taken on a cycle tour of Italy’s coastline and hung at eye level throughout the gallery’s two spaces, forming one continuous horizon line. Photos comprising only the horizon of the sea meet with the inclusion of statues, a wall, railway lines and other simple motifs, which, while different each time, form a unified continuum. The show breaks a tendency in Rome during the last two years to focus on irony and quick impactful conceptual pieces, these often drawing inspiration from London and Berlin. The selection of the Italian horizon as a contemplative motif draws – wittingly or not – on a fundamental issue for the survival of contemporary art here over the next ten years. In short, a Roman or, indeed, Italian scene must be outward-looking while retaining – or building upon – a fundamentally Italian experience. To look at the horizon is to look outwards at an unknown beyond, but to do it from a fixed position. It requires taking a stand with fidelity to one’s location while aspiring for change. One Roman collector confided to me that the lesson of the crisis is that all ambitions have to be scaled back. We will not return to a previous point of productivity, but will have to settle for less in terms of levels of production and ambition. If this is the case, then a rejuvenated centre of production for the arts in Italy is essential, as opposed to investment in young foreign artists paired with a neglect of the particular history and situation of Italy itself.

Antonio Rovaldi, Orizzonte in Italia (detail), 2013, c-print on aluminium, 44 × 31 cm (framed).Courtesy the artist and Monitor, Rome

ArtReview

Jonathan Grossmalerman Some advice on compiling future power lists I can’t believe it. It’s finally happened. I’ve… well, I’ve slipped off the ArtReview Power 100. At first I suspected it had been a simple oversight. So outlandish was my absence from the list that I assumed their refusal to answer my phone calls, emails and obsessive tweets had been out of embarrassment over their silly mistake. It wasn’t until I finally ‘ran into’ editor Mark Rappolt’s mom in the Tesco fruit and vegetable aisle that my darkest fears were realised. She explained, in no uncertain terms, that I simply wasn’t powerful enough and they didn’t want me on their list any more. Well ain’t that a kick in the pants! Sure! I suppose it’s been a couple of years since I cunningly organised a coalition of nations to destroy the connoisseur/brutal dictator Gaddafi’s enormous but really quite good art collection, thereby keeping it out of the hands of rebels who I suspected were just going to dump it willy-nilly on the international art market, causing a worldwide deluge of contemporary art and in turn collapsing artists’ markets everywhere. Tino Sehgal’s notwithstanding. You know – aka the time I pretty much saved contemporary art! I mean, I feel like maybe that’s worth a little more than two years on the Power 100 list. Sure, maybe I frittered away some of my power on late nights and cheap thrills, but… I saved contemporary art! And yes, it’s possible that

I squandered a chunk of power with my ill-advised power play to become President Obama’s art czar. I understand that paying a K Street lobbying firm a substantial portion of my income in the mistaken understanding that such a position, in fact, existed wasn’t such a hot idea. And yes! I do have egg on my face… but fall off the list entirely? Has Marc Spiegler (no 16) never made a mistake? Has François Pinault (no 19) never gotten in the wrong taxi

Has François Pinault (no 19) never gotten in the wrong taxi and ended up in New Jersey with a series of peculiar stains on his lap that he can’t explain to the woman he loves? and ended up in New Jersey with a series of peculiar stains on his lap that he can’t explain to the woman he loves? I can only presume Anne Pasternak (no 47) is some sort of perfect angel! Listen, I admit that I’m in the middle of a painting crisis. Sure, I’ve stared at my easel every day for the last three months, its blankness mocking me. Yes, my market has slowed, and it’s possible (but I am not necessarily convinced) Courtesy Jonathan Grossmalerman

December 2013

that large-scale paintings of vaginas may not be the cultural slam-dunk they once were… but this doesn’t take away from the fact that I saved contemporary art! That must be worth something! Surely you can see that!? And don’t think I’m demanding to be number one. Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani is a nice girl and she owns 3,256 of my best paintings. I’m perfectly content with Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani being number one. If you asked me who I think should be number one on the ArtReview Power 100 list, the first name that would pop into my head is most definitely Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, alright? But is it too much to ask to be number seven? Perhaps 23? I’d even happily take Eva Presenhuber’s spot at number 59. She’s in Zurich, so she probably isn’t even using it. Which brings me to another point. I couldn’t help but notice that a significant portion of the people on your list don’t even live or work in New York. I mean, how powerful could they even be? I have an idea that could possibly get us both out of this awkward jam: perhaps next year you could expand the list to make it the ArtReview Power 250. It would still have that haughty aura of social ranking. You could even put the first 100 in bold caps! I’m pretty confident I’d be on that one. I would, right?

Sam Jacob Creativity? That’s just a business term… Lust for Life, the 1956 biopic of Vincent van Gogh, sees Kirk Douglas hamming it up as a tortured, misunderstood yet brilliant artist. Bluesmocked and patinated with picturesque poverty, the artist is figured Technology, as a visionary, someone Entertainment, outside the norms of Design is a notsociety and far beyond the for-profit dedibounds of the market. The cated to ‘Ideas artist is cartooned as a Worth Spreading’ romantic, if doomed, hero. – like ‘ArtReview’, But if one were to characexcept for the first bit terise the figure of contemporary creativity, it would be a very different performance. It might be someone with a tech consultancy, a suit but no tie, and a TED-talk lanyard around his neck. In other words, ‘creativity’ is not a natural, innate quality, but a synthetic idea. Creativity is, it seems, a central plank of the machinations of the modern world. We see it cited in the rhetoric of business, the future of cities, economic growth and government policy. It’s there in the creative class, an idea popularised by Richard Florida’s 2004 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and often celebrated in the strange modern parables we know as TED talks. Indeed today we rely on so-called creative industries to drive our knowledge economies. ‘Design thinking’ is a term applied to management theory as a way to maximise efficiency. There is a whole literature dedicated to this idea of creativity. In Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere’sThinking in New Boxes: A New Paradigm for Business Creativity (2013), the authors write that ‘true leaders must develop the capacity for radical originality: they must re-imagine and reinvent the world in totally unexpected ways. By doing that, they can create

a culture that is open to creative risk-taking and an environment where failure is accepted as part of the creative process.’ You can read articles in Time and on The Huffington Post with titles like ‘What Can Jazz Teach Us About Business?’ or ‘How to Harness the Creative Mindset’. You can go to events, such as the Motion Picture Association of America’s 2013 Creativity Conference, that convene ‘leaders from the world of politics, media, business and government to engage in a direct dialogue about the role creativity plays in our economy and in creating the workforce of the future’. You can take part in ideation sessions. You’ll become enthused with the idea that ‘creativity is not

Creativity is remade as a form of value creation, a tactic that generates shareholder wealth just good for a company, it’s good for a nation’s economy’, as the UK Design Council’s Graham Cox put it several years ago. There’s something unnerving in all of this. It’s as though a coup had been staged in the heart of art-school culture by management theorists. This is taking the place of creativity as we once knew it. It’s creativity reimagined in the terms of business. Creativity remade as a form of value creation, a tactic that generates shareholder wealth. It’s strange that this cult of creativity should be simultaneously so highly prized – fetishised, even – when the value of creativity in wider culture is becoming devalued. State support for the arts has been slashed in the name of austerity economics. But then that was a different kind of

creativity – the old-fashioned, high-minded idea that culture might be something of value in and of itself, something whose ‘value’ might be measured in equally old-fashioned notions of the public good. Creativity as viewed through the lens of management speak, by contrast, is a form of competitive advantage, a means of advancing the private sphere. One might argue that these new myths of creativity are not just an expanded idea of what might constitute creativity, but an attack on existing forms of creativity. Think of the parasitic relationship of advertising, perhaps the longest-serving ‘creative industry’, to fine art. Think of advertising’s proboscis nudging around, sniffing out repurposable ideas and images. Or think of the rhetoric of the creative class, whose belief in a kind of creative/ economic growth axis is phrased as the trickledown neoliberal future of cities instead of the proper planning of housing and communities. Creativity is, in other words, an ideology. And the figure of today’s ‘creative’ is one that occupies the centre ground of one of the most powerful ideologies of late capitalism: the cult of the individual. All those qualities that were associated with old-fashioned (and equally ideologically constructed) creativity (see, for example, Douglas’s raging Van Gogh) have been bent into new arrangements. Creative heroes and visionaries no longer stalk the Arles landscape with an easel over their shoulder. Instead, creative consultants channel these myths into corporate boardrooms and Powerpoint presentations, where their mantras of ‘disruption’, ‘revolution’ and ‘innovation’ simply fuel the monocultural globalised business model of neoliberalism. It’s enough to make you want to cut your ear off.

Sheikha Al-Mayassa speaks during ‘Session 5: Harmony and Discord’, 8 December 2010, at TEDWomen, Washington, DC. Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED

ArtReview

Francesca Woodmann, Self-deceit #1, Rome, Italy, 1978/1979, black-and-white gelatin silver print on barite paper

FRANCESCA WOODMAN Works from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND The Viennese collection SAMMLUNG VERBUND is showing 80 photographs by Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) from its holdings. The exhibition affords a comprehensive insight into the works of the artist, accompanied by an extensive new publication. Exhibition | Vertical Gallery in the VERBUND-Headquarters, Vienna January 30 – May 21, 2014 Guided tour every Wednesday 6pm | free entrance Publication | Ed. by Gabriele Schor and Elisabeth Bronfen Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2014 http://www.verbund.com/kt/en/

J.J. Charlesworth British art’s new establishment figurehead “It’s about time a transvestite potter won the Turner Prize,” quipped Grayson Perry when he accepted the Tate’s annual best-artist prize back in 2003. In the decade since, Perry has become a media celebrity and public figure, turning his hand to television appearances and newspaper criticism, and, in his wellreceived 2012 documentary series All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, taking on the subject of social class and taste among the cultural ‘tribes’ of contemporary Britain. Perry’s affable, tolerant, sceptical public persona has made him an unusual, but somehow appropriate candidate to be anointed as the British artworld’s next establishment figure, at a time when the media glow surrounding the previously media-friendly controversialism of the YBAs has cooled. Awarded the title of CBE At this (Commander of the Order of the point art British Empire) in the Queen’s bows Birthday Honours last June, Perry to the was this autumn given the artworld prestigious task of presenting the BBC’s Reith Lectures – the national broadcaster’s annual public showcase for important debates on society, politics and the arts, delivered by one or other leading figure in their specialism. Perry joins the august ranks of Reith lecturers such as Aung San Suu Kyi and Bertrand Russell. Perry is also the first practising artist to present the Reith Lectures. So, dressed as his alter-ego, Claire, in front of a packed audience at Tate Modern, he set out his task to try to reconcile the broader public with contemporary art; to answer those questions people ask “when

they go into a gallery and are slightly bemused or maybe angered by the work”, and to “help them – give them tools to understand and appreciate art”. Perry wanted to help answer the thorny questions: “How do we know when something is good? Who tells us, and does it really matter?” As it turned out, Perry never got near to answering these questions. In fact, what was interesting about Perry’s lectures was that they presented a completely empty, wholly institutional notion of contemporary art, in which its content and function were pretty much secondary to the machinery of the ‘artworld’ itself. So in the first lecture, rather than risk asserting some idea of what might still function as a criterion of value in art, Perry quickly drifted into explaining that what gave value to art were the myriad operations of “validation” that occurred between collectors, dealers and curators (not so much critics). In other words, it’s good because, er, these people say it is. By the second lecture, Perry was grappling with what was or wasn’t art, attempting to “beat the bounds” of what constituted an artwork, in an age when, apparently in the wake of Duchamp, “anything goes”. Again, Perry’s definitions were purely institutional: is it in a gallery? Is it mass-produced or limited in production? Is it a “boring version” of some other form of culture? Is it being looked at by “hipsters” or the wives of “Russian oligarchs”? In other words, it’s art because, er, it isn’t anything else. By lecture three, Perry was declaring that we are in the “end state of art”, constituted by the redundancy of artistic rebellion and the passing of the “age of manifestos”. Quoting approvingly the recently deceased Arthur C. Danto (Perry’s

Grayson Perry. Photo: BBC/Richard Ansett

ArtReview

only intellectual compass, it seemed) that “in the age of pluralism we have a model of tolerant multiculturalism”, Perry asked, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe that the pluralistic artworld of the historical present was a harbinger for a political situation of things to come?” And in the closing lecture, Perry made a personal and emotional case for art as the authentic space for inner expression – hopefully not too tainted by the “self-consciousness” of an artistic training, and of the “artworld”. For all their strangely vacuous self-regard and jovial, droning circularity, Perry’s lectures nevertheless encapsulated something of the current predicament of contemporary art in the public sphere. Criteria, manifestos, definitions, values – all these things are too disruptive, too divisive, too associated with conflict. And who wants all that? Conflict, in a culture that doesn’t have much enthusiasm for determining what is right or wrong, good or bad, can only be a dangerous thing. Better to be reconciled, pluralistic and tolerant. Sincere, individual expression, playing mildly inside the machinery of the ‘artworld’, is all one should aspire to. Perry turns out to be the perfect figurehead for the relaxed, fatigued, diminished role of contemporary art in today’s public culture. An art whose participants no longer argue for any idea of artistic values or criteria, nor even for its social function to surprise, challenge or change. A culture, in fact, that stakes no great claim to the public’s attention, but still hangs around, uncertain of whether it should get its coat. But while it’s still there, everyone can come in, and there’s nothing to be afraid of, because in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

Jonathan T.D. Neil

Jeff Koons, ‘Balloon Dog (Orange)’, 1994–2000, 307 × 363 × 114 cm. © the artist

What is art? Nothing more than an asset, really. And what’s wrong with that? By the time this column is in print, it’s quite hold that they are ‘assets that will never produce possible that the record for the most expensive anything, but that are purchased in the buyer’s work by a living artist ever sold will have been hope that someone else will pay more for them broken. That record either still does or did in the future… This type of investment requires belong to Gerhard Richter’s Domplatz Mailand an expanding pool of buyers, who, in turn, (1968), which sold for $37 million just this past are enticed because they believe the buying May, but Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange) pool will expand still further. Owners are not (1994–2000), with a low-end estimate of $35m inspired by what the asset itself can produce and a high of $55m, but rather by the belief that others will desire may now have it even more avidly in the future.’ According to Christie’s, surpassed it. This is a reasonable description of the who sold Jeff Koons’s What does this way we think about works of art, in particular ‘Balloon Dog (Orange)’ mean? Probably very expensive ones like the Richter and the Koons. (1994–2000) at a Postlittle if we think of It could be objected that such works of art, War and Contemporary purchases like these though assets, are not ‘investments’, strictly Art Evening Sale in New as the ‘trophy hunting’ speaking. Art, as the economists say, is a York on 12 November, it ‘has become an icon of an exceedingly small ‘consumption good’. And these works were of Popular vernacular, capitalist class. bought for no other reason than that they adored by the public Confirming the masses and collectors for Now, to the opponents of capital that the very its unabashed celebrawealthy have available of the term ‘asset’ being used tion of childhood, hope to spend on assets such and innocence’ as a description of works as art will be news to of art: grow up. Even when no one. So why bring it up? Because it is interesting to think about works of art were not selling just what kind of assets these works of art are. for many millions of dollars, Now, to opponents of the term ‘asset’ being used as a description of works of art: grow up. they were assets Even when works of art were not selling for many millions of dollars, they were assets. The satisfied the buyer. That may be, but remember works you have traded with other artists or that that both of the works under discussion are in you have bought, the works that belong to you, the secondary market. The Koons was originally that you own – these are assets, pure and sold by Anthony d’Offay to Peter Brant in the simple. The works sitting in public trust in our late 1990s for a reported $1m as part of the museums are assets, even if they don’t enter financing of the larger Celebration series, of into the accounting as such. which Balloon Dog is a part. And Wishing it weren’t so, dismissing the Richter has gone on the block According to Koons, the language (which is in fact very it is ‘about celebration before, at Sotheby’s in London and childhood and precise; ‘art’ is the loose term here) back in 1998, where it sold for colour and simplicity or continuing to trot out classical $3.3m. In other words, these – but it’s also a Trojan or eighteenth-century aesthetic works were bought with some horse. It’s a Trojan theories of art’s purity or nonutility expectation that there would be horse to the whole are examples of intellectual laziness a ‘future’ in which ‘others’ would body of art work’ and blinkered thinking. Art is many ‘desire’ these works even more things, and an asset is one of them. ‘avidly’ than before. From the What kind of asset is a Koons’s Balloon Dog or other direction, it could also be objected that a Richter painting, then? One definition, whose these works ‘produce’ aesthetic experiences for author I’ll withhold for the moment, would their beholders, or happiness in their owners,

December 2013

or somesuch. But it beggars belief to think that selling the works at a loss wouldn’t find the seller thinking hers was a bad investment. It’s helpful ‘I wanted to have the to note that, as the nose a certain proporauthor of the tion to the ears to the definition above legs… once I had control points out, ‘the of the medium I chose major asset’ of this the balloon dog that I felt was really the best kind is not in fact suited to become art but gold, and it “Balloon Dog”’ is also helpful to point out that the author is Warren Buffett. Buffett of course is one of the most successful and richest investors in the world, all because of ‘value investing’, which means, in his words, the ‘transfer to others of purchasing power now with the reasoned expectation of receiving more purchasing power in the future’. In Buffett’s world, this means transferring purchasing power to things like businesses and farmland, investments in entities that produce. Little wonder that Buffett is not an art collector of any note. But if the asset that art most resembles is gold, the prime motivation for buying it, at least according to Buffett, is fear – fear that capital invested anywhere else, and in currency-backed securities in particular, is a bad bet. Currency is only as good as the credibility of the country that issues it, after all, and when countries such as the US – whose currency is the global reserve – print money to shore up their credit and labour markets, and then threaten to default on their debts, those currencies don’t look safe, and so the search for ‘harder’ assets, less ‘scary’ ones, begins. You can’t print more gold, the theory goes, so it must be safer, just as long as someone else is more scared than you. And it’s easier to bet on someone else’s fear than it is to bet on your own conviction in the productive value of an investment. About the buyers of the Richter and the Koons, few will have said that they were or are scared, but in a sense that is what they are, if we take such assets to be ‘as good as gold’.

Hettie Judah The Hanna-Barberians are at the gates This last season, fashion hype was reserved not for a garment, or even an actual object, but an image – a simple cut-and-paste amalgamation of Disney’s Bambi and a naked but ill-defined woman. Generated by the house of Givenchy, the image did, of course, come attached to clothes – a black T-shirt, a neoprene sweatshirt and a lace top – but they were mere facilitators, weather- and occasion-appropriate backing for the main event. Priced at £400 for the T and £750 for the sweatshirt, the Bambi-print pieces sold out almost before the general public knew that they existed. During October, fashion feeds across the digital world showed a rich broth of both mutton and lamb dressed as venison, as famous, camera-loving ladies rocked the deer. There have been status garments for as long as clothing has existed (though perhaps not at price tags this cartoonish), but the Bambi print is significant not for its status or its price, but as the most visible example of the impact of digital and social media on contemporary dress. Changes in the speed, reach and quality of fashion images have had an actual effect on the way garments are worn and designed. Over the last ten years, images of fashion have increasingly been seen on screens rather than the printed page. With the rise of smartphones, those screens have become smaller and smaller, and the most widely disseminated images have diminished commensurately in

quality. As anyone involved in book and The new media favour the brightly magazine publishing well knows – but very few coloured, the boldly patterned, the strongly within the fashion world have digested – there shaped and the distinctively accessorised. All is an enormous difference between digital of these elements coincide neatly with trends images viewed even on a large screen, and a from the last few years: colour blocking, the well-printed photograph. Onscreen it is very rise of neon, assertive and clashing patterns, difficult to make out any kind of surface detail. the return in popularity of hats, rococo Subtle handwork, fine embellishment, quality sunglass frames, outsize garments, pod-shaped fabrics, careful tailoring, details at an intimate coats and ‘luxury’ sweatshirts bearing large, scale and all the other quirks of thoughtful recognisable pictures. In response to viewing fabrication – the very elements, in other words, platforms that remove surface detail, fashion that formerly distinguished designer fashion has gone Cartoon Time. from the high street – become to all intents and Street-style photography has flourished in purposes invisible. tandem with the rise of this Hanna-Barberian The speed of image consumption and tendency in fashion, and arguably it has pushed of changing trends has accelerated dramatically. these trends far more strongly than it has Expensively crafted garments from prominent followed any tendencies laid out by print couture collections, which in previous decades fashion publications. The stars of the street-style might have been evaluated by fashion blogs dress not only to be photographed, They shot editors before receiving their public but in a way that ensures the resulting his mum, debut in an imaginatively styled image will appear to advantage on a tiny now they’re screen. Style has thus been conflated with photoshoot, will now be seen by shooting fashion fans via blurry Instagram feeds recognisability; online fans cannot ‘like’ Bambi that flash up online before the pieces what they cannot see. Givenchy’s outsize have left the runway. Fashion houses Bambi image was immediately identifiable, both major and modest must now court the even at a distance – wearing it expressed Insta-snappers, the Tumblrs and the Pinterested an understanding of style founded on nous, as well as the glossies. For young designers clout and the desire to be photographed. Such needing to get noticed, there is pressure to photogenic popularity brought the harbinger create images that have immediate impact of its own death – everybody shot Bambi, online, and some openly admit to adjusting the so the hype has moved on to the next thing. aesthetic of their collections accordingly. It’s unlikely to be subtle.

Bambi print, 2013, Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci

December 2013

Oliver Basciano Off-space No 17: Am Nuden Da What is Am Nuden Da? Well, it is three people. Individually they are artists. Pretty simple as a definition, really. But we’re not here to talk about them as individuals, so don’t think all is resolved quite yet. When they work together as Am Nuden Da, it gets more complicated: the collective’s output can at times be described as a gallery space, a curatorial entity or an artist’s collective, and in each of these roles it has operated as both facilitator and agitator. It has been all of the above simultaneously and none of them at all. As a trio they’re about exploring the boundaries and labels that we apply to the people who operate around art – morphing in and out of roles and wrong-footing audience or critical labels. Initially Am Nuden Da operated out of a physical space in the East End of London, a lo-fi shopfront on a residential side street, from which they conceived the first seven of their ‘sessions’ (a typically ambiguous and undefined title). These mostly took the form and process of group exhibitions – complete with installation and curating of works, a private view, press release, documentation and all the rest of the ephemera that surround the public manifestation of art. The shows weren’t totally typical, however: blink and you’d miss ’em, they mostly lasted for just two days after the opening. Session_2_Flags saw 41 artists, writers and designers, including Rut Blees Luxemburg, David Raymond Conroy and Charlie Woolley, making flags, which were hoisted for three days in January 2009. Session_7_Words (2009) showed art that explored the ideas surrounding language and words, with contributions from Aleksandra Domanović, Cally Spooner and Cerith Wyn Evans among a host of others.

Intermingled with the exhibitions, and equally billed as sessions, a series of conversations was posted online, and an evening of lectures occurred. Then, in 2010, Am Nuden Da gave up their gallery, a move that catalysed a more pronounced form of the institutional critique that had echoed through their previous endeavours. They initiated the Press Release series of sessions in which the trio would provide a fully written press release to a third-party curator, who would be tasked with realising an exhibition based on the text. In mixing up the order and hierarchy of the exhibition process (press releases

In mixing up the order and hierarchy of the exhibition process, they were questioning, and perhaps gently undermining, the status quo of exhibition-making are supposed to take the lead from the show, not the other way round), they were questioning, and perhaps gently undermining, the status quo of exhibition-making. How should the hierarchy between curator and artist function? What is, or should be, the difference between the two roles? Should concept lead artwork, or artwork lead concept? If the art object is a form of communication, then what the hell is the point of a press release anyway? Their initial response to an invitation last year by the artist George Henry Longly to take part in a two-stop touring group show was typically immaterial – they conducted

Kerstin Brätsch, Sol per Sfogare il Core (Painting as Monster), 2013, Bomarzo, Italy, 31/7/13, one of five exhibitions in the Am Nuden Da series Let’s Not Dispute the Useless. …

ArtReview

seemingly ‘purposeless’ studio visits with each of the other artists (thus questioning and to an extent short-circuiting the careerist expectations that surround the studio visit as a social and professional phenomenon). For the second incarnation of the show, staged at Chez Valentin in Paris, the trio defied categorisation again, however, by producing an actual artwork themselves and not just facilitating the production of work by others. Entering once the show had been hung, but before the evening vernissage, they highlighted the hairline cracks in the wall or areas of filled plaster, by daubing ‘Facebook blue’ across the offending areas. It’s a neat gesture, one that asks whether, like the ubiquitous social media site, the exhibition format is merely a platform and artists are the content providers – and, additionally, who benefits from whom. If Am Nuden Da’s work thus far has involved rewiring the connections between gallerist, curator and artist, then their latest project, Let’s Not Dispute the Useless. …, seems to be addressing the circuit receiver, the viewer. Under this banner the trio are in the process of staging five solo exhibitions by Gerry Bibby, Juliette Blightman, Kerstin Brätsch, Oliver Laric and Gil Leung, lasting a day each and in purposely cryptic locations (the collective’s website states Blightman’s show was titled The Beach at Trouville and took place in Trouville, France). The only visitors expected are the members of Am Nuden Da and the individual artist, who will spend his or her time talking and fleshing out a fictive scenario to contextualise the show, to be published at a later date. In typically skewering fashion, the viewer becomes a reader, the show becomes dematerialised and the chronology is unhinged.

FANG Lijun opening on 20 December

方力鈞

100 Years

100 Objects

Worlds

Part I Hong Kong Arts Centre 16 Jan - 3 Feb 2014 2 Harbour Road Wanchai, Hong Kong

Years

Part II Hanart TZ Gallery 17 Jan - 15 Feb 2014

401 Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong

Jointly Presented by

Curated by Institute of Contemporary Art GAO + and Social Thought Shiming (China Academy of Art)

www.hanart.com +852 2526 9019 hanart@hanart.com

Great Critics and Their Ideas No 27

Georg Lukács on the Turner Prize Interview by Matthew Collings

Philosopher and critic Georg Lukács (born in Budapest, 1885, died there in 1971) was one of the founders of the tradition of Western Marxism, the intellectual movement that returns Marx to Marx, resisting the distortion of his ideas by Soviet orthodoxy.

ArtReview

ArtReview What do you think about contemporary art – the Venice Biennale, the Turner Prize? Georg Lukács The Turner Prize was invented as a media event, and for its first few years, as its creators tried to understand what the media might want, the artworks were displayed badly and the rules of the prize were amateurishly confused and changeable. When responsibility for it was largely taken over by the media itself in the form of a commercial TV station, in the early 1990s, it began a decade-long identification with the then emerging YBA movement. It was lucky for both of them that they each existed. Today the Turner Prize retains the spectacular slickness and scale it first acquired under the protection of Channel 4. Staged somewhere out in Ireland this year, it performs an honourable function of bringing art to the regions. To turn to the Biennale, this year it seemed to be about outsiders and insiders: an insider elite is challenged to allow a new crowd to get in on the action. However, the outsiders are not really so remote – so the challenge is rather a soft one. For many years now, as art occupies more and more positions previously considered a bit pathetic, the art-insider mindset has been conditioned automatically to applaud art by mad people and mystics. As if it were returning to a pre-New York School moment. And during the same last few years, hardcore insider artists, who previously might have made every effort to conform to a different expectation, that artists ought to be rational and articulate, have often pretended to be mad. If they don’t pretend themselves, then critical commentary is happy to do it for them. Take Bruce Nauman, a boring guy in person, as anyone knows who’s met him. At least if they have an active mind they would see that. Of course, if it’s a journalist from Vogue, then Nauman will appear to combine the mental brilliance of St Thomas Aquinas with the charisma of Rasputin. But more and more, the supposedly informed art publications adopt a Vogue socialite approach, peppering insufferable whimsy with off-the-peg theoretical formulations. There is a tacit agreement that we must pretend that Nauman’s videos of himself spinning or moaning or walking oddly actually constitute some kind of record of modern dervishism. If you look at the conjuncture that produced those videos, and which made it possible for ideas of the 1960s and 70s about structure to take that particular form, it is clear they are something else entirely. AR What’s a conjuncture? GL Because certain economic, social and political forces are temporarily aligned, a new development, an advance, becomes possible. A bit later and the moment will have passed:

no videos of Nauman muttering or painting his balls black. A bit sooner, the same thing: it’s too early. But in this particular historical conjuncture, the painting-the-balls moment is there. Lenin wrote to the party from exile in 1917 that it was now or never as far as taking over power was concerned. And he was right. Such a moment can be days or months, but it is certain that if it’s missed, it won’t come again. AR Do you think artworld people should revere art or be a bit contemptuous of it? GL Whatever it takes. The real motivation is that they should seek to affirm the ideal of a fulfilled humanity through critical insights in their chosen field. In relation to this point, I regret the hold that sheer irrelevance has on today’s light art-journalism; that is, the kind of art writing that is most ubiquitous. The sacred cows of art continue to be sacred cows. In fact, critical

The sacred cows of art continue to be sacred cows. In fact, critical fawning and worshipping is worse than ever. But now writers – keen to be thought of as informed but at the same time human – feel they must add irrelevant personal confession to the crime of failing to have anything original to say about art. Marx would say they are the conduits for forces they are unable to perceive fawning and worshipping is worse than ever. This is a certain kind of irrelevance that has always existed: avoiding the necessity to see through fads and instead pathetically identifying with them. But now the writers – keen to be thought of as informed but at the same time human – feel they must add irrelevant personal confession to the crime of failing to have anything original to say about art. Perhaps it is unsurprising that they don’t show any capability or willingness to draw conclusions from self-exposure. It is as if it is a tic they cannot conquer. Marx would say they are the conduits for forces they are unable to perceive. In the magazine for which we’re recording this interview, the editor breathlessly confesses facing page Georg Lukács. Licensed Under Creative Commons

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that ‘it felt good’ to tell his readers – who are expecting insights into a modern-day reconstruction of a famous 1960s exhibition of conceptual art, which has been staged in Venice at the same time as the Biennale – that he is too young to have seen the original. In the Guardian review of the same show, headed ‘From Prada to povera: the Venice Biennale recaptures the spirit of the 60s’, the critic inexplicably mentions visiting earlier Biennales with his ‘lovers’. (And in his later review of the Biennale itself, we are informed, not for the first time by this writer, that ‘being pretentious’ is a value in art, not an affliction; a bit of information which – since it recurs so often – the reader can perhaps be forgiven for interpreting as the reviewer’s personal mantra or life-purpose.) Of course, these are asides only, but the examples one could cite are endless. A whole book could be written about the phenomenon: the ratio of pointless self-exposure is in exact proportion to the degree that contemporary selfhood in general becomes falsified, as the total takeover of the self’s construction by capitalism is inexorably achieved. AR Don’t you think critics should ever let their hair down? GL Relevant irrelevance can be an effective rhetoric in criticism. Appearing to be contemptuous might be part of it. The writer refuses the expected air of sanctimony that goes with consideration of certain figures or topics, and instead allows opposing and even outright outlandish tones and thoughts to come in. The aim is to put to the test automatic obedience. Reification is attacked. I would call this the right kind of irrelevance. Unfortunately this current journalistic syndrome I’m referring to is not that. AR Surely readers can enjoy the experts being interesting personalities? GL Appearing to be talking humanly is not necessarily any more use than genuinely talking analytically or intellectually. The voice of course doesn’t matter. The point is to have grasped something in the first place and to have found a way to convey it to an audience with force. Getting across fantasies about how you’d like your individual personality to be understood is irrelevant in a bad way. AR Where do you get these ideas? What was your own life experience? GL Well, it’s interesting. From the moment I converted, at the age of thirty-three, I was a lifelong communist. I have been imprisoned and interrogated many times. I denounced my own books. I betrayed my own ideas, and then in different contexts I regenerated enthusiasm

for them. A belief system is not rigid: you’re always constructing it. I was commissar for culture in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. A few years earlier I’d been part of a theatre troupe that brought Ibsen and Strindberg to Budapest. I studied philosophy in Berlin. I was an aesthete. Before I was thirty-five I was under sentence of death in my own country, such was the explosive changeability of the times. I lived in exile in Vienna. I met Gramsci. I published a vast number of articles. I pointed out the centrality of the concept of alienation in Marx’s thought. And I wrote about the subjects that preoccupied the greatest revolutionary minds, Trotsky included. His involvement at a high level with culture and the military mirrored my own trajectory – in the same year I was the culture minister I was also a commissar in the Hungarian Red Army. I published History and Class Consciousness, a collection of essays, in 1923. That book’s centre was a dense and lengthy consideration of reification, the essential product of commodification. Reification means ‘thingification’. Marx said under capitalism a person is transformed into a thing. But also human relations cannot be seen clearly, we see them instead as relations between things. Marxism is a theory of the totality, the whole. I said that, to avoid ossification and dogma, Marxist ideas themselves must be subjected to Marxist analysis. With this book I was really instrumental in the initiation of the school of Western Marxism, the school of thought that was to become known as the New Left. The Communist Movement immediately denounced it, on the grounds that it defended positions rejected by Lenin in his pamphlet ‘LeftWing Communism: An Infantile Disorder’, which was published three years prior to History and Class Consciousness. I aligned myself with the Moscow Comintern. I publicly apologised for my own researches.

Although not in so many words, I pretty much said, ‘Don’t read this deviant book.’ Eventually I lived in Moscow, to avoid the Nazis. Initially I was summoned there, to answer questions, but then I was prevented from leaving and I ended up staying for 15 years. I worked in the basement at the Marx-Engels Institute, reading works by Marx that were little known at the time. I survived the purges by accepting Stalinism. I compromised myself partly deeply and partly only outwardly. During the 1950s, once again in my own country, I attacked Modernism in the arts. The Moscow Comintern of course infamously opposed modernist art as well. But there were elements within vulgar antimodernist ideology that I thought were true. So I was the enemy of the same thing that communism at its basest level, out of the crudest motivations, sought to eradicate. I made myself ridiculous, I’m afraid, chastising modern art for being morbid, pathological and solipsistic. In my seventies I regenerated my

political energies and became part of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. And once again I served as minister of culture in a briefly existing revolutionary government. When it was crushed, I was arrested and imprisoned. Soviet secret police pressured me to denounce the imprisoned Hungarian revolutionary premier. I refused and said I’d be glad to make public my opinions about him when we were both free to walk the streets. I was exiled to Romania – imprisoned in Count Dracula’s Transylvanian castle, as it happens – and then allowed to return to Hungary on condition I lived an outwardly depoliticised existence. I lasted a long time, and I analysed a lot of ideas in the history of culture and politics. I was born at the time Nietzsche was putting the finishing touches to Thus Spake Zarathustra and Gladstone was still prime minister of England, and I died after the Beatles broke up and the moon landing was already a memory. In the year of the Summer of Love, when Sergeant Pepper came out, I wrote a preface for the republication of History and Class Consciousness, advising readers not to read it, but in language that deliberately drew them in. AR It seems there’s no end to irony! GL There should always be an aim for it. It’s a problem when it only shows itself in order to wake up the reader from her snoring at the rest of your article consisting of mere automatic obedient spouting of current platitudes. In this case irony will only be the register of the writer’s mental depression. After all, irony in art criticism – and I speak as the author of many books on literary form – is no different to irony in conversation. It should denote an ability to think from multiple perspectives and starting points and to inhabit multiple frameworks, while maintaining a firm hold on your ultimate critical idea. Not that you have lost the ability to think at all. Next month Walter Benjamin on David Shrigley

David Shrigley, Life Model, 2012 (installation view, Turner Prize 2013 exhibition, Derry-Londonderry). Photo: Lucy Dawkins. © the artist

ArtReview

Great Collectors and Their Ideas No 3

Martin Margulies Interview by Joshua Mack

One of a handful of world-class collectors in Miami, developer and philanthropist Martin Margulies has shaped the cultural and built fabric of South Florida since he began building and buying in the 1970s. His art holdings, which number over 4,500 works and are particularly rich in photography and large-scale sculpture, are the basis of rotating exhibitions at a warehouse space that opened to the public in 1999 and has offered educational programmes since 2003. Admission fees benefit Lotus House, a shelter and advocacy group for homeless women and children for which Margulies recently purchased a building to house at-risk teenagers.

ArtReview

ARTREVIEW When did you begin collecting? What was your initial focus? Martin Margulies I began buying art by purchasing prints by various artists. A good friend and I got together and purchased the Vollard Suite by Picasso. We had to hunt down a few of the prints that were missing from the suite, which was an interesting and pleasurable process. I began reading and studying about art and the art market and became intrigued by what I was learning. One of the things I remember was reading about the taxi tycoon Robert C. Scull and his wife Ethel, who sold 50 paintings and sculptures from their renowned collection of Pop art for what were, at that time, unheard-of prices for art by living artists. I decided there must be something to the art market that warranted my attention, so I kept reading and looking and eventually made a commitment to become a collector. I attended a Contemporary sale at Sotheby’s in 1976 where I was the underbidder for a bronze work by Isamu Noguchi. After the sale an intriguing woman named Shaindy Fenton (an art consultant from Fort Worth, Texas) tapped me on the shoulder and explained she knew where to get me the Noguchi I wanted. Shaindy knew Noguchi and Leo Castelli and Claes Oldenburg and just about everyone in the contemporary artworld. We became great friends and she introduced me to a lot of people. She used to work with Raymond and Patsy Nasher on their collection and for a while I would join them visiting all the galleries. Eventually I went out on my own, and unfortunately Shaindy passed away when she was still young from diabetes. I dedicated the book on my sculpture collection to Shaindy. AR I’ve read that a turning point for you was your acquisition of John De Andrea’s Blonde Woman Holding Dress (1977), a piece that seems to encapsulate a state of introspection and vulnerability. What about the sculpture clicked for you and how did it change your sense of what art and collecting could mean to you? MM The sculpture was an early acquisition, and I have lived with it in my home for almost 40 years. It went out on loan only one time, to the De Andrea retrospective at the Kunst Haus Wien during the early 1990s, and I really missed the work when it was out of the collection. The figure is diminutive and the posture is very human in the way the female figure is holding the cloth in a modest demeanour. When I purchased the work from the late dealer and artworld personality Ivan Karp I was already committed to building a collection, but I was just getting to know Ivan. We went on to become friends and I have great memories of all our entertaining conversations and

correspondence. His gallery in Soho, OK Harris, has a great stable of realist artists – in fact I just purchased a wonderful work by Masao Gozu from the gallery, and the artist, who is Japanese, is coming to Miami next week to install the sculpture (a realist structure depicting a fragment of a brick facade of a building which includes plants growing on the brick surface and a working window) at our public Warehouse facility for the season. AR You saw the De Andrea at OK Harris. What was it that led you to Ivan’s? And more broadly to Soho? What year was that? MM It was in 1977. I have a residence in New York and travel often to the city to look at all the exhibitions. Soho was in its nascent stage back then and there was a raw quality to the scene with all the industrial buildings, old streets and warehouses. OK Harris had new exhibitions

When Song Dong visited my private collection he saw the John De Andrea sculpture, which was placed in my bedroom with other works. He became mesmerised by the figure and asked us if he could borrow it and install it in the middle of his installation so that the mirrors of the wardrobe doors would reflect the blonde woman throughout his work. Of course we agreed once a month, usually by three different artists, so there was always something interesting to see. There was a real energy to the place, with artists coming and going. Ivan would look at any submission by any artist. He was constantly looking at new work. I saw Duane Hanson there and all these wonderful photorealist painters. I don’t really collect photorealism much anymore but I still enjoy the works. An interesting thing happened recently with the John De Andrea sculpture. About two weeks ago, we were installing a very large installation work at our Warehouse by and with the Chinese artist Song Dong. The work, The Wisdom of the Poor: A Communal Courtyard was exhibited by him in 2011 at the Venice Biennale, and we are featuring the work as a major part of our exhibition at the Warehouse this season. It is comprised of 100 wardrobe doors from 100 Chinese families that lived together in one of the very poorest

December 2013

neighbourhoods in Beijing during the 1950s and 60s. When Song Dong visited my private collection he saw the John De Andrea sculpture, which was placed in my bedroom with other works. He became mesmerised by the figure and asked us if he could borrow it and install it in the middle of his installation so that the mirrors of the wardrobe doors would reflect the blonde woman throughout his work. Of course we agreed. The effect is stunning – as you walk through Song Dong’s work, you see the elusive reflection of the blonde woman standing alone, eyes cast downward, clutching a cloth to cover herself. So this will be the second time the work will be out of my home on loan, but this time it is close by at the Warehouse where thousands of people will have the opportunity to experience the sculpture in a new way. AR What was the art community like in Miami at that time? MM At that time Miami had a small but interesting seasonal art scene. There were world-class collectors such as Norman and Irma Braman, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr and Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz, who were active with their collections. I was developing my own collection and opened the outdoor sculpture portion of the collection to the public in 1979. Artists such as Bob Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain and Jim Rosenquist visited Miami frequently and took up residences on the west coast. I became friends with Isamu Noguchi and he would stay with me when he was working on a public project for Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. There was a lot of activity within the private collections. Like most collectors everywhere, the private collectors in Miami were very generous in opening up their homes to groups of serious people who are active in the artworld. By the 1980s, Miami was already an artworld destination for out-of-town groups. Museum curators and directors from all over the country would bring their patron groups to Miami to tour the private collections in an effort to educate their supporters about collecting and connoisseurship. AR Still, it seems to have changed since then. How would you describe the city’s evolution as an art centre? How much effect has Art Basel had on the scene? MM Miami is home to five of the top 200 collectors in the world. Art Basel has brought a global artworld audience to Miami. People know there is something going on and everyone wants in on it, so to speak. It is an exciting time for Miami. But you have to remember Art Basel is just five days of the year. It’s a struggle for the local dealers and art professionals the remaining 360 days.

ar You, among several other collectors in the community, have established spaces to present your collection to the public. Those efforts predate the fair, of course. When did you decide to take this step and what led you to it? mm We opened the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in 1999. My longtime curator, Katherine Hinds, and I were searching for a way to accommodate my growing photography collection. We began looking for a warehouse storage facility and decided it would be safer and healthier for the works – and more interesting for us – if we hung them on the walls rather than just storing them in stacks. We had been doing exhibitions culled from the collection for many years with museums and universities, so it was a natural decision to open the warehouse to the public and do our own seasonal exhibitions. We started with photography then expanded to video and sculpture, and installation art, and recently added paintings. We went through a series of three expansions and have 45,000 sq ft [4,200sqm] of space. Each year we do a new exhibition that normally includes several hundred works of art from the collection.

experience that can expand their capacity to understand our culture and the world around them. We are glad when teachers bring their new students back to the collection year after year or include a visit to us as part of their curriculum. ar Admission to your collection is by donation to Lotus House, a shelter for homeless women and children in Miami. But is there a deeper connection? An underlying sense of obligation or an interest in social justice? mm Yes, we charge adults $10 admission to our facility with all proceeds going directly to the homeless shelter. Students are free of charge. In addition all proceeds from our books sales and an annual fundraiser, as well as tours and other initiatives we host, go directly to the Lotus House, which supports women and children who have fallen through the cracks and are desperately trying to make a better life for themselves.

ar Does that, or has that, sense of involvement and empathy affect the kind of work you collect? Is there something you believe the arts can teach us as human beings and as members of a society? mm Not really, no. Each of us responds to art in a very personal, subjective way. I can say that there is a portion of the collection – mainly the social documentation works in the photography collection – that involves the human condition. We have several hundred photographs by Lewis Hine from the early decades of the twentieth century that document child labour and which led to changes in our society that protect children from abusive labour practices. I collect Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange in depth, and they documented the poverty of rural American families during the Depression. There is a dignity to the suffering and everydayness of people in these photographs that one can equate with the urban homeless people of today. I empathise with the human suffering I see in these photos and the poverty I see on the streets of Miami and other cities. It’s frustrating to see the waste and foolishness of our government.

ar Was there a role you were hoping to fill in the community? Perhaps more specifically, how have the spaces been a response to the paucity of public institutions that match, at least until now, the vigorous engagement Miami collectors have with the arts?

ar On the other hand, you are a real-estate developer, so in essence, you are creating environments for people to live in and curating aspects of the city. Has your thinking about art affected how you imagine the spaces you build, or vice versa?

mm Our space was never a response to other institutions. And we didn’t look at the collection as filling a role. Once you become involved with educating people through exposing them to great art, especially young people, you get excited and you want to do a good job, and so that’s what we do. Occasionally we will come across a great work, such as the three-ton truck with 14-screen video installation by Barry McGee that we look at as an especially poignant work, which will resonate with some of the young students that make up our audience. So we are particularly inclined and motivated to add certain works to the collection because of their educational qualities and potential. We found that the video installations are what young students respond to the most. We think we can provide young people with an

mm Yes, it has to a degree. The buildings I build must be functional and be attractive to the market I am reaching out to, whether it is families or retirees. While many of my buildings have beautiful public areas, generally I do not put art in these public areas. Everybody has a different point of view and I would not want to subject the residents of my buildings to my ideas of what art is to me. ar What are your hopes for the collection and Miami as a cultural centre in the future? mm My hope is to get through Art Basel Miami Beach. People ask me what is the best part about the Art Basel week? I always say… when it’s over. While it is very exhilarating and fun to see many of my friends from around the world, it is exhausting. When it’s over, I need a vacation.

John De Andrea, Blonde Woman Holding Dress, 1977, polychromed vinyl, 157 × 36 × 30 cm

ArtReview

Other People and Their Ideas No 11

Simon Castets Interview by Tom Eccles

Simon Castets is a curator based in New York, who, together with Hans Ulrich Obrist, founded the long-term research project 89plus at the beginning of the year. 89plus also formed the basis of this year’s talks marathon at the Serpentine Galleries in London, which brought together participants from the fields of art, architecture, music, activism, science, technology, literature and theory in an attempt to understand a series of questions and propositions about the generation born in or after 1989. Castets himself was born before 1989, although not by much. In September he was appointed director and curator of the not-for-profit Swiss Institute in New York.

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ArtReview You recently formed an ongoing investigation into what might be described as the next generation: those born in or after 1989, a year in which you note that the Internet became widely available, the Berlin Wall came down and the first GPS satellite was launched into orbit. The project asks a series of questions: ‘Can the potential of emerging technologies lead to a truly global dialogue that is not homogeneous but acknowledges and fosters difference? What options are available to the generations born after the Cold War, growing up through the crisis of financial capitalism? How can we understand new and networked forms of collectivity as examples of new social, economic, political and aesthetic forms? What are the new forms of activism and protest? Has access to the Internet changed political action? What is the relationship between individual leadership and the group in the age of nonhierarchical, ‘horizontal’ practice? Who is responsible for the future?’ Can I ask why you think this generation is any different from any other? Simon Castets We don’t know that the generation in itself is different – we are way too early in a decades-long project to make broad statements. But we do think that the changes brought by the technological innovations and geopolitical changes you mentioned amount to a radical paradigm shift. Hence our interest in investigating the work made by people who are born into this new state of affairs. We think it is interesting to consider those effects from a generational perspective, as having such a constraint does not only focus the research but also forces you to recognise the limits of such a framework: it is a generation of over three billion people; a homogenising view wouldn’t be apropos. AR Can you explain the structure of 89plus? The scope of the inquiry seems rather overwhelming, if not a little broad. SC Even though the constraint can seem narrow, the inquiry does indeed yield an incredibly vast array of possibilities. It has to do with the fact that this generation is unevenly distributed and we don’t realise its importance from here: only about 30 percent of the population of Europe and the US is born in 1989 or after, while in most African and many Asian countries the proportion rises above 60 percent. This is reflected in the very structure of 89plus: it is a research platform hosted online on 89plus. com, and can therefore be added to by virtually anyone in the world. Thanks to this open call, we receive information daily from people working in Indonesia, India or Nigeria, and it is indeed overwhelming, but we embrace this aspect. As we are working without a deadline, or more precisely, with a series of deadlines, we welcome this constant flow of submissions and are in

conversation with an incrementally large group of people, which is somewhat contrary to the logic of curating. AR You are currently in the phase of an open call to artists, writers, architects and other so-called creatives, but which also includes scientists and technologists, the only rule being that participants must be from the ‘89 plus’ generation. There are no restrictions, other than the file size, as to what people can submit. While the project is only the beginning, are there any patterns emerging from what you’ve received so far?

People born in 1989 and afterwards have often had an early exposure to Internet porn. If that is your first representation of sexuality, it is most likely to influence your perspective SC Even though, as you said, the project is only beginning, we see some recurring aspects in people’s interests. Poetry is one of them, and this is why the 89plus Marathon at the Serpentine Galleries during this year’s Frieze London included a poetry section, which was a highlight. There were readings by – in order of appearance – Sophie Collins, Harry Burke (who was a key adviser in selecting the participants for that section), Luna Miguel, Gabby Bess, Rachael Allen and Crispin Best. Although it wasn’t poetry per se, Ho Rui An’s participation was also part of that realm. And there was also a large group of poets participating through the marathon’s online platform.

The effects of the Internet are not experienced only firsthand by young computer users but also indirectly in everyday life situations and exposure to foreign cultural influences virtually anywhere in the world AR I heard there were quite a lot of poems about sex. The Canadian writer and novelist Douglas Coupland was certainly an inspiration for many at the Serpentine Marathon, drawing an enthusiastic response on your concurrent live-stream blog. Coupland was born in 1961 and famously popularised the label ‘Generation X’ in the title of his 1991 novel. The 89plus generation is

facing page photo: Bruno Zhu

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neither Y nor Z. Is growing up in a fully digital world what really defines them? SC Douglas Coupland coined the term ‘Diamond Generation’ for people born in 1989 and after: it is about sharpness (immediate access to knowledge) and transparency (a different relationship to privacy). The fact that there was lots of talking about sex in the poetry section of the 89plus Marathon at the Serpentine Galleries might not be a coincidence. People born in 1989 and afterwards have often had an early exposure to Internet porn. If that is your first representation of sexuality, it is most likely to influence your perspective. This generation has sometimes been characterised as ‘digital natives’, but this appellation doesn’t account for the fact that, according to a recent study from the Georgia Institute of Technology and International Telecommunication Union (ITU), on a global scale, less than a third of this generation has been active online for at least five years. TimorLeste is both the country with the highest proportion of people in its population born in 1989 and after (69 percent according to the UN Population Division) and the country with the lowest proportion of digital natives (less than one percent). What this shows is that if you look further than the richest countries, we are far from living in a fully digital world. What should be accounted for, though, is that the effects of the Internet are not experienced only firsthand by young computer users but also indirectly in everyday life situations and exposure to foreign cultural influences virtually anywhere in the world. Also, the proportion of digital natives globally is increasing extremely rapidly. The ITU report indicates that it will double by 2017. And some figures are surprising: there are more digital natives in Malaysia (fourth in the world proportionally) than in Spain. AR My wife characterises the ‘millennials’ as lazy, self-absorbed and overentitled. How would you describe them? SC This characterisation could easily apply to lots of Gen-Xers, and to other age brackets. It might just be that this is simply most destabilising when people are teenagers. Actually this is a good occasion to emphasise a very important aspect of the 89plus project: it is not about youth. It is a long-term project investigating the interests of a generation that happens to be exclusively young today, but in ten or 15 years from now hopefully we’ll still be talking with some of the same people, who will be in their late thirties then. The scope becomes wider as we progress. AR After the suicide of the American Internet activist Aaron Swartz earlier this year and the revelations of

NSA spying by Edward Snowden (not to mention the destruction of this young idealist’s life), don’t you think the utopian bubble built around the Internet and its possibilities may have burst for many young people? One would certainly hope so. Mark Zuckerberg still seems to think that connectivity is a liberation, while Bill Gates has argued recently that information technology doesn’t even rank in the top five of the problem-solving devices on our planet today. As you reach out globally (and you carefully note the disparity in global access to computers), what do you think are the differences between how, say, my generation (‘64plus’) and the next generation will address the political realities of their time? SC The examples you mentioned I think speak volumes about the transformative potential of the Internet on political action. As with all major innovations, it is presented as both the solution to everything and the worst thing that has ever happened to mankind. Reality is somewhere in between, and the 89plus Marathon explored different aspects of this, from James Darling’s plea for the UK Government Digital Strategy to Jake Davis, who is famous as the former LulzSec/ Anonymous hacker ‘Topiary’. Jake was legally banned from the Internet for two years and has served time in Feltham Young Offenders Institution for his involvement in computer misuse, defined as a ‘tier 1 threat to British national security’. Jake had to cancel his presentation at the very last minute, as he expressed concerns about speaking in public after a long legal battle. Another example of a hyperconnected teenager becoming a ‘threat to national security’: Ou Ning introduced us to Joshua Wong, who at age fifteen used social media to organise mass protests against the adoption of Beijing-dictated Chinese civic education into the Hong Kong public school curriculum. Interestingly, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests are omitted from the Chinese government’s version of history. AR I’m actually interested in the impact of technology on a generation’s relationship to authority and politics, which seems to be changing – certainly in

modes of resistance. Do you consider the Occupy movement a failure? SC Again I think we can’t have a general perspective on this. It makes me think in a way of your The Human Snapshot project [generated by an international conference organised by the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France, of which the interviewer is a member of the Core Group of advisers (and which also supports 89plus), and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, of which Tom Eccles is executive director], which looks at claims of universality and human rights, and how you highlighted the shortcomings of the Family of Man-type approach. The Occupy movement has been particularly active in Spain, where we will be conducting an 89plus ‘professional meeting’ with ARCO art fair in Madrid in February. This will be

SC Definitely not a mischaracterisation. It is a unique institution, and my predecessors have brilliantly managed to establish its key position in New York. So the achievement is rather something I will be working towards: it’s a great honour and a challenge to now start a new page of its history. The best is yet to come! There is great momentum: the annual benefit has been incredibly successful, Daniel Baumann is joining us as a trustee and we are soon opening the first solo exhibition in the US of Allyson Vieira, a new site-specific iteration of her splendid Kunsthalle Basel show. More soon. Fasten your seatbelt. AR In what is undoubtedly a ‘crowded market’, how do you think an organisation like Swiss Institute can distinguish itself? What do you think is lacking right now in New York? SC It distinguishes itself through its mandate, inscribed in its name, and the way it fulfils it. As you said, ‘decidedly Swiss’ yet ‘comfortably international’. I can’t think of any other institution with that approach to cultural diplomacy. It probably has to do with the fact that, within its population of roughly eight million (almost the same as that of London), Switzerland holds the world’s highest proportion of artists per square metre.

the occasion to also do some focused research in the country. We are particularly interested in this project, as within the Spanish population born in 1989 and after, 50 percent of people are unemployed. It is disastrous. But it may also lead to unexpected developments. AR You have recently been named as the new director of Swiss Institute in New York. At twenty-nine, and being French, that’s a remarkable achievement. It’s a rather oddball institution, being unabashedly not Swiss and yet decidedly Swiss at the same time – being comfortably international, sophisticated and self-assured, with a fair bout of humour. Or is that a gross mischaracterisation? Curator Harry Burke speaking at the 89plus Marathon, Serpentine Galleries, London. Photo: Lewis Ronald and Pierrick Mouton

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AR We all complain about the art market. Is it really as pernicious and malevolent as many claim? SC Only if one lets it dictate choices in areas where it shouldn’t. It is a necessary evil that often allows the not-for-profit sector to think bigger. Probably more convergences than conflicts of interests. It is evolving very fast, so it’s everybody’s role to make sure the boundaries are respected. AR What role do you see for not-for-profit organisations? SC They are bastions of creative thinking. Their voices can carry much further than their small infrastructures. They have a great responsibility. They are a public service. They work in the long term with elegant flexibility and unflinching determination.

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THE LIBER ATION OF ART

‘F for Fake’: The trials and tribulations of Knoedler & Co

top F for Fake (film still), 1973, dir Orson Welles, 89 minutes above stereoscopic interior view of Knoedler & Co, New York, c. 1870, from the Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views. Courtesy New York Public Library

ArtReview

The Law and Its Ideas No 2

Legal issues and disputes that shed light on the often opaque relationships and codes that underpin the art market by Daniel McClean

The Case Orson Welles’s F for Fake (1973) memorably tells the story of Elmyr de Hory, a professional art forger who duped the artworld, marooned in the villa of one of his ‘art dealers’ on the island of Ibiza. Welles’s ironic mise en abyme, which features de Hory’s biographer, Clifford Irving (a hoaxer in his own right), prefigures the recent crisis in art authentication caused by the scandal afflicting the venerated Knoedler & Co. The New York gallery sold at least 40 fake abstract-expressionist artworks, including paintings purprtedly made by Rothko and Pollock, to unsuspecting buyers. Knoedler & Co closed in 2011 (after trading for 165 years) – the successive lawsuits brought against it and its directors by deceived clients proving too much. As it transpired, the fakes had been consigned to Knoedler (and to another New York gallery) by a fraudulent dealer, Glafira Rosales. Working with a local forger based in Queens, Rosales had organised their production and had netted a reported $32 million (of a total sum of $80m paid by purchasers to galleries for the works) in the process. In September 2013, Rosales pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the New York courts; charges that could leave her facing up to 99 years in prison. Who is to blame? So how did Knoedler get caught up in the scandal? It seems that Rosales told Knoedler that she represented an important Spanish collector who wished to remain anonymous. She also told the gallery that her commission would be taken care of by this unnamed principal if Knoedler was to sell the artworks on consignment. To its peril, Knoedler, like many secondary art-market dealers, accepted this arrangement (possibly incentivised by the large potential profits) and did not seek to verify the identity of this mysterious Spanish collector. Ann Freedman (a Knoedler director until 2009) filed defamation proceedings in September 2013 in the New York courts against another art dealer, Marco Grassi. Freedman’s claim arises out of negative comments made by Grassi in New York magazine regarding her/ Knoedler’s role in the scandal. However, Freedman has also used her defamation suit to try and clear her name by throwing dirt on the leading art experts whose expertise she claims she relied on when authenticating the fakes consigned to Knoedler by Rosales. Freedman names over 20 experts in her action, including senior curators from

MoMA (New York), the Beyeler Foundation (Basel) and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), all of whom she says were duped. Freedman’s evidence (like the entire Knoedler scandal) places the artworld’s authentication procedures on trial, throwing light not only on their secrecy and opacity, but also on the flimsy evidence on which experts’ attributions are often built and the selective manner in which they can be communicated to buyers. It has also alarmed art experts and artists’ authentication committees already fearful that they may be exposed to litigation for getting their opinions wrong. Lessons to be drawn Ignoring the many issues that are raised concerning how art is authenticated, selling and buying artworks where the identity of the seller remains undisclosed is fraught with risks. On the one hand, there are those relating to the ownership of artworks (eg, not knowing whether the seller/dealer can actually transfer ownership). On the other hand, there are risks relating to authenticity: is the artwork genuine? Though it is easy to speak with the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that if Knoedler and its clients had exercised greater due diligence regarding the provenance of Rosales’s artworks (ie, their history of ownership) and in particular had asked Rosales to provide evidence of the identity of the unnamed Spanish collector, then the fraud could have been discovered and the scandal avoided. In the secondary art market, privacy is highly valued. Sellers often wish to remain anonymous for a host of legitimate and illegitimate reasons, ranging from not wishing the market to know that they are trying to sell or have sold artworks, to tax avoidance and money laundering. Agents often also dislike to disclose the identity of their principals (both sellers and buyers), not least because they are fearful that once this information is disclosed, they will get cut out of the deal. As F for Fake brilliantly illustrates, forgery is the enduring nemesis of authentic authorship. Yet there are steps that can be taken by dealers and collectors to reduce the risks – linked to greater transparency. In the past, the art market was a relatively small world where dealers and collectors knew one another and art transactions were based on trust. Today, this world has changed. The art market is a different game consisting of global protagonists (who don’t know one another) and collectors who are often just as much investors as traditional connoisseurs. How long will it be before the rules of the game are also rewritten?

December 2013

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Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville Searching for my lost shaker of salt 73

Cosmic Girl The Berlin-based artist’s meditations on time, space and the nature of objects take shape in sculptures that are pared back, stripped down and often surprisingly humorous. How does she pull off what are, in effect, exercises in both style and modal logic? by Kimberly Bradley portrait by Simon Menges

When Alicja Kwade was young, her father didn’t tell her the usual fairytales at bedtime. Often, just as she was falling asleep, he’d say things like, ‘Just imagine space is endless.’ She did. And still does. Primarily focused on sculpture but often straying into photography and video, Kwade’s practice centres on a compelling series of mind exercises: thought experiments with space and time, jumps into parallel worlds and infinite possibilities, and wildly imaginative explorations of what’s real and what’s not. “I’m fascinated with the borders between science and suspicion. All the in-betweens. Mr Houdini is one of my biggest heroes,” she says laughing, and jerking her head towards a large poster of the magician Harry Houdini, on the back wall of her vast two-room studio in Berlin’s Kreuzberg. Kwade is no escapologist, but she’s certainly an illusionist. Her often confounding objects highlight deep-seated social conventions, the laws of physics and the mysterious natures of time, space and light (why is gold universally valuable? What if we could feel how fast the earth is flying through space?). The artist plays with time and its wrinkles (her video Ein Tag in 7 Minuten und 23 Sekunden, 2006, is a Christian Marclay-esque series of clocks and wristwatches culled from 24 feature films, each scene running just long enough to not be narrative, depicting one day in 7:23 minutes). Light, too (Teleportation, 2010, sees the light of an art deco lamp reflected on glass sheets strategically placed throughout a space). In works like Kohle (Union 666) (2008), she questions how society allocates and identifies value by covering bricks of coal with gold leaf. In Bordsteinjuwelen (Die 100 Auserwählten) (2008) she had jewellers cut normal street stones into faceted ‘diamonds’. She presents improbable scenarios using doubled or multiple objects – like her famous set of two silver Nissan Micra cars (Nissan (Parallelwelt 1 + 2), 2009), with identical rusty dents and steering wheels on opposite sides (one was purchased in Bristol). The doubling or multiplying, she says, is not about “creating twin objects, but cutting time into a lot of slices and putting it back together again”. What? Kwade explains a theory that there are actually 11 dimensions, some of which we can’t access but exist parallel to the ones we know. The multiplication and mirrors go some way to representing the time and space we can’t perceive. In an ongoing body of work from 2008 collectively titled Aggregatzustand (Aggregate Condition), everyday objects (including mirrors) are curved, often melting down walls in an almost clichéd surrealist way; but it’s perhaps more akin to Alice’s looking glass in Lewis Carroll’s book. I’m not the first to notice the thematic

connection, as well as the connection with her name: in researching this article, I found a German-language interview in which Kwade reveals that ‘Alice’ is the name in her German passport, given to her by immigration authorities when she immigrated with her family from Katowice, Poland, at age eight. “I’m trying to see what reality is for me, and what it is for us all,” says Kwade, dragging on a cigarette. Her animated speech makes the conversation feel like an old friend is taking you on a brisk jaunt through a funhouse. “I’m trying to see what could be the structure of reality. I mean, we’re living on a ball that’s flying around. That’s crazy. Imagining that, everything is kind of possible. Because we can’t understand it anyway. We’re just animals, our brains are too small. Trying to understand the situation we’re all in is kind of incredible.” Around her studio is ample evidence of her apparently relentless quest. Research becomes object, object becomes research. A series of weirdly jagged metal rods lies on the floor, which Kwade later tells me are renderings of the invisible ‘borders’ between the world’s different time zones – often arbitrary structures humans have imposed on the passing and measurement of time. A thick door, typical for a prewar Berlin apartment, stands on end, rolled into a spiral. A ring of concentric circles in the form of tape and notes on the floor reveals that the artist mocked up a small version of the installation Die Gesamtheit aller Orte (The Totality of All Places, 2012, versions of which were on view at her Berlin gallery, Johann König, as well as Art Basel’s Unlimited that same year) right here. A model of her current exhibition, a solo museum show at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld’s Museum Haus Esters near Düsseldorf, tumbles across the floor in the atelier’s second space. On one wall is a multitude of clocks from different eras – here not an artwork, but clearly a manifestation of her preoccupation with time. I arrive in the early evening as one of her several assistants is leaving for the day. The artist usually stays a few hours longer, alone. “I have, depending on the work, two to five assistants, but during the day, I always feel a little observed,” she says. “I do my research and develop my ideas in the evening and at night.” The daughter of a cultural scientist and former gallery owner and conservator knew at age five that she wanted to be an artist. Now thirty-four, Kwade came to Berlin at nineteen to study sculpture at Berlin’s University of the Arts, mostly because, she jokes, “New York and London were too expensive”. She spent those early years learning, working, meeting other artists – like boyfriend Gregor Hildebrandt, with whom she’s been allied for 12 years – finding her inspirations (she mentions Robert Smithson’s formal (continued on page 81)

December 2013

Parallelwelt 1, 2008, eight Kaiser-Idell lamps, eight mirrors, 98 × 392 × 56 cm. Courtesy the artist and Johann König, Berlin

ArtReview

Andere Bedingung (Aggregatzustand 6), 2009, steel, copper, glass, mirror, iron, mop embroideries, seven parts, dimensions variable. Photo: Roman März

December 2013

ArtReview

December 2013

‘I’m trying to see what could be the structure of reality. I mean, we’re living on a ball that’s flying around. That’s crazy’

above Nach Osten, 2011, five speakers, microphone, amplifier, electric motor, pendular lightbulb, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Johann König, Berlin preceding pages Die Gesamtheit aller Orte, 2012, metal plates, metal pipes, metal mesh, perforated metal, metal rails, steel plates, steel bar, copper tubes, brass rings, brass rods, euro coins, wood mouldings, wood panels, glass panels, mirrors, door, bricks, bicycles, door, window, lacquer, rust, 54 pieces, dimensions variable. Photo: Roman März

ArtReview

concerns, Gordon Matta-Clark’s lighthearted approach and Italian philosopher/sociologist Elena Esposito’s theories on doubled reality and capitalism) and honing her own ideas. Kwade first gained wider recognition when she won the Piepenbrock Förderpreis for Sculpture in 2008 – the news of which came in the form of a surprise phone call. Apparently the nominating curator had seen Kwade’s Palette (a piece consisting of a varnished mahogany shipping pallet) at Art Cologne in 2006; the jury lauded her use of ‘highly varied concepts, techniques, and materials’. The award included a stint teaching at her alma mater as well as an exhibition at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum. Her work in the intervening years has placed her within a generation of young European artists – like Germans Michael Sailstorfer and Kitty Kraus, the Swedish Nina Canell and Austrian artist Judith Fegerl – exploring aspects of nature, time and space; perhaps testing belief systems, exposing what’s ‘real’ and ‘true’ in our environment, or plumbing the most physical ‘objectness’ of the object in a world in which objects are increasingly abundant and thus increasingly meaningless. Yet Kwade’s work stands on its own in terms of combining extensive (obsessive?) scientific-artistic research with a highly reduced, sometimes severe, formal sculptural language… and often a subtle sense of humour. Kwade likes to gently tease us into thinking. No matter how manipulated Kwade’s objects – both found and fabricated ones – might be, they are always flawless. The spiralled door looks like it was always that way – it’s in fact several doors, cut into slices and bent, acquired from a place outside Berlin that sells a vast array of everyday objects. The artist also finds items on eBay, like the Kaiser Idell lamps that crop up in her lightworks. She’ll reject pieces in which the human manipulation is obvious. The effort of fabrication needs to stay invisible, and the objects “light and easygoing”, as she says (she leaves most of the fabrication to outside experts), yet the concepts behind them must be airtight – thought through from the materials to the physical laws governing them to the ideas she’s expressing and exposing. The completed installations and exhibitions often feel like compellingly interactive set pieces, and have been described as filmic. “I can’t fake so much. I have to be straight with my works and be sure of what I’m doing 100 percent,” she says. We discuss the mechanics of a recent show; the inauguration of König’s new, still-raw Kreuzberg space in a brutalist church called St Agnes during Gallery Weekend Berlin in spring 2013. Nach Osten (2013) took the Foucault’s pendulum concept and translated it to a bright lightbulb swinging from a very long (14.5-metre) cord though a very dark space, its windy, whooshing sounds amplified to dramatic effect. It’s an idea Kwade had been waiting to

execute, but hadn’t been able to in smaller spaces. The bulb was calibrated to shift its swinging axis against the earth’s eastern rotation, something Kwade worked out with professors and engineers. The vernissage was a spectacular show of sharp shadows and sound, attended by hundreds, and talked about for weeks afterward. Nach Osten was a physical, awe-inspiring experience, but I admit I initially missed its deeper level (openings are horrid that way; later viewers reported perceiving the rotation). Kwade doesn’t mind. “The important thing is that the object itself is touching something in the viewer. Some works are more complex and you can’t get the inner plot without someone explaining it. But if the viewer does get that vision and my starting point, it’s important to be very honest.” It’s as if, by offering us coherent initial access with pieces like this – and, in other work, providing us with familiar markers with her found everyday objects – Kwade gives a glimpse of or passage into her possible worlds and extra dimensions. Only if we really want to come along, that is. The temporal issues before the opening were far more banal: “We had only one day to install the pendulum, and there were a lot of mechanics to keep the swinging smooth. I couldn’t really test it before the opening, so I had five beers right away because I was so nervous,” she says, laughing. Her candour, passionate curiosity and, yes, honesty are refreshing at a time in which so many others in the world of emerging art seem to be about developing a personal brand, or making work that is often over-referential and gimmicky. Kwade has just returned from the opening of her Krefeld show, whose centrepiece (the mockup of which I’d been eyeing on the studio floor) sees 1,417 stones, the largest of which weighs between six and seven tons, set outdoors and decreasing in size as they slowly enter the museum building and become sand. The work 1417 + (16.08.2013) (2013) refers to the 1,417 asteroids whose orbits are close enough to earth that NASA has deemed them dangerous (as of 16 August 2013, at least; the number continues to grow). It’s about time, where things begin and end, point of view and scale. “I’m just starting to work big,” says Kwade, when I ask about the latter. “It’s always a question of budget, of place. It’s not easy. It goes slowly.” Actually, ‘slowly’ no longer seems to be the right word. Trying to remember those high-school physics experiments in velocity and inertia, I visualise the artist’s career on a clear trajectory. As we have known since Newton, an object in motion tends to stay in that state of motion. ar Alicja Kwade: Solid Stars and Other Conditions is on view at i8, Reykjavik, through 14 December, and her exhibition Degree of Certainty is on show at the Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, until 16 February

Ein Tag in 7 Minuten und 23 Sekunden, 2006, mini-DV on DVD, monitor, 7 min 23, 3 + 1AP. Courtesy the artist and Johann König, Berlin

December 2013

Michele Abeles Back in the 1980s, artists from the Pictures Generation were critiquing an increasingly consumer-oriented and media-dominated world. Three decades later, is it time to stop worrying, dump the critique and surrender to the realities of everyday living? One New York-based artist is taking us there (and providing ArtReview’s horniest critic with more than a few thrills along the way)… by David Everitt Howe

During the July opening reception of the group show October 18, 1977 Abeles is known mostly for her disorienting, large-scale, schizo at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunnert, Inc in Chelsea, New York – phrenic photographs combining portraits, abstract images and which was notable not only for it being an especially hot evening but text; or conversely, nude, faceless dudes suspended in what look also for the droning cellist seated next to the video of an elephant like the trappings of a traditional studio practice sent out into orbit, being cut into pieces by a chainsaw (Dominic Nurre’s Conservative with lighting gels, still-life objects and other ephemera seemingly Video Work: Giacometti’s Elephant, 2009–13) – a man walked in, grabbed floating in space around splayed limbs, chests and floppy, flaccid Michele Abeles’s archival inkjet print Confrontation 01 (2012) off the penises posed just-so. She’s just as infamous, however, for sending wall and ran out of the crowded gallery with it, past a gaggle of chain model and actress Paz de la Huerta in her stead for the 2010 Rob smokers. The photograph in question, sharing the same title as Pruitt Art Awards, for which she was nominated (though didn’t win). a famous Gerhard Richter work, was seemingly a film still. It depicted Search for ‘Michele Abeles’ in Google Images and you’re just as likely a pretty, possibly twentysomething woman taking a bath. Looking a to see de la Huerta as the ‘real thing’, since every image of de la Huerta contained Abeles’s name in the little like a young Shelley Duvall, she image credit, a scrambling of authorpeers up from the book she’s reading Some critics have compared Abeles’s (Leon Trotsky’s biography of Lenin), ship Marcel Duchamp might find work to clip art, though I don’t see the as if she’s responding to someone funny – pissing, as the stunt did, on who has just asked her (as is written association. Her photographs look more the artworld establishment and its out in subtitle on the image), “Can masturbatory affections, much like like early avant-garde photograms the Frenchman’s urinal did ages ago. I take a bath after you?” The bather’s It also, incidentally, pissed on media culture and the free market in response? “Come on in. Saves water.” The work seemed to have little to do with the exhibition’s general, which so easily turns people into fetish objects, and in the case premise, which revolved around the dubious prison suicides of three of celebrities like de la Huerta, tits and asses into high-stakes insurGerman Red Army Faction terrorists on 18 October 1977, unless the ance policies. There is money to be made with our lifestyles, and in protagonist of Abeles’s photograph is a charming, leftist terrorist on that instance at least, Abeles refused to participate, sending in the the cusp of having charming, leftist, terrorist bathtub sex with her very embodiment of profit as a handy double. boyfriend (kinky!). Markedly unexceptional, the photograph was an This is not to say, of course, that Abeles claims some immunity to afterthought, a footnote even, to the kidnapping itself. Unbeknownst the market; if anything, she is an accomplice. For her debut gallery to the gallery or to organiser Birgit Rathsmann, Abeles had planned exhibition at 47 Canal, Re:Re:Re:Re:Re (2011), she found male models the theft all along. She saw it as a small way to transfer one culture’s on Craigslist, their fit, slick bodies becoming the perfect sex objects trauma to another, and wished to keep it a secret so the event was for her collection of photographs – objects being the operative word. more ‘real’, whatever ‘real’ means to an artist whose whole practice With their faces removed, they become mere dime-store tchotchkes just like everything else in her compositions. In Red, Rock, Cigarettes, undermines the very idea.

ArtReview

Red, Rock, Cigarettes, Newspaper, Body, Wood, Lycra, Bottle, 2011, inkjet print, 102 × 76 cm

December 2013

ArtReview

December 2013

above Pot, Paper, Hand, Lines, Numbers, Table, 2010, pigment print, 79 × 66 cm preceding pages Fuschia, Yellow, Green, Blue, Numbers, Man, Cement, Paper, 2010, pigment print, 89 × 117 cm

ArtReview

Newspaper, Body, Wood, Lycra, Bottle (2011), a model reclines on a table, a in the corner of Coaches. A tacky agglomeration of overlapping, cool newspaper and rock disguising his junk, his fingers filled with dozens greens and blues and the tips of palm fronds appear exactly the same of cigarettes. In another, Pot, Paper, Hand, Lines, Numbers, Table (2010), a in two prints, though in one, Transparencies, Abeles has crudely drawn hand and arm are seen resting next to an empty pot, the back wall the outline of a woman’s face on its museum glass. filled in with lined and numbered paper. What the paper is, exactly, Abeles’s recycling of motifs and vaguely identifiable imagery is anyone’s guess. It’s found in another composition, Plant, Hand, Paper, doesn’t merely reiterate Crimp’s observation that with postmodFly, Table, Lines, Numbers (2009). Though this time, the plant is where ernism, ‘underneath each picture there is always another picture’. it should be, its leaves spilling over another man’s limb. Rather, she updates it for the twenty-first century, taking into account Here, real people are reduced to generic, junk consumer items – the increasing stranglehold of so-called post-Fordism, an economic wine bottles, wallpaper – and overlaid with a clusterfuck of colour model based not just on the production of objects and goods, but on and confusing perspectives meant to emulate digital editing tools, relationships and networks – on life itself, really, in which identibut which in actuality are flesh and blood executions, such as Plexiglas ties are formed by capital from the get-go. It’s as if his image-aftercovered in colour gels attached directly to the camera lens. Which image thesis was hyped up on amphetamines, and with her puzzling, way is up is anyone’s guess in Fuschia, Yellow, Green, Blue, Numbers, hard-to-read surfaces and source material, as if Abeles was letting go Body, Cement, Paper (2010). A gentleof any pretence towards cogent resistFor her debut gallery exhibition at ance. Born surrounded by advertising man’s body is suspended horizontally and other forms of mass media, we’re across the image, with blocky squares 47 Canal she found male models of colour marching across the scene. clicked in, so to speak – both consumer on Craigslist, their fit, slick bodies Behind this svelte figure, that pesky and consumed, as Cindy Sherman, Jack becoming the perfect sex objects for her Goldstein and the others of Crimp’s paper background appears again, this time cut off illogically in strange ilk were so attuned to, and so earnestly collection of photographs places. Though shot in a studio, the critiquing. For Abeles, such criticism whole setup lacks perspective and is notably placeless. Some critics seems pointless, even naive, when – to slip into literary terminology have compared Abeles’s work to clip art, though I don’t see the asso- – the death of the author at the hands of MTV seems so complete. ciation. Her photographs look more like early avant-garde photoPerhaps this is why Abeles faked her own answers for an exchange grams, in which objects inhabit a field evenly with very little depth. I with Kerstin Brätsch in Interview. She and Brätsch collaborated could go on, though it would just be an excuse to linger inappropri- on the scripted responses, crafted carefully out of other people’s writings, from Jean-Luc Godard and Grace Jones to Rosemarie ately long on hairy armpits and fuzzy nutsacks. Much to my chagrin, Abeles abandoned her twink army for English Trockel and Richard Prince, among others. Even an offhand for Secretaries (2013), her second solo show at 47 Canal, opting instead comment about the tea she was drinking probably wasn’t hers, but for more prosaic scenes, such as a fat cat she shot lazing on a carpet, someone else’s entirely, proving that the brand of Michele Abeles, which appears twice in the triptych Coaches (all works 2013); in one a type of author figure Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault so careprint it’s surrounded on the sides by cut-off slips of digital colour, and fully deconstructed during the 1970s, is a very slippery, hard-to-pinin another, it’s superimposed upon a colour gradient overlaid with down thing. Responding to a series of questions I emailed to her, Abeles chains. With this exhibition, the artist relied less on new images and expressly told me not to quote her, directly or indirectly, for this essay. more on recycling old ones in a constant process of ‘quotation, excerp- Which I guess means I just did, oops. Sorry, Michele! But what does tation, framing and staging’, as Douglas Crimp might say if Abeles it matter anyway, when her answers, outlined for me in red, might not was part of the original Pictures Generation. You People’s white brick- have even been hers? She LOL’d when I asked, jokingly, where all the patterned foreground, floating above a discombobulating back- naked men went in her work. Last time I checked, ‘LOL’ doesn’t belong ground of text and vague, colourful abstract imagery, also appears to anyone, not even to her. ar

English for Secretaries, 2013 (installation view, 47 Canal, New York). Photo: Joerg Lohse

December 2013

State of the Art If we want the global artworld to be inclusive, is it reasonable to expect it to promote difference? by Niru Ratnam

Wifredo Lam, Mujeres Recostadas, c. 1936. Courtesy Private Collection, London/Scala Archives

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Next year is the 25th anniversary of the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, naively, Martin agreed with Buchloh’s criticism, admitting in an an ambitious attempt to articulate a vision of contemporary art that interview with the German art historian that he avoided non-Western was truly global in scope. Curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, the exhibi- works that ‘do not communicate sufficiently well in a visual-sensuous tion was, in part, a reaction to a much-talked-about exhibition organ- manner to a Western spectator’. ised by William Rubin, ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the The two exhibitions mark the beginning of a period in which the Tribal and the Modern, which had taken place five years previously at artworld started to deal with globalisation. In retrospect, the controNew York’s MoMA. Rubin’s exhibition focused on the visual similari- versy that both exhibitions generated was down to the simple matter ties between tribal art and the modernist works of the likes of Picasso of how the exhibits looked, and more specifically the extent to which and Matisse, and was accompanied by the explicit acknowledge- the non-Western exhibits in each exhibition looked too similar to ment by Rubin that he was not interested in the tribal works in them- the Western artworks. Rubin’s method offered a seamless path from selves, but only in the way they acted as inspiration for the Western African masks to Picasso, conveniently ignoring social and political avant-garde. Rubin’s approach was heavily criticised, most promi- history around colonial exploitation. Martin’s method seemed to nently by Thomas McEvilley in Artforum, who argued that the exhibi- revel in the happy coincidence of visual similarities. To critics such tion glossed over the appropriation of tribal art by Western modern as Buchloh and a number informed by postcolonial theory, cultural artists by sheltering under the wishful idea of ‘affinity’. McEvilley difference was suppressed where it should have been flagged up. concluded, ‘“Primitivism” lays bare the way our cultural instituFast-forward 25 years, through a period when globalisation has tions relate to foreign cultures, revealing it as an ethnocentric subjec- taken hold both economically and culturally, and one might have tivity inflected to coopt such cultures.’ Magiciens de la Terre wanted expected the debate about art and globalisation to have moved on. to avoid this quasi-imperialist attitude by utilising an approach However, this is not the case. The anxiety about things looking too that would place non-Western artworks, a number of which occu- similar pervades contemporary art’s thinking about the global. pied a midground between cultural artefact and work of art, on the So, American curator (and 2007 Venice Biennale director) Robert same footing as Western artworks. This led to juxtapositions such Storr’s verdict on the state of today’s globalised artworld, given in as a Richard Long mud painting sited next to a floor-based tradi- the October issue of The Art Newspaper, is blunt: ‘The ecosystem of tional Indigenous Australian ceremonial ground painting. Martin’s the “global” artworld is like that of the planet itself – overheated approach also ran into a barrage of criticism, from Benjamin Buchloh, and dire. Rather than expecting a cleansing cataclysm, we can look for example, who accused Martin of an ethnocentric approach to forward to a relentless melting of aesthetic distinctions, dissolving selecting the non-Western objects in the show. Buchloh argued that of institutional barriers and fusion of cultures, resulting in a sludgy, Martin selected non-Western objects because they looked as if they sulphurous magma laced with gold.’ Storr is not alone in the view would fit in with Western contemporary art – so the Aboriginal floor that increased globalisation in the artworld has resulted in the piece was there because there were visual levelling out of culturally specific ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, continuations with the neighbouring forms. In the last issue of this maga1984 (installation view). Courtesy MoMA, Richard Long. Disarmingly, but perhaps zine, ArtReview’s J. J. Charlesworth New York/Scala Archives

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argued that globalisation has resulted in the production of a form in India in the 1940s, they did so via that most European of forms, the of contemporary art that is visually homogeneous, created that way manifesto. Modern form was adapted to local circumstance in Latin in order to be consumed easily around the world in biennials and America (think of Wifredo Lam reworking Cubism). These regional fairs. He characterises this as ‘an artworld Esperanto’ that is ‘legible, Modernisms were, and continue to be, framed in relation to a domiunderstandable and, ultimately, commercially exchangeable’. For nant orthodox Modernism, a canonical Modernism, if you like. So Storr and Charlesworth, cultural specificity would have a significant Indian modernists are still seen as vaguely provincial because of their element of the illegible, unconsumable and incongruous: a viewer inability to become fully abstract, while Latin American modernists in Rio should not be able to understand significant elements of an are seen as more accomplished thanks to the emergence of Geometric artwork made in Jakarta. For both critics, art should speak princi- Abstraction – a set of views that relies on the Greenbergian idea that abstraction is the highest form of modern art. In short, a dominant pally to the locality in which it was made. paradigm was absorbed, aspired to Storr’s and Charlesworth’s arguWhere non-Western forms of modern and reacted against by artists from ments are not significantly different around the world, many of whom to the critical hostility that met art have appeared, it is clear that ‘Primitivism’… and Magiciens…: that artists were looking closely at the dominant upped sticks and moved to New everything looks too similar. There York, Paris or London. form of modern art as articulated in Paris are not enough markers of cultural The narrative for what came after specificity and the untranslatable. modern art is not much different. and then New York This then is the complaint that has Movements such as the neo-avantbeen present right through the emergence of a globalised artworld: garde, Minimalism, Conceptualism and Neo-Expressionism were work from elsewhere ought to look more different. To this, a counter- articulated by artists who were reacting against high Modernism, question might be posed: when it comes to contemporary art, why but by doing so were still part of Modernism’s endgame. There was expect difference, locality, the untranslatable and the culturally still a coherent narrative to react against. As Francesco Bonami put specific at all? Storr’s and Charlesworth’s view rests implicitly on art it in an article on the ‘problem’ of criticism published in Frieze in scenes springing up organically in different localities around the 2011, ‘Once upon a time – say 20 years ago – everything was crystal world and, as a consequence, each developing with their own specific clear in the art world.’ Bonami (seemingly arbitrarily) pinpoints traits. However, this ignores the way that modern art spread around the appearance of Jeff Koons’s series Made in Heaven (1989) as the the world. Put simply, modern art was articulated by European artists moment at which the grip of the modern is loosened ‘[marking] the after the First World War as a response to the conditions of modernity end of by-laws and the beginning of critical chaos’. But Bonami’s and in reaction to the perceived straitjacket of academic art. It was a choice of date might be telling in another way: 1989 was the year of culturally specific set of forms that was rooted in the legacy of the Great the Berlin Wall coming down, and in the artworld it was the year of War in Europe, industrialisation and modern life. Paris became the Magiciens de la Terre. Modernism might have been over, but it was not undisputed centre of modern art at the start of the twentieth century, necessarily postmodern relativism that replaced it, but globalised and while there were competing senses of what modern art might be neoliberalism. Indeed Bonami describes the emergent language of during the 1930s (particularly in 1920s Berlin and Moscow), abstract art that replaced modernism as ‘so-called global aesthetics, which is, art emerged as the dominant form of modern art as the Second World ironically, a Western construction’. War took hold. As Paris fell to the Nazis, modern art emigrated to New For Bonami, like Storr, this move towards global aesthetics has York through the movement of artists and through the frameworks negative connotations. Bonami paints a picture of critical chaos constructed by figures such as the curator Alfred Barr at MoMA and the caused by the breakdown of what he terms the ‘unwritten by-laws city’s dominant critic, Clement Greenberg. By the 1960s modern art conceived at the beginning of the twentieth century’. In turn, Storr suggests ‘aesthetic distinctions’ was synonymous with the New York The anxiety about things looking too are collapsing. While it would be a School. Subsequent rejections of Modernism by the neo-avant-garde similar pervades contemporary art’s think- gross exaggeration to suggest that to begin with, and then a number either Bonami or Storr is a fully-paid ing about the global of competing and sometimes overup Greenbergian modernist, both lapping movements such as Minimalism and Conceptualism, their positions imply that there was a consensus for understanding were to greater or lesser extents articulated in opposition to a high twentieth-century art, most commonly articulated through a series of movements, or ‘-isms’, from Cubism onwards, a more nuanced Modernism which had reached its apex in New York. Critical reevaluations of this account have produced more multi- version of Alfred Barr’s now infamous diagram. Nonetheless, critical valent accounts of the story of modern art, and of course postcolonial or canonical consensus here is cast as a shared set of beliefs about which academics have attempted to rewrite it entirely. But while the accounts works fit into the narrative of modern and the avant-garde artwork of of those academics, such as that contained within Stuart Hall and the 1960s and 70s. As Bonami puts it: ‘Everybody knew the difference Sarat Maharaj’s Modernity and Difference (2001), might be theoreti- between, for example, an Alberto Giacometti and a Fernando Botero… cally neat, they fall apart entirely when it comes to discussing (on the the Manichaean difference between good and bad art.’ rare occasion they try) actual artworks. Where non-Western forms of Non-Western practices tended to be positioned as external to modern art have appeared, it is clear that artists were looking closely this narrative of Modernism, acting as precursors (in Rubin’s vision) at the dominant form of modern art as articulated in Paris and then or nonart practices (in Martin’s articulation of the idea of ‘magiNew York. So when the Progressive Artists’ Group announced itself cian’ rather than artist). The key shift happens with the rise of what

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F.N. Souza, Crucifixion, 1959, oil paint on board, 183 × 122 cm. © Tate, London, 2013

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Bonami terms ‘contemporary global aesthetics’, an all-encompassing idea of contemporary art that includes non-Western practices on a much larger scale than Modernism allowed. Contemporary art might be a category that operates on a geographically wider scale than Modernism, but according to Storr and Charlesworth, it tends to result in more homogeneous work. The reaction to this unexpected homogeneity is a desire for work from outside the West to go back to productively occupying a space outside the category of contemporary art, and ideally for it to become untranslatable again. As Charlesworth asks: ‘What would it mean to assert a local that is opaque to the global, that was resistant to its forms of translation?’ The accepted answer from a globalised, postcolonial perspective is to dismiss this desire as not only nostalgic but also impossible. Once any practice has been identified by the contemporary art world, that act of identification in itself begins the process of translation of that identified object into the uneasy catchall category of ‘contemporary art’. From this viewpoint it is more logical to accept the all-pervasiveness of ‘contemporary art’ as a category and celebrate its global inclusivity with the added rejoinder that there is nothing wrong with having a dominant language of what contemporary art is and can be. After all, non-Western artists who aspired to be seen as modern artists had no desire to knock down the central tenets of Modernism. Instead, artists like F.N. Souza, Aubrey Williams or Wifredo Lam wished to be seen as having fully entered and become participants of canonical modern art. By logical extension, artists today from around the world who wish to be seen as making ‘contemporary art’ should be allowed to do the same, to become participants of a shared language that is far more welcoming than Modernism.

Of course this openness is very important for artists from outside the traditional centres of art production. However, the robust, if politically correct rejoinder to the likes of Storr, Bonami and Charlesworth does not quite fully add up. Contemporary art is increasingly propagated around the world by the market, rather than by curators or writers. It is auction houses, art fairs, collectors and art magazines on the hunt for new advertising opportunities that open up ‘emerging’ art territories, and these uncritical mechanisms are not necessarily the best for discovering radical practice that looks very different from contemporary art being made in London, Berlin and New York. There are two possible solutions: firstly to disengage the yoking together of looking for the different with looking at the non-Western. In other words, perhaps the start for the search of the radically different should begin with looking within the traditional centres of art production. This avoids the accusation that it is always the non-West that gets hit with the demand to be different. Secondly, look beyond mechanisms associated with the market (auction houses, collectors, fairs, magazines and even biennials) when looking for radically different practices outside the West. Contemporary art might look the same wherever it is made, and there might be no way round that (indeed, depending on your perspective, this might be a cause for celebration). The radically untranslatable could be out there, both within and outside the West, but it’s going to take some experimental models of curation and critical thinking, and the ability to take the inevitable potshots that follow, to unearth it. Twenty-five years on, a successor to Magiciens de la Terre, with all its barmy optimism, is sorely needed to balance out an articulation of global contemporary art that is in danger of being flattened by market forces. ar

Bodys Isek Kingelez, Mundial Isek Sport, 1989 (installation view, Alternative Guide to the Universe, 2013, Hayward Gallery, London). Photo: Linda Nylind. © the artist

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Alfred H. Barr, Jr, cover of the moma exhibition catalogue Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936. Courtesy moma, New York/Scala Archives

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Film | An evening film program shown on the 7,000 square-foot outdoor projection wall of the New World Center. Curated by David Gryn, Director of Artprojx, London Info | December 4 –7. Free public access, program available mid-November; Soundscape Park, 500 17 th Street, Miami Beach. artbasel.com/miamibeach/film | facebook.com/artbasel | twitter.com/artbasel

Michael Part

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3222opening page 2[Ag(S2O3)2] + S2O4 + 4OH 2Ag + 4S2O3 + 2SO3 + 2H2O, 2011, silver on glass, slide mount pages 96–101 The Way Things Stand, 2006, C-41 negative material exposed with Zorky Nr 156873

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In the first in an occasional series of extended monographic studies, ArtReview meets Austrian artist Michael Part to discuss his approach to photography, its history and techniques, and the photograph’s status as a unique object Interview by Mark Rappolt

A rtReview What does making art mean to you? Why do you do it? Is it for you or is it for an audience? Michael Part It’s for me. I grew up in an artistic family, and for a long, long time I really refused it, or let’s say I didn’t recognise it – making art. I was doing things – producing, collecting, arranging – all the time. Until the time when I got to know the term ‘art’, and some of the contexts of that term. Then I stopped immediately, but started painting in a very, very secret way – no one needed to know about it. But what I ‘officially’ did was to play in punk bands – making music all the time and dyeing my hair every week in another colour – leave me out of the arts! Even during my time studying at the Vienna Academy I was making more music than other things… AR But you’ve been doing photography for a long time? MP Yes, as a teenager, from about fifteen to eighteen, I was just in the photo lab. AR What attracted you to that?

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MP Light sensitivity – it was about getting to know photographic material, light sensitivity as a chemical process. This was the most exciting thing I ever got to know at this time. In those days I also took chemistry classes, and the thing I was doing was taking chemicals from there to the photo lab, without any knowledge about the details of any processes, but being very excited about it nevertheless. AR So it was more about being in the lab than taking photographs? MP I guess it was much more about being in the lab. Darkness slows things down. It’s best while working with large-format film material, in absolute darkness without any sort of light source. If you don’t see any more and you’re just counting seconds for development… that’s something I really appreciate. Untitled, 2012 (studio view), silver on brass (cementation), 100 × 67 cm. Photo: the artist. Courtesy Collection Sabrina Buell and Yves Béhar, San Francisco

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AR Do you just think of the counting and nothing else? MP Seriously, most of the time I’m thinking about whether or not I really turned off the light. Actually, all the time I’m opening and closing my eyes, again and again, during the whole process, in absolute darkness. You can perceive your eyes and what your visual perception does without any sort of input. That’s wonderful, but distracting too. But my concentration is actually focused on the tactile senses, feeling temperatures of the developer, etc, the tactile marks for knowing where each thing is placed. And sure: hearing the ticking of the timer, and counting seconds and smelling the chemicals. AR So it is quite sensual? MP It’s all some sort of choreography that is set up and trained in every detail. Maintained by tactility and hearing. AR What do you get from making art? MP I’m trying to understand things – how

things work. In particular, I am now trying to understand how details work. Next to the sensual there is a very technical aspect to the work I have been doing over the last few years: be it photography now, or producing transport crates, glassworks, chemicals, olfactory formulas or whatever at other times. It’s a wonderful experience to perceive a detail in isolation. I remember the first time I went to buy silver nitrate. The saleswoman warned me, among other things, about the black corrosions caused by skin contact. I used everything I bought in a very short time and then returned to the shop with black fingers asking for more. The saleswoman had to smile. It’s a great shop, an old drug store, offering pure chemicals in a wide range, essential oils, body care products, but tools too. It’s wonderful all around. If I were up to open a shop, it would be something like that one. AR Is there something in particular that attracts you to a process or to a detail of one of these processes? MP They often involve an element of chance, and that’s what I’m really, really interested in: how things work. I think the smaller you get, the more precise you can be. That’s why I’m interested in details. If you’re taking just one excerpt of a long process, then you can really concentrate on that and try to understand it, or at least see how it works out. Take for example the brass panels that I use to extract the silver from the used photographic fixing solution in the cementation works. Every time it’s the same: as soon as the process of extraction has started, I can’t take my eyes off the panel – just watching how the silver gathers on the surface of the brass, creating shapes and images. I think it’s even possible to call all my works particular interests. AR And does that focused understanding tell you more about the bigger processes? MP That was the initial intention, and I’m still trying to do it. AR Does that element of chance that you focus on mean you’re not in control of the work? That the result is random? How do you work with chance? MP In the beginning, I set up fixed conditions, a framework. That determines the space in which a natural process can occur, randomly and without my manipulating it. Some of the works that are produced like that are beautiful; others I don’t like. But everything that happens within the framework is part of the work; everything that leaves the framework or happens outside of it is not. AR So is it those parameters that you set up at the beginning that are the work?

MP Yes, and the parameters are both references to historical processes and the origins of photography, as well as narrative elements. I’m not interested in this as a means of mediating some sort of media theory. At least it’s not the impulse to start with. The origins of photography are so adorable, so simplified: it’s just about ‘mix this with that, and this will happen’. It’s logical, traceable, but once you do it and watch it, it’s just magic. It’s like jumping into a puddle. AR Chemistry plays an important role in a number of your works. Do you think you have a particular way of seeing the world that’s related to chemistry, or chemicals? MP I’m working on some olfactory projects at the moment, and there was an incident this summer, when I was chopping tomatoes – for the first time, I recognised the presence of cis-3-hexenol within the smell of cut tomatoes. It made me laugh. AR What makes you or the viewer of your work satisfied? MP For me? At the end it’s ambiguity. For the viewer? Hmm… I don’t know. AR What distinguishes your approach from a scientific approach? MP The basis of science is verification, proving something right or wrong and trying to set that in some sort of mathematical description. I think my description is much more sensual. AR It still has a mathematical description as well, a formula… MP I actually use these mathematical descriptions to explain my works, or to open them up for the audience, just to be precise. AR Is that the opposite of the chance thing? MP I think the mathematical description opens up the space for working with chance. AR Do you think it’s important that people know about the processes that have resulted in the works? MP I’m sure that knowing the framework conditions of the things contributes a lot to how you approach them. But I think at the end I’m always dealing a lot with ambiguity and trying to offer as many different ways as possible to approach pieces. AR Can your works be approached as purely aesthetic objects? MP That might be a little bit awkward because there are all the time references to the processes from which the excerpts are taken. But I think that it’s a really important point, if we are talking about art, that you can also just say,

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‘OK, this is beautiful, this is ugly’ – whatever you prefer. I think of it in the way in which you might approach a plate of food. You can just enjoy how it tastes, but you can also ask about the ingredients or where they came from or how the combination of just two ingredients might taste, what they are doing, or to what they refer. AR Are you interested in the balance between randomness and control? MP I think at the end it’s a bit like talking about a snapshot, because it’s a selection you’ve made, and the selection is never actually spontaneous. I totally appreciate the idea of a snapshot, but I think it just doesn’t exist… take a look at Facebook. AR What sort of things make you want to select something in your artworks? MP In the beginning I select the parameters. It’s the context, the details; it’s the surface, how it looks. I’m trying not to be too tasteful about the selection: if I see a wide range of possibilities that might happen within one set of parameters, I think then it’s right. AR Does one work lead to a set of questions or propositions that sets up the next? MP Not in a very logical way, but yes. For example, when I was making the cementation pieces, I was researching how to extract silver from the used fixing solution that I got from the photo lab. That reminded me of silver mining, which led me to the production of the glass drops (which are produced in a region that was the main silver mining area in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but has now turned into the main region for glass production…) This research led me to malachite [a copper carbonate hydroxide material, generally in the form of a green crystal], and its natural occurrence within silver mines, which is somehow the way back to photography… It’s not 100 percent logical. AR You’ve said that getting into silver printing in 2006 really changed the appearance of your work. How did that happen? MP I tried to take photographs of my graduation show, and I used a camera from my grandfather. It’s from the 1950s or something like that, the lenses were made in a totally different way to new lenses and they look totally different. And I’m still using his camera today. He told me then that I should try it out first with a black-and-white film; just getting to know how to expose it, and which aperture you’re using and stuff like that. I totally failed in that first attempt, and that became really interesting to me. I had to keep on working on that. And I started up this intense technical research about how photographs work, or how it’s possible to

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fabricate a light-sensitive material and use it to make pictures of the world, or for optics, or whatever. AR Was your grandfather a photographer? MP He took a lot of photographs, but actually taught mathematics and technical drawing. AR Do you consider the silver panels to be photography? MP I wouldn’t call them photographs. I know all the time I was perceiving them somehow as a summary of the photographs that I’ve taken because developing them is actually a waste of the photo-lab time. AR Are you interested in this idea of waste? There are references to decay and time in your works… MP Yes. But my interest in waste is more to do with economics. Earlier on this was a pragmatic thing, but now I think it’s much more about how things are connoted in perception. I was always collecting or keeping small things that have a real significance to me – maybe some relics from situations that I really enjoyed or things like that. AR Do you still have the emotional connections like that to all the work, is that important? MP Yes, absolutely. AR What kind of emotional attachment do you have to, say, something like one of the cementation works? MP It’s something like a treasure for me because – OK, now I’ve started off talking in pragmatic terms about it – it’s just silver extracted from the waste product of the developing process, but I don’t want to give in to it and trash it because it’s some sort of toxic waste. I want to keep that. AR Are all these works in some ways about labour of sorts? The work of the chemicals combining? MP Maybe I see this aspect of labour much more in the work that was already done creating these chemicals, and then I’m setting up this new situation in which they produce themselves. That’s what I meant when I said before that this is all some sort of summary from the photographic process that I did over the last years. AR So you see in the works a kind of history then? MP Yes, but also some sort of presence and immediacy, because everything is oxidising and changing all the time. AR Do people who buy them ever complain about that? MP No, or let’s say some of them, not really complaining. There are two groups of people: some really appreciate the point and are totally

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curious about how the work will change; others get anxious about what might happen.

It started with the situation that I couldn’t afford new shoes in those days.

AR Generally, people tend to think of artworks as stable objects.

AR Are you good at letting go?

MP Yes, but no artwork is actually a stable work, none at all. I’m also wondering about people talking about paintings or sculptures and never being aware that they are for sure going to fall apart in 20 years or so. I like that point of view; it’s one of the taboos in the contemporary art market. AR Do you remember the exact formulas of time and chemicals for each work?

MP Honestly? No! AR How much do you think your work is about memory and triggering memory, and exploring memory? MP I think memories are actually the most important part about it, that the main, let’s call it base, of my work is something that I’m calling my archive. AR Is that a personal archive?

MP If it’s necessary to know it, for example for technical reasons, sure. I have a lot of notebooks around all the time. But talking for example about these cementation panels, no, because they are produced in a quite pragmatic way: the process of extracting the silver is getting started and stops automatically at some point. The

MP Yes, and it’s actually just full of stories and memories. I just got a wristwatch from my grandfather, and that’s a very precious piece for me, and it’s definitely part of the archive because it still smells like him somehow.

No artwork is actually a stable work, none at all. I’m also wondering about people talking about paintings or sculptures and never being aware that they are for sure going to fall apart in 20 years or so. I like that point of view; it’s one of the taboos of the contemporary art market

MP Yes, I stopped wearing it. I think memories are the most important point in general because it’s defining the moment, that very right moment and how you are, what you are up to, going to do.

cementation panels are all produced with the used fixing solution from a photo lab, and it always depends how much this fixing solution is used and how much silver is inside. It varies. AR Do you think of your works as marking passages in time? MP Yes, all the time. For example, the Nachtlicht photograms are produced in an ‘archival standard’ which Kodak published during the late 1950s. These gelatin silver prints will ‘act’ like [they are] resisting time for a pretty long time. Whereas one of my recent slideshows (the green malachite oxalate) is set up explicitly as ‘not light fast’. These slides change from the very first moment they are projected, ie, exposed. I mean time has always been important to me, even in earlier works, especially in one for which I was collecting the stones that got stuck in a hole in the sole of my shoe. I did that for a long time, for something like three years.

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AR Do you become careful about making it not smell of anything else?

AR Do you think you’re interested in processes that are becoming old-fashioned? MP No, not at all. I mean all this photo work that I’m doing is not because it’s old-fashioned, it’s just because it’s a process that can be simplified, but also complicated a lot. You can make abstractions of this process. If you’re talking about colour photography, it’s something totally different… I’m doing that too, but talking about photography, I’m much more interested in objects. All the time I’m perceiving photographic prints, if they’re done in an analogue way, as not possible to reproduce, not at all – and I’m still laughing about people making editions in an analogue way. Maybe that’s the point that makes this old-fashioned process more attractive to me: you’ve got one unique thing, and either it works or it doesn’t work. AR How often does it not work? MP Quite a lot. AR Do you prefer it when there are lots of failures? Does that give you more of an attachment to the work? MP Sometimes I appreciate things that from the very first moment failed but then, looking at them maybe later on, see them from some different point of view. AR Do you tend to keep all the failures? MP Yes.

above Untitled, 2013 (installation view, Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna), 9 photograms on 35mm gelatin silver transparency, chemical toning (malachite oxalate) procedure after J.H. Christensen, L. Lumière and E.J. Wall (first published in The History of Three-Color Photography, 1925), slide mounted digitally controlled projection loop, 8 min 35 sec. Photo: Georg Petermichl overleaf Both works Untitled, 2011 (installation view, Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna, 2011), silver on brass (cementation), 100 × 67 cm each. Photo: Antoine Turillon

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Michael Part & Florian Pumhösl, 15|10|2012 – 20|01|2013, 2012 (installation view, Kunsthaus Bregenz billboards), cyanotype on textile, stretcher, 6-part series, 300 × 300 cm (each). Photo: Rudolf Sagmeister. Courtesy the artists

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Nachtlicht, 2005/10, gelatin silver fibre-based photogram, gelatin relief, bleach dye (iron) partially treated with DIY Kodak Eb-2 (photomechanical reverse process, formula published by Dr Mutter, 1962), 24 × 30 cm. Photo: the artist. Courtesy Landessammlungen Niederösterreich, St Pölten

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Nachtlicht, 2005/10, gelatin silver fibre-based photogram, gelatin relief, bleach dye (iron), treatment with hydrogen peroxide, 24 × 30 cm. Photo: the artist. Courtesy Landessammlungen Niederösterreich, St Pölten

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Untitled, 2008, 35mm gelatin silver negative depicting the apparatus (Nachttischlampe) for producing the photogram series Nachtlicht

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Untitled, 2013, 35mm gelatin silver transparency, daylight development in hydroxylammonium sulfate/potassium carbonate

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Glass Drop #3, 2011, glass, 22 × 23 × 8 cm. Produced in collaboration with Kisslinger Kristall, Rattenberg. Photo: the artist. Courtesy Sammlung Belvedere, Vienna

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Hydrochloric Acid Fuming, 2011 (installation view, Dienstag Abend, Ve.sch, Vienna, 2011), hydrochloric acid fuming 38%, vitrine out of Flabeg Control 60. Photo: Udo Bohnenberger

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Untitled, 2013, 35mm gelatin silver transparency, daylight development in chrysoidine/sodium hydroxide

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Untitled, 2007, 35mm gelatin silver transparency, cms 20, developed in Adotech

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Grandpa’s Eyes (shot after his cataract operation), 2011, gelatin silver print, 10 × 15 cm. Photo: Georg Petermichl

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Potassium Iron (III) Oxalate, 2012, approx 5 × 4 × 2 cm. Photo: Stefan Lux

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Untitled, 2013, 9 photograms on 35mm gelatin silver transparency, chemical toning (malachite oxalate), slide mounted, in archival box; projected on a loop for the exhibition Re: Image, Andreas Huber, Vienna, 2013, according to the following durations: no 1, 4 min 16 sec; no 2, 2 min 8 sec; no 3, 1 min 4 sec; no 4, 32 sec; no 5, 16 sec; no 6, 8 sec; no 7, 4 sec; no 8, 2 sec; no 9, 1 sec. All images courtesy the artist and Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna, unless otherwise specified

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But there’s booze in the blender And soon it will render That frozen concoction that helps me hang on 123

Lutz Bacher Black Beauty ICA, London 25 September – 17 November Somewhere between the old-school totem and the current Internet usage of ‘avatars’ we might locate the practice of people being ascribed, whether they liked it or not, literary or cartoon characters according to their personality traits. (I’m familiar with entities like Eeyore, Oscar the Grouch and the Grinch, because they were the ones most often attributed to me as a kid.) The activity lives on in the endless ‘which character from X TV series are you?’ surveys online. But you get the feeling that Lutz Bacher has an acute sense of the vacuous possibility inherent in such characters, and of the intricate flows that take place in this act of transference. Her installations make blatant use of cultural swipes, found ephemera and broad tropes, and while Black Beauty might not hold any surprises for those who’ve seen her work before (sand-covered floors, cardboard cutouts, walls covered in gold Mylar), it still manages to feel both unsettling and intimately familiar. Upstairs, the cheery cartoon racing horse of Horse Shadow (2010–12), painted on a sheet of wood, rotates under the strong glare of two bright stage spotlights, its dance serenaded by the looped, soaring tones of Elvis (2009) singing Blue Moon drifting in from the opposite room. The King, or a stand-up cardboard image of him grinning in a gold suit, stands alongside a

beat-up camel stage-prop, a photograph of an old tyrannosaur sculpture and the twisted shells of a bishop and a queen, all taking part in an oversize game of Chess (2012). They loom in a weary circle on the pixelated black, white and grey patches of the playing board, staring down a replica of Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913), the swirling music and horse chasing its own tail in the next room only emphasising the sense of stalemate. Upstairs, with its racing, strategising and gold-covered hallway, is where the competitive go-getters are; it is in the monochrome underworld downstairs where, by the artist’s own proclamation in the titles, the beauty and magic lives. Black Magic (2013) is a wall of dark ‘astroturf’, thrumming and pulsing with waves from presumably thousands of phone vibrators just behind its surface. At times, the pulsing, loud buzz takes on a marching rhythm, at others a symphonic sweep, as if a toneless transcription of a Wagner piece. The eponymous Black Beauty (2012) covers the entire downstairs gallery in black silicate, turning it into a dense, surreal beach. Walking in it is one thing, but the work’s greater pleasure comes in observation: everyone roaming in the sandpit looks pensive, lost, alone. Their only companion is Ashtray (2013), a small junkshop figure of welded brackets and bolts that looks like a cheap Johnny Five with an

Horse Shadow, 2010–12 (installation view, ICA, London). Photo: Mark Blower

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erection. Stuttering around us is the soundwork Puck (2012), a man giving a range of uneven readings of an excerpt from the closing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended.” Think but what? Bacher leaves out the bit where Puck tells us, it’s OK, it’s all a dream. There’s any number of suggestible analogies readily here for her art: an obtuse game of chess, senseless beachcombing, half-recognised music. There is something more, though, to Bacher’s pilfered stage props arranged to create profane, self-undermining conjurings of kitsch sublime. It feels personal, I think, because it’s scrappy and aspirational, taking the stock characters and stories we find constantly around us and using them as ciphers for a bigger idea, imaginative proxies for an unreachable great beyond; hence her touchstone themes of dream and space, using Elvis to gesture to the moon. Any number of characters, materials and texts then become supple cultural readymades for her to stage for us. If, as Rosalind Krauss asserted, ‘the temporality of the readymade is that of the conundrum, or riddle; as such it is speculative time’, then Bacher is the set designer for the scenes where we enact the fevered, oddball dreams that come from prolonged dwelling on such speculations. Chris Fite-Wassilak

Kate Owens A Mangy Gherkin on a Horse-Dung Ground Limoncello, London 3 October – 16 November Accompanying this show is a short written dialogue adapted by Kate Owens from a 1954 children’s story by Maria Bird – Andy Pandy’s Tea Party, if I’m not mistaken. Two children, ‘AP’ and ‘T’, are invited to paint the walls and furniture of a ‘plain room’. After experimenting with ‘stripes’, ‘paw marks’ and ‘splodges’, they are ‘covered head to foot in all the colours of the rainbow’. Finally, unable to distinguish their own bespattered bodies from their surroundings, ‘they [fetch] pails and soap and scrubbing brushes and [wash] everything – even the walls.’ This isn’t just a literary framing device, but a fictionalised account of a workshop activity undertaken with four children prior to the show. Five works (all 2013) stand as a record of that event: The Trees Get New Leaves in Spring, a partially erased mural on the end wall of Limoncello; Towards Zero (1–18), 18 bars of soap arrayed on two long shelves; Hollows (White), a Perspex box filled with disposable shoe covers; and Hollows (Blue), a Perspex box containing a single pair of shoe covers. Thus, the janitorial supplies used to erase the mural are recouped as part of the installation.

In the fifth work, The Trees Get New Leaves in Spring (Tables and Chairs), the table and chairs from the workshop have been placed in the foyer, still covered in paint. Where Owens’s written dialogue captures the social richness of the workshop (‘What shall we stand on?’ ‘Let’s cover the walls in bright colours’), this quintet of works neutralises it. The soaps are beautiful, like miniature abstract paintings, swirled and caked with pigment and child-sweat, but their inclusion alongside the vitrined shoe covers and erased mural locates them within a discourse of dematerialisation, the endgame aesthetics of conceptual art. Presenting the physical remnants of a real event alongside its fictionalised retelling is a good idea, but the format of that retelling – a flimsy photocopied document next to the comments book – surely downplays its significance. I watched several viewers ignore it. Also included are some block prints that, according to the artist, were ‘created using the first known method of wallpaper printing’.

Owens had access to the archive of the Anstey Wallpaper Company in Loughborough, where she replicated four of William Morris and Arthur Sanderson’s blocks, minus the patterns, replacing them with square monochromes and retaining only the registration marks, rendered as peripheral dots of colour. The original designs must be inferred from the titles: From the Department of Dead Ends (Trellis), From the Department of Dead Ends (Willow). Owens adopts a refreshingly perverse approach to social participation here, involving people only to eradicate their contributions. But the outcomes feel perfunctory, too reminiscent of the historical avant-garde – with its stock menu of iconoclasms: art as erasure and effacement, the nullification of subject matter – to surprise us. True, with The Trees Get New Leaves in Spring, there is a misanthropic thrill that comes from knowing the kids had to ‘clean up’ their own picture in order to facilitate Owens’s deconstruction of the artistic gesture, but the results still seem inevitable, less a product of this sociality than an excuse for it. Sean Ashton

Towards Zero (17), 2013, soap, paint. Photo: Ollie Hammick. Courtesy the artist and Limoncello, London

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Patrizio Di Massimo The Lustful Turk Gasworks, London 3 October – 1 December In The Lustful Turk (Harem) (2012), four naked blonde ladies are stacked on top of one another, plump pink bottoms perfectly aligned. They are sitting on what appear to be old-fashioned balance scales, as if literally being weighed up for someone’s delectation. There are lots of bottoms in Patrizio Di Massimo’s recent paintings and objects. Entitled The Lustful Turk, the series was inspired by the eponymous late Georgian novel (published in 1828, just before the dawn of the Victorian era, but not widely known until its 1893 edition) that tells the bawdy tale of an English virgin abducted by an Algerian (the so-called Turk) and forced to join his harem – which she loves, much to the horror of her best friend back in England. It looks as though Di Massimo had a lot of fun parodying nineteenth-century prudishness and moral hypocrisy. Crass innuendos abound, like the girl apparently giving a candle a blowjob or the painting of a pile of cushions with a pair of legs poking out, the shapes of the soft furnishings – erect bolsters, soft scatter cushions, snaking curtain tassels – mimicking the human orgy below. Knobbly toes and cheap puns make this more Carry On than Marquis de Sade. Di Massimo heavily exploits the Freudian association of furniture and furnishings with

the female form. He has made two phallic sculptures, one tower of flesh-coloured cushions (bottoms or breasts, according to your fancy) interlaced with pompoms and more tassels, and a taller tower of deep purple cushions, the kind on which you imagine concubines reclining. The exhibition is dressed like a stage set, with wallpaper – black-and-white illustrations depicting oversize cushions, a candle, tassels and other fetish symbols – covering one wall, and a satin curtain in boudoir-pink with black pompoms lining another wall. Indeed, curtains appear in many of the paintings as a motif for revealing and concealing erotic fantasies, and as a reminder of the fictional basis of these works. Di Massimo’s films have previously dealt with the status of immigrants in his native Italy and also explored Italy’s colonial legacy in Libya, one that was complicated by the fact that the country was only fully unified in the late nineteenth century. British colonial attitudes are an easier target, and Di Massimo doesn’t hold back. The painting The Lustful Turk (Bang Bang) (2013) features a motley assortment of anthropomorphised, primitive sculptures in a museum, all unmistakably phallic and bunched together as for an erotic encounter.

The Lustful Turk (Haberdashery), 2013, oil on canvas, 200 × 270 cm. Courtesy the artist and T293, Naples & Rome

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The work neatly conflates the colonial fantasy of the well-endowed native with the lust for collecting trophy objects for collections back home. But for all the send-up of Britishness, Di Massimo allows some Italian elements to creep in: some echoes of de Chirico’s neoclassicism, for example, or a section of a building that recalls the fascist architecture of Roman suburb EUR. If the British are constantly trying to repress their sexuality, the Italians must strive continually to keep their classical and fascist past at bay. This is the first exhibition in a series of five at Gasworks, in which artists are asked to respond to Norbert Elias’s 1939 seminal study of Western European manners and tastes, The Civilising Process. Di Massimo’s contribution reminds us, as Freud did a century earlier, that the cost of Western civilisation is the repression of our basest desires and fears, while pointing to how the white, male, colonial violation of the ‘dark races’ ends up inverted – and excused – by tales of oriental males seducing white women. In an age of Internet porn and overt sexualisation, is the West more or less civilised than before? And are the British really any less repressed, or have we just forgotten to laugh at our insecurities and reserve? Jennifer Thatcher

Shannon Ebner The Electric Comma Sadie Coles, London 5 September – 2 November Conceptual art may have successfully made the case that art doesn’t have to have a physical manifestation – art can be an idea. But ideas can become text, which means a physical manifestation of some sort. And when that happens, all kinds of possibilities open up, since text appears all over the place – in books, on screens, on signs, on billboards, on walls, in the landscape. Signs become objects, and back again. Los Angeleno Shannon Ebner thus mines a rich seam when she turns her camera on text in situ. Photographing letters as they appear in vernacular, everyday usage (street signs, graffiti) while snapping her own form of sign-making, in the shape of cut-out and propped-up lettering, Ebner presents photo-assemblages that tangle the act of reading with that of looking; while we’re reading, we’re also aware that we’re looking at a dissociated photograph of a letter as it appears somewhere out there in the world. At the same time, Ebner’s texts tend to play with the mechanics of language, in narrative streams that unravel and disintegrate, and the overlooked conventions of written

form –the visual presence of punctuation marks and what they attempt to represent. The Electric Comma is easily described yet labyrinthine in its implications. A short text, turning on the elusive nature of the comma (in a looped video projection and in a series of framed monochrome photographs), appears as displayed by a mobile traffic-warning display board – a matrix of rudimentary LED lights, bold and basic. In the video, the 70-odd words flash by at barely legible speed; in the photographs, black-on-white fragments of the text appear as negatives of the original illumination. Ebner’s text – in digital capitals – haltingly starts out: ‘dear reader comma the twentyseventh letter of the alphabet is a blank comma delay, a language of exposures a dear reader photograph in your mind comma eye, the liquid treatment causing ecstatic delays’. There’s no simple sense to it, but paying attention to the comma – the odd ‘pause’ in spoken language it supposedly represents – points us to a meditation on both the presence of the physical body and the nonlinear nature

of thinking, which written language tries to represent in the form of punctuated asides and ellipses. So if the comma represents a gap, an absence, then what is it an absence of, exactly? Text and image are both representations, and Ebner’s text-as-image seems keen to flee the static, conclusive fixity of the written or photographic record – ‘now go outside this time and plug in some really long chord this will make your photographic dance the electric comma and promptly disarrange the photographic universe’, the text exhorts. Text, photograph, language, body, performance and physical site all swap places in Ebner’s vertiginous fusion of fixed sign and unmediated, dynamic materiality. There’s an obsessive, cover-every-angle energy to her investigation, but at a time when art debate is full of phoney virtual-versus-material oppositions, Ebner’s work maps out a more complicated in-between, where concept, subjectivity and reality play out in an open, always-unfinished dialogue. J.J. Charlesworth

The Electric Comma, 2013 (installation view). © the artist. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ , London

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Rob Pruitt The Suicide Paintings Massimo De Carlo, London 14 October – 30 November The Suicide Paintings are neither abstract nor figurative. The main body of work in the show comprises 11 canvases, all alike in that they feature smooth linear colour gradients in airbrushed acrylic. Each canvas has a generous border that is also a colour gradient, which often works to balance or enliven the colour in the centre. Depending on how you look at the paintings, they appear as kitsch imaginary vistas or formal colour studies exploring different theories from a painter’s rulebook. At one moment a canvas will seem to be the former, bringing to mind the fading pastel blue-pink sky of a blown-up Botticelli, or the impenetrable pixelated palette on the iPad’s Brushes app that manages, with surprising ease, to merge garish colour combinations never seen on canvas (indigo into pale peach via olive-green). The next moment you are looking at a simple grey tonal study. The most visually impressive canvases demonstrate the effectiveness of the simplest of painting

theories: that a colour’s intensity varies depending on what frames it or surrounds it; light is only light when offset by dark, and vice versa. But always the colour is lively – has the effect of moving or vibrating – and is almost aggressively present. This is the artist who gave us endangered pandas in glitter, designed a pair of Jimmy Choos and installed a chrome-covered Andy Monument (2012) outside Warhol’s Factory in New York. So what to make of these paintings, which appear to riff on the ‘death of painting’ debate – where do we find Pruitt’s signature wit and droll take on pop culture? The first clue is his 2012 Faces series of colour gradient paintings, featuring hand-drawn faces expressing reductive emotions (angry, puzzled, etc): the result being that a story or dialogue takes place between the background colour and the mood expressed. In The Suicide Paintings, the colour combinations are more complex and there are no emoticons to tell us how we should feel. The

TBT, 2013, acrylic on linen, 206 × 274 cm. Courtesy MDC London

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absence of a story is made alarming by the scale and intensity of the encounter with colour on canvas. In a small anteroom, chromed television sets have been mounted on white-and-black boxes that allude, seemingly, to blank pixels. How far are our moods, our emotions, projected or simplified by our worlds, by pop culture in particular, Pruitt asks, and what happens to our identities when you take that away? Contemplating the exhibition title, and connected metaphors for life and death, one begins to see the paintings in a different light. These hypnotic vistas, reminiscent of flatscreen TVs in both proportion and aggressively slick vacuity, are perhaps not visions of our possible suicides, but visions of our actual digitally mediated suicides. The delivery of the concept feels messy (sculpture, word, paint, even previous Pruitt paintings), and perhaps that’s the point: in a world where the pixel is king, pop culture has lost its punch. It is all very wry and very clever. Very Rob Pruitt. Florence Waters

Judith Hopf Testing Time Studio Voltaire, London 12 October – 14 December Given that the press release for Testing Time, Judith Hopf’s first institutional solo show in the UK, asserts the artist’s interest in ‘how environments shape, influence, and by extension exclude us from ourselves’, it seems odd to find how little consideration was given to the exhibition’s spatial layout. With few relationships forged between three distinctively separate bodies of work sharing a single gallery space, Testing Time relies heavily on contextual references, which sadly are hardly made manifest in the viewing of the work. A large suspended, fabric-clad black box houses the projection of Lily’s Laptop (all works 2013), a five-minute film that alludes to Le Bateau de Léontine (1911) by Romeo Bosetti. In this short comedy, anglicised as Betty’s Boat, a young bored girl wishes to play with a toy boat. Betty turns on a tap, which eventually overflows, causing havoc to the rest of the building. In Hopf’s version of the film, a teenage Lily, left alone, is eager to play with her parents’ laptop. Frustrated by its protected password, Lily turns to the kitchen tap and floods the apartment by letting the sink overflow. Shots of various objects floating around the room are interwoven with a slapstick

scene of the downstairs neighbours struggling to enjoy their dinner, as water gradually ruins the living room. Hilarity ensues, as the drenched couple clamber over furniture, their framed artworks and possessions spouted down a flight of stairs by the ever-raging flood. Flock of Sheep is a herd of sculptures; modest concrete cubes cast in cardboard boxes, propped up awkwardly on stilted metal legs. Their faces crudely sketched in coal, they stare back deadpan at the viewer. Legs askew, some of the more wonky specimens are balanced on little wooden wedges, while others are taking a rest, placed directly on the floor. Adjacent are Untitled (Captchas), collages of Hopf’s writings and words triggered by CAPTCHA, which stands for ‘a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’. Commonly used on the websites of such companies as Facebook or Ryanair, their prompts are usually nonsensical and humorous. The resulting combinations of the jabberwockylike and the deliberately poised are Concrete poems passed through a digital filter. Just as French poet Tristan Tzara proposed

pulling words from a hat to create poems, so Hopf plucks random, machine-generated gibberish to forge sparse, surreal short texts. Most surprising in Testing Time is the formal dominance of the black box for Lily’s Laptop, positioned centrally within the gallery, the sound of the gushing water spilling out into the surrounding space. The press release’s emphasis on the film’s critique of modernist architecture and references to feminist materials also seem out of place given the lightness of the Bosetti original, and the very generic interiors used in the film, domestic spaces that could easily be found in any middle-class Danish or German home. It was Hopf’s wonderfully eccentric earlier short film Some Ends of Things (2011) that so much more successfully satirised the rigid geometry of a sombre, modernist glass building by showing a man wearing an egg costume struggling to negotiate crisscrossing walkways, and failing to squeeze through a doorway. In Testing Time, however, whether due to the selection of work or its spatial arrangement, there are few moments where Hopf’s usually acerbic wit is made paramount. Pavel S. Pyś

Lily’s Laptop (still), 2013. Courtesy the artist and Kaufmann/Repetto, Milan

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The World Turned Upside Down – Buster Keaton, Sculpture and the Absurd Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry 4 October – 14 December One aspect of slapstick is the zany comedy of clowning: ooh-er, crash, bang, bish bosh, thwack, custard pie, whoopee! But it’s the more nuanced and less humorous elements of the genre that this group show aims to highlight, through a selection of film, sculpture, installation and performance by 25 artists, from the late 1960s to the present day, and which takes as its initial reference point the silent films of Buster Keaton. Slapstick in general and Keaton in particular have long been source material for both artists and curators – Steve McQueen’s short film Deadpan (1997), which recreates a scene from Keaton’s 1928 feature Steamboat Bill, Jr being the most famous. Germany’s Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg’s show Slapstick! which includes work by Keaton and several artists also showing at the Mead being a concurrent example. Crowdpleasing and well-worn territory maybe, but there’s still something to add by drawing out connections between these works which focus less on laughs and more on ideas of heroic failure, domestic drudgery and a visceral sense

of the absurd through endurance, physical danger and destruction. So, we have Ben Woodeson’s installation of a giant pane of glass – silently inviting someone to walk into it (charmingly titled Fuck You You Fucking Fuck, 2012); Hayley Newman’s Domestique (2010–13) – dishcloths, embroidered with miserable faces; and Miranda Pennell’s 2003 film Fisticuffs, in which the choreographed saloon fight of the Western is transposed to a working men’s club, where little old ladies sit knitting, oblivious to the brawling that goes on around them. In Emma Hart’s film Lost (2009–11), projected onto the back of a narrow, corridorlike space, where a handheld camera probes under beds and on top of dusty cupboards, it’s the artist’s excitable commentary that comes to the fore, her signature exclamations of “OK, OK, what is it? Shit! No way” taking on an almost Frankie Howerd tone. And there’s a natural sequence to the way in which works follow on from each other. Hart leads into Keaton’s 1920 film One Week (one of three Keaton films included in the

Hayley Newman, Domestique (detail), 2010–13. Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London

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show), in which Keaton and his new bride attempt, with calamitous consequences, to construct a flat-pack house. This in turn leads to the seminal film of Gordon Matta-Clark bisecting a house, for his work Splitting (1974). The awareness of sound is handled particularly well. Keaton’s silent films are played without any musical accompaniment, but the ear compensates by picking up the soundtrack to filmworks playing nearby. Thus the noises of fizzing gases and bubbling liquids in Fischli and Weiss’s famous short Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) (1987) become the perfect adopted soundtrack to Keaton’s 1921 film The Boat (almost a sequel to One Week in its narrative, but enacted at sea), which is playing nearby. The show ends with the work that perhaps best encapsulates the mood of the exhibition, another well-known piece – Bas Jan Ader’s Broken Fall (Organic), Amsterdamse Bos, Holland (1971), in which the gangly artist hangs by his hands from a tree over a river, until his strength gives out and he crashes in. Precarious, ridiculous, dangerous, poignant but also very funny. Helen Sumpter

Jan Tichy Politics of Light No Longer Empty and Richard Gray Gallery, New York 10 October – 14 December Standing in an exhibition and waiting for something to happen can be nerve-wracking. This is not to say that art needs to be instantly gratifying, but walking into the dark space that houses Jan Tichy’s first New York show is jarring. The venue, a commercial space on the ground floor of a condominium on the Lower East Side, is finished with cement floors, white paint and columns throughout, but has the ghostly quality, so rare in New York City, of a place vacant of human activity. And then the site-specific Installation No. 18 (2013) sets off. The room is gradually lit by a number of projectors placed across it. The light lingers on corners, slowly climbs a column, draws attention to the texture of the walls. The eeriness of the space is not erased by the brightness, but if one gives in to the white light, the space can feel comfortable, the effect entrancing. The light is determined by an

algorithm that reacts to the architecture, but still seems to have a life and velocity of its own. This slick presentation contrasts with other works on view. In 100 RAW (2009), 100 black-and-white photographs of an urban landscape show continuously on a monitor as raw data files, with no greyscale to soften the imagery. Accompanied by white noise – actually the ‘sound’ of the image files when opened with audio software – the pictures convey a fateful failure of technology, where the images produced cannot represent anything that is ‘really’ there; in their rough state, they echo the fear or disquietude of the cityscapes. A similarly forbidding sound appears in Installation No. 6 (Tubes) (2008), where 200 paper tubes are placed atop an analogue television monitor playing a black-and-white animation. As the light moves across the television, illuminating the tubes to look like a small paper city,

a sense of poetics becomes interchangeable with the lightshow’s ominous pace, which pushes the viewer away from the piece. As with 100 RAW, the disrepair or disuse of a familiar technology becomes a key aspect of the work and our interaction with it. And the politics of the show’s title? It is in Tichy’s subjects, and his reserved handling of them makes them all the more resonant. For example, 1391 (2007) is a 40-centimetre-tall paper model of a secret military base in Israel, displayed alongside what look like architectural drawings of the model. With its small scale and scrupulous detail, the presence of the classified building in model form is disturbing as is. What makes it even more poignant is that it is placed on the dark floor and illuminated from above by a rectangle of white light. Bringing something to light can be as tormenting as being kept in the dark. Orit Gat

1391, 2007, video installation, ceiling digital video projection, 250 gram paper object, adhesive, inkjet print, 9 min. Courtesy Richard Gray Gallery, New York

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Carol Bove The Equinox MoMA, New York 20 July – 12 January It’s not by chance that Carol Bove’s The Equinox looks like the Ikea of modernist art, albeit with much higher production values. It’s as if the artist spent a few days in MoMA’s Painting and Sculpture galleries only to pilfer from the institution’s well-known art-historical playbook, making it generically her own. The White Tubular Glyph (2012) – with its shiny, powder-coated steel tube looping, snakelike, across the low white plinth on which the seven sculptures that comprise the show are placed – resembles a Robert Morris geometric sculpture downsized, neutered and pulled into a kind of a curvy, minimalist noodle. If it were much, much larger, it also, at first glance, could easily be dumped in the front plaza of some big, faceless bank’s corporate headquarters, a fat, blank object filling up space for the sake of filling up space – the kind of sculpture Bove and many others would call ‘plop art’, which the sculpture handily references.

With Terma (2013), another dude of Morris’s generation, Sol LeWitt, gets his dressing-down. The artist’s well-known variations on the white cube, which form patterns of criss-crossing, aggregating structures, is turned by Bove into dull brass grids growing unevenly off the top of a pedestal like a malicious, minimalist cancer. Chesed (2013) is composed entirely of irregularly overlapping I-beams, a brutish building material toppled like little tinker toys. One would almost expect to find a Richard Serra-like blob of lead somewhere, as if he came all over the floor in a gurgle instead of a Splash (1968–70). Situated in such close proximity to the museum’s fabled permanent collection, is The Equinox, then, a pointed feminist critique of Alfred H. Barr, Jr’s outsize influence, a browbeating of big-business, big-patriarchy art history? Certainly. But there’s more going on here. One could say that at stake is artwork’s

art-ness, as foregrounded by the plinth. It’s only 10 cm high, but it’s quite a demarcation from ‘the real world’, though it didn’t stop Bove from hauling up to MoMA a beat-up, rusted bed from some forsaken lot in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Disgusting Mattress (2012) is dumped unceremoniously next to the other, more cultivated objects. It’s really a funny, pitiful thing, with its springs bent out of shape as if styled by some Looney Tunes cartoonist. This is as real-world as it gets. On the one hand, the mattress offers a taut retort to the privileged position that much modernist artwork is accorded. On the other hand, it itself becomes privileged in this privileged setting – a frog turned into a prince thanks to the symbolic sheen of Bove’s low-slung platform. The Equinox proves how quickly the tables can turn, and how infinitely small the difference can be between trash and treasure. David Everitt Howe

The White Tubular Glyph, 2012, powder coated bent steel, dimensions variable. Photo: EPW Studio/ Maris Hutchinson. Courtesy the artist, Maccarone, New York, and David Zwirner, New York & London

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Mark Leckey On Pleasure Bent Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 31 August – 8 December Ken Jacobs’s Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son (1969), a seminal work in the canon of American avant-garde film, can be taken as an example both of modernist reflexivity – it is a film about a film, in a sense – and the libidinal cinephilia that courses through the veins of filmmakers of the ‘independent persuasion’ (Annette Michelson’s wonderful phrase) no less than their devotees. Jacobs’s camera caresses and peruses the surface of an earlier artefact of film’s history in a manner that only someone with a deep desire for the medium might do. And ‘desire’ is the word. Not ‘love’, which is too respect-laden an emotion to allow for the kind of mistreatment to which mistresses are subject while ‘loves’ are not. Pearl Vision (2012), a video that Leckey produced during a residency at the Hammer Museum, exhibits a similar kind of cinephilia, but in Leckey’s case the desire isn’t so much for film itself but for digital video’s capacity for analysis and capture. To revive that old distinction of Walter Benjamin’s, if Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son is magical, involving a laying on of hands

without ever compromising the body of film, Leckey’s work is surgical, laying bare the body of moving-image work as light, movement and sync sound. Much might be made of the object here. Pearl Vision is the brand and model name of the snare drum that stars in the work. We see through it, the way one sees through a kaleidoscope perhaps. And we penetrate it in the manner that endoscopic procedures penetrate the body, as if through a keyhole. We also see the drummer, but never all of him, just his legs, both clothed (in red trousers) and unclothed, in their natural male hirsuteness. We hear the snap, snap, snap of the drumsticks’ report, but on other occasions we see only the drumsticks’ motion, the object of their ballistic arcs having been removed temporarily from the scene. It’s all pretty compelling to watch. The problem is that Pearl Vision is not the only work offered here, even within the space of the video itself. On Pleasure Bent is billed as a trailer for a more autobiographical work of Leckey’s

to come. The video begins with a different, far less coherent set of scenes, which have something to do with picturing Leckey’s memories of his childhood. They’re culled from footage of the 1970s and succumb to all the clichéd conventions of music-video montage in order to ‘suggest’ a mood and a portent – presumably of the artist. The cardboard ‘standees’ – those advertising constructs, like potted plants, that one can still find in odd corners of movie theatre lobbies – that accompany the video are also meant to offer such suggestions, but these merely ‘stand for’ and so picture the kind of truss-work towers that carry high-tension electrical lines (goodness, did the artist have to look at these growing up?). The looped animations on LED screens are similarly pat. Save for Pearl Vision, On Pleasure Bent smacks a bit too much of art school – although one suspects that the art school implicated here is of the ‘curatorial persuasion’, the kind that wants to look smart rather than be it. Jonathan T.D. Neil

Pearl Vision, 2012, video, colour, sound, 3 min 10 sec. Courtesy the artist, Cabinet Gallery, London, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin & Cologne

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Josh Kline Quality of Life 47 Canal, New York 3 September – 13 October Whitney Houston has been hitting the molly at Brooklyn warehouse parties recently. So she says. She was clubbing in Berlin ten years before you even thought about it. Houston’s face glitches and twitches, but she remains deadpan, bored, as though riffing on some kind of hymnbook that has been written about herself. “I’ve partied in every city in the world since forever,” she explains with complete dedication to her vacant soundbite. Josh Kline’s video Forever 48 (all works 2013) shows Houston interviewed by a talk-show host, and suggests that it might have become easier for the star, who died last year from drug-related problems, to party on every continent since she stopped having to bother with that niggling problem of, well, being alive; now she can dedicate herself to being pure personality. Houston takes a sip of green juice, the healthy New Yorker’s refreshment du jour, and it slides under her mouth to another mouth behind: a face that flickers below her expressionless, glittery, heavy-lashed mask. In this video, and in Forever 27, in which we meet a green-haired, e-cigarette-smoking Kurt

Cobain, Kline has employed real-time imaging software, developed by Arturo Castro and Kyle McDonald, to layer the visages of dead stars on top of live actors’ faces. These moving digital masks are used as free-floating signifiers of celebrity ‘personality’ that can be detached from the star and worn by anyone as a kind of digital prosthesis. They are eerie, persuasive, memorable works. While we are all increasingly in on the game of crafting public personas, we need to be wary of what we sacrifice: Houston admits that the only aspect of herself that she felt was truly hers was, in fact, the gaping cavern of depression that she tried to block up with cocaine; Cobain on the other hand offers us his stomach problems and the miracles of probiotics. Quality of Life builds on Kline’s recently curated summer exhibition ProBio at PS1, which featured Ian Cheng, Carissa Rodriguez and DIS among others, and which excellently articulated a number of visions of bleeding-edge techno culture in ecstatic communion with the body. Kline’s sculptural works here and there employ

Quality of Life, 2013 (installation view). Photo: Joerg Lohse. Courtesy 47 Canal, New York

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a clean Apple Store aesthetic that is both corporate and medical – in Quality of Life we are offered hybrid objects such as iv bags full of Ambien and chamomile for sleep, or spirulina and Red Bull for energy, or blood doped with Green Vibrance powder. But wait, hold the iPhone: pharmaceutical aesthetics? White vitrines? A dead-eyed, sardonic view of the current conditions of labour? The physical impossibility of death in the mind of… right. Sculpturally we might have found our era’s Damien Hirst (and I write this as someone who would defend Hirst’s 1990s work). Kline’s works are cynical blossoms grown from soils of bad economic policy, base desire and fear (and I write this as someone with no health insurance who bought a chia seed drink and a kale salad in the last 24 hours). But those slipping digital masks in Kline’s videos gladly do far more than this, and suggest that Kline, as both artist and likely spokesperson for his scene, is moving beyond the diagnostic into a deeper philosophy of the surface. Laura McLean-Ferris

Natalie Frank The Scene of a Disappearance ACME, Los Angeles 19 October – 16 November Natalie Frank’s figures usually lie behind closed doors, in contracting spaces that dimensionally contort and spin under the duress of slow pressures. An essential stress spills out from every solid. The basic metaphor is of the collapsing spaces of the mind in the midst of trauma or on the frontiers of dreaming, when the most banal situations take on the weight of symbol. These are interior paintings. Literally and figuratively, the people inside them are pale and atrophied and held in a state of arrest. Little sun breaks through. The news that Frank brings is both visually and topically resonant with late-nineteenthcentury Symbolism. Riding a wave of new interest in the subconscious and the romantic revival of old myths, artists such as Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and Fernand Khnopff pictured the mind quite poisoned by its new industrial reality. Whereas the Impressionists turned to physical reality, the Symbolists plunged into the imagination as shaped by narrative history. Very much in this spirit, Frank presents the subconscious as continuously fresh and horrifying,

torturing her apparitions as they navigate terrains of archetypal totems. Consider Portrait in Interior with Window (2013). A distended female body stretches on a bed, as though tied at the top, while an incubus lurks in the upper left corner. Ultimately, this is an update and refutation of Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781). Frank does not allow her dreaming subject fetishistic entry into the rubric of Fuseli’s male rape fantasy, but instead offers the viewer a potential empathetic moment with the woman in bed. The incubus is merely an opportunistic tormentor, while the potential hope in the window (a family member? a lover?) seems the true source of the trauma. The woman twists in ambivalence between happiness and pain, and the symbols of her release (birds) are trapped as a mere design motif on the floor. That this interpretation reads as the sequence of a dream is no accident. Frank’s humans seem alienated from warm interactions with others, bound up in their own codes of acceptance. The dream is a great metaphor

for this, an independent language created by the brain based on an unrepeatable set of conditions. Unlike, say, Neo Rauch, Frank’s dreams do not flirt with expansive historical allegory, but instead focus on flash encounters of feelings and moments of individual distress. Erotic energy only increases the fracture. Frank’s subjects experience their worst divisions when they encounter the sexual other. It is poignant and important that these paintings emerge in a society obsessed with increased connectivity. Frank presents dark subtexts and layered narratives in an age dominated by soundbites and carefully constructed personas. These personas are patently false, Frank seems to suggest, while the reality of the mind is still as dark and hidden as it was for Redon and Khnopff. The fruits of decadence – for the Symbolists and now for Frank – are islands of disconnectedness and ennui where individuals are bombarded by images but lack the capacity for feeling and meaning. Ed Schad

Portrait in Interior with Window, 2013, oil, enamel, collage on board, 183 × 274 cm. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer. Courtesy the artist and ACME, Los Angeles

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François Morellet No End Neon Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles 19 September – 9 November The spectres of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly still haunt contemporary painting, with their hard edges and pure colour beaming from remembered walls, but François Morellet’s straight lines and bright colours literally beam, here and elsewhere, with the tawdry, soft shimmer of neon. Even as cold LEDs take over the street lamps, and fluorescents evenly irradiate the Kafkaesque offices of the world, neon remains the most modern of lights. It’s a night light: the electric glow of traffic-choked boulevards and exhaust, of the shimmy and short skirt of the old Times Square prostitutes, of 24-hour diners and 3am discos. Maybe by ‘modern’ I mean more ‘moderne’, not contemporary exactly, but truly the last century’s industrial future, Disneyland’s Tomorrowland for decadent adults looking for cheap whisky and cheaper thrills, always an advertisement for some clubby desire just inside. But even then, blue neon spears that rain from the walls and ceiling here attempt to refer

only to themselves, a game long played by artists trying to free themselves from content: the faux-purity of modernist gesturing. But Kelly’s abstractions always cheerfully grinned like the logos of detergents from supermarket shelves, shapes and colours a 1950s housewife could love, and Morellet, as a cofounder of GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel), evolved that minimal aesthetic into the hard cool hip of the 1960s, a time and aesthetic that still frequents American Apparel shop windows (not just a little French art smacks of such display). The black taped-out grid on the gallery wall – Tamponade No. 2 (2013) – shows Richard Tuttle-ish affections for simple materials, but the grid is ever the grid, as Rosalind Krauss adroitly pointed out back in the day, and it dominates postwar art, the age of circuitboards and mall parking lots. As cities abandoned medieval ring roads for crisscrossing avenues, artists reflected it, from Mondrian’s

boogie-woogie to Andre’s floor plates and LeWitt’s wall drawings. The trick is that even after 40 years, Morellet’s work still feels moderne, a chic present, an aesthetic hard to age. His is an art of codes and systems, geometries we can’t ever seem to evade. Unlike Flavin or Turrell, whose penchant for light as medium is well known, with Morellet composition trumps atmosphere: the neons are like electric slashes of pure colour rather than open space soaked with a chromatic glow. Morellet’s neons rope down from the ceiling and stripe the gallery walls like piercing rain, but they also cross canvases. Though a couple of off-kilter pictures – Entre Deux Mers No. 2 (2013) – find their footing through the neatly painted acrylic horizon line they share (it parallels the ground while the paintings do not), the others are naked of wet paint and only have white neon tubes angled across the surface of their canvas, flowing into the air like paint could only ever dream of doing. Andrew Berardini

No End Neon, 2013, 29 200 cm blue neon tubes and transformers, dimensions variable. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer. Courtesy the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles

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Roxy Paine Apparatus Kavi Gupta, Chicago 20 September – 20 December If you were asked to create a diorama that represents the social, political and economic conditions of twenty-first-century America, what would you put in it? A white kid looking at an iPad while his Filipina nanny makes his bed? A group of meth heads in the cereal aisle of a Walmart? There is so much to cover, and so few ways to do so without being either superficial or offensive. In Apparatus, Roxy Paine does the task justice. Through two full-scale wooden dioramas of a control room (a composite of different kinds: air-traffic control, power plant, recording studio) and the interior of a fast-food restaurant, Paine evokes so much of what drives American society today – control, complacency, greed, excess, ignorance. He does so by replicating the sterile facades of the messy (and some would say evil) web of systems that enable our comfortable lives. In presenting them here devoid of the human presence that would activate them, and meticulously hand-carved out of birch and maple, Paine asks us to contemplate their true nature. But rather than being imbued with a sense of wabi-sabi, a Japanese concept having to do with finding enlightenment

in the imperfect, which the press release claims is central to Paine’s practice, I ended up feeling powerless in the face of the powerful apparatus that Americans service, to the detriment of their own health and happiness. With the breathtaking Control Room (all works 2013), what will come to mind first – at least for a science-fiction nerd – is the bridge from Battlestar Galactica’s eponymous spaceship. Enclosed behind a window of glass, the installation is composed of hundreds of wooden pieces, painted in mute tones of taupe and grey and resembling gas gauges, television screens, levers, telephones, switches. Behind every system that we have come to rely on (a steady water supply, waste management, the servers that store our emails), along with those that we passively accept because we think that they keep us safe (drone technology, NSA spying programmes) stands such an anonymous space – an apparatus that, to skilled and unskilled worker alike, appears as inoperable as the merely symbolic shells Paine reproduces. The fastfood counter of Carcass consists of wood so carefully carved that, for example,

even the straws in its straw dispensers look like precious objects. The systems embodied are different than the ones in Control Room. Here we confront the subsidised farmers and corporations that engineer our food, and who are connected to the advertising firms that rely on poverty and poor education to sell their products, and to the healthcare system that makes money off the damage done to our bodies. In essence, it’s a system that fucks us. But fast food easily stands in as well for fast fashion, ever-upgraded smartphones, McMansions – all ultimately intended-to-be-obsolete products that embody America’s voracious appetite for instant gratification. There’s a brilliance to how much can be addressed by two wooden dioramas. But there’s also something missing. What Paine fails to address is the system that the artworks enter by their very presence in an art gallery. The monied one that drives the top of the food chain, and which benefits the most from a smoothly running and little-questioned apparatus. Brienne Walsh

Carcass, 2013, birch, maple, glass, fluorescent, 424 × 611 × 414 cm. Photo: Joseph Rynkiewicz

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12th Biennale de Lyon: Meanwhile... Suddenly and Then Various venues 12 September – 5 January Curator Gunnar B. Kvaran’s stated goal for his iteration of the Lyon Biennale was to make a show that surveyed forms of narrative in contemporary practice. It is bitterly ironic therefore that the exhibition wholly lacked a cohesive one of its own. In short, the biennale was curatorially, formally, a mess. One example from many possible: in the final furlong of the show is a film installation by Czech artist Václav Magid titled From the Aesthetic Education Secret Files (2013). Two projections show clips from what the wall text explains to be a 1970s Soviet drama series, Seventeen Moments of Spring. The viewing room is laid with a plush grey carpet, with the digits 1, 2 and 3 visible in black in the weave. It’s a quietly dense piece, meditating on the aesthetics of politics; the accompanying text makes reference to eighteenth-century philosophy, contemporary theorist Boris Groys and the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin. A work that will, with time and thought, deliver rewards. Yet it is encountered straight after a brain-frazzling, epileptic, gurn-fest gallery of Ryan Trecartin’s films, works which purposely (and brilliantly) destroy one’s attention span. It belittles Trecartin. It is disastrous for Magid. A growing sense of fatigue while moving through the show, catalysed by such curatorial clangers, reaches lethal levels on the ground floor of La Sucrière, the biennale’s regular venue

alongside Lyon’s Musée d’Art Contemporain, which, with few exceptions, is given over to works with a digital or animated aesthetic. These ‘range’ from the out-and-out gif-happy post-Internetism of Petra Cortright, whose videos feature the kind of young ladies who might pop up on the web to entice you into a ’cam party, writhing enticingly over digitally rendered (found, perhaps) scenes of pastoral myth, to Dan Colen’s Pop art sculptures of the Kool-Aid Man, Roger Rabbit and Wile E. Coyote, the presence of the latter taking over the venue in the additional form of a cutout silhouette in all the dividing walls, the length of the gallery, as if the toon had rampaged through the place in an effort to escape the work (an understandable reaction: perhaps Coyote was overcome with existential worry as he realised his presence was just dull, irony-laboured posturing by Colen). To the new Net art camp one can add Tabor Robak’s quadrant of digital renderings depicting a Victorian domestic interior, an Asian supermarket, delicate fine cuisine and a CCTV-like animation of magnified bacteria. Elsewhere, Ed Fornieles’s wholesale shipment of his recent pop culture-filled Los Angeles exhibition, Despicable Me 2 (2013), felt too aesthetically similar to Bjarne Melgaard’s work Untitled (2013). In the former, a large cardboard cutout cock vied with sculptural renditions of Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin and other zinging

Petra Cortright, SpringValle_ber_girls, 2012, flash animation. Photo: Blaise Adilon. Courtesy the artist and La Biennale de Lyon

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Generation-Y motifs. This visually cacophonous ‘stuff’-piled-‘messily’-in-a-room vibe is also utilised by Melgaard, with a gallery filled with old sportswear, stop-frame animations and a sculptural Pink Panther taking a woman from behind. The viewer, in the end, becomes desensitised to this lowbrow burlesquing. I don’t think it’s necessarily the artists’ fault – those mentioned are chasing different ideas, perhaps – but something has to be wrong when you’re staring at a cartoon character’s grossly engorged pinksequined penis with an air of total ambivalence. The viewer gets minor, but much needed relief from this otherwise all-pervasive sense of hipsterish detachment from tangible reality with Laida Lertxundi’s excellent film collage The Room Called Heaven (2012), which, with its shots of a hand swirling an ice bucket or a woman standing near a clanging railway-crossing bell, has a welcome sense of physicality to it. Ditto Ed Atkins’s new video, Even Pricks (2013), which, while using digital rendering (animated from motion-capture technology), combines it with a deeply affecting, beautifully written and voiced narrative on depression, adding depth and charge, and a feeling that something is at stake in the work. This is sadly missing from many of the other works in the biennale, and the direction of the show as a whole, which felt merely reflective and muddled: a tale with no point to it, a tale badly told. Oliver Basciano

Kalliopi Lemos I Am I, Between Worlds and Between Shadows Ioakimion Greek High School for Girls, Istanbul 11 September – 10 November Timed to coincide with the Istanbul Biennial, Kalliopi Lemos’s offsite exhibition sounds, when described, like it shouldn’t work at all. Housed in a girls-only lyceum closed in 1988 due to Turkey’s declining Greek population and now preserved yet decaying, the show comprises three main elements. There are seven steel sculptural hybrids of woman and animal, typically maimed; sound installations of schoolchildren’s speech and scratchy schoolroom ambience; and, laid like classwork on graffitimarked wooden school desks, printouts of news reports detailing the diversely brutal treatment of women worldwide. Tabulated accordingly, the London-based Greek artist’s I Am I, Between Worlds and Between Shadows reads as dangerously didactic, and beamed in from another artworld, where denatured Expressionism lives forever. Yet Lemos’s sculptures – a formal shift for an artist who has previously favoured politicised readymades such as accumulations of immigrants’ battered boats (Round Voyage, 2007–) – are often genuinely grotesque and of intriguingly hazy status, and they reposition the environment even as its historical aspects threaten to overpower them. In one schoolroom, Hen on Crutches (all works 2013), a large half-fowl, half-woman figure, plucked and beheaded,

long birdy legs dangling, faces the desks like a cross between a victim-exemplar and a pedagogue; it then fades into the background as one reads reports on school sex abuse in China and India, a paedophile ring in Oxford, abuse in Chinese labour camps. Such material, in this abandoned building, is irrepressibly potent and serves to make the sculpture a nightmarish periphery: a semiabstract commentary on, or condensation of, hideous news. The same goes for the queasily eight-breasted Hanging Hare in another classroom, while in a poky science room a six-year-old’s voice emerges hesitantly from a speaker, reading from Little Red Riding Hood, and elsewhere children keenly recite, “Now I know my ABCs. Next time won’t you sing with me?” Such warped-kindergarten menace works on Boards of Canada records and in horror movies, and it works here too. What Lemos is articulating, it’s clear as the stats accumulate, is a horror movie: human trafficking in Vietnam, domestic abuse in Istanbul, a Saudi child sold for a PlayStation and a car, Congolese soldiers raping, voodoo prostitution in Nigeria where the women are branded with irons, and more. Lemos, though, seemingly wants to tackle all strata of female debilitation. Goat, the most abstracted sculpture, finds the

titular animal broken in half and attached to a right-angled pole: the upper body erupts from its top while a pair of breasts is attached further down. If goats on mountainsides leap fleetly from point to point, this one has been broken by trying to cover too much ground – the analogy, Lemos has said, is with women being expected to be mothers and careerists, Madonnas and whores – and lost its coherence in the process. Hen with Two Faces, like a three-dimensional rendering of one of Goya’s sardonic Caprichos (1797–8), has a proud, childish, beaky face and, embedded in its feathered rear, the world-weary one that time and experience will bring to it. These sculptures need the decrepit aesthetics of the school, which not only summarises a specific example of victimhood (how the Greek community in Turkey has been treated) but brims with happenstance gifts – eg, photographs of the final few students pinned to a door, unmoved in a quarter-century – and the textual and sonic addenda Lemos lays out. In memory, for all that they made this viewer rethink certain reflex preconceptions about anthropomorphic sculpture, the figures become blurred and sentinellike: shadowy presences in Lemos’s vociferous gesamtkunstwerk of a haunted schoolhouse. Martin Herbert

Hen on Crutches, 2013. Photo: Rowan Durrant

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Sam Durant Propaganda of the Deed Centro Arti Plastiche, Carrara 19 October – 25 November In Carrara, the mountains seem covered by a perennial snowcap, even in summer. It’s an optical illusion: the white glow is that of its famous marble quarries, opened in the second century BC and still in use. Nowadays the extraction is done by heavy industrial machinery, so that the speed of consumption is traumatising. An endless flow of trucks runs up and down the winding roads, but not all the mineral is cut in slabs. Every day, tons of it are crushed and turned into the best powder in the world for whitening teeth, or to create ‘cultured marble’ when mixed with cement and resins – one of those insane Italian stories that can fill you with anger at the obtuseness of grinding up landscape, history and beauty for the sake of profit. Of all the sculptures by Sam Durant installed in the Centro Arti Plastiche (Centre of Plastic Arts, a small museum, once a convent, overlooking the city) for this exhibition, the most poignant is possibly the most inconspicuous. Titled Calcium Carbonate (ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around) (2011; the title includes a quotation from nineteenth-century Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane), it is a carefully hand-sculpted marble reproduction of a bag of pulverised marble, resting on the floor. As if matter could revert to its original state, and time could be rewound. In counterpoint, one finds

Black Powder (ours is a struggle inspired by love and not by hatred) (2011; here the quote is from anarchist Errico Malatesta’s Violence as a Social Factor, 1895), a marble copy of a box of explosives once used to set off the rocks – as well as for bombings. Carrara was the epicentre of anarchist thought and action in Italy, and the history of marble is inextricably linked with that of its defiant quarrymen. In Piazza Gramsci, visitors can come across a commemorative stone to a local hero, the anarchist trade unionist Alberto Meschi (1879–1958), ‘Maker of better times, magnificent worker among workers and outcasts, heart open to the wounds of man and society’. Durant’s exhibition is the last chapter of Propaganda of the Deed, a project the California artist started two years ago, after he participated in Post-Monument, Carrara’s 14th Sculpture Biennale. The outcome of his site-specific research is a posthumous monument to legendary anarchists from the area, whose memory could be on the verge of vanishing together with the local handicrafts: Gino Lucetti, Renzo Novatore, Marie-Louise Berneri, Carlo Cafiero, Francesco Saverio Merlino and Malatesta. It consists of a series of marble busts, installed on high plinths against the background of a black flag (anarchy’s colour) held in place by a portable tubular structure. Previously

exhibited at Galleria Franco Soffiantino in Turin and at MACRO in Rome, these black and white works revert to a less abstract, less remote state in Carrara, surrounded as they are by other marble sculptures from various editions of the biennale and a nostalgic aura of homecoming. Durant commissioned the busts from a local atelier, Telara Studio d’Arte (he included in the captions the names of all the people who executed the heads), where old methods are still in use and the figure is firstly built in clay, then in plaster and finally in marble. As the portraits are based on old pictures, when the images are good, the rendering is detailed; when they are blurry, the busts are non-finito, left unfinished, and the traces of tecnica a punti (the use of compasslike instruments to measure the distance between different parts of the relief in plaster, in order to have the same measurements on the marble) become clearly visible. Curator Federica Forti’s decision also to include a series of didactic materials (books, photos, biographies of the protagonists, memoirs), as well as to reconstruct a (kitschy) corner of the production workshop, somehow closes the circle of cross-references and mimesis. What is historicised, what is fictionalised and what is ‘cultured’ mingle in the quietness of these rooms, open on the panorama of the selfconsuming quarries. Barbara Casavecchia

Black Flag, Unfinished Marble (Errico Malatesta), 2011, Carrara marble carved at the Telara Studio d’Arte by Adriano Gerbi, Mauro Tonazzini, Sara Atzeni, Maria Teresa Telara, dimensions variable. Photo: Stefano Lanzardo. Courtesy Franco Soffiantino Contemporary Art Productions, Turin

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Nic Guagnini Heads Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin 20 September – 26 October At first glance Nic Guagnini’s first solo show seems too smart, almost decorative. Here, seven black-and-white prints hang in a precise line on the wall: on these Heads (2013) antique busts are depicted, each with a severed nose. The Argentine-born, New York-based postconceptualist photographed these in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are Greek and Roman heads. In front of this series of images are two square pedestals, a glossy black ceramic sculpture on top of each one. Hard of Hearing (2012) and Blake’s Paranoia (2013) depict black, amorphous forms, which upon closer inspection manifest themselves as cast penises, ears and noses that have been joined together. The ceramic material blatantly evokes, with an ironic wink, the feeling of kitsch and romanticising historicism. The objectivity of the sculptures proves to be ambivalent; they refer, on the one hand, to a mimetic aesthetic nowadays considered obsolete, while on the other hand the displayed motifs are somewhat unsettling. Now, at least, a slight uneasiness

comes over the viewer as he slowly recognises the network of references that Guagnini has staged in the gallery space. The severed noses, like the ears and penises, remind one of violence against people, the phallic aspects even evoking something like fear of castration. At the same time, although less obviously, the installation alludes to the problematic relationship between the German government working in Berlin and a heavily indebted Greece. The cubic pedestals not only aestheticise brutal events but also cite a modernistic vocabulary of form and thereby bridge the gap between ancient and present times. In addition, the brochure ‘Some Notes on Dickface’ (2013), which Guagnini designed together with Bill Hayden and which can be downloaded for free from the gallery’s website, as well as the website dickface.me, from which the trashy, virtually ‘bleeding’ Dickface font (also designed by Guagnini and Hayden) of the brochure can be downloaded for one dollar, are integral components of the exhibition. In ‘Some Notes on Dickface’, short texts on subjects like

the Holocaust, fear of castration, fetishes and hell are printed; the fragments are illustrated with photos that are in some cases dire – of mass graves, for example – but also with attractive fashion photos. Blatantly recounted on these pages are the contradictions of modernity, paranoia and mass destruction, commoditisation, the lustre of commodity fetishism as well as the precarious construction of identity. That ‘Some Notes on Dickface’ are, on the one hand, structured far more complexly and emotionally than the clean ensemble of sculpture and prints (the supposedly ‘actual’ art), but that, on the other hand, the brochures are just placed casually in the gallery’s hallway, is an exciting moment in the exhibition. This shift of the important towards the marginal – the most significant images seen only in the leaflet, and exiled from the main space – is a clear statement by Guagnini, expressing his mistrust towards any form of established art. Raimar Stange Translated from the German by Emily Terényi

Blake’s Paranoia, 2013, ceramic on pedestal, 24 × 16 × 16 cm (foreground) and Heads, 2013, prints, 46 × 34 cm (background). Photo: Simon Vogel. Courtesy the artist & Lars Friedrich, Berlin

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Meriç Algün Ringborg A Work of Fiction Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm 22 August – 29 September Istanbul-born, Stockholm-based Meriç Algün Ringborg’s first solo show in her adopted city comprises three complementary components or approaches to displaying her eponymous ‘work of fiction’. First among them is an environment resembling the studio or workspace of some writer or creative type, displaying objects that may or may not provoke or comfort the imagination during production: a sculpted hand and head, commonplace reference books for a writer-in-the-making and some modernist furniture pieces that might be associated with a studio or office space. Second is the audio narrative Metatext (all works 2013), wherein a writerly voice dissects her intricate rapport with the act of writing. Here one hears observations on pursuing the craft, such as, “The first sentence is so hard to compose” or, “I was toying with the idea of writing a book”. The third aspect: unbound pages, fitted neatly into a box (which one can open to sift through), from the manuscript of a novel that refuses to fit any genre, although it highlights clichés found within already existing ones. The writing, A Work of Fiction, appears collected rather than deliberately written so as to follow any predictable, linear narrative arc. The text resides in the overlapping spheres between crime thriller, trite romance and realistic drama; the lives of three characters (Maria, Peter and Mark) unfold as one reads each dense,

500–1,000-word ‘flash fiction’-style narrative, and a question of authorship arises as one progresses further into the manuscript. Typed pages including typos are displayed, reminiscent of the once visceral, intimate nature of writing – when one expressed oneself with the assistance of a seemingly archaic machine, instead of the word processors used today. The Oulipo movement, which Algün Ringborg acknowledges as an influence on this show, is predicated on applying constraints to literary production. Originating in France at the outset of the 1960s thanks to the collaborative energies of mathematicians and writers, it is now well established, and its influence still prevails in other parts of the world (eg, Los Angeles, in CalArts and the experimental writing movement in the area). Some critics argue that Oulipo has been exhausted, to the point that its ideas are no longer lucrative inspiration for others following the movement and in the midst of developing their creative practice – whether it be writing-based or otherwise. Others simply desire to see artists taking risks and not following any predesigned code or safe, trend-driven methodology. And some believe that Oulipo allows artists to dodge actual ‘productivity’, because some of its incorporated rules justify a questionably laissez-faire or inconclusive attitude, promoting thoughtless artmaking and writing. The poetic ‘flarf’ phenomenon,

A Work of Fiction (detail). Photo: Jean-Baptiste Beranger. Courtesy Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm

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using text scoured from the Internet as a source of textual formulation, has been linked to Oulipo and harshly deemed subpar. Now, and significantly for Algün Ringborg’s propositions (eg, a work here consisting of sentences appropriated from The Oxford English Dictionary and displayed via an overhead projector), others in Scandinavia (and elsewhere) are also working according to constraints – yet they often seem unaware that they are doing so. Some artists operate by following self-designed rules, others by adopting the rules of others, and some fall into a comfortable zone of using rules when unorganised, openended chaos seems too much for them to continue their path. This exhibition, then, could be perceived as a flippant mockery – or an invitation to alter one’s perspective on validity. It’s notable, in this questioning regard, that also on view here is a black-and-white faux bookshelf – the spines of books printed onto a plastic surface – displaying self-help volumes geared towards assisting a struggling writer searching for a guiding light. Such self-reflection and scrutiny are valuable for any artist who cares about how her own art is inevitably influenced by the practice and ideas of others, since the burdensome beast of crowd behaviour frequently leads to either acceptance or rejection in the art and publishing worlds alike. Jacquelyn Davis

±1961: Founding the Expanded Arts Reina Sofía, Madrid 19 June – 28 October Early in the exhibition ±1961 a visitor encounters Onion Walk (1961), by choreographer and dancer Simone Forti. A wonderfully (and deceptively) simple work, Onion Walk consists of nothing more than a sprouting onion balanced atop an empty bottle. As the onion’s sprouts grow, they gradually draw matter out from within the bulb until, ultimately, the onion’s overall weight shifts and it falls off the bottle. Onion Walk thus embodies ideas that inform ±1961 as a whole: it is at once an object and also a kind of performance and thus an example of ‘intermedia’; it is deskilled and unpretentious and thus manages to bridge the gap between art and life; and above all, it is a kind of ephemera, not in the sense of ancillary work on paper, but rather in the more fundamental sense of something that would not, could not and was not intended to last. ±1961 takes as its point of departure the remarkable publication An Anthology of Chance Operations (1963), edited by the composer La Monte Young (with poet Jackson Mac Low) and designed by Fluxus ringleader George Maciunas. Compiled by Young largely in 1961, An Anthology was an odd and radical publication, a collection of experimentally polyvalent texts, musical compositions, choreographies (including Onion Walk), word-events and other unclassifiable

material. In spirit and methodology, it was a direct product of John Cage’s composition classes at the New School in New York in the late 1950s, and also the direct precursor of the Fluxus movement that Maciunas would promote in the following years. Curated by Julia Robinson and Christian Xatrec, ±1961 brings together contemporaneous work by contributors to An Anthology – a small group, a clique even, centred on Young and with its nucleus in downtown New York (despite a certain degree of geographic disparity). Such a tight focus is a great boon to a thesis-driven, historically oriented exhibition; but in the case of ±1961, it forces the exhibition headlong into the inevitable problem of how to present, within the formaldehydelike environment of the museum, work by an exceedingly small group whose shared ethos entailed guerrilla-style resistance (and occasional outright hostilities) directed precisely towards such presentations. Not surprisingly, in this museum context art objects qua art objects fare better in weathering the passage of time, and ±1961 includes many memorable such pieces: spare sculptures by Walter De Maria, a musical composition by Earl Browne that takes the form of a large,

constructivist-style drawing stretched out on the floor, various works by Robert Morris and Ray Johnson, and a delightful announcement for the publication of John Cage’s book Silence (1961) in the form of a matchbook. In addition, daily dance performances and occasional film screenings serve to enliven the exhibition. But in fact live art was the common currency among this select group of artists, composers, dancers and writers, and its transactional exchange, more than anything else, is what opened the way for the ‘expanded arts’ of the exhibition’s subtitle. As a result, the bulk of ±1961 is made up of material that is highly resistant to satisfactory gallery display (and that cannot, like Forti’s onion, be remade afresh every few days.) Here ±1961’s combination of restrictive focus and vast, sprawling scale works to its disadvantage. Had it been reduced in size, and had curatorial criteria been exercised to a greater degree (and with greater finesse), ±1961 might have functioned as a kind of ‘chamber exhibition’ – smaller, more intimate and more capable of conveying the unruly, challenging and challenge-taking spirit pervading certain lofts in downtown Manhattan in and around 1961. George Stolz

Diane Wakoski, Henry Flynt delivering the lecture ‘From Culture to Veramusement’ in Walter De Maria’s loft, 28 February 1963, b/w photo, 36 × 30 cm. Courtesy Henry Flynt

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Gilles Barbier Galerie G-P & N Vallois, Paris 20 September – 26 October The most famous work by Gilles Barbier depicts the superheroes of the so-called Golden Age – the mid-1930s to the 50s – finally showing their age. The sculptural installation L’Hospice (Nursing Home, 2002) finds Superman bespectacled and hobbling about on a Zimmer frame, Catwoman wrinkled and slumped comatose in front of the TV and Captain America bloated on a gurney with a drip running out of his arm. This work, flavour of the month for a while on such clickhungry websites as Trendhunter and Io9, nonetheless provides an immediate portal into some of the Marseilles-based artist’s central preoccupations: time and its suspension, and the fantasy space between the two. Barbier has long used his own image in his work, and he tends to be as honest about his own changing features as Marvel’s comic artists aren’t. So after an association of some two decades with the Vallois gallery in SaintGermain (he was one of the very first artists they worked with), and as he approaches fifty, Barbier’s own ageing process can be mapped in a walk around Nathalie and Georges-Philippe Vallois’s storage space. The latest addition to Barbier’s catalogue of doppelgängers sits in a side room of the present exhibition. Still Man

(2013) is a mixed media sculpture, 180cm long and 135cm high. This photorealistic self-portrait presents the artist slumped down in the forest, apparently for so long that he has become a part of its undergrowth – vines wrapped around his arm and moss growing from his skin, he is thoroughly immersed in foliage. Like his earlier reference to superheroes, what we are being presented with is again a fantasy about time: of having so much time simply to sit and think that you become almost reabsorbed into the environment. From the wild profusion of nature to the superabundance of gluttony. The centrepiece of the present show, dominating the main room at almost 4m in length, takes its cue from the food replicas beloved of Japanese restaurants. Le Festin (2013), however, goes way beyond any Shinjuku sushi spot, proffering an almost obscene array of meat and cheese, gleaming gateaux, brightly coloured fruits, fondue oozing over sausages. Everything glistens with a pregnant ripeness, as if captured on the verge of spoiling. But only when you look a little closer do you realise that this feast is also a city. Miniature white anonymous-looking tower blocks bisect a rondelle of Emmental, burst from the breasts of pheasants

and perch precariously on cream cakes. Utopia has always promised luxury and plenty; in this case, the modernist utopia seems to have been swallowed up by the promises of the hyperreal, just as our Still Man was swallowed by his jungle. On the wall hangs a pencil and acrylic design on polyester tracing paper, laid out somewhat in the style of the old Larousse Gastronomique (Barbier has for some time been copying sections of the Larousse encyclopaedia). This work, La Recette du Festin (2013), reveals the ‘recipe’ for Barbier’s medieval cornucopia – in fact the actual materials for the work: ‘Resin polyurethane 84 A & B… a mould of silicon… a real bay leaf’. Once you read this, finding the solitary bay leaf becomes a kind of treasure hunt, a desperate search for the one real thing amid Le Festin’s sickening glut of overglossed goo vying for your attention. It is perhaps in just such a quixotic hunt for the real, for meaning or for truth lost in the white noise of the Internet, that we might locate the appeal of sites like Io9 and Trendhunter. They promise a treasure map for the nonplace of the web, a recipe for utopia. In the meantime, the paradise of Barbier’s Still Man – of having enough time to reflect and re-wild – becomes ever more elusive. Robert Barry

Le Festin (detail), 2013, mixed media, 165 × 390 × 115 cm. Private collection. Photo: Aurélien Mole. Courtesy Galerie G-P & N Vallois, Paris

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Jo Baer Museum Ludwig, Cologne 24 May – 25 August This is an exceptionally sharp survey exhibition. Anchored by approximately 100 of Jo Baer’s works on paper from the early to mid-1960s (mainly small gouaches that were produced as possible prototypes for paintings), it succeeds in constructing a compelling argument against seeing her trajectory merely as split between an early minimalist phase and, from the mid1970s, a figurative one. Brought together like never before (and in her first institutional show in Germany), the Amsterdam-based American artist’s works from various periods are given more than ample opportunity to re-present their connectedness despite their distinctions. In some cases, the bond is straightforward. For example, in the midst of the small, predominately geometric gouaches, one in particular, Untitled (1960), contains a silhouetted and linear black image of a reclining female figure in the upper half of its white square, prefiguring (literally) the white shape of an ‘absent’ figure in a large linear painting called ’Tis Ill Pudling in the Cocatrice Den (La-Bas) constellation1 (1987),

and suggesting that the ‘radical figuration’ that Baer named for herself during the mid-1970s – at the point when she moved from New York to Ireland – began some time before, maybe even in the most geometric of the earliest gouaches and paintings that refer, in particular, to architectural detailing. Of course the titles of the two works mentioned above maintain a distance from each other, but that fact seems here to speak more of the different times in which each was produced than to the pictorial decisions Baer made in each instance. Then again, this exhibition provides compelling evidence that Baer has made productive use of the gaps in verbal and pictorial language all along, by way of her clear and ongoing interest in signs and symbols – even within some of her specific series. I’ve had the privilege of seeing, in various places, several of her best-known ‘frame’ paintings from the late 1960s (white monochromes with black and/ or coloured borders) as well as her idiosyncratic ‘radiator’ paintings from the early 1970s (so

called because of their almost-on-the-floor wall placement and boxlike shapes), but never before have I focused as much on the connections between what they are and what they are capable of representing, not to mention how they are made. A radiator painting like V. Eutopicus (1973), titled after the Latin naming of plants, reinforces its organic ‘nature’ via the painted shapes that continue around its sides, similar to some of the earlier and more formal frame paintings that Baer has classified (rather than titled) as ‘Wraparounds’. That initial bolstering is reiterated in the most recent paintings included here, especially Testament of the Powers That Be (Where Trees Turn to Sand, Residual Colours Stain the Lands) (2001), in which a mashup of natural and architectural imagery is framed by bands of colour along its vertical edges. With reinforcement upon reinforcement again and again, then, this exhibition provides a powerful type of mise en abyme for a deeper understanding of a deserving artist’s total endeavour by circumscribing it brilliantly. Terry R. Myers

Untitled, 1960, gouache and collage on paper, 15 × 15 cm. Collection of the artist. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln. Courtesy Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

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9th Bienal do Mercosul Various venues, Porto Alegre 13 September – 10 November Occupying four of Porto Alegre’s grandest exhibition spaces, the 9th Bienal do Mercosul is a festival of unforgettable artworks, brought together in a process of nuanced, multilayered curating that keeps the experience lingering and multiplying long after your visit to the southern Brazilian city has become just a memory. It contains grand gestures, like Cinthia Marcelle’s vivid carpet of rust, laid thickly on the marble floor at Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul, which within days of its installation had received hundreds of unexpected interventions from nocturnal insects crisscrossing the fine powder, creating a topography of miniscule journeys. There are memorable collective experiences, including, on the opening weekend, a set of sunlit performances on the Astroturfed roof of the old gasworks building overlooking the estuary. In one of them, Signal Jammed Geographies (2013), the Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui mixed a radio signal from the nearby Ilha do Presídio island into a jarring techno soundscape, appearing to conjure the dissonant noises with his hands as he twitched and writhed over the mixing desk. And in among the 100 artworks, there is a multitude of opportunities for private contemplation: in Peruvian-born artist David Zink Yi’s giant squid, a hyperreal ceramic sculpture, oozing black ink onto the floor inside the Santander Cultural exhibition space; and in the inexplicably touching progress of a string of copper-coated iron beads, set rotating bumpily over a tray of sand in David Medalla’s Sand Machine (1964/2013). The recommissioned artwork was one of numerous historic pieces brought to Porto Alegre by the curator, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, alongside dozens of new works, many commissioned specifically for the Bienal. Another of the historic artworks was Robert Rauschenberg’s Mud Muse (1969–71) – a bubbling, pustulous tank-cum-sound-sculpture of liquid mud created as part of the US artist’s participation in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art and Technology (A&T) programme, in which Rauschenberg worked alongside engineers from the Teledyne Corporation. The piece’s appearance in the Bienal is emblematic of a whole series of artworks created as a result of related

methodologies, reflecting Hernández’s interest in projects like A&T and the UK’s Artist Placement Group (APG). An installation by George Levantis, Pieces of Sea Fall Through the Stars (1976/2013), recommissioned and shown inside the gasworks building at the Bienal, was the fruit of a 1974–5 APG placement in which Levantis made three long voyages aboard cargo ships in the capacity of ‘Incidental Person’ – a member of the ship’s crew given the job, as the curator’s essay describes it, of simply ‘being around’. Levantis later wrote about the experience in a book with the same name as the installation. Under the heading ‘Imagination Machines’, the Bienal organised half a dozen modern-day artist placements, one of which gave rise to Marcelle’s striking installation, made following spells at the Gerdau mining and steelworks plants in her native state of Minas Gerais, where the soil, charged with iron ore, is as red as the rust in Marcelle’s artwork. In another industrial collaboration, the British artist Lucy Skaer worked with a Brazilian factory, Irani, which among other things produces blocks of natural resin for use in the manufacture of cosmetics, chewing gum and other products. Sculpting facets into the heavy slabs, Skaer turned them into beautiful, glowing amber gems just for a while, until their next phase: release back into the Fordist production chain to be sold on as usual. ‘The contemporary corporatization of culture’, writes Hernández in the catalogue notes, describing the process of negotiating and arranging the artist placements, ‘hung over our discussions like a phantom.’ In another intervention in the chain of production, Aleksandra Mir created a large-scale installation on Porto Alegre’s riverbank, half a mile from the gasworks building. A press release was issued claiming that the metal mass, crumpled in a crater of piled-up earth, was a fallen satellite, included in the Bienal as a kind of found artwork. It is only at close quarters that the sculpture created by the London-based artist is revealed to be a collection of immense, rusted machine parts, which have been seconded from a local scrap recycling company before, like Skaer’s resin slabs, continuing on their way to pulverisation and rebirth in new forms.

facing page, top Fernando Duval, Bivar: Em busca de um animal que nunca existiu, from the series O mundo imaginário (galáxia Washemin), 1967/1999, illustrated manuscript, 2 of 31 pages, 21 × 30 cm each page. Courtesy the artist

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Mir’s satellite motif ties in with a series of themes orbiting the Bienal, including those derived from its title, Weather Permitting, which extends to ideas around climate and ‘atmospheric disturbances’. Conceptually, the Bienal ‘focuses on the interaction between nature and culture’, writes Hernández in her curatorial statement, ‘Promises’, ‘and the ways in which visual artists address unknown, unpredictable and seemingly uncontrollable phenomena’. A second satellite, this time an exquisitely fine, complex and precise wire sculpture by Allora & Calzadilla, haunts the upstairs exhibition space at the MARGS museum, waiting, so it is claimed, for the International Space Station (ISS) to come into range and receive a ham radio transmission from the sculpture. But despite the ISS being in range at 90-minute intervals, the communication never takes place. Similarly, a pigeon was to have been sent from Alexandria to Cairo, recording the sounds of its flight en route as part of Malak Helmy’s artwork Music for Drifting (2013), which also contains tracks recorded in various parts of Egypt’s western desert. The pigeon’s journey was scuppered by July’s overthrow of President Morsi, making the flight, and that particular track, impossible. In other artworks, messages are dispatched with little weight of expectation attached to their being received: a telepathic message was sent from Buenos Aires by the artist Eduardo Navarro, to an auditorium of people at a preliminary Bienal event in Porto Alegre in May; and a message in a bottle – a long letter, beginning, ‘Hola amor…’ – was placed into the water at the nearby island Ilha do Presídio by the artist Fernanda Laguna. Backed up by a set of rewarding texts, including a collection of strange and wonderful essays, The Cloud, available on the Bienal website, and by a high-quality series of educational materials (the Bienal receives visits from hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren from the state of Rio Grande do Sul), the exhibition was suffused with the sense of messages being tapped out: of communications being emitted and important ideas transmitted; and sometimes, if not every time, received. Claire Rigby

facing page, bottom Takis, Télépeinture 1, 1972, acrylic on canvas, metal elements and magnets. Photo: Camila Cunha/Indicefoto. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Xippas, Paris & Geneva

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Yu Youhan Yi Ban Yuan Space, Beijing 23 June – 7 September It is almost inconceivable that the range of styles on show in Yu Youhan’s first solo exhibition at Yuan Space could be the work of a single artist. The show includes his neofauvist portraits, created during the 1970s, his expressionist Shanghai street scenes of the 1980s, his infamous Pop-style Mao series from the 1990s and impressionistic landscapes of the Yimeng Shan painted since 2000. And while experimenting with all these genres, Yu continued to paint his signature Circles abstractions. At Yuan Space, he demonstrates more than the equal impact of both Western and Chinese artistic traditions on his own creative practice; as we observe his shifts from one genre to another over the last four decades, we are reminded of the complex, constantly changing sociopolitical context, to which the artist has responded, in ways that are personal, philosophical and humble. His fauvist-style portraits and expressionist Shanghai street scenes may seem rather dilettante, particularly as they are art-historically anachronistic. But like many other artists at the beginning of China’s reform period, Yu was eager to experiment with the various artistic styles from the West upon gaining access to greater knowledge and freedom of expression. In the two types of paintings – humorous depictions of Mao in the style of famous Western masters such as Rousseau, Chagall and Van Gogh, or the jubilant Mao decorated with flowers in historical moments and his juxtaposition with Whitney Houston – from the Mao

series shown in this exhibition, Yu has reversed the role of the ‘great helmsman’, from being the idol of the Cultural Revolution period to being a normal person. Unlike some of Yu’s contemporaries, such as Wang Guangyi – who projected political cynicism in his 1990s Great Criticism series – or Li Shan’s effeminate and coquettish Mao portraits, Yu Youhan’s equivocal attitudes towards Mao do not quite fit the definition of Pop art. Rather, as the artist suggests, they are paintings of his life experience executed in a modern style. Mostly painted in the last decade, the Yi Meng Shan series (which constitutes a large portion of the exhibition) is another subtle comment on rapid urbanisation. On a scouting trip to the Yimeng Mountains, Yu was reacquainted with the serenity of the natural landscape and the humility of the locals – an impression that contrasts with the alienating concrete shells of urban life. One can easily identify this series as a synthesis of early-twentieth-century French Impressionism, in particular the works of Cézanne, with an obvious reference to Chinese literati painting (via its fluidity and unrestrained brushmarks). Traditionally speaking, Chinese landscape paintings were not simple representations of the scenery, but the artist’s embodiments of certain cultural attitudes towards the relationship between man and nature. Yu’s adoption of a Western artistic medium suggests that the tension between Western and Chinese artistic traditions remains unresolved in the

Yi Meng Shan 1, 2002, acrylic on canvas, 127 × 199 cm. Courtesy the artist and Yuan Space, Beijing

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renditions of these landscapes. And yet it is precisely their coexistence that provides dynamic and open-ended possibilities for various cultural viewpoints. Another major portion of the exhibition is devoted to Yu’s Circle series. Often painted in monochrome, the alignment of dots into lines combined with the use of various shades of colour block express both the inertia and freedom of movement of the universe and the constant flux of human thought processes. Despite using acrylic paints, Yu’s brushmarks make reference to the technique of traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting, in which ink is allowed to drip off each brushstroke to highlight the principle of natural occurrence. The Circles of various periods are expressive of their respective social, political and personal context, whether the more contained circle of 1985.05 (1985), the bright-coloured 1991.04 (1991) or the latest, 2012.03 (2012), the solemnity and gracefulness of which seems to have come full circle in the artist’s attitudes towards the tradition and the context in which he belongs. In this respect, the Circle series does indeed illustrate Hans Ulrich Obrist’s comment about abstraction being ‘a microcosm of society’. Yu has adroitly assigned an elegance to his abstractions, which the artist conceived as being primarily about the mind and that display a humility in their deployment of minimal gesture which nevertheless produces a superior outcome. Fiona He

Going Where? ShanghART Singapore, Singapore 19 July – 30 September Whither Singapore? At early decades of a new millennium, the island-state is a nation in transition. Ballooning immigration numbers, rapidly shifting demographics, a constantly altering urban fabric and a growing income gap have all contributed to a highly public campaign of soul-searching, of hard questions about cultural roots and collective identity. ShanghART Singapore’s exhibition Going Where? foregrounds issues that loom large in the Singaporean psyche. (Appropriately enough, the title is rendered in the local vernacular, ‘Singlish’.) Positioned at the gallery’s entrance and at its exit are a pair of works that, between them, provide antithetical views: Chen Sai Hua Kuan’s Rynek 450m Down-under (2011) is a photograph of a multidirectional signpost that the artist had encountered in Poland, one of its signs bent and wilted, clearly the victim of vandalism. Facing it, next to the exit, is Henry Lee’s An Ode to Mother (2013). If Chen’s work poses a question in photographically ‘real’ terms, Lee’s operates in the imaginary register: An Ode is a portrayal of the mythical realm of Zix, a Kafkaesque landscape rendered in muted

chiaroscuro. ‘Mother knows best,’ observes the writeup in the catalogue, ‘especially when it comes to keeping tabs and a firm hand on the daily chaos of Zix.’ The analogy to Singapore’s infamous culture of censorship and control is salient. Here is a dystopian vision of the future, offered up as a rejoinder to the uncertainties of the present. Elsewhere, Robert Zhao Renhui’s and Wong Lip Chin’s works likewise utilise the imaginary as a means of negotiating the here and now. Renhui’s series A Heartwarming Feeling (2011) is framed within a quasi-fictional narrative of the lives of migrating birds, to some of which tiny pinhole cameras have been attached. The present images are the result, oneiric abstractions comprised of indistinct shapes and colours. While the works allude to the effects of climate change, the broader concern with vision – Renhui’s subjects are ambivalent, evading the viewer’s gaze and comprehension – suggests the general lack of public awareness regarding environmental issues. Wong’s Journey to the Land of Milk & Honey (Majulah Singapura Part II) (2010) is a monumental canvas: set into a sea of

monochromatic black is a tiny window, through which we see a seminude couple in a lush utopia. The reference to a fictive, prelapsarian Eden, presented as a diminutive tableau, is an ironic comment on nostalgia, of the impossibility of returning to the days when a kampong spirit reigned (kampong being the Malay term for a village, with connotations of communal harmony and a slow, easy rhythm of life). Other works in the show include Burmese Nyan Soe’s Unstable (2012), a hollow sculpture built up from numerous wooden parts jointed together, its material void obliquely signalling the capricious nature of identity, and a photographic series by Taiwanese-born Valence Sim, whose snapshots of individuals – the poor and elderly, foreign blue-collar workers, itinerant performers – who are overlooked or demonised calls attention to those left out of national conversations that privilege the Englishspeaking middle-class, the aspirational and upwardly mobile. In short, Going Where?, while not the most large-scale of shows, provides a cogent, timely engagement with matters of sociopolitical import. Louis Ho

Robert Zhao Renhui, #471, After 710 Days, 2011, photo, archival Peizographic print, 121 × 84 cm

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Malicious Damage: The Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton by Ilsa Colsell Donlon Books, £35 (hardcover) Beautifully produced, this is an in-depth history, and annotated collection, of the library books systematically ‘defaced’ by playwright Joe Orton and his artist and writer boyfriend, Kenneth Halliwell. Author Ilsa Colsell runs through the story chronologically, intricately footnoting her almost entirely original research to a litany of primary sources, detailing how Orton and Halliwell met at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, lived together (this was prior to the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality) and would, for each other’s amusement and in a period between early 1959 and April 1962, steal books from Hampstead Central Lending Library, and subsequently the smaller South Library on Essex Road, and return them with the front covers altered through collage. A history book titled The Great Tudors was revised, removing the faces of the various sixteenth-century royals that adorned the original dust jacket and replacing them with the more contemporary features

of the stage actor Roger Livesey, military hero T.E. Lawrence and a chimpanzee. If this was gentle needling, then the work done on a romance novel titled Queen’s Favourite was more provocative to the unsuspecting late-1950s/early-60s audience: two men, stripped to the waist, wrestle, apparently before the Great Mosque of Herat. Likewise Bentz Plagemann, whose popular fiction often referenced his experiences in the Navy, was queered with a toned, jockstrap-wearing torso added to an edition of his 1959 novel The Steel Cocoon. On other occasions the duo turned their attention to the interiors of the lending books, typing alternative blurbs onto the dust jacket flap. A personal favourite is the subversive description for a Dorothy L. Sayers novel. Instead of describing the actual narrative of this clichéd murder mystery set among the English upper classes, Orton and Halliwell’s new inscription claims the book concerns the case of ‘little Betty Macdree’, who says she was been ‘interfered with’. It goes on: ‘This is one

of most enthralling stories ever written by Miss Sayers. It is the only one in which the murder weapon is concealed, not for reasons of fear but for the sake of decency!’ In case this was not darkly, comically offensive enough, they end the blurb with the advice to ‘read this behind closed doors! And have a good shit while you’re at it!’ Colsell pores over these artistic interventions, which would eventually lead to prison sentences for both men, examining them within the context of Orton’s flourishing career, Halliwell’s overlooked artistic output, their personal biographies (not ignoring, but neither dwelling on, the horrific violent end to their lives) and the wider cultural and social milieu. Colsell persuasively concludes her essay by suggesting that these guerrilla art actions were bellwethers to British Pop art and the social revolution that was around the corner; convulsive events that neither, tragically, got to see. Oliver Basciano

Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Taste by Dave Hickey Ridinghouse, £15.95/$25 (softcover) At the end of 2012, American critic Dave Hickey loudly proclaimed his self-imposed ‘exile’ from the contemporary art world. ‘It’s nasty and it’s stupid. I’m an intellectual and I don’t care if I’m not invited to the party. I quit,’ he howled to The Observer. Pirates and Farmers is a collection of essays, the vast majority originally published during the 14 years leading up to that moment. Its curious title is explained in the opening essay. According to Hickey, everyone’s personality can be broken down into one of two types: farmers, ‘who build fences and control territory’, and pirates, ‘who tear down fences and cross fields’. Or something like squares and rebels. No prizes for guessing to which tribe Uncle Dave belongs, or that it’s the farmers who seem to have control of the artworld right now. This has not been good for cultural progress. ‘The last “new” thing I saw was break dancing,’ Hickey writes. Art is run by a cabal of rich collectors and the people who flatter their tastes; group shows in museums look like the walls of those collectors’ summer homes, and Olafur Eliasson’s ‘enigmatic décor’ reminds the author of Vegas magicians Siegfried & Roy (but might benefit from the addition of their tigers). Meanwhile, Hickey’s own ‘downward spiral into idiocy’ began when he ‘agreed to curate a biennial exhibition’. Hickey, of course, became fashionable as a critic for unfashionably placing ‘beauty’ at the heart of art (1993’s The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty), and art in the more general context of worldly pleasures (1997’s Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy). And behind both brilliantly written collections seemed

to be the struggle against the increasing elitism, rigidity and exclusivity that dominated art and what became known as the artworld during the latter stages of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. And what made Hickey special, other than the skill of his writing, was that while other critics polished their ivory towers, the only ivory Hickey appeared acquainted with was that of the dice in Las Vegas (he lived there for some time) gambling emporiums. He accepted the dubious and ephemeral thrill where others sought out the institutionalised and the permanent. Hickey’s tactic in those books and the current collection often revolves around describing the authenticity of his lived experience in order to verify his experiences of art – yeah, I’ve done drugs, his line often seems to go, so I understand the addiction to art and can treat it responsibly. Where once (during a stint in the music industry) he hung out with anonymous session musicians from Nashville, he now hangs out with people like casino mogul and art collector Steve Wynn. Formerly there was a pile of drugs on the living-room table; now it’s a Cézanne. Hickey is at his most readable when writing about himself. And yet his constant evocation of his friendships and the drugs he’s taken can be counterproductive. Even annoying. In a single page we hear about Hickey offering the critic Robert Hughes (or ‘Bob’ to Dave) drugs over dinner, what his friend Peter Schjeldahl assures him about Europeans’ understanding of Roy Lichtenstein and what the artist told Hickey about his friend’s theory. When Hickey wants to make a point about what

December 2013

distinguishes taste from desire, he feels the need to tell us that John Baldessari was visiting an exhibition (of ‘Andy’s’ work) with him when the revelation took place. As if that makes the revelation more valid. Of course, on one level, declaring your friendships is declaring your interests. And all of this does address the theme under which these essays are grouped (and which the book’s subtitle flags up): taste. More precisely, a positioning of art within a realm of personal taste, as opposed to the blindly consensual taste (or, more properly, desire) manufactured by art institutions, art collectors and the market. Yet Hickey’s tactics can work against his message. And there’s no irony in the fact that he comes closest to achieving his goals in essays about subjects like the ascent to art status of popular Ghanaian movie-poster painting, in which the author has slightly less to say about himself and more about how the ‘fenceless ephemeral cornucopia of Ghana’s local art production’ came into being, or, in another essay, how mixed martial arts ‘is a tribute to the creative power of cosmopolitanism, to the forces of globalism at their best, and to the challenges that face an autumnal America smoldering with anger’. Despite all that, Hickey remains one of the best writers on the art of our times (who else could tie up Vanessa Beecroft’s ability to create works that stir up ‘chubbies’ in geriatrics, Quintilian’s ideas on rhetoric, Swift’s and Pope’s on irony, and an analysis of ‘cool’ into less than a page of text?). And his is an unrivalled lens through which to view the confusions and contradictions that make up the territory of art today. If that doesn’t float your boat, he’s a mean storyteller too. Mark Rappolt

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Ghostly Apparitions: German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media by Stefan Andriopoulos Zone Books, $28.95/£19.95 (hardcover) Consider this vague but excitable passage: ‘In phantasmagorical presentations it is night on all sides; here a bloody head surges forward, there another white form abruptly appears, before vanishing again. It is the night of the world that presents itself here.’ The lines don’t come, as may be expected, from the likes of Thomas De Quincey or Edgar Allan Poe, but from a lecture that G.W.F. Hegel delivered in 1805. It seems there were phantoms at the heart of his metaphysical apparatus – but exactly how surprising is that? In the introduction to his study of spectral media and their place in post-Enlightenment thought, Stefan Andriopoulos notes that his subject ‘may seem frivolous or crude to a specialist in German idealism’. Can it be true? Are there really still scholars of philosophy or the history of technology ill-disposed to the idea that modernity was haunted all along by atavist shades and superstition? It’s one of the frustrations of Andriopoulos’s flickeringly instructive book that his thesis seems so familiar, like a well-loved domestic spook caught rattling the cutlery again. Perhaps that’s a little unfair, because there are reminders here of neglected writings – and overlooked passages in better-known ones – that complicate the portrait of a period (roughly 1750 to 1930) notionally in flight from tenacious beliefs and

potent metaphors. Some of this material gets routinely overquoted: Marx’s ‘spectre haunting Europe’, or his comparing commodities with lively tables at a seance. But much of it is more obscure; as for instance Kant’s several writings on the supernatural. His Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) is an ambiguous study of the phenomenon of ghostly clairvoyance – it’s unclear if the philosopher finally believed in memos from the departed – and like many sceptical texts it had the unintended effect of spreading the stories it was meant to dispute. Andriopoulos’s more substantial narrative, however, concerns the way philosophy, in describing the workings of consciousness, relied on metaphors drawn from the popular spectacle of the phantasmagoria, or from eerily chattering new contraptions. According to Schopenhauer, there was a kind of ‘presentation machine in the human brain box’, which in turn crackled with information just like the telegraph. Andriopoulos conveys all of this phantomic business competently enough, but he oddly fails to pursue the central metaphors to their obvious conclusions. Take for example the philosophers’ anxiety, shared by writers on the popularity of the gothic novel, regarding the unruly audiences for ghost stories and magic-lantern shows. The clear inference, which was made already in the eighteenth century by

such writers as Joseph Addison, is that whatever revenants may stalk the page, screen or stage, the real ghosts in the new media machine are the spectators themselves. So intent is Andriopoulos on rehearsing well-established links between, say, gothic fiction and Robertson’s famous phantasmagoria in Paris – links most recently described, with more panache, by Marina Warner – that he fails to notice the zombie throng in the shadows and the cheap seats. In part, the relative timidity of Ghostly Apparitions – a book that rather hubristically claims kinship with Jonathan Crary’s canonical Techniques of the Observer (1992), and is fleetingly dismissive of Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (1994) – is a result of its episodic structure. Chapters on German philosophy, fiction from Radcliffe to Poe, mesmerism and early experiments in television manifest themselves in unrelated succession – this despite Andriopoulos’s tendency to bring previously quoted passages back to life in other contexts. There was a real opportunity here, especially in light of the intriguing final chapter on the invention of television and its roots in spiritualist seeing-at-a-distance, to trace an arc from Hegel’s horror-show metaphor to contemporary distraction and the cinematic imaginary of undead masses. But Ghostly Apparitions closes its eyes and hopes it’ll go away. Brian Dillon

Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton & John Armstrong Phaidon, £24.95 (hardcover) The only thing prettier than the pictures in Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s Art as Therapy is the writing. I’m not as familiar with Armstrong, but de Botton is a master of thoughtful yet unmannered English with just enough crass colloquialism thrown in to keep one from walking out of the auditorium. For example, in an extended passage on the moral lessons that can be learned from art, the authors – but de Botton, I suspect – have this to say about the photographer Eve Arnold’s Divorce in Moscow (1966): ‘The task for artists… is to find new ways of prizing open our eyes to tiresomely familiar, but critically important, ideas about how to lead a balanced and good life. It is no easy task to keep making what is hellish vivid: the attempt can easily yield just formulaic horror, which ends up touching no one, until a skilful artist like Arnold stops us in our tracks with an image that brings home what is truly at stake when we let ourselves and others down. We might long to hang her work in the bedroom or the kitchen, in just the right place so that it can be seen when one is tempted to say in anger, “Well, that suits me fine, let’s just fucking get divorced. See you in court.”’ This passage is at once typical and unique: typical of the book’s intention of convincing us that art has a therapeutic role to play in ameliorating our diminished modern lives (Armstrong and de Botton

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take us to be at turns bored, haggard, impatient, fretful, scattered); unique in that it’s one of the few places where the authors exhort artists themselves to rise to the moral promise of their practices. Far more common though are passages that explain how ‘we’ – meaning us, the readership, or more grandly, the public – have been getting art wrong all this time when we have sought to learn about and to understand its methods and histories, to know it by knowing the cultures and contexts that gave rise to it, to think about it through the eyes and minds of the artists that produced it. For what, the authors ask, can those methods and histories, those contexts and cultures, those eyes and minds possibly tell us about our lives, about our selves. Art, if it is to have any virtue, must be about us. What else should one expect from a self-help treatise dressed up as a coffee-table art book? De Botton has created a cottage industry out of highbrow life coaching, and Art as Therapy is only the most recent offering – the industry would call this a ‘vehicle’ – of de Botton’s School of Life, a purveyor of pamphlets and classes and trinkets that promise low-amplitude emotional uplift with light erudition, good design and other narcissistically small differences thrown in. The question of art’s moral value is indeed an important one. The recent resurgence of intellectual

ArtReview

attention to questions of ethics and morality more generally would seem to put de Botton and Armstrong in company with such serious moral philosophers as Ronald Dworkin and Michael Sandel – that is, until one reads in Art as Therapy that, for example, one of the ‘great number of shortcomings’ of capitalism is that ‘there is an astonishing array of chocolate bars for sale’ rather than services that would ‘help us to deal with the causes of domestic rows’. Can they be serious? If the size of the self-help section at any chain bookstore is any indication, capitalism is very much interested in helping us out on the domestic front. If a single epigraph could sum up just what Art as Therapy is after, it would be Matisse’s little quip that art should be like a comfortable armchair for the tired businessman. Armstrong and de Botton’s aspirations are no doubt larger than this, but the sensibility is exactly the same. When in 1964 Calvin Tomkins asked Marcel Duchamp about the Matisses that adorned his home, Duchamp responded: ‘The surroundings in which you live in my case don’t interest or bother me at all. I could live with the worst calendar picture, and with any sort of furniture, because I never put taste in my life. Taste is an experience that I try not to let come into my life.’ Perhaps Duchamp needed therapy – Armstrong and de Botton must think so – but I suspect not. Jonathan T.D. Neil

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Artwork by James Franco

Austria 21 Haus – Museum of Contemporary Art Ursula Mayer: But We Loved Her 13 Nov – 12 Jan Open 11–9, Wed–Thu; 11–6, Fri–Sun 21er Haus Schweizergarten Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna 21erhaus.at MUMOK – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien And Materials and Money and Crisis 8 Nov – 2 Feb Open 2–7, Mon; 10–7, Tue–Sun; 10–9, Thu MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1 A-1070 Vienna mumok.at

Belgium Tim Van Laere Gallery Armen Eloyan/Atelier Van Lieshout 5 Dec – 25 Jan Open 1–6, Tue–Sat Verlatstraat 23-25, 2000 Antwerp timvanlaeregallery.com

Czech Republic Galerie Rudolfinum Jack & Dinos Chapman: The Blind Leading the Blind 3 Oct – 5 Jan Open 10–8, Tue–Sun; 11–6, Thu Alsovo nabrezi 12, 110 01 Praga 1 galerierudolfinum.cz

France Galerie Almine Rech Taryn Simon: The Pictures Collection 16 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 64 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris alminerech.com Galerie Perrotin Ryan McGinley 13 Nov – 11 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 76 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris perrotin.com Praz-Delavallade Joel Kyack 23 Nov – 11 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 5 Rue des Haudriettes, 75003 Paris praz-delavallade.com

Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve Paris Delphine Balley 28 Nov – 5 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 7 Rue de Pastourelle, 75003 Paris suzanne-tarasieve.com Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais Marc Brandenburg: Interior/Exterior 30 Nov – 11 Jan Open 10–7, Tue–Sat 7 Rue Debelleyme, 75003, Paris ropac.net Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin Empire State: New York Art Now 17 Nov – 15 Feb Open 10–7, Tue–Sat 69 Avenue de General Leclerc 93500 Pantin ropac.net

Germany Aanant & Zoo Gerhard Rühm: Arbeiten auf Papier, 1955–1975 1 Nov – 11 Jan Open 11–6, Wed–Sat and by appointment Bülowstr. 90 D–10783 Berlin aanantzoo.com

December 2013

Sprüth Magers Anthony McCall: 1970 Solid-Light Works 22 Nov – 25 Jan Open 11–6, Tue–Sat Oranienburger Straße 18 D-10178 Berlin spruethmagers.com

The Art of Drawing 1903 –2013, Deutsche Bank Collection

KunstHalle by Deutsche Bank Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn 28 Nov – 2 Mar Open 10–8, Daily Unter den Linden 13/15 10117 Berlin deutsche-bank-kunsthalle.com

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Michelberger Hotel

Warschauer Straße 39/40 10243 Berlin

Matt Johnson

Spain Helga de Alvear Marcel Dzama: A Trickster Made This World 7 Nov – 4 Jan Open 11–2, 4.30–8.30, Tue–Sat Doctor Fourquet, 12, 28012 Madrid helgadealvear.com

michelbergerhotel.com

Switzerland Alison Jacques

Italy Brand New Gallery This Is the Story of America: Everybody’s Doing What They Think They’re Supposed to Do 21 Nov – 11 Jan Open 11–1, 2.30–7, Tue–Sat Via Carlo Farini 32, 20159 Milan brandnew-gallery.com Galleria Continua Michelangelo Pistoletto/Etel Adnan 21 Sep – 11 Jan Open 2–7, Tue–Sat Via del Castello, 11 53037 San Gimignano (SI) galleriacontinua.com MDC Steven Claydon/Matt Mullican 28 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11.30–7.30, Tue–Sat Via Giovanni Ventura 5, 20134 Milan massimodecarlo.it

Netherlands Grimm Gallery Dave McDermott: The Power and Influence of Joseph Wiseman Nov 29 – 4 Jan Open 12–6, Wed–Sat Frans Halsstraat 26, 1072 BR, Amsterdam grimmgallery.com

Norway Peder Lund Lucas Blalock 16 Nov – 11 Jan Open 12–6, Tue–Sat Tjuvholmen Allé 27 N-0252 Oslo pederlund.no

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Gregor Staiger Sonia Kacem 22 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11–5, Tue–Fri; 12–6, Sat Galerie Gregor Staiger Limmatstrasse 268 CH–8005 Zurich gregorstaiger.com

22 Nov – 20 Dec Open 10–6, Tue–Sat 16–18 Berners St London W1T 3LN

Collective Gallery Goldin + Senneby: Anti-VWAP 7 Dec–19 Jan Open 11–5, Tue–Sun City Observatory & City Dome, 38 Calton Hill, Edinburgh EH7 5AA collectivegallery.net Tramway Panel with Annette Lux and Steven Cairns: House Style 25 Oct – 19 Jan Open 12–5, Tue–Fri; 12–6, Sat–Sun 25 Albert Drive Glasgow G41 2PE tramway.org Wysing Arts Centre Rolling programme of artists residencies Wysing Arts Centre, Fox Road, Bourn, Cambridge CB23 2TX wysingartscentre.org/about

alisonjacquesgallery.com

Lutz Bacher

3AM: Wonder, Paranoia and the Restless Night Chapter 13 Dec – 2 Mar Open 12–6, Tue, Wed & Sun; 12–8, Thu–Sat Market Road, Canton Cardiff, Wales UK CF5 1QE chapter.org

Kunsthalle Zurich

Reflections from Damaged Life: An Exhibition on Psychedelia Raven Row Curated by Lars Bang Larsen 26 Sep – 15 Dec Open 11–6, Wed–Sun 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS ravenrow.org

Artist Residence Boutique Guest House

23 Nov – 2 Feb Open 11–6, Thu; 11–8, Sat, Sun and Public Holidays; 10–5, Tue–Sun

Bradford Washburn

Limmatstraße 270 CH - 8005 Zurich

This urban art hotel is housed in a Grade II Listed townhouse in Brighton’s famous Regency Square. Each bedroom at Artist Residence is designed by a different artist

kunsthallezurich.ch

UK Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Birmingham Printmakers Group: Thirty Years of Printmaking 1983–2013 Oct – 19 Jan Open 10–5, Mon–Thu; 10.30–5, Fri; 10–5, Sat–Sun Chamberlain Square Birmingham B3 3DH bmag.org.uk

Michael Hoppen 5 Dec – 27 Jan Open 10.30–6, Mon–Fri; 10.30–5, Sat

33 Regency Square Montpellier and Clifton Hill Brighton & Hove BN1 2GG

3 Jubilee Place London SW3 3TD

arthotelbrighton.co.uk

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ArtReview

[ Space ]

Community of 700 studio artists

129–131 Mare St London E8 3RH spacestudios.org.uk

USA, New York Andrea Meislin Gallery Beyond No-Man’s Land: Journey Across a Landscape of Identities 31 Oct – 20 Dec Open 10–6, Tue–Sat 534 West 24th St New York, NY 10011 andreameislin.com Canada Gallery Anke Weyer 19 Dec – 1 Feb Open 11–6, Wed–Sun 333 Broome St New York, NY 10002 canadanewyork.com CRG Gallery Jumana Manna 7 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–6, Tue–Sat 548 West 22nd St New York, NY 10011 crggallery.com C24 Gallery Skylar Fein: The Lincoln Bedroom 1 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–6, Tue–Sat 514 West 24th St New York, NY 10011 c24gallery.com Danziger Gallery Michael Light: Some Dry Space 30 Oct – 21 Dec Open 11–6, Tue–Sat 527 West 23rd St New York, NY 10011 danzigergallery.com Venus over Manhattan Alexander Calder: Shadows 4 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–6, Tue–Sat 980 Madison Ave, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10075 venusovermanhattan.com

Luisa Strina Secret Codes Curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio 17 Dec – 22 Feb Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 10–5, Sat Rua Padre João Manuel, 755 – loja 02, Cerqueira Cesar 01411-001 São Paulo, SP galerialuisastrina.com.br

USA, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography Of Walking 18 Oct – 20 Dec Open 10–5, Mon–Sat; 12–5, Sun Columbia College Chicago, 600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605 mocp.org

Raquel Arnaud Célia Euvaldo/Tuneu 9 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–7, Mon–Fri; 12–4, Sat Rua Fidalga, 125 - Vila Madalena, 05432-070 São Paulo raquelarnaud.com

USA, Los Angeles Night Gallery XOXO 16 Nov – 20 Dec Open 12–7, Tue–Sat 2276 East 16th St Los Angeles, CA 90021 nightgallery.ca

Australia

Sydney Festival 2014

Thomas Duncan Gallery Heather Guertin, Zak Prekop, Josh Tonsfeldt 1 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–5, Tue–Sat 6109 Melrose Ave Los Angeles, CA 90038 thomasduncangallery.com

Tang Contemporary Art Project by Colin Chinnery, An He, Hui Zhang 14 Dec – 14 Jan Open 11–6.30, Thu–Sun 798 Art District, No 2 Lane, Jiu Xian Qiao Rd Chaoyang Dist, Beijing 100015 tangcontemporary.com

Hong Kong Edouard Malingue Gallery João Vasco Paiva: Near and Elsewhere 7 Nov – 28 Jan Open 10–7, Mon–Sat 1st floor, 8 Queen’s Road, Central edouardmalingue.com Hanart TZ Gallery Liu Guosong 22 Nov – 31 Dec Open 10–6.30, Mon–Sat 401 Pedder Building 12 Pedder St Central, Hong Kong hanart.com

Thailand Music, Theatre and Dance, Art Installations 9–27 Jan

Brazil Baró Galeria Pablo Siquier: Contratura 21 Sep – 18 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Fri; 11–6, Sat R. Barra Funda, 216 - Santa Cecília, São Paulo, 01152-000 barogaleria.com

Level 2, 10 Hickson Road The Rocks NSW 2000 sydneyfestival.org.au

Galeria Fortes Vilaça Planos de Expansão 19 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 10–6, Sat Rua Fradique Coutinho 1500 05416-001 São Paulo, SP fortesvilaca.com.br

Tang Contemporary Art – Bangkok Xu Qu: Mutable Forms and Immutable Consciousness 14 Nov – 14 Dec Open 11–7, Mon–Sat F5, Silom Galleria 919/1 Silom Rd (soi 19) Bangkok 10500 tangcontemporary.com

China

Galpão Fortes Vilaça Beatriz Milhazes 23 Nov – 21 Dec Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 10–6, Sat Rua James Holland 71, Barra Funda, 01138-000 São Paulo fortesvilaca.com.br

Rockbund Art Museum Birdhead, Hsu Chia Wei, Hu Xiangqian, Kwan Sheung Chi, Lee Kit, Li Liao, Li Wei: Hugo Boss Asia Art 13 Sep – 12 Dec Open 10–6, Tue–Sun 20 Huqiu Rd, Huangpu Dist, Shanghai rockbundartmuseum.org ShanghART Gallery Chris Gill: New Works 23 Nov – 5 Jan Open 10–6, Mon–Sun ShanghART Main Space, Bldg 16, 50 Moganshan Rd shanghartgallery.com

December 2013

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The View from… 49°15’N 123°6’W by James Franco

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Consumed

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Clothing inspired by the work of Hilma af Klint

College, swan print sweater £270

College, white and black print sweater £270

College, pink multi print sweater £270

Mario, multi pink print cotton shirt £270

Standard, black print tee £150

Selections from Acne Studio’s S/S 2014 collection. acnestudios.com

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ArtReview

And some other things you didn’t know you really needed

Concert, Behave Like an Audience, €29

Ciara Phillips, A Lot of Things Put Together (Sophie), £600 + vat

Lorna Simpson, Double Portrait, $6,500

Ciara Phillips, A Lot of Things Put Together (Sophie), 2013, screenprint with monotype on Heritage Bookwhite (315gsm) paper, 115 × 84 cm, edition of 12 It’s not quite a divine endorsement, but this Ciara Phillips limited-edition print does have godly origins. One of a pair, it is produced in association with Dundee Contemporary Art, currently hosting a group show that refers to the life and works of Sister Corita Kent, in which Phillips is showing a large, multipanel screenprinted work inspired by religious parade banners. dca.org.uk

Lorna Simpson, Double Portrait, 2013, silkscreen on felt panel, diptych, 88 × 102 cm overall, edition of 27 Concert, Behave Like an Audience, 10" lp ArtReview will always raise a glass to ‘another last, last drink’, which is how curator Mai Abu ElDahab describes this vinyl farewell to Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp. In tribute to all the late-night conversations she had during her tenure, Abu ElDahab has commissioned texts from seven artists – including Sharon Hayes, Michael Portnoy and Guy Ben-Ner – which are given musical interpretation by the arty three-piece Concert. sternberg-press.com

December 2013

In this edition printed on starched and pressed felt, Lorna Simpson pays pointed homage to the before-and-after tradition of magazine makeovers, using images based on advertisements found in midcentury editions of Ebony and Jet. Commissioned by New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the prints are an extension of Simpson’s series of collage works using material derived from magazines published between the 1930s and 70s. art.lincolncenter.org

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Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2013, $4,000

Liz Glynn, Anonymous Need (BlackBerry), $300

Zaha Hadid/Blohm + Voss Yachts, The Unique Circle: Mother Ship, poa

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2013 (a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organisation of a unitary ambience and a game of events) (handkerchief ), 2013, fine linen oversize handkerchief, custom hand embroidery, 132 × 132 cm, edition of 10 + 1ap Is the sickle-wielding hand harvesting or merely cutting a swathe through the natural world? Either way, should you be caused to sneeze hayfeverishly or howl Dogmatixlike over tortured fauna, you may have reason to call on this community-size handkerchief. artistsspace.org

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Zaha Hadid/Blohm + Voss Yachts, The Unique Circle: Mother Ship, 2013, 128m yacht Resembling the stringy tendons of the human body seen beneath an electron microscope, or perhaps a giant oceanbound version of the rubber shoes that Hadid designed for Melissa, the Mother Ship is the assertive ur-design for the architect’s collection of superyachts. Hadidified inside and out, with nautical engineering by German luxury yacht specialists Blohm + Voss, all the Unique Circle is missing are Roman Abramovich and Tamara Ecclestone holding a party on the deck. blohmvossyachts.com

ArtReview

Liz Glynn, Anonymous Need (BlackBerry), 2013, cast lead with clear lacquer coat, 11 × 6 × 1 cm, edition of 50. Photo: Stacey Allan Weighing it at almost a kilo, this cast-lead smartphone may start to feel like a burden before too long, but that’s the point. It’s a limited-edition version of a group of casts made by Glynn of items – including garlic bulbs and chocolate bars – smuggled across the Egyptian border into Gaza. eastofborneo.org

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For more on artist Howard Hardiman, see overleaf

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Contributors

Laura McLean-Ferris

Tom Eccles

Contributing Writers

is a writer and curator currently based in New York, where she is curatorial fellow for Performa 13. As part of Performa she was cocurator, with Charles Aubin, of Cally Spooner’s And You Were Wonderful, On Stage at the National Academy Museum. A group exhibition, Geographies of Contamination, which she curated with Vincent Honoré and Alex Scrimgeour, opens at DRAF London in January 2014, and a conceived group performance entitled #nostalgia takes place in April 2014 as part of Glasgow International. This month she reviews Josh Klein at 47 Canal, New York.

is a curator, writer and producer. He is executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandaleon-Hudson, New York. His recent exhibitions have included installations with Haim Steinbach, Josiah McElheny, Rachel Harrison and Liam Gillick. Eccles is known for his large projects outside traditional venues, including the recent Paul McCarthy installation at the Park Avenue Armory (with Alex Poots and Hans Ulrich Obrist), Susan Philipsz and Mark Handforth on Governors Island and his many projects as the former director of the Public Art Fund, all in New York.This month he talks to Simon Castets, the newly appointed director of Swiss Institute, New York, and codirector of 89plus, an ongoing investigation into the next generation of cultural producers (born in or after 1989).

Sean Ashton, Robert Barry, Andrew Berardini, Kimberly Bradley, Barbara Casavecchia, Matthew Collings, Jacquelyn Davis, Tom Eccles, David Everitt Howe, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Gallery Girl, Orit Gat, Paul Gravett, Jonathan Grossmalerman, Fiona He, Louise Ho, Sam Jacob, Maria Lind, Daniel McClean, Terry R. Myers, Pavel Pyś, Niru Ratnam, Claire Rigby, Ed Schad, George Stolz, Raimar Stange, Jennifer Thatcher, Brienne Walsh, Florence Waters, Mike Watson

Simon Menges is a photographer. Originally trained as an architect, he came to photography through David Chipperfield Architects, with whom he undertook a one-year photographic project in Shanghai in 2009 while contining to work as a freelance photographer focusing on architecture. In addition, he has been working with artist Wolfgang Tillmans since 2011, and is involved in the production of Tillmans’s museum and gallery shows. Simon Menges is based in Berlin and works internationally on commissioned and individual projects. His images are published in numerous magazines. This month he photographed Alicja Kwade.

Joshua Mack is a writer and independent curator born and based in Manhattan. He contributes regularly to ArtReview, and his work has also appeared in Art in America, Aperture, Modern Painters and Time Out New York. He has written several catalogue essays on postwar Japanese art, most recently for the Rachofsky Collection at the Warehouse in Dallas. This month he speaks with Miami collector Martin Margulies about his passions for art, education and social justice.

Contributing Editors Tyler Coburn, Brian Dillon, Hettie Judah, Joshua Mack, Laura McLean-Ferris, Christopher Mooney, Niru Ratnam, Chris Sharp Contributing Artists/Photographers Lena C. Emery, James Franco, Howard Hardiman, Simon Menges, Michael Part

Howard Hardiman (preceding pages)

Births, burials or ejaculations can be premature, but how about cohabitation? Howard Hardiman knows something of London’s gay escorts, having done a bit of sex work himself. Fascinated by their world and worldview, he began interviewing his friends and developing a play about them, which he eventually realised as the graphic novel The Lengths. “Through the interviews,” Hardiman says, “their moments of doubt or fear were never related to conflict, addiction or danger, but hinged on all-too-familiar anxieties about self-worth, attractiveness and missing out. Small, mundane fears. Glimpses of tenderness. These are the stories I’d much rather tell.”

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To respect his sources’ anonymity, Hardiman quickly abandoned drawing them with human faces and instead gave them dogs’ heads. Rather than having to respond to specific male features, which may or may not be attractive, the reader soon adjusts to the different breeds and how they suit different types and temperaments. The book’s lead, Eddie, is living two lives and struggling to keep them separate. To most, he’s a loveable graduate looking for that hard-to-find steady relationship, but Eddie also calls himself Ford (as in Ford Escort), a sex worker, tempted by thrills and money. The Lengths not only refers to the ‘lengths’ these male gay prostitutes will go to, but also to their body

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fetishism. With an insider’s empathy, Hardiman confronts their conflicted desires: “It’s hard being someone’s Mr Right when, for £100 an hour, you’re anyone’s Mr Right Now.” In his coda, ‘Premature Cohabitation’, as Hardiman explains, “Eddie has run out of money and is falling into the trap when London rents get far too high to manage (unless you’re doing lots of sex work) and someone has the dire idea, ‘It’d be so much cheaper if you moved in…’” The Lengths takes us inside the hearts, minds and bodies of the world’s oldest profession with a rare understanding and frankness. Paul Gravett

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on the cover Alicja Kwade, photographed by Simon Menges on pages 122, 157, 158, 161, 166 Lena C. Emery

Lyrics on the spine and on pages 27, 73 and 123 are from Margaritaville (1977), written by Jimmy Buffet

December 2013

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Off the Record December 2013 We’re holed up in a small room above Churchill’s Pub in Little Haiti, Miami. I’ve requisitioned a couple of homeless guys from the parking lot to guard the door. The whole team who carefully picked the ArtReview Power 100 are here, some looking weary from the month of nonstop debauched revelry we’ve had since it hit the stands. “Do we still have to be locked away here in this endless cycle of decadence?” asks one of the associate editors. The once renowned but now mentally broken critic looks vacant, possibly from having spent the last ten days on the trot in Tootsie’s Cabaret, where the strippers are good but the chicken wings with lemon oil sauce are great. “It’s a plot,” I reply. “The editor and the big boss are keeping us distracted and specifically away from Art Basel Miami Beach because they know we’re on an anti-art-meets-celebrity-vibe.” The rest of the team look up, their interest suddenly roused. I’m off my meds, but I’m feeling alive like never before. “I missed something once before,” I yell. “I won’t. I can’t let that happen again.” With that I unveil the secret wall drawing I’ve composed over the past fortnight when the editor and big boss haven’t been watching. Crazed pen-portraits of artworld figures, Hollywood celebrities and music stars are linked by lines that I’ve scrawled in my own blood. One of the contributing editors leans over, his once-svelte form bloated by a daily diet of Nutella and caramelised onion burgers from the Filling Station. “Who’s that?” He’s peering at the portrait in the centre: a handsome yet sinister figure sporting close-cropped hair, a diamond earring and a silk hankie in the breast pocket of his immaculate suit. “Abu Nazir!” yells the associate editor. “Not quite,” I reply. “Look, I’ve got a plan. All we need is a celebrity-type person who works for us and this vest-bomb thing I’ve been making from parts that I broke off Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument.” I turn up the volume on the Krell Foundation stereo, and Little Mix’s Always Be Together floods the room, drowning out the details of the rest of my plan to blow the back doors off this whole shallow edifice.

An hour later we disembark from our black SUVs in the parking lot of North Miami’s MOCA, where the party for Tracey Emin’s show is kicking off Art Basel Miami Beach week. The team stroll into the caterer’s entrance dressed in European pastry chef outfits I’ve purloined from Michael Schwartz’s restaurant at the Raleigh and take our places at the dessert stations dotted around. There’s a moment where Emin goes for a pavlova and clocks the semiautomatic I’m hiding under my Victoria Beckham red twill dress, but I wink knowingly at her, and the moment passes. Suddenly the handsome young managing editor does a forward roll into the crowd, the sign that it’s all on. It’s mayhem. I do a straight punch into a large plate of millefeuille, leap through the explosion of cream and execute a perfect ward-off on a visibly stunned drinks waiter. I can see Jay Jopling, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kanye West and Diane von Furstenberg through the crowd and start to make towards them, fully intending to do more warding off, but I am unexpectedly felled by an Eric Cantona-style kung fu kick by one of Rob Pruitt’s entourage. No matter, our celebrity columnist, James Franco, is in the middle of the crowd, oblivious that I’ve swapped his Loro Piana reversible quilted gilet for my evil contraption attached to a combat top I bought from an army surplus store. He’s approaching Jay Z, Jeffrey Deitch and Demi Moore. This is it. I crawl back up to my feet and climb on a table, knocking over a plate of Esterházy torte, and fire my gun into the ceiling. “My name is Nicholas Brody and I’m a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps,” I yell while fiddling with the remote control for the Hirschhorn bomb. “By the time you watch this, you’ll have read a lot of things about me, about what I’ve done…” Jay Z smiles broadly, moves in front of me and starts rapping, “I just want a Picasso, in my casa, no my castle, I’m a hassa.” “Get out the way, Mr Z!” I implore, trying to remember the combination of moves on the control that’s going to blow the vest. “I’m never satisfied, can’t knock my hustle,” continues Jay Z. I realise I could be losing the moment. I drop the gun and leap at Franco to trigger the contraption. I fall short and end up grabbing at his Saint Laurent slim-fit leather trousers, which slide down in my hands as I crash to the floor. “Go, girl!” yells Mera Rubell. Fucking Hirschhorn, I think. I look up just as a devilishly handsome figure executes a perfect 540-degree jump inside kick that hits me on the side of head and simultaneously knocks the Hirschhorn bits to smithereens on Franco’s waistcoat. It’s my nemesis: Spiegler. The crowd cheers wildly, assuming the whole thing has been some sort of Abramović-style performance with bells on. Jay Z’s still rapping, “Twin Bugattis outside the Art Basel.” Spiegler and Franco have got their hands in the air. I’m facing defeat or a lengthy spell inside a detention facility. There’ll be another day, I reckon. In the meantime I do the only acceptable thing, haul myself up and start twerking next to Will Ferrell. Gallery Girl