ArtReview November 2013 by ArtReview

www.dior.com

La Rose DioR BagateLLe coLLection White gold, diamonds, fancy pink diamonds, sapphires, pink sapphires, purple sapphires, emeralds, Paraiba tourmalines and tsavorite garnets.

Watch in high tech ceramic. Moonphase complication with aventurine counter. Self winding mechanical movement. 42 hour power reserve. FOR DETAILS OF AUTHORISED STOCKISTS PLEASE TELEPHONE 020 7493 3836

www.chanel.com

thinking in circles Curated by Briony Fer 5 November – 21 December 2013

Gabriel Orozco

Exhibition first presented at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. A fully illustrated catalogue by Briony Fer, published by The Fruitmarket Gallery, accompanies the exhibition.

MARIAN GOODM A N G ALLERY 24 West 57th Street New York NY 10019 +1 212 977 7160 www.mariangoodman.com

MARTIN CREED 8 NOVEMBER — 21 DECEMBER 2013

HAusER & WIRTH 32 EAsT 69TH sTREET NEW YORk NY 10021 WWW.HAusERWIRTH.COM

GAVIN BROWN ’s ENTERpRIsE 620 GREENWICH sTREET NEW YORk NY 10014 WWW.GAVINBROWN.BIz

Work No. 1674 ANouchkA, 2013 PeNcil ANd WAtercolour oN PAPer 28.3 × 20.7 cm / 11 1/8 × 8 1/8 iN

Ha u s e r & W i r t H

rodney GraHam tHe Four seasons 2 november — 21 december 2013 limmatstrasse 270 8005 ZüricH WWW.HauserWirtH.com

Actor / Director, 1954 2013 PAinteD Aluminum lightboxes with trAnsmounteD chromogenic trAnsPArencies; DiPtych 232.7 × 376 × 17.8 cm / 91 5/8 × 148× 7 in

15 November 2013 — 11 January 2014 52–54 Bell Street, London

Florian Pumhösl lissongallery.com

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

lissongallery.com

Willem de Kooning Ten Paintings, 1983–1985

Yayoi Kusama I Who Have Arrived In Heaven November 8 - December 21, 2013

David Zwirner 519, 525 & 533 West 19th Street New York, NY 10011 212 727 2070 davidzwirner.com

Photo by Gautier Deblonde

Ad Reinhardt November - December 2013

davidzwirner.com

On March 18, 1990, six paintings by Rembrandt, Flinck, Manet and Vermeer, five drawings by Degas, one vase, and one Napoleonic eagle were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The frames of the Rembrandt, Vermeer and Flinck paintings were left behind. In 1994, after being restored, the empty frames were hung back in place, further emphasizing the painting’s absence. I asked the curators, guards, other staff members and visitors to tell me what they saw within these frames. Sophie Calle “What do you see? The Concert, circa 1660. Jan Vermeer.”

NEW YORK, 909 MADISON AVENUE KAWS “PASS THE BLAME” 2 NOVEMBER - 21 DECEMBER 2013

PARIS, 76 RUE DE TURENNE SOPHIE CALLE “DéROBéS” 13 NOVEMBER 2013 - 11 JANUARY 2014 RYAN MCGINLEY “BODY LOUD” 13 NOVEMBER 2013 - 11 JANUARY 2014

HONG KONG, 50 CONNAUGHT ROAD CENTRAL MR. “SWEEET!” 4 OCTOBER - 9 NOVEMBER 2013 DANIEL ARSHAM “#FUTUREARCHIVE” 20 NOVEMBER - 21 DECEMBER 2013 KAZ OSHIRO “LOgICAL DISJUNCTION” 20 NOVEMBER - 21 DECEMBER 2013

CAPE TOWN

CARLA BUSUTTIL 02 November – 07 December 2013 FIAC BOOTH C16 24 – 27 OCTOBER 2013 ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH BOOTH C20 5 – 8 DECEMBER 2013

www.goodman-gallery.com +27(0)21 462 7573 cpt@goodman-gallery.com

GARY HUME The Wonky Wheel

Matthew Marks New York

Takeshi MuraTa, Bernie’s, 2012 (DEtAil) PigMENt PRiNt, 161.3 x 215.9 cM (63.5 x 85 iN) cOURtEsY OF thE ARtist

Empire State NEW YORK ART NOW

CURATED by ALEx GARTENfELD AND NORmAN ROSENThAL 17 NOVEMBER 2013 – 15 FEBRUARY 2014 mIChELE AbELES URI ARAN DARREN bADER ANTOINE CATALA mOyRA DAVEy KEITh EDmIER LATOyA RUby fRAzIER DAN GRAhAm RENÉE GREEN WADE GUyTON ShADI hAbIb ALLAh JEff KOONS NATE LOWmAN DANNy mCDONALD bJARNE mELGAARD JOhN mILLER TAKEShI mURATA VIRGINIA OVERTON JOyCE PENSATO ADRIAN PIPER ROb PRUITT R. h. QUAyTmAN TAbOR RObAK JULIAN SChNAbEL RyAN SULLIVAN

EmpirE StatE. NEw York art Now hAS bEEN CONCEIVED fOR AND PRODUCED by AzIENDA SPECIALE PALAExPO – PALAzzO DELLE ESPOSIzIONI, ROmE.

PA R I S

PA N T I N

6 9 AV D U G É N É R E A L L E C L E R C

T 331 42729900

R O PA C . N E T

Pablo Accinelli / Caetano de Almeida Leonor Antunes / Juan Araujo Alessandro Balteo Y. / Eduardo T. Basualdo Laura Belém / Erick Beltrán Alexandre da Cunha / Matías Duville Olafur Eliasson / Marcius Galan Carlos Garaicoa / Fernanda Gomes Brian Griffiths / Federico Herrero Magdalena Jitrik / Marcellvs L. Luisa Lambri / Tonico Lemos Auad Laura Lima / Armin Linke Jarbas Lopes / Mateo López Jazmin López / Renata Lucas Jorge Macchi / Antonio Manuel Marepe / Gilberto Mariotti Cildo Meireles / Pedro Motta Muntadas / Bernardo Ortiz Nicolás Paris / Pedro Reyes Marina Saleme / Gabriel Sierra Edgard de Souza / Adrián Villar Rojas Art Basel Miami Beach Booth K14

São Paulo | Brasil www.galerialuisastrina.com.br

In 1987. June. Manfred Schneckenburger curates Documenta 8. The exhibition was originally to be curated by Harald Szeemann and Edy de Wilde but both resigned. (Photo by Dietmar Walberg)

October. Thomas and John Knoll develop the first version of Photoshop. Massimo De Carlo buys his first telefax machine.

November. The first exhibition of Massimo De Carlo Gallery is Olivier Mosset.

www.massimodecarlo.com info@massimodecarlo.com

Jules de Balincourt Itinerant Ones 16 November - 20 December 2013

Victoria Miro 16 Wharf Road · London N1 7RW victoria-miro.com

All Hail the King! Everyone’s always asking ArtReview how they can get to the top of its power list. “What do I have to do?” they squeal at your favourite magazine every October as it walks through the streets, before pawing at its clothes in search of its personal mobile device so that they can type in their name and number and pretend to be its best friend (even if it lets them do this, ArtReview knows that they will never call it back come November). ArtReview’s first reaction is always to remind the supplicants of the wise words of one of England’s greatest socialists: ‘A human being is what he is largely because he comes from certain surroundings, and no one ever fully escapes from the things that have happened to him in early childhood.’ (Yeeesss, ArtReview knows! The socialist had a problem with the society of women, OK? And yes, it was a result of his childhood. So there!) Before presenting them with its commiserations and a list of the least cripplingly expensive private schools, so that their offspring will not suffer the same fate as they did. “But you don’t know me! You don’t understand who I am!” they tend to howl at this point. That’s when ArtReview reminds them of the wise words of one of its favourite misogynist novelists (as filtered through Hollywood): “What does that mean, know me? Know me – nobody ever knows anybody else, ever!” Before issuing a final reminder that ArtReview is too busy documenting real power (which rests with the people who don’t talk to it) to carry on this conversation and that emails can be deleted, letters and packages can be binned unopened, conversations at exhibition openings are forgotten almost as quickly as the exhibitions themselves, cash can be spent, automobiles crashed and houses in the Caribbean are just too expensive to get to.

Most people still don’t get it. “Can’t you do something for me, like when you told Iwan to phone the Schimmel guy?” they sob. “Or when you told David that Jeff was at something of a loose end? Or Hans Ulrich that he had insufficient air miles to be considered? Or the Qataris that the new world order would be founded on culture, not carbon, even though the carbon would be a necessary first step to dominating the culture game?” ArtReview is ashamed to say that after 12 years of putting up with all this Power 100 business, its charity is limited. But that’s all changed, thanks to one plucky artist. In his desperation to be top of this year’s power list, he’s taken ‘in your face’ self-promotion to a whole new level. But – and this is crucial – without actually getting his face anywhere near ArtReview’s. He’s a professional. He’s written his name on almost every surface ArtReview could possibly encounter on its way home from the U-Bahn station in Vienna’s eighth district. No fancy tags for this guy; unlike some of his contemporaries, he wants ArtReview to be able to read, remember and then correctly spell his name: Puber. Not only that; right opposite ArtReview’s home he’s written, ‘ALL YOU SEE IS KING PUBER 1’, in case ArtReview didn’t get what he was after. Puber knows that ArtReview can barely remember the name of the artists it sees in these ‘exhibitions’ it keeps going to. Maybe because it gets so tired of having to go to them. But it doesn’t have to go more than ten metres to see Puber’s daubings. It doesn’t have to talk to him to understand him. It doesn’t need to open an email to read a press release about how busy and important and successful he is. He is, in graffiti terms, the most ‘up’ artist in town. And the writing is on the wall. Puber has taken away ArtReview’s pain! Don’t expect ArtReview to go out in search of power any more, bring the power to ArtReview! There’s only one fatal error in Puber’s plan: if he’d only taken the same trouble that David, Iwan and Larry have and brought his message to the hometowns of all the other members of ArtReview’s power panel, he’d be in business… There you go, pesterers – free advice. And while we’re at it, contrary to what ArtReview might have suggested earlier in its ‘down’ paragraph, its charity in this power business is, in reality, unlimited. Did you know that two years after ArtReview started its greasy-pole-climbing competition (that’s 2004 to those of you with ADD), the Egremont Crab Fair in Cumbria, England, which was founded way back in the thirteenth century, had to discontinue its long-running greasy-pole-climbing competition due to rising insurance costs? (Now Egremont has only got a gurning competition, whereas for ArtReview, asking people to pull faces for its audience’s – and occasionally its photographers’ – entertainment remains a sideline.) Rest assured that ArtReview will never bow to that kind of pressure! It is, and will remain, totally uninsured. : |

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

pacegallery.com

Paradise Lost

ArtReview vol 65 no 8 November 2013

Art Previewed 39

Previews by Martin Herbert 39

The Archangel Gabriel on Jeffrey Deitch Interview by Matthew Collings 64

Points of View by Joshua Mack, Jonathan Grossmalerman, J.J. Charlesworth, Mike Watson, Hettie Judah, Maria Lind, Sam Jacob, Jonathan T. D. Neil & Karen Archey 49

Michael Ward Stout Interview by Tom Eccles 70 The Law and Its Ideas by Daniel McClean 74 The View from… by James Franco 76

ArtReview

GMT 5N red gold case

WWW.GREUBELFORSE Y.COM

Art Featured 90

Philippe Parreno Interview by Christopher Mooney 90

Zheng Fanzhi by Aimee Lin 136

The Power 100 An Anatomy of Power by Nicolas Bourriaud 98

Paul Schimmel by Jonathan T.D. Neil 142 Isa Genzken by Martin Herbert 146

Introduction by ArtReview 100

The Power 100, profiles 69–80 150

The Power 100, profiles 1–36 102

Global vs Local by J.J. Charlesworth 154

Culture and Power in a Globalised World by Omar Al-Qattan 118

The Mirror of Power photography by Bridget Collins, Kwan Sheung Chi, Donja Pitsch, Lena C. Emery, Andrea Stappert 156

The Mirror of Power photography by Yasuyuki Takagi, Lena C. Emery, Kwan Sheung Chi, Wang Tao 120

The Power 100, profiles 81–100 164

The Power 100, profiles 37–68 126

the Strip 178 Contributors 180 Off the Record 182

ArtReview

Beatrice Pediconi 9’/Unlimited

6 October 2013 – 31 January 2014

Thursday – Sunday Via Fratelli Cervi 66 Reggio Emilia – Italy ph. +39 0522 382484 www.collezionemaramotti.org

Previewed Performa 13 New York 1–24 November

Aslı Çavusoğlu Arter, Istanbul 14 November – 12 January

Susan Philipsz K21, Düsseldorf 9 November – 6 April

Adam McEwen Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels 14 November – 21 December

Art Turning Left: How Values Changed Making 1789–2013 Tate Liverpool 8 November – 2 February

Barbara Kasten Mary Mary at 10 Northington Street, London through 23 November

Cindy Sherman Moderna Museet, Stockholm through 19 January

Paris Photo Paris 14–17 November

The Way of the Shovel: Art as Archaeology MCA Chicago 9 November – 9 March

Lutz Bacher Kunsthalle Zurich 23 November – 2 February

1 Ryan McNamara performing Re: Re: Relâche at Performa’s Relâche – The Party, 29 November 2012. Photo: Clint Spaulding/Patrick McMullan

November 2013

Is it live? Most probably, since performance has conquered the artworld in recent years – not least by appealing to broad audiences, as RoseLee Goldberg recently pointed out. Performa, the ephemeral and performative art biennial that the tenacious South African curator/art historian set up in 2004, accordingly grows more pertinent with every edition. 1 Performa 13 rings the changes via a researchdriven ‘Pavilion Without Walls’ strand that zooms in on performance strategies in specific countries, part of a ‘full-to-bursting’ schedule masterminded by 30-plus curators worldwide, transpiring in over 40 venues and featuring new commissions from Raqs Media Collective, Alexandre Singh, Marianne Vitale, Jake &

Dinos Chapman and Paweł Althamer, among many others. Essentially, for three weeks New Yorkers won’t be able to open their fridge doors after dark without someone leaping into the spotlight. Is it dead and gone? Again most probably, 2 assuming Adam McEwen’s involvement. The US-based British artist, who famously started out as an obituary writer for the Daily Telegraph, is best known for producing obits of living people (from Jeff Koons to Bill Clinton to Macaulay Culkin) and for abstractions that represent the bombing of German cities via appended wads of chewing gum. What McEwen calls ‘sinister pop’ is, according to gallerist Rodolphe Janssen, in the service of his view

of history as ‘a huge lie’; in deconstructing it, morbid humour is his weapon and his welcome mat. A show at the Modern Institute, Glasgow, earlier this year featured the reconstructed cave of mythical Scottish clan leader and cannibal Sawney Bean (who legendarily killed and ate some 1,000 travellers), a graphite representation of a coffin carrier and a still from the Italian horror movie Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Lovely. In the nine years since Hal Foster published his influential essay ‘An Archival Impulse’ in October, many other artists have continued to operate as archivists and archaeologists 3 – treating art, as MCA Chicago’s The Way of the Shovel describes it, as ‘an alternative History

2 Adam McEwen, Untitled, 2013, inkjet print on cellulose sponge, 200 × 150 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels

ArtReview

Channel’. Curated in-house by Dieter Roelstraete (following his 2009 e-flux Journal essay of the same title), the show digs in three locations. It brings together artists who use and tweak historical research, including Moyra Davey, Tacita Dean and Joachim Koester. It considers the slipperiness of truth within representation, and the ‘politics of archaeology’, through the work of artists such as Cyprien Gaillard, Jean-Luc Moulène and Simon Starling. And it taps the source of all this via two mini-exhibitions revolving around Robert Smithson. And there we were, looking at that title, expecting Duchamp’s In Advance of the Broken Arm. Duh. Aslı Çavusoğlu also ruminates on how 4 history gets written and who has the right to

write it; in the young Istanbul-based artist’s film creating a condition of historical amnesia; In Diverse Estimations Little Moscow (2011), this as Turkey continues to westernise – in terms meant going to a Turkish town on the Black Sea of embracing neoliberalism, with the disconto revisit, with the residents, the moment in tents that have followed – Çavusoğlu is surely 1980 when the National Army staged a rehearsal not living in the past. for its national, dictatorship-enabling coup Strange that an exhibition like Art Turning 5 d’état there, and create/record something Left: How Values Changed Making 1789–2013 approximating collective memory. Visitors to hasn’t been made before. Except that its the Frieze Art Fair in 2012, meanwhile, found subject is such a vast one. Prior to the French Çavusoğlu and compatriots exploring evidence Revolution, the show asserts, art was a redoubt in a different, reflexive way, with a TV crew of the Establishment. Afterwards – the turning filming rehearsals and discussions of a scene in point being Jacques-Louis David’s Death of Marat a crime drama featuring an art exhibition. Her (1793), used as a poster for republicans – that current focus, it appears, is the Turkish modernchanged, and collectivist values and the desire isation period from the late nineteenth century for equality, alternative economic models, etc, on, when the country westernised strongly, have filtered into art ever since. Resultantly this

4 Aslı Çavusoğlu, Gordian Knot, 2013 (installation view, Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment, 2013, Arter, Istanbul), ceramic, 5 × 30 × 30 cm.Photo: © Murat Germen

5 Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793, oil paint on canvas, 111 × 86 cm. © Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Photo: C.Devleeschauwer

November 2013

is a show in which Mass Observation docustills of menaced females to her darkening of menters meet the Guerrilla Girls, Alan Kane the fashion-photo aesthetic and the socially & Jeremy Deller share space with Tim Rollins. accepted horror of surgically rebuilt, wealthy, Expect, also, an archive of materials relating ageing Hollywood wives. Seems we can’t quite to Palle Nielsen’s 1968 conversion of the step away from the horror this month. Moderna Museet (with director Pontus Hultén’s 7 The more you see of Lutz Bacher’s work, farsighted blessing) into a self-organised society the less you might know. Since the 1970s this for children in the form of an unsupervised reportedly pseudonymous, once cultish, now adventure playground tricked out with tools, exceedingly hip figure (galleries: Cabinet, paints and other creative materials, The Model: Greene Naftali, Daniel Buchholz) has floated A Model for a Qualitative Society. At the Moderna out dark, sometimes erotically engaging Museet now, meanwhile, is something far less conundrums hinting at dicey subjects (self6 child-friendly: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled identity and how the media constructs it, Horrors, which edits her oeuvre for its most historical knowledge, the nature of the disturbing elements and veers between grotesuniverse), in formats ranging from ruined queries ranging from her famed faux-cinema videotapes to distressed and altered celebrity

photographs to jeans crammed with foam balls. Following shows this year at Frankfurt’s Portikus and London’s ICA (the latter until 17 November and pairing a cosmos of coal slag with an audio recording of Puck’s speeches from A Midsummer Night’s Dream), in Zurich there’s a career overview of her work: a chance, insofar as it’s possible, to discern what Bacher is about. In the iconography of art, a musical instrument with a string missing historically symbolises discord. In her show The Missing 8 String at K21, Susan Philipsz employs a recording of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen (1945) performed by two cellos – an alleged lament for Germany’s destruction during the Second World War – here played, necessarily

7 Lutz Bacher, Baby Mirror, 2012, framed pigment print, 112 × 165 cm.Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Cologne & Berlin, and Greene Naftali, New York

6 Cindy Sherman, Untitled #458, 2007–8. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

8 K21, Düsseldorf. Photo: Ralph Richter

ArtReview

TO BREAK THE RULES, YOU MUST FIRST MASTER THEM. THE VALLÉE DE JOUX, THE JURA. FOR MILLENIA, A HARSH, UNYIELDING ENVIRONMENT – A PLACE OF RAW NATURE AND UNFORGIVING CLIMATE. FIRST SETTLED IN THE SIXTH CENTURY BY MONKS WHO SAW IN THIS AUSTERE EXISTENCE A SERENITY AND SPIRITUALITY; MORE RECENTLY, SINCE 1875, THE HOME OF AUDEMARS PIGUET, IN THE VILLAGE OF LE BRASSUS. THE EARLY WATCHMAKERS OF LE BRASSUS WORKED THE IMPOVERISHED LAND IN SUMMER – AT ONE WITH NATURE AND COMPELLED BY ITS ELEMENTAL POWER. THROUGH WINTER THEY WORKED AT THEIR BENCH, BY THE EVEN, NORTHERN LIGHT, STRIVING TO MASTER, THROUGH THE COMPLEX MECHANICS OF THE WATCHMAKER’S CRAFT, THE ETERNAL MOVEMENT OF THE COSMOS. TODAY WE ARE PROUD TO FOLLOW THIS TRADITION, EXPRESSING THE DYNAMIC COMPLEXITY OF THE UNIVERSE THROUGH THE ART OF FINE WATCHMAKING.

CALIBRE 2120/2808. PERPETUAL CALENDAR WITH EQUATION OF TIME, SUNRISE AND SUNSET TIME THE AUDEMARS PIGUET FOUNDATION PROUDLY SUPPORTS GLOBAL FOREST CONSERVATION.

imperfectly, on a cello with a string missing, each of the twenty-four tones relayed on a separate speaker. Elsewhere are recordings made using instruments damaged by war, now reverberating crudely; expect, then, characteristically spectral – if wounded and hobbled – overlaps of music and memory from the Berlin-based Scottish artist. Given the superfluity of artists now plying sculptural and colour-driven approaches to photography – images of transient studio constructions, materialist approaches to the 9 printed support – Barbara Kasten ought to be feeling pleased with herself. After all, she’s been doing that since the 1970s, hewing to

abstraction and herself guided by Minimalism, Light and Space artists, Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. (Nothing new under the sun.) Now in her late seventies, her sharp, tranquil work looks totally relevant, as this cache of Kasten’s recent images and covetable 1980s Construct Polaroids will corroborate. Young bucks looking to plunder ideas from Eileen Quinlan et al might as well look here first. 10 How big a thing (in four short days) is Paris Photo? How many registers can one singlemedium art fair touch upon? Aside from featuring 135 galleries and 27 photography-book publishers, this year’s event is capacious enough to hold the following: an ‘Open Book’ section

from Martin Parr’s collection, featuring photo books dedicated to protest (from the postwar era to the present day); a talks programme organised by Nicolas Bourriaud; Giorgio Armani selecting photographs of water – which makes sense given that Armani supports drinkable water projects for Ghana and Bolivia, though we naturally thought immediately of Acqua di Gio; a ‘Recent Acquisitions’ strand weighted partly towards photographs of the Egyptian uprising; and a section that hymns the godlike taste of the private collector, in this case Harald Falckenberg. Oh, and book awards, a BMW-organised exhibit and more – but we’re out of space. Martin Herbert

9 Barbara Kasten, Construct PC XI, 1982, Polacolor photograph, 61 × 51 cm. Courtesy the artist

10 Władysław Pawelec, Untitled, 1980, silver gelatin print. Courtesy Galeria Asymetria, Warsaw

ArtReview

Laura LIMa Bar Restaurant

an InstItutIon of the MIgros culture percentage

Opening Friday, 22.11. 6 pm

23.11.2013–02.02.2014 migrosmuseum.ch migros-culture-percentage.ch

Sacré 101 an exhIbItIon based on the rIte of sprIng

Opening Friday, 14.02. 6 pm

eleanor antin, Marc bauer, dara friedman, Karen Kilimnik, sara Masüger, Vaslav nijinsky, silke otto-Knapp, christodoulos panayiotou, Yvonne rainer/babette Mangolte, lucy stein, alexis Marguerite teplin, Julie Verhoeven, Mary Wigman

15.02.–11.05.2014 Migros Museum für gegenwartskunst limmatstrasse 270 ch–8005 Zurich

21 NOVEMBER 2013 11 JANUARY 2014

Shirazeh Houshiary 30 October - 28 December 2013 201 Chrystie Street, New York lehmannmaupin.com

ArtReview and EFG International are proud to present the last in a series of six specially commissioned poster projects featuring unique artworks created by artists following their selection as 2013 Future Greats. Each artwork is reproduced in ArtReview and is available as a full-size limited-edition poster in subscriber copies of the magazine.

Poster series: No 6

Edward Thomasson selected by Oliver Basciano

Practitioners of the craft of private banking

Edward Thomasson’s films are frequently set in institutional environments, featuring workshops, support groups or grouplearning activities, affective signposts to the artist’s interest in the spoken and unspoken rules of social interaction. A wilful confusion between fiction and documentary in the workshop scenes is typically catalysed. Thomasson will lead his actors through warm-up exercises, with the camera already rolling, and then often include this footage in the final edit. In his use of a realist aesthetic, which belies the self-referential theatricality of the production, the artist is leading us into questions of role-playing: of what constitutes the projected self and what constitutes the real; of how people manage themselves on the outside, within the rules of society, and what’s happening on the inside at the same time.

www.efginternational.com

Points of View Joshua Mack Power? Let’s keep it personal…

Mike Watson Power and disobedience

Sam Jacob The new design is undesign

Jonathan Grossmalerman When it comes to sex(y), can you have too much of a good thing?

Hettie Judah Dance sings the body electric

Jonathan T.D. Neil Is the artworld’s celebriphilia merely the symptom of a deeper insecurity?

Maria Lind Can a show about the real world be too close to the real world?

J.J. Charlesworth World of wonders

Karen Archey Off-space No 16: Donut District, Brooklyn

Joshua Mack Power? Let’s keep it personal… Several years ago I proposed that the Power 100 include a list of artworld insiders whom those participating in the selection admired (rather than those they thought wielded some degree of power – not the same thing). Lot, perhaps, had an easier task finding ten honest men in Sodom and Gomorrah, and my editor’s terse response – “Why not 100 people we’d like to fuck?” – turned my idea into a pillar of salt while posing me a challenge of plenty, not paucity: there are scores of young men and women working in galleries across the world who’d make the cut on my list. (I have made my preferences abundantly clear – you know who you are.) Surely we could all agree on a number one for this year: Tilda Swinton, who has appeared recently, and on dates unannounced to the public, lying immobile in a showcase in MoMA’s lobby, a work conceived in 1995 with Cornelia Parker, before its subject was so famous.To paraphrase Susan Sarandon’s comment on a lesbian scene she played opposite Catherine Deneuve in a 1983 vampire flick called The Hunger – the director had wanted her character to be inebriated, alcohol being the excuse for the peccadillo – gay or straight, no one would have to be drunk to want to bed Swinton; all the better if Sandro Kopp joined in. Therein lies the problem. Like Swinton’s performance, the artworld is preponderantly show and no touch. Back in the 1980s, when Deneuve seduced Sarandon (let us not forget that the latter had

starred in that 1975 romp of lascivious abandon, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and identity politics raised eroticism to a political statement, sex was an artform, and sexuality, in its private and public manifestations, a consolation for and a resistance to the social conservatism visited upon women and gay people.

Identity politics raised eroticism to a political statement, sex was an artform and sexuality a consolation for and a resistance to social conservatism visited upon gay people Yet its power – and aesthetic force – derived from an ability to make the specific, universal. Take Robert Mapplethorpe – all show and all feel – whose work linked the wanton urge – and rank shock – inspired by a fat black cock and the desire simmering beneath the stylish poise of the artworld luminaries he photographed. I think of his photograph of Paula Cooper, the pioneering gallery owner, whom he pictured as a preternaturally beautiful and unashamedly sexual woman, which suggested a combination of spirit and steeliness. The charge behind both types of work is a clear-eyed elision of the visual and physical that made art a vehicle for something highly personal, essential and necessary. It persisted despite the venal current of hype that fuelled

November 2013

a speculative bubble at the end of the decade; the artworld retained a sufficient sense of intimacy to allow shared company to remain one of its pleasures and one of its motivating forces. Today’s pay-to-play system has spawned a closed and self-reinforcing nexus of money and exposure, particularly at the top of the power pyramid – it is not coincidental that a friend and private dealer referred to the Warhol market as a circle jerk. From the school of big, ostensibly rough work like Paul McCarthy’s WS – a glorified porn version of Snow White that played at the Park Avenue Armory this last summer – to the tease of Swinton’s noli me tangere moments at MoMA, sexuality has been cleansed of intimacy and replaced by exhibitionism. Presenting the work in a venue occupying an entire block on the Upper East Side or in the museum that houses the world’s greatest collection of modern art (both of which charge entry fees) renders it porn: what’s on display is really celebrity, matched by a creepy voyeurism on the part of audiences. It’s not a matter of what you might like to have, but what you can’t; power comes from the ability to deny. The real challenge, though, was and remains how one articulates individuality against the structures and strictures of the established. You might not affect who is on the attached list, but you can figure your own way through their thicket by trying to determine whom among them you admire, or might like to fuck, and why.

Jonathan Grossmalerman When it comes to sex(y), can you have too much of a good thing? With my gazpacho chilling in the refrigerator, I collapsed on the porch, enjoying the final moments of calm before my dinner guests arrived; a cold Kamchatka and cola in my hand and the sound of the surf against the dunes below my summer house in Amagansett. It was then that an absolutely intolerable notion took hold of me. Try as I might, I could not shake it loose. What if – and I shudder at the very thought – the public was to grow tired of my garishly huge paintings of vaginas in a variety of alluring positions, sometimes coupled with penises but just as often not? What would I do then? My lack of any strategy was troubling to say the least, and I now stand on the precipice of a full-fledged crisis. I’ve experimented with form before. Oh, yes! With varying degrees of success. After all, my giant plush foam vagina sculptures were a real success with viewers and critics alike. But not all mediums articulate with equal measure the subtleties of my obsessions. Namely: vaginas and penises, often apart but sometimes together. For instance, I’ve found that when you shoot video of a vagina with a penis going in and out of it for several minutes, it kind of just becomes… pornography. Regardless of your pointing out to anyone and everyone that it is not. In fact, I grew to suspect that the wall text for my show at PS1 – intended to communicate that the work, despite bearing superficial similarities to a particular subset

of pornography, was actually contemporary art – achieved exactly the opposite of its intended function, amplifying the problem and making things much, much worse. So the question I am now faced with is this: do I tamp down the sex thing or ramp it up? Ramping it up is, of course, my initial impulse. And a fine impulse it is! But ramp it up to what? My imagination fails me! After all, there’s only so much you can really do with a vagina before it stops making any visual sense!

The thought of painting lonely, drab, inactive vaginas for the rest of my life is horrifying! As I’ve often flattered myself that I am the Morandi of hot fucking, perhaps it is he I should turn to in my hour of distress. What would Giorgio do? Approach the silken vulvas as though they were merely form? Address them only as a vehicle for light and shadow? An excuse for the application of paint and colour? But how? Is colour the problem? I suppose, when I think about it, maybe I can see how my rich bright hues might give too much of a ‘party vibe’ to the vaginas I paint. And vaginas don’t just party all the time, do they? Has any painter ever addressed the workaday vagina? One must assume they spend a good deal of time

Courtesy Jonathan Grossmalerman

ArtReview

in repose, tucked away, nestled cosily behind twills and denim, biding their time, preparing for attack. But how shall I paint this vagina waiting in the wings? Another thing I must contemplate, and I’m really considering all angles today, is the possibility that I am confusing the situation when sometimes including penises in the paintings but just as often not. Maybe I should either always put them in or banish them altogether. They are, after all, not my primary focus. My primary focus is and has always been vaginas, so it’s entirely possible that I’m muddling my message. A vagina alone suggests one thing, but add an erect penis to the mix and I’m beginning to sense it brings up a variety of issues – subtexts and narratives I hadn’t necessarily accounted for. Though I’m still uncertain as to why. In any case it’s well documented that the audience is an easily confused mob of yahoos the artist should despise and fear. But to strike the bright colours and the penises? The thought of painting lonely, drab, inactive vaginas for the rest of my life is horrifying! A grim inky blackness settles over my mood. Oh, God! What am I to do? As I write this I hear the first of the dinner guests arriving. Their tyres popping and pinging against the driveway’s pebble surface. And me in a funk. It’s going to be a very difficult evening.

J.J. Charlesworth World of wonders For a while now, the metropolitan artworld has been excited by a new way of thinking about artefacts, objects and things, one that treats them as if they possessed a sort of existential autonomy, independent of us mere humans. Go to an opening and it’s hard to avoid one or other breathless ‘research-based’ curator engaging you in a conversation about the new philosophical discourses of ‘object-oriented ontology’ and ‘speculative realism’, while inviting you to their latest show in which artificial intelligence algorithms and/or ecological processes offer a postanthropocentric vision of reality. OK, maybe you can avoid them. But only just. And only by backing away hurriedly, thus knocking over the display stand of colourful books published by Zero. Even in the provinces – you’d think they’d be immune from metropolitan art vogues – I can’t avoid the growing fashion for viewing artefacts as inscrutable, quasimagical things. It’s Friday and I’m at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, which has just opened a show called Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia. While Masterpieces… is superficially about the history of artistic production in the east of England – presenting artefacts dating back to pre-Roman Britain alongside what we might understand as more recognisably fine art and decorative art objects from the last 500 years – even here, the extreme historical range and diversity of these artefacts imposes on everything a strangely ethnographic aura, emphasising a sense of their otherness and detachment. The next day, I’m at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, to catch one of the legs of Mark Leckey’s remarkable touring exhibition The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, in which Leckey contrasts premodern and

sacred artefacts with primitive art, primitivist Modernism and instances of postmodern technological delirium – a hand-shaped medieval reliquary next to a high-tech bionic hand prosthesis, for example – to suggest a world in which objects have become ‘reenchanted’ in a strange new age of ‘technoanimism’. According to Leckey’s notes, ‘the status of objects is changing, and we are once again in thrall to an enchanted world full of transformations and correspondences, a wonderful instability between things animate and inanimate, animal and human, mental and material’. What connects such different shows – one an accessibly conservative celebration of regional creativity, the other a sizzling experiment of artist-curating – is the common fascination with artefacts such that the traditional distinctions that once demarcated art from decorative art, art from ethnography and the artist from the amateur no longer retain any importance. That’s perhaps also why one finds the curatorial conceit of the wunderkammer, the ‘cabinet of curiosity’, in so many places right now: elsewhere in the regions this summer, you could have found Brian Dillon’s neo-wunderkammer show Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing at Margate’s Turner Contemporary; while at the highest level, the international artworld cheered on Massimiliano Gioni’s pulse-fingering edition of the Venice Biennale, in which outsider artists, above left Cyberman Helmet, 1985. Photo: Chris Balcombe above right Head of the Emperor Claudius or Nero, first century, Romano-British, copper alloy, 32 × 25 × 25 cm. © Trustees of the British Museum, London

November 2013

amateurs and schizophrenic ‘visionaries’ were piled in with ‘professional’ contemporary artists. Gioni’s biennial rhetoric was also studded with talk of ‘blurring the line between professional artists and amateurs, outsiders and insiders’, and of a world experienced as ‘dreams, hallucinations and visions’, in which we find ourselves ‘possessed by images’. Madness, amateurism and, crucially, the fetishisation of things that are not the product of an increasingly self-conscious and institutionalised artworld – there’s a kind of logic that connects these trends. It has something to do with a weakening sense of the value and purpose of human creativity, as well as the human capacity for critical reflection and action – and the artworld’s In this bit J.J. growing worry that its activities links madness, have no capacity to effect any amateurism kind of real change. Fascination, and the wonder, intoxication, delirium fetishisation – these are terms that imply of things with a happy resignation to not logic! knowing, nor ever being able to know, faced with a world, as Gioni would have it, made up of a ‘constant flood of information’. It’s not our fault, there’s just too much stuff… The rise of objects in artworld debate, as mysterious, animistic, autonomous or whatever, is the flipside of a declining belief in the human capacity for knowledge, historical undestanding and subjective action. As subjects become more passive, objects become more active. Like an artworld cargo-cult, we’re starting to see things – artefacts, commodities – as independent of us, imbued with their own life: washed up on our shores not to be questioned, criticised or changed, but maybe only to be worshipped…

Mike Watson Power and disobedience The sociolinguist Max Weinreich’s adage that ‘a language is a dialect with an army and a navy’ exposes the contingency of power. There is a contradiction inherent to power exercised at the level of the state, in that it is language that bestows the right of a nation state to maintain a punitive legal framework – with the legitimate use of violence underpinning that right – and yet the nation state’s sole recourse to legitimate violence invariably derives from an originary founding phase of illegitimate violence, or the threat thereof. Indian independence was won in part through peaceful civil disobedience, but could not have been maintained without a military and policing system sympathetic to the governing class. Given the glaring gap between the nation state as benevolent provider (as it may wish to be seen) and as bullying henchman of the rich (as it often is), little wonder that resistance to its authority or to the authority of its government is as perennial and global as the changing Want to know why we have not of the seasons. What is conceived of a more perhaps more friendly, honest surprising is that we societal structure? have not conceived of a more friendly, honest and localised societal structure. Such failure is perhaps inherent to the methodology of disobedience. The exhibition Disobedience Archive (The Republic), held at Turin’s Castello di Rivoli during this last spring and early summer, was the result of nine years of research into a 40-year history of resistance, conducted by curator

Marco Scotini as a response to the worldwide anticapitalist uprisings of 2001–2 and the repression of the post-Seattle movement through the Patriot Act in America, and similar legislative processes in other countries. The show presented a selection of 22 videos from the archive, which cover themes ranging from education to anticapitalism, Italian resistance in the late 1970s, disobedience in Eastern Europe and in Argentina, the Arab Spring, Reclaim the Streets, Gender Politics and Foucault’s notion of ‘biopower’. Screens arranged in a kind of amphitheatre – or ‘Parliament’ – format invited the audience to engage in research into the recent history of resistance. This is the first time the archive has been shown in Italy and comes during a period of increasing political tension and an increasing hybridisation of the artworld and activist politics. Sections such as ‘Protesting Capitalist Globalization’ – which included films by Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler (What Would It Mean to Win?, 2008) and Bernadette Corporation (Get Rid of Yourself, 2003) – alongside others like ‘1977: The Italian Exit’, which included Alberto Grifi’s film Festival of the Young Proletariat at Parco Lambro (1976), allowed for reflection on the ancestor movements of today’s Occupy and Bene Comune movements (to take two examples). Grifi’s documentary records the revolt that arose out of the sixth Festival of the Proletariat, in Milan in 1976, and includes footage shot by participants in the uprising as the filmmaker handed the camera to the public and refused the role of director. This video archive was flanked by archival materials associated with protest – ‘Anticamera

Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler, What Would It Mean to Win? (film still), 2008, 40 min. Courtesy the artists

ArtReview

1969-1979’ and ‘Anticamera 1999’ – documenting protest in Italy in the 1970s and globally since the end of the twentieth century. What arises from the objects associated with movements in ‘Anticamera 1969–1979’ (leaflets, books, posters, etc) is that the inherent tensions that prevent a serious challenge to state power do not arise alone from the simple leftwing/ rightwing dialectic that perennially serves to distract the working class from severing the head of its oppressor. The simplicity of the traditional ‘us and them’, ‘left and right’ dialectics is certainly distracting, yet there is another dialectic at play that impedes social change at a different level. In Turin, the display included works by groups such as the Living Theatre, figures such the feminists Carla Lonzi and Carla Accardi, and Bologna free radio station Radio Alice – all committed to a more complex and nondialectical understanding of society, and demonstrating a conflict within the left in Italy in that period that mirrors the hostility of the Communist International to the Situationist Movement in France in 1968. In Italy the Bene Comune movement, which strongly links art to activism, is becoming increasingly concretised as a national political alternative. In April Stefano Rodotà, the father of the Bene Comune movement, ran as a presidential candidate in the final ballot against Giorgio Napolitano. An understanding of history, as exemplified and conveyed by projects such as the Disobedience Archive, may serve to help unblock the inherent antagonisms that distract each generation from the exposure of the ruse presented by power at the governmental and state level.

Hettie Judah Dance sings the body electric The body of an athlete is primed and engineered to excel in a narrow and specific field of movements. The body of a dancer – particularly one involved in contemporary dance – is, by contrast, primed for the greatest available range of movement; it is an expressive tool rather than a purely functional one. The more extensive the gestural vocabulary dancers can access, the more articulate their physical expression. The evolution of dance in the last century has involved a constant transformation of the lexicon of gesture. As with a verbal vocabulary, however, the language of dance must retain the capacity to communicate – not only with the audience, but also with the performers themselves. A piece of choreography, particularly one involving multiple dancers, must be memorable and reproducible to a very precise degree. The question of how the vocabulary of gesture evolves and of how dancers retain the memory of a precise and convoluted sequence of unfamiliar movements is the subject of some fascination. The Wellcome Collection in London is currently exhibiting the fruit of some ten years of research into the link between mind and movement carried out by scientists from various disciplines working alongside Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance company. The exhibition touches variously on collective intelligence, the genesis and development of ideas and how technology can understand and interpret three-dimensional movements. One study investigated how the company memorised movements for which there was no existing verbal or graphic symbolism – and in particular the strong role that visualisation played in this. Dancers talked about how their sequence of gestures created or related to a form

or picture. One described how he would imagine a city laid out on the stage, across which he would pick his route, with the architecture dictating the form of his movements. These segments feel like a ‘eureka’ moment; perhaps because, as nondancers, we grasp at notions that translate dance into a vocabulary we find accessible – the language of architecture, or the gesture of a brushstroke.

By connecting choreography directly to muscle, Ka Fai releases the vocabulary of gesture from the weight of other cultural language The artist and designer Choy Ka Fai (aka Ka5) has been investigating movement memory from the opposite direction – in Prospectus for a Future Body (2011) he experimented with sonic and electrical stimuli applied directly to muscle. In one part of the project – Eternal Summer Storm – we watch him mapping a sequence of movements from a 1973 performance by Tatsumi Hijikata; Ka Fai then reproduces the sequence by responding to programmed sonic vibrations stimulating his muscles. In the final part of the project – a lecture performance called Notion: Dance Fiction – he applies similar stimulation to the body of a professional dancer, essentially electrocuting her (albeit mildly) according to choreography derived from portions of work by luminaries ranging from Pina Bausch to Pichet Klunchun. Choy Ka Fai, Eternal Summer Storm (video still), 2011. Courtesy the artist

November 2013

Broken down and sequenced in such a way, choreography is eternally reproducible; taken to its most ridiculous extreme, the human body becomes a puppet, controlled by a network of electrical stimulations, and the dance sequence becomes a kind of industrial product. While there is Electrostimulation something slightly disturbaddicts – this bit ing (and indeed disturbingly is about shocking comic) about this, by people to make them dance for connecting choreography the sake of art directly to muscle, and by communicating movement by creating muscle memory, Ka Fai releases the vocabulary of gesture from the weight of other cultural language. A movement is just a movement, not a metaphor. This issue of cultural language becomes pointed in Ka Fai’s project Soft Machine (2011–), in which the artist initiates a new discourse in response to the persistence of mystification and ‘exoticism’ in Western representations of contemporary dance from Asia. Involving dancers in China, Japan, India, Indonesia and Singapore, Soft Machine is an immense project, encompassing short documentary films, collaborative performances and lectures, the first elements of which will be shown in Singapore in November. The attempt to examine the vocabulary of gesture on its own terms becomes a task of Fibonacci-esque complexity, spiralling in from continent to country to city to scene to YouTube references to in-jokes. Having stripped gesture of its cultural weight in Prospectus…, here Ka Fai builds it back up, layer by layer, describing the apparently endlessly eloquent complexity of human movement.

Maria Lind Can a show about the real world be too close to the real world? How good an idea is it to make an exhibition about schools in a school? Or to curate a project about gardens in a garden? Or to organise a series of projects about the conditions of a demilitarised zone right next to such a zone? The latter currently exists, on the southern border of the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. While the Artsonje Center has an exhibition titled The Real dmz Project 2013: From the North in its premises in Seoul, it has also staged The Real dmz Project 2013: Borderline, an ambitious endeavour presenting 13 artists’ perspectives on this border, in the province of Cheorwon. On a bus tour to the area in late August I am sweating profusely, but forever grateful to the young art-historian who volunteers to translate what the entertaining guide says in Korean. On the trip I encounter both preexisting and newly commissioned artworks distributed along this fertile region. This district has been central to several periods in Korea’s history: following the division of Korea in 1945 it was part of the North, and during the Korean war it was the site of intense conflict. Given that, as yet, there is no formal peace between South and North Korea (only a truce signed in 1953), it is a tense place, rigorously controlled by the military. The works in Borderline range from the documentary and illustrative to the displaced and abstract. An example of the displaced is Dublin-based Jesse Jones’s video The Other North (2013), in which Korean-speaking actors reenact the script of a film recording a group-therapy session during the early 1970s centred around the Northern Ireland conflict. The original participants represented different walks of life, and in Jones’s staging they take turns discussing ‘the conflict’, sitting in a dark studio, filmed by a circling camera. It is screened in the cinema of the Iron Triangle Tourist Office (during the Korean war, Cheorwon was part of a key communist Chinese and North Korean communications centre known as the Iron Triangle), the first stop on our tour and a reminder of the fact that the zone is a tourist attraction. Souvenir stands sit

next to decommissioned tanks and fighter planes outside the office. London-based South Korean Koo Jeong A’s boulders, assembled in collaboration with people living in the area and placed on the deserted plaza in front of the equally deserted DMZ Peace & Culture Hall, provide a momentary encounter with something really ‘other’. The sound of busy places in New Delhi, collected and edited by Raqs Media Collective, fills a small, quiet train station, defunct for many years. It turns out that the station was moved to its current location only after the DMZ had been established – just one instance of a much bigger staging enterprise with infrastructural additions such as a funicular and an observatory allowing for precisely choreographed encounters with the zone. Being so close to the DMZ makes the artworks fade into the background. They are overwhelmed by reminders of reality, whether it is the constant presence of soldiers and the vast quantity of barbed wire or the variable time limit that is posted daily for how long anyone (including labourers on the region’s vast rice fields) can spend near the DMZ. It’s for this reason that the exhibition in Seoul, somewhat surprisingly and despite the fact that the artworks here are too similar to one another, has a more lasting effect. The works benefit from being inside a white cube four hours’ drive from the border. They resonate differently due to their displacement. This is true of Sean Snyder’s blurry photographs, culled from the Internet, of the bottom parts of the legs of Kim Jong Il. All of them reveal platform shoes, a signature feature of the late North Korean leader, who also tried to compensate for his shortness with a conspicuous hairstyle. It is true as well of London-based photographer Seung Woo Back’s series Blow Up (2001), in which details of, for example, people Paul Kajander, What Cannot Be Is What, 2013, documents from a site-specific performance, Cheorwon-Gun, dimensions variable. Courtesy Artsonje Center, Seoul

ArtReview

on a street, the profile of a soldier and a political poster from negatives shot during an expedition to North Korea and subsequently missed by local censors are enlarged. Regardless of curatorial success, it surely takes some courage for a curator to address the subject of the border between these two countries, a border that continues to produce headlines on a daily basis. Of late these have been about nuclear threats and the execution of a former girlfriend of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. But beyond that, the pressing nature of the situation also concerns the destinies of some of the 73,000 people in the South who still are separated from family members. Indeed, the division of the country remains the principal structuring factor in the societies on either side of the border. Nevertheless, The Real dmz Project’s curator, Sunjung Kim, has not shied away from implying that unification should be part of the debate, despite the fact that South Korea’s current hardline president, Park Geun-hye, has chilled diplomatic relations considerably. Even if the topic were less charged than ‘the conditions of a DMZ next to a real DMZ’, it is rarely advisable to curate on the basis of a one-to-one relationship between content and location. At the end of the day, what made the strongest impression on me during the bus tour was a visit to Cheorwon Peace Observatory. It holds an observation deck in the shape of a cinema theatre, complete with upholstered chairs. But instead of a screen, there is a panoramic window offering a view of rice fields and hills, and in the background, some hazy mountains. Apparently a view over the DMZ and into North Korea, this vista is obscured by two large monitors showing images of the view and featuring a loud Korean voiceover, a maquette of the surrounding landscape and several fixed binoculars. As with the shaky, more-or-less abstract photographs by embedded journalists in Iraq, the closer you get, the less you actually see in the pictures.

Bett (Bed), 1950

JOSEPH BEUYS REVEALED 10 OCtOber – 15 nOvember 2013 31 St. GeOrGe Street, lOndOn W1S 2FJ | enQUIrIeS +44 (0)20 7293 6700 | SOthebyS.COm neW yOrk | London | hOnG kOnG

Sam Jacob The new design is undesign Every time I get on an aeroplane, I feel like I’m being asked to play Kim’s Game, that old Scouts challenge where you try to recall which object has been removed from a tray. On every trip it seems like something else has vanished, shrunk or been downgraded. Piece by piece, the experience is being dismantled from those fulsome pre-9/11, precrash days: travelling is being slowly stripped of extraneous stuff, like the Pink Panther cartoon in which his car gradually disintegrates until he’s holding nothing more than a steering wheel, a bemused expression on his face. Increasingly, though, it’s us travellers who are wearing that expression. Those of us brought up in advanced consumer economies expect things to progress, get better. We expect computers to go faster, medicine to cure more, everyday problems to be eased. But from air travel to austerity cuts to cultural programmes, from the shrinking of the welfare state to the challenges facing city regeneration, we find ourselves involved in a new kind of asceticism. All around us, services, objects and scenarios are being redefined by ideological economic arguments. Austerity brings a difficult idea to the world of things. For design – both as it relates to designers and to consumers – the concept of managed decline is difficult to grasp. Even the idea of ‘less’ is often framed in design as a kind of betterment, a way of suggesting refinement and precision: from the maxim ‘Less is more’ (borrowed by Mies van der Rohe from Robert Browning) to improvements in efficiency. But the kind of less that we increasingly encounter is very different. It’s not austerity chic – this is less as less. Less as a retreat, a capitulation, a U-turn. And it’s perhaps one of contemporary design’s

to shrink. Shrinking, though, as a design challenge, might be harder than growing. The modern design ethos was forged in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and then honed at the start of the twentieth century. These attitudes may feel immutable, but they are simply a result of rapidly expanding societies and economies. In a world where zero-to-negligible growth increasingly becomes the norm, design will be forced to find its appropriate coupling. Undesigners would Erasers poised over masterplans of the past, funding no longer coming from the large central be specialists in amputations, sources of corporations or government but careful surgeries around the from the atomised drip-feed of crowdfunding. Shrinking and decline-management might skeleton of postindustrial suggest a whole new discipline: undesign. societies. Their skill would lie Undesigners would be specialists in amputain fashioning voids in places tions, careful surgeries around the skeleton of postindustrial societies. Their skill would where there once was substance lie in fashioning voids in places where there once was substance. Rather than filling the The problem not only scales, but leaps world with more stuff, they would be tasked across economic sectors. Take Detroit. Once the with designing the gaps between existing clanking mechanical heart of American automothings. Gaps that themselves might become bile production – the home of Ford, Chrysler something more than wasteland. The role of and GM – the city is now the poster child these new kinds of designers would be to find for urban decline. From a population peak new possibilities for abandonment. of 1,800,000 in 1950, Detroit’s inhabitants now Back in the cabin of the aeroplane, the number some 700,000. Vast swathes of the city pretzels have shrunk so much that they have fallen into ruin. Buildings crumble and are barely visible, tissues are so thin you territories once home to urban communities have returned to what Spend too can see through them, legroom is barely looks like ‘nature’, while the city’s much time in an that. But perhaps there are other ways aeroplane these of designing the decline of full service. tax revenue shrinks. In an attempt days and you to find a way out of this downward Maybe you stash your homemade packed start to make up spiral, the city has filed for banklunch as you’re welcomed aboard and names for things get together a scratch am-dram society ruptcy. This is perhaps the first act in a new kind of city-making. It’s to perform an in-flight play. Maybe clear that for cities like Detroit the issue is no it’s not only about things getting worse but longer the production of more but finding ways imagining that less might just be enough. most difficult challenges. Partly because it runs against the whole momentum of design culture. In aviation, the decline of flag carriers is linked to the loss of state support, shrinking margins, competition and regulation. Their new circumstances mean that reduction by a single peanut or a centimetre of leg space multiplies exponentially. Each and every tiny cut plays its part in the bottom line.

Photo: Jason Thompson. Licensed under Creative Commons

ArtReview

Jonathan T.D. Neil Is the artworld’s celebriphilia merely the symptom of a deeper insecurity? Does the artworld have a celebrity problem? The new c-word has undoubtedly captured the attention of the gossips and scribblers. Everyone from friends (Christian Viveros-Fauné in Newsweek) to frenemies (Adam Lindemann in The New York Observer) has either whined and griped or shucked and grinned about those loveable cardboard cutouts from the entertainment industry getting all the airtime in the auction rooms and at the opening parties. Whether it’s Franco – yes, the Franco that’s gracing the pages of this rag – or Leo Franco and Leo – yes, the Leo whose charity auction broke multiple sales records – the stars that fill stadiums and screens increasingly appear to be (or are getting noticed as) the buyers and sellers of note for very expensive works of contemporary art. But why is that a problem? Celebrities have money, and presumably a few have taste, or at least good advisers. For example, Jay Z, much in the news of late for his music-videomasquerading-as-performance-art-piece Picasso Baby, works with Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who even the most cynical critics would have to accept as being something more than superficially knowledgeable about art. Jay Z So the artworld’s newfound love and loathing of ‘the celebrity’ in its midst must have its roots in some other insecurity. I remember seeing Keanu Reeves walking the halls of Art Basel Miami Beach back before 2008 and thinking, ‘Who knew?’ Of course I wondered what he might be buying. To a certain extent this is what being a celebrity is about today. Sociologist Frank Furedi writes that ‘what is distinctive about today’s celebrities Keanu is that they are promoted as both special and utterly ordinary’. That ordinariness – pictures of celebs at the beach (‘he’s got thinning hair’), having lunch (‘she’s

not vegan!’), buying groceries (‘Twinkies?’) the measure of their intelligence. I accept that – cultivates an artificial intimacy, a feeling that they speak with a certain authority. And when we know them in the way that we know people they speak, they don’t always do it directly with whom we have regular daily contact. to me. Sometimes I read what they write, or But to understand how this works in the see what they paint or watch them on a stage artworld we have to recognise that the artworld in front of an audience, and I measure. This is is not like other professional worlds; it’s one why I can respect the authorial intelligence of entirely bound up with the social existence of someone I’ve never met (Furedi, for example), its members. Evenings, weekends, vacations because the catalogue of deeds – times that other professionals normally Frank Furedi?? or words is great enough to grant spend away from ‘work’ – is often the most them the respect that I can honestly essential time for artworld professionals and responsibly judge they deserve. to be at work. When Keanu (of course we’re on If the artworld has a problem, then, it’s not a first-name basis; he’s a celebrity!) is at ABMB, with the celebrities themselves but with what he’s on his own time, buying or browsing; he’s they represent: the confusion of familiarity doing it, presumably, for himself and his own with authority. We cede authority to what we pleasure. But I’m there working: writing, feel we know, and we feel we know it because teaching, consulting, etc. Keanu’s personal it’s ever-present to us, online, onscreen, in world and my professional world overlap, the checkout aisle, ‘in the air’. The contrarian economist Tyler Cowen, in his new book Average and because he’s so familiar, because we’re on Is Over, says that the next boom industry will a first-name basis (although he doesn’t know this), I’d like to know what he’s seen that he likes, be ‘marketing’. Which is what? The business or doesn’t. Which dealers, in his opinion, have of getting more of our good work, or don’t. I want to know this in the attention more of the time; Tyler Cowen??? in other words, of making same way that I want to know it from friends things familiar. Is there any wonder why or colleagues or acquaintances that I run into at celebrities of all stripes play such outsize roles the fair. I respect their opinions enough to want to give five minutes of my time to hear them out. in the marketing business? Marketing is a means to manufacture authority. I don’t take what they say as gospel. I take it as When the big celebrities, the ones that being of interest – potentially. It’s a low bar, but are famous as much for being famous as for it’s a bar nevertheless. And Keanu ABMB? anything else, move into your neighbourhood hurdles it because, again, he’s and start playing a bigger role in your world, familiar. We’re artificially intimate. you don’t have a celebrity problem, you have What exactly do I respect here, then? It’s an authority problem. Contemporary art today, a kind of authority, the kind that comes with a on the whole, doesn’t know how to authorise familiarity with the intelligence, or lack thereof, itself. It doesn’t know what values it subscribes of others. I listen to friends and colleagues and to or what good it is for. Absent of its own acquaintances because, over time, I have taken authority, art must look elsewhere to be taken seriously, and increasingly it appears it wants Jay Z, Picasso Baby, 2013, performance, to be nothing more than familiar. Pace, New York. Photo: Kodaklens

November 2013

Karen Archey Off-space No 16: Donut District, Brooklyn Wafting trees and sleepy brownstones line Carroll Gardens’s Huntington Street just before it meets the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and descends progressively into dump-hood. A combo Sunoco gas station and Dunkin’ Donuts lies at the end of the street – cars zoom above on the BQE next to a resplendent Dunkin’ sign – and across from it stands the Donut District, a span of three scrappy but ambitious artist- and designer-run galleries: Primetime, Know More Games and 247365. My first visit to the Donut District was in February on the occasion of the Neoteny group exhibition at 247365, featuring up-and-comers BFFA3AE, Debo Eilers, Lisa Jo & Amy Yao and Jared Madere, curated by artist Josh Kline. That week’s cold snap didn’t prevent the galleries from overflowing with twenty- and thirtysomethings, the crowd spilling outside and keeping warm with convivial nips of whiskey. As compared to standard artist-run gallery fare in other deep-Brooklyn locales such as Bushwick, the Donut District crowd are a bit older and, perhaps consequently (and thankfully), take themselves a bit less seriously. (It’s OK to paste Miley Cyrus photos on the wall here, and no one’s going to give you a half-hour undergradthesis spiel on the topic.) “It would be a much, much different space if we did this in Bushwick,” 247365 cofounder Jesse Greenberg says to me in a recent onsite interview. The gallery’s name is said “twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five”, as in every hour of every day of the year, speaking

to the shared ambition of district cohorts to make running a gallery a sustainable, costeffective practice, albeit an omnipresent social and professional commitment. While the Donut District galleries enjoy cheap rent, and all involved live in or around Carroll Gardens, they have jobs and actual art or design careers in addition to running their respective spaces.

It’s OK to paste Miley Cyrus photos on the wall here, and no one’s going to give you a half-hour undergrad-thesis spiel on the topic Donut District began with Primetime, a nonprofit and the smallest space of the three, which opened in February 2010 after five months of renovations. While Primetime is now run by designers Scarlett Boulting, Gary Fogelson, Meredith James and Ryan Waller, 12 artists initially split the costs of the space and divided its schedule into distinct months, during which one of the crew would take over the space, similar to a time-share format. The following year saw Primetime institute a pay-to-play system in which artists could apply to pay $100-a-week to rent the space, which continued until early spring 2012, when a successful Exterior view, 247365. Courtesy 247365, Brooklyn

ArtReview

Kickstarter campaign transformed the space into a donor-funded initiative. Jacques Louis Vidal, an original Primetime member, founded Know More Games with Brian Faucette and Miles Huston in July 2011 after a veterinary clinic next door to Primetime went out of business. Artists Greenberg and MacGregor Harp started 247365 in November 2012 in the other half of the abandoned clinic storefront on a tip from friends at Know More Games. Since then, the Donut District has initiated a handful of shared opening nights and events such as a Fourth of July party with a dunk tank. Both 247365 and Know More Games are currently hosting a group exhibition of black-and-white drawings, featuring work by about 75 artists, curated by another artist, Brian Belott. My earlier allusions to Bushwick art spaces weren’t to draw similarities between the two locales, but rather meant to highlight the rarity of comparably mature artist-run spaces in New York – remember the late 2000s, when the term ‘pop-up’ was coined (and then consequently overused to death)? Be it the rebound of the real estate market, continued financial hard-luck of Gen-Y’ers or the proclivity of New York City to run on pretension, permanent project spaces and artist-run galleries remain few and far between in the Big Apple. Due to some real-estate luck and ingenuity, we’re fortunate to have the Donut District – but hopefully this recession reversal won’t mean they’re the last ones standing.

C a rro l l / F l e t c he r i s p l e a se d to an n ou n c e t h a t w e n o w re p re se n t

Michael Najjar and

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

56 – 57 Eastcastle St. London W1W 8EQ

www.carrollfletcher.com info@ carrollfletcher.com

TO M WESSELMA N N Still Life, Nude, Landscape: The Late Prints 14 November – 21 December 2013

The Alan Cristea Gallery at 31&34 Cork St. London W1S 3NU Telephone +44(0)20 7439 1866 Facsimile +44(0)20 7439 1874 Email: info@alancristea.com Website: www.alancristea.com

Monica Sitting with Mondrian, 1989

Alan Cristea Gallery is the exclusive worldwide representative for prints from the Estate of Tom Wesselmann

JOHN ARMLEDER ALEXANDRA BACHZETSIS OLAF BREUNING CHRISTOPH BÜCHEL VALENTIN CARRON M CLAUDIA COMTE ASL URS FISCHER BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL SYLVIE FLEURY GSTAAD 2014 THOMAS HIRSCHHORN JANUARY 27– MARCH 8 CHRISTIAN MARCLAY OLIVIER MOSSET SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS GIANNI MOTTI IN AND ABOVE GSTAAD, SWITZERLAND MAI-THU PERRET ELEVATION1049.ORG PIPILOTTI RIST UGO RONDINONE CURATED BY PAMELA ROSENKRANZ NEVILLE WAKEFIELD + OLYMPIA SCARRY KILIAN RÜTHEMANN OLYMPIA SCARRY PRODUCED BY LUMA& FOUNDATION ROMAN SIGNER TOBIAS SPICHTIG NOT VITAL IMAGE SOURCE: SWISSTOPO, FEDERAL OFFICE OF TOPOGRAPHY

ELEVATION 1049

philippe parreno 23 OCTOBER 2013 - 12 JANUARY 2014

C.H.Z., 2011, Courtesy Galerie Esther Schipper

Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World

PALAIS DE TOKYO 13, AVENUE DU PRÉSIDENT WILSON F-75116 PARIS

PALAIS DE TOKYO PARTNERS

PARTNERS OF ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD

Palais de Tokyo thanks : Air de Paris, Pilar Corrias Gallery and Esther Schipper Gallery. Palais de Tokyo also thanks : SABMiller France, Horticulture & Jardins, Modular, and les Amis du Palais de Tokyo and the Tokyo Art Club.

Great Critics and Their Ideas No 26

The Archangel Gabriel on Jeffrey Deitch at LA MOCA Interview by Matthew Collings

Gabriel is one of the higher angels. Traditionally he blows a golden trumpet at the Last Judgement to indicate God’s return to earth. He has made many appearances in Western art, from mosaics and icons by anonymous craftspeople in the Middle Ages to Renaissance altarpieces by Botticelli, Fra Angelico and El Greco.

ArtReview

ArtReview Hi. I’m sure many readers will associate you with the well-known Christian narrative: you’re an angel of the Lord, you come down to earth to give Mary the news that she’s going to be the Mother of God. The Archangel Gabriel I’m actually a product of Judaism: in one book of the Old Testament I explain the prophet Daniel’s visions and in another I’m sent to destroy Jerusalem. In my New Testament continuation I foretell the births of Jesus and John the Baptist. Muslims are taught that it was I who brought the words of the Koran to God’s last prophet. Interestingly, there’s a lot of ambiguity about my status. Sometimes I’m just an angel and sometimes even just ‘the man, Gabriel’. Being an archangel, one of the upper echelons of the angelic order, the chosen few, is neither a biblical nor a Koranic conception. It comes instead from religious texts compiled between the periods when the Old and New Testaments were produced (hence their scholarly category, ‘intertestamental’) and unrecognised by the Church. In the Book of Enoch, for example, Jewish wisdom collected between 300 BC and 100 AD, I’m sent down to the earthly realm to ‘proceed against bastards and reprobates’. AR What do you make of Jeffrey Deitch’s departure from LA MOCA last summer? TAG Well, it’s another archangel, Michael, who weighs good and evil on the heavenly scales. AR Sure, but you must have an opinion. Do you think Deitch will be saved at the Last Judgement? TAG It depends on your perspective. He is knowledgeable about art and the market. If you’ve got an institution in trouble, and its purpose is to get people interested in art, or disseminate information about art to initiates and professionals alike – basic knowledge as well as involved and complex stuff – and the trouble it’s in is financial, then making him the boss surely makes sense, and it’s bad luck it didn’t work out. Maybe Benjamin Buchloh should have been the boss. Who can say? AR What do you think would happen if he was? TAG Let me answer that by proposing that knowledge of the market could imply many different things, and the same goes for knowledge of art. And it’s another matter again as far as their relationship is concerned. What should it be? That is, is there an ‘ought’ issue here? Or is the relationship written in stone already and it’s therefore the task of anyone in a position of responsibility to make sure nothing upsets the connection or causes it to short-circuit? That is, Buchloh, who is a fiery writer and very probing in his critical enquiries about the social place of art, and art’s capacity

to alter the social structure, might have a vision of art and the market that transcends present conditions. He might see these as a hegemonic construct and not an inevitable outcome of human nature. And he might want to set a revolutionary example with his leadership of LA MOCA that appears bizarre and appalling and unworkable because it accords with humane social relations and attacks spectacular capitalism. AR The row about Deitch was to do with a general perception of him being an operator because he only had shows of graffiti and fashion, and he was obsessed with getting Hollywood celebrities into the artworld all the time. He just had the wrong values.

Hollywood celebrities are people too. They can get in on art if they want. Why should we object? Their involvement causes yet more money to be brought into the art market, and to date at least, money is still the language of power. Celebrities create glamour around art, and this makes people who don’t know much about art feel OK about the lack, as if such knowledge isn’t really necessary if you want to get something meaningful from an encounter with art TAG Wasn’t he hired precisely because of his values, which are widely known? That is, he has a history of which he is not at all ashamed, which includes being an art adviser and being involved with corporate collecting. He helped form an art collection for Citibank, for example. A lot of people might say there’s always been a market dimension to art, and it can’t exist without it. The same people probably think there’s always been market competition of the kind we have now. They don’t seek to destroy it. Instead they pragmatically set about making it serve their individual ends, so they can, no doubt, be in a better position to help society eventually by opening a private museum or donating funds for a wing in the Guggenheim. And for those same people art is at once a respite from the facing page Cyrus Emanuel Eugenicus, fourteenth-century fresco of the Archangel Gabriel from the Tsalenjikha Cathedral, Georgia

November 2013

obsessive concern with profitmaking that dominates life, and deeply part of it. And there’s nothing unreal about the contradiction, they would say; indeed, it would be naive to insist that there is. In practical reality, they maintain, you simply accept there’s a time and a place for everything. You feel soulful because of art’s effect. Or you feel entertained. Or you have acquired superior knowledge, or whatever it is you believe art does. And these happen in some contexts while in others you get big bucks from it. And the manoeuvres involved in the latter process, that is, art’s monetisation, might seem obscene compared to all the poverty in the world, but this is unavoidable. Academia is the place for worrying about it. Or even art. But you don’t bring in prophets or academics or artists or whatever to run big museums. If you want them to run OK. AR But he left because it wasn’t going OK; at least that’s the general perception. TAG Well, it wasn’t going OK before he arrived, either. Maybe he ran it as well as it was possible to run it. AR What about all the graffiti? TAG It’s a legitimate style. And Hollywood celebrities are people too. They can get in on art if they want. Why should we object? Their involvement causes yet more money to be brought into the art market, and to date at least, money is still the language of power. Celebrities create glamour around art, and this makes people who don’t know much about art feel OK about the lack, as if such knowledge isn’t really necessary if you want to get something meaningful from an encounter with art. AR You’re awfully tolerant. Do you really think these things? TAG I’m a messenger, I don’t create meanings myself, I announce them. AR Well, what’s a new meaning you can announce to the artworld to help it? TAG The message of making: it is coming back. AR What do you mean by ‘making’? TAG I mean a physical, unalienated relationship between the art object and the person who’s making it. The artworld lost sight of this, and as a consequence a hunger developed for it, and now the hunger will be answered, and making will return. I’m not sure it would be correct to say God caused it, though; it’s more to do with material reality. If there is such a thing at all as ‘human nature’, then it is that human beings are labourers. They use their bodies and their minds to transform nature in order to exist. And so the higher form

of making that has gone by the name of art always has a basic momentum issuing from below. And if the higher form is obstructed for whatever reason, it will always only be temporary. The obstruction recently has been the massive presence of illusions of making. By this I mean making automatically or mechanically, with all its subsequent attendant morbid manifestations, which are really only so many pathological compensations for the loss of making, such as making weirdly or exotically, making with extraordinary chemical processes, for example, or making with an infinitely expandable range of unlikely materials. Something substantial will inevitably replace this semblance of making. Simulated and hysterical pseudo-making will continue no doubt, but alongside the returned, substantial kind.

connection to cult and ritual – won’t be coming back just because someone suddenly gets serious again about colour relationships, composition and visual dynamics generally. Bourgeois values are much more likely to be challenged right now by a blast of that kind of thing than by yet more insipid art-gallery-pleasing exercises in interrogating society’s production of images.

buying vague and generalised signs for importance. He is very bright to have thought up the right thing for the new situation, one must give him that.

AR Do you have any examples of this return to making you advocate? Do you mean Thomas Houseago? He showed at Gagosian last summer, he sells for millions, we’d always be happy to review him.

AR Are you a fallen angel?

TAG I regret to say I think the highly successful market for those objects is based not on informed appreciation of visual ideas, but precisely the opposite; that is, a profound forgetting on the part of the audience of what visual ideas in art are or have ever been. They’re

AR At ArtReview we’re very concerned to please a consuming mindset, and that necessitates avoiding like the plague reading anyone like Walter Benjamin. But I suppose it’s now so ingrained into trendiness that we simply take it for granted that the concept of the unique, handmade art object’s relationship to authority, signalled by the object’s aura, must always be challenged. TAG Sure, but all that’s just sorted itself out anyway, hasn’t it? It’s a long time since Benjamin wrote his great works. Art objects are either feeble or impressive now, as opposed to mystifying versus aware of historical materialism. The aura – and the object’s

AR So God didn’t tell you any of this, you just analysed the situation yourself and produced this interpretation? TAG Damn right.

TAG Ha ha – no, that would be Satan. No, my interest is really in formal meaning, which has come to be known derogatorily and quite misleadingly as formalism. That’s a hostile word for the concern that artists for millennia have had with the creation of meaning through the manipulation of forms. You know, a tribesman or -woman whittling a fantastically intricate form on a piece of bone, or Matisse painting a painting, or Fra Angelico painting one of me announcing the birth of Jesus: we don’t have to look for sinister Foucauldian ruling-class interests in the institutions that shore up art like that. We can just say: yeah, that painting or bone carving has visual, rich, impactful and multilayered sheer content, and it’s about time art-culture stopped being afraid of that. Moaning about whether museum directors have the right values or not is just missing the point. Who cares? Get up off your knees, artist warriors! You have nothing to lose but your chains! AR Ha ha, right on!

Next month Lukács on reification and the Turner Prize

Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: World Economic Forum. Licensed under Creative Commons

ArtReview

A.R. PENCK LES ANNÉES 80

24 Oct – 01 Dec. 2013

Exhibition catalogue - Text by Elisabeth Wetterwald

SUZANNE TARASIEVE PARIS • 7, rue Pastourelle • F-75003 Paris T : + 33 (0)1 42 71 76 54 • M : + 33 (0)6 79 15 47 85 • www.suzanne-tarasieve.com

Other People and Their Ideas No 10

Michael Ward Stout Interview by Tom Eccles

Michael Ward Stout is a lawyer specialising in art law and intellectual property rights, and president of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, a nonprofit organisation set up in 1988 (ten months before Mapplethorpe’s death) to protect the photographer’s legacy, support photography in general and support research into HIV/AIDS.

ArtReview

ArtReview You have been practising art law and intellectual property rights since the late 1960s and established your practice working for Salvador Dalí. That must have been an astonishing beginning for a young man from Wisconsin. How did you start out? I imagine Dalí was probably concerned with the huge number of fakes on the market. Michael Ward Stout I have been practising law for 45 years – at first as a securities lawyer with a large Wall Street firm, then with a small firm specialising in music, theatre and art. I opened my own firm at the end of 1974, after Salvador Dalí retained me to be his attorney. Indeed, as a ‘small-town boy’ from Wisconsin, to be thrust into Salvador Dalí’s international circus was an amazing experience. He had been without counsel for a few years, and the accumulation of legal issues throughout the world was fascinating as well. He was obsessed with eliminating fakes and abuses until about 1981, when his health began to fail and his wife, Gala, who was much older, could no longer function in his professional life. After she died, in June 1982, he simply didn’t care and therefore the abuses, fakes and forgeries became rampant. He wasn’t well enough to deal with law enforcement, so it was easy to get away with forging his signature. When, finally, he agreed to give a deposition, while reviewing several examples of faked originals and unauthorised reproductions, he basically said, ‘This is not my problem. This is a problem of society. If people are happy to look at and even buy these things, then they deserve to own them.’ It was part of his view about the decline of Western civilisation. AR You’re probably best known as the lawyer for Robert Mapplethorpe. How did you first meet? Was Mapplethorpe the first photographer that you represented? MWS We were both frequenters of [New York club/restaurant] Max’s Kansas City in the 1970s but had only said hello to each other over the years. In 1980 Robert was commissioned to take a series of photographs for a new discotheque owned by a client and friend of mine. Robert asked the friend, Bruce Mailman, to arrange a dinner for us so that he could talk to me about representation. He reasoned that my relationship with Salvador Dalí provided me with many European contacts, and a knowledge about extensive image licensing. We hit it off, and gradually became friends, as well as client and lawyer. Mapplethorpe was indeed the first photographer I represented, which was an important education for me. AR That must have been in the punk days of Max’s second iteration – with Blondie, Patti Smith, the Cramps, Television and Annie and the Asexuals – not the kind of place you’d expect to find a midtown lawyer.

MWS I actually started going to Max’s in the 1960s while in college. I moved to New York in 1968. Yes, those musicians were there (upstairs) in the 70s. There was always an interesting mix. I may have been singular by always coming from work in a three-piece suit. I haven’t changed much. AR What was the difference between representing a photographer and, say, a painter? Am I wrong to suggest that photography still remained in question as a ‘fine’ art at that time? MWS Representing a photographer was very different then and is still different, for the works most often are created in multiples. And yes, photography was not very well accepted by the contemporary art world at that time. However, Mapplethorpe insisted that he be represented only by contemporary art galleries. In that regard, Holly Solomon and Robert Miller were ahead of their time. Miller actually had a photography department and devoted significant resources to his photography-based artists.

When Salvador Dalí finally agreed to give a deposition, he basically said, ‘This is not my problem. If people are happy to look at and even buy these things, then they deserve to own them.’ It was part of his view about the decline of Western civilisation AR Before Mapplethorpe died in 1989 you helped to establish a foundation in the artist’s name, of which you are the president, ‘to protect his work, to advance his creative vision and to promote the causes he cared about’. These kinds of foundations are becoming fairly common today in the United States. In fact they seem to be proliferating. Do you think the Mapplethorpe Foundation helped to set a precedent? MWS ‘Prominent artists’ have become very wealthy during the last 25 years, and it is almost mandatory for them to consider charitable vehicles in their estate plans. That is to say, that a typical successful artist may expect to die with important real estate (studio, New York or other urban home, a country house, perhaps a European property), a million or two dollars in investments, and perhaps tens of millions of dollars in self-created artworks, plus a collection of artworks or decorative arts by other artists. A charitable vehicle (foundation or charitable trust) avoids the very steep

Michael Ward Stout, 1986. Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

November 2013

estate-taxes imposed in the US and many states. In other words, if an artist leaves the bulk of his or her artworks to a foundation, it passes to the foundation tax-free. In addition, if an artist chooses a board of directors carefully, from a selection of professionals as opposed to loved ones, the foundation has a reasonable chance of successfully running the artist’s studio well beyond his lifetime. The foundation will arrange sales and placements of the artworks, as well as publications, exhibitions and other events that expand the legacy and keep the artist ‘alive’. Of course it can never be as good or as interesting as when an artist is alive, creating new works. I like to think that the Mapplethorpe Foundation has been successful for 25 years in providing a model for other artists. Indeed, my colleagues and I have been consulted many times by artists interested in the Mapplethorpe model. The Mapplethorpe Foundation was created at about the same time as the Warhol Foundation, which is a much wealthier foundation, due to the relative market value of the works and the age of the artist, which allowed Warhol to collect and accumulate many asset classes in greater abundance than Mapplethorpe, who died at the age of forty-two. Nevertheless, the Mapplethorpe Foundation has enjoyed an equally prominent reputation. Similarly, the Keith Haring Foundation has more recently become a model for other artists. The combination of strategic and important giving, together with the programme of promoting the artists’ legacies by organising exhibitions, publications and institutional placements of artworks, shows living artists the possibilities available for estate and legacy planning with a view towards legacy expansion. AR I certainly don’t disagree with the desire to set up charitable organisations, and one can’t doubt the good that many artists’ foundations have done – particularly here in the US. But do you think one might question, or at least query, the self-promotional aspect of artists’ trusts? Is that really a bona fide ‘charitable’ function? MWS You are right to question whether the promotion of a single artist’s legacy is indeed an ‘exempt purpose’ under the rules of the Internal Revenue Service. In fact we have seen applications for tax-exempt status rejected for this very reason, with the IRS stating that the promotion of a single artist’s legacy is not broad enough to qualify for a charitable exemption where the charitable mandate must be for the good of a larger public than that who may be interested only in a single artist. I have also seen similar applications (one, actually) slip by, although at some point there will be a second look and, I believe, a correction. Recently a well-known New York-based foundation was disciplined or ‘corrected’ after

broadly stating that the foundation’s sole purpose was to promote and protect the legacy of the founding artist. The intended purpose of a foundation must be clearly stated in its application to the IRS, and those documents, when accepted, must be filed with the charities office of the attorney general in the state(s) where the foundation is organised, and in the states where it expects to conduct its affairs. New York and California pay very strict attention to the activities of foundations and particularly to whether the foundation is following its charitable mandate. Issues of governance are also looked at when it appears that a foundation is making gifts to promote its founders or trustees or officers, as opposed to the exempt purpose stated, which must be for the public good. If an artist’s foundation is positioned to fund, for example, art museums, arts education, art therapy, it is likely that the founding artist’s artwork will receive attention and promotion as a byproduct of philanthropy – for the constituency in arts organisations is very often the same constituency that collects, writes about, organises exhibitions of and otherwise focuses on art. If a prominent artist’s foundation is mandated to promote animal welfare, the secondary effect of promoting the single founding artist will be much less. AR Currently living artists, unlike collectors in the US, can’t receive tax deductions for gifts of their artwork to museums. Do you think they should? MWS Yes. I feel very strongly that artists should receive fair market value deductions for gifts of their artworks to qualified recipients. The law disallowing deductions for creative output was enacted in 1969 and was intended to stop public officials from donating their ‘papers’ and taking outsize tax deductions. Unfortunately the law affects writers, artists, choreographers, composers and all ‘authors’. There were also many abuses in the visual-arts world in those days, for there was much less of a marketplace where one could establish fair market value, which is specifically required by the IRS. Auctions were very private affairs, and the private markets were even more mysterious and secretive than they are today. The IRS did not have an art advisory panel. Many amateurs, for example, created watercolours or paintings, sculptures, photographs, etc, and donated works to their schools, temples and churches, deducting the value stated, or indicated by a charity auction. Many museums felt obligated to accept gifts for fear of offending patrons, members and supporters, their spouses and children. At the time, few institutions had curatorial review processes where gifts had to be proposed and voted upon.

Today, the IRS has a very sophisticated, rotating advisory panel; and, fair market value is much easier to establish. There are many companies or organisations that track and analyse prices and public sales results. Therefore, I believe that the deduction should be reinstated with strict fair market value guidelines. There is an association of (respected) appraisers who claim to stake their reputations on their ability to establish value, and the auction houses are much more mindful of the rules required for collectors and inheritors when conducting appraisals. Respectable appraisers are willing to defend their appraisals in the event of an audit. There is no reason why artists cannot utilise the deduction based on legitimate indicia of fair market value. If there is no market, for deduction purposes there should be no deductable value. AR You represent a good number of ‘prominent artists’. Are there recurrent themes to their legal issues? MWS Prominent artists tend to generate a constant flow of legal issues from the matters

Appropriation artists have become increasingly successful, and intellectual-property owners increasingly aggressive. We now seem to be wrestling with complicated fair-use and rights clearance issues. These concerns were rare when I started practising in the visual arts world you’d expect, such as gallery representation agreements, editioning projects, licensing, commission agreements, infringements, the production and funding for complicated or large-scale works, studio staffing and operations, etc. However, in the last ten years or so, I’ve also seen some previously novel legal issues start to crop up. Appropriation artists have become increasingly successful, and intellectual-property owners increasingly aggressive. We now seem to be wrestling with complicated fair-use and rights clearance issues frequently. These concerns were rare or almost nonexistent when I started practising in the visual arts world. Another recent source of legal issues is nontraditional art. For example, the film, video, digital and other forms of ‘time-based’ works that have become so common these days do not benefit from the provision in US copyright law that automatically allows the owners of traditional artworks (eg, paintings, sculptures, drawings, etc) to publicly exhibit the work without the copyright owner’s

ArtReview

permission. Instead, a specific license from the artist is required, a requirement that is often misunderstood or ignored. Other issues arise from the fact that most time-based works, as well as various other types of nontraditional works (eg, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sol LeWitt, etc), have no ‘original’ in any traditional sense. This tends to raise all kinds of odd legal issues (eg, whether it is permissible for a single number in a limited edition to be shown simultaneously in multiple locations). Finally, estate planning has emerged as a major legal concern for prominent artists. As I say, a successful artist may die holding a large and extremely valuable collection of self-created art, often worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Without proper planning, such a collection will generate an enormous and crushing estate-tax bill. The art, while valuable, cannot easily be liquidated in time to pay the tax. The bill may soak up all the liquid or nonart assets (bank accounts, real estate, etc) and force the executors to hold a ‘fire sale’ of works to make up any shortfall. So a lack of proper estate planning can be devastating for a prominent artist’s heirs, not to mention the artist’s legacy. There are additional advantages to proper planning that involve the consideration of a charitable vehicle such as a foundation or trust which can carry forth with the artist’s legacy after the artist is deceased. AR Richard Prince’s recent copyright dispute and subsequent victory regarding his ‘appropriation’ of Patrick Cariou’s photographs of Rastafarians in his ‘Canal Zone’ series must have been a major source of concern and subsequent relief to many artists. MWS My understanding is that Mr Cariou has applied for review by the Supreme Court, so we may not yet know the final outcome. The original trial court decision in Cariou v Prince caused a bit of a panic among artists, but I think this was misplaced, as the court did not in fact apply a standard any stricter than what pertained in the past. What really happened is that subsequent appellate court decision significantly expanded the existing scope of fair use, at least in the Second Circuit. Before that decision to support a claim of fair use, the artist normally had to demonstrate that the appropriated material was itself in some way the subject of the artist’s artistic commentary. The appellate court set that principle aside. This liberalised the fair-use defence but has probably also made it much trickier to apply. So it’s a bit of mixed blessing. In any event, I believe the appellate decision puts the Second Circuit at odds with other circuits, which means the Supreme Court may well elect to hear the case. If so, we may finally get a definitive legal opinion as to the scope of fair use in the context of artistic appropriation.

19.10.13 – 12.1.14

www.lamaisonrouge.org 10 bd de la bastille - 75012 Paris

The Case of Orlan vs Lady Gaga

top Orlan. Courtesy Université de Nantes above Lady Gaga, Born This Way (video still), 2011

ArtReview

The Law and Its Ideas No 1

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

The Case ‘High art’ and ‘low art’ cyclically borrow from one another. If Pop art utilised the flat surfaces of advertising billboards and goods packaging and then, in turn, found itself copied in advertising and on goods packaging, then something similar seems to be happening today with performance artists who increasingly find their performances mimicked by pop stars. The French artist Orlan’s recent legal dispute with Lady Gaga’s label, Universal Music Group, in the French courts illuminates the authorial and commercial issues at stake when artworld spectacle finds itself translated into pop spectacle – a marriage that does not always work as ‘comfortably’ as Jay Z’s recent rap tribute to Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present (2010) at Pace, New York. In court papers filed in June, Orlan accuses Universal Music Group of infringing her copyright and moral rights of authorship in producing and disseminating Lady Gaga’s promotional video for her song Born This Way (2011), directed by British fashion photographer Nick Knight. Orlan’s complaint is that Knight’s video copies (in a sequence roughly a minute in length) her 1996 sculpture Femme avec Tête (Woman with Head) – a sculpture that features a copy of Orlan’s head displayed decapitated on Plexiglas. She alleges that the video uses the same ‘Plexiglas support, same square shape when it comes to the haircut, same facial implants, same decapitated heads’. Orlan’s complaint also cites unauthorised reproduction of her work Bump Load (2009) – a sculpture of Orlan in which she appears with bodily implants. Orlan claims damages of 7.5 percent of the profits from both the Born This Way album and video – equivalent to date of $31.7 million – something of an incentive, presumably, in her bringing the claim. Orlan is notorious in the artworld for her repeated surgical interventions on her body, which include the use of cheekbone implants in her temples. Orlan’s transformation of her body through surgery might be seen as one long performance: a performance that has met with mixed reactions from within the artworld. The Legal Position Can an artist copyright her own face? Though French law is generally more protective of authors’ rights than Anglo-American law, Orlan’s claim is not straightforward and there appears no obvious precedent. In proving copyright infringement, a claimant must establish first

that there has been an act of unauthorised copying of a protected work, and second that a significant amount of the ‘work’ – in French law, the author’s ‘original creation of the mind’ – has been copied. The ensemble of objects contained in Orlan’s Femme avec Tête may qualify as an artistic work under French law, including possibly Orlan’s surgically altered face with its distinctive protrusions and African-style facemask. Note, however, that UK judges have not granted such protection to facial markings: the pop star Adam Ant was once denied copyright protection of his face as a ‘painting’ on the grounds that it lacked permanent material form. However, when it comes to the question of copying, things get trickier. While there are clear resemblances between Orlan’s work and Knight’s video, it is not clear that a French court would find copyright infringement. For copies that involve reenactment rather than straightforward mechanical or digital reproduction, there are often grey areas between what is legally permissible and not. Legally speaking, copyright law protects ‘expressions of ideas’ rather than the underlying ‘ideas’ themselves, so it is the specific detail in a work that is protected. The idea, for example, of putting a decapitated head on a table on its own is unlikely to be protected; what matters is that other specific details have been copied too. Looking at Orlan’s sculpture and Knight’s video, there are clear resemblances in the idea of placing a decapitated head on a table and even of the head having blonde hair and ghoulish makeup. Yet it is unlikely that the copying of these elements alone constitutes copyright infringement – even under French law. Perhaps, however, the ‘bizarre flesh-coloured facial horns’ (to cite the French press) on Lady Gaga’s face, which resemble Orlan’s facial implants, will be enough to tip the balance in Orlan’s favour. The Conclusion

The dispute between Orlan and Universal Music Group raises the fraught question of where we draw the boundaries between inspiration and plagiarism. While plagiarism (meaning to ‘kidnap’) is disagreeable, all creativity exists in a context and all authors build upon the influences of others (including Orlan, whose work refers to female bodily stereotypes). Copyright law tries to capture this distinction by not granting monopolies in ideas. Creating rights of authorship in a face might prove an unwelcome precedent: it remains to be seen what face the law will reveal.

November 2013

The view from… Halfway up the greasy pole by James Franco

November 2013

THE LIBERATION OF ART

DAVID BURTON | TRUNK ARCHIVE Italian Wedding

BERLIN . NEW YORK . LONDON . PARIS | SALZBURG . VIENNA . ZURICH

LU MAS.CO.UK LU MAS.COM

$710

23.6 x 36.6 inch

£430

60 x 93 cm

limited & hand signed

56 / 150

TRN96

Hand signed, limited editions. From over 160 recognised artists. At affordable prices.

Current Exhibition

2013 Past Exhibitions

Li Jikai White Dew Painting and Ceramic Works 07.09–27.10.2013

Enlightened Nature 15.04–19.05 2013

Coming Soon The Taste of Ink 02.11– 29.12.2013 Participating Artists: Chen Qi, Liu Liyun, Luo Wei, Liu Zhixing, Sui Jianguo, Tan Ping, Wu Mengshi, Wang Huangsheng, Zhan Jinjuan Curator: Liu Libin

Participating Artists: He Duoling, Li Jikai, Liu Wei, Ma Dan, Ma Yanling, Shi Xinning, Wang Jinsong, Wang Yin, Xu Zhongmin, Ye Funa, Yin Zhaoyang, Yu Fan Academic Support: LI Xianting Guo Jian Solo Exhibition You Might Enquire 27.05–07.07.2013 Curator: Zhao Li Yu Fan Solo Exhibition Floating Wall, Moving Sound 13.07–03.09.3013 Curator: Liu Libin

No.54 Caochangdi, (Old Airport Road), Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 www.amyligallery.com T:+86 10 64340616

Aishan Yu Others 19 (2013) pencil, ink and gouache on card, 100 x 125cm (detail)

MOTINTERNATIONAL LONDON 72 New Bond Street

BRUSSELS Place du Petit Sablon, 10

ULAY 15 October–30 November 2013

AISHAN YU 31 October–21 December 2013

ARTISSIMA Stand No. 5 & 15 8-10 November 2013

motinternational.com

DAIDO MORIYAMA SILKSCREENS 7 NOVEMBER – 20 DECEMBER 2013

13 CARLOS PLACE, LONDON, W1K 2EU

HAMILTONSGALLERY.COM

DAIDO MORIYAMA, THE CITY I ALWAYS HAD A HARD TIME LEAVING, 1976/2013, 40 × 58 INCHES, EDITION OF 3 © DAIDO MORIYAMA

SAAD QURESHI D ark B lue S tanD n16 | O range S tanD n17 8 . 11 - 10 .11 . 2013

Gazelli Art House

39 Dover Street | London W1S 4NN

gazelliarthouse.com

BOOK NOW TATE.ORG.UK/STIVES OR CALL 01736 796 226 FREE FOR TATE MEMBERS AND 18S & UNDER STIVESTATE @TATE_STIVES

12 OCTOBER 2013 – 26 JANUARY 2014 Presented in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary

Supported by Tate Members and Tate St Ives Members

Wangechi Mutu Blue Rose 2007 (detail). Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London © Wangechi Mutu

Visual Arts: Projects / Events / Exhibitions

Roman Ondák ‘Some Thing’ 12 October – 14 December 2013

Roman Ondák Shadow, 1981/2013 (Detail) Oil painting on MDF, glass, display case 141 x 50 x 50 cm Courtesy of the artist

The Common Guild is supported by:

AUGUSTIN REBETEZ & FRIENDS

THANKS FOR GIVING ME A SKY BUT I'M NOT A BIRD 14 NOVEMBER 2013 – 25 JANUARY 2014 Supported by

Exhibition supported by:

Design — Graphical House

21 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow, G3 6DF www.thecommonguild.org.uk

University of Hertfordshire Galleries Art and Design Gallery, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB +44 (0) 1707 281127 uhgalleries@herts.ac.uk

www.go.herts.ac.uk/uhgalleries www.augustinrebetez.com

AmN ONGOING series of micro oil paintings by ARTISTS YOKE AND ZOOM

micro oil paintings 2012/13 Nina Coulson,Yoke + Zoom 22 November - 21 December

Contemporary Figurative and Abstract Art Located centrally in Little Venice and set over three rooms, Thomas and Paul gallery provides a relaxed and contemplative environment including a reading room of art books and magazines. We have a schedule of solo and themed exhibitions with regular late openings. 20 Bristol Gardens, London W9 2JQ Nearest tube: Warwick Avenue Phone 020 7289 6200 www.thomasandpaul.com

AR_ad_thomasandpaul_v1.indd 1

SHOWING ONBOARD RAIL NETWORKS BETWEEN AND AROUND VENICE/PARIS/LONDON/WORCESTER

02/10/2013 12:36

A C T I O N

PA I N T I N G

for more info: www.hendriksmit.eu info@hendriksmit.eu henk_hennie@hotmail.com or +31637124153

Untitled 2013 A nr 003 Acrylic on canvas 140 x 130 cm, 55 x 51 inches

NADA miAmi beAch Dec 5–8 2013 collins Ave & 67th St NADA

newartdealers.org

above Speech Bubbles (Gold), 2009 (installation view, Art of Communication, 2011, NMCA, Seoul), gold helium balloons in Mylar, dimensions variable facing page Speech Bubbles (Black), 2009 (installation view, May, 2009, Kunsthalle Zurich), black helium balloons in Mylar, dimensions variable. © Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zurich / Kunsthalle Zurich

Philippe Parreno This month Philippe Parreno becomes the first artist to take over the entirety of Paris’s Palais de Tokyo for a solo exhibition. Although for Parreno, many of whose works involve collaborations with other artists, this doesn’t mean that the exhibition features his art alone.

And like many of the Frenchman’s works, the exhibition will unfold in time as well as space. Given all that, and the fact that he has (in collaboration with Rirkrit Tiravanija) created the cover artwork for this year’s Power 100 issue, ArtReview decided to track him down and find out what he thinks the business of making art and showing it to other people is all about Interview by Christopher Mooney

November 2013

ARTREVIEW So you’re doing the cover for our Power 100 issue. PHILIPPE PARRENO Am I? Oh, right, the out-offocus cover. AR I don’t know the details. PP Neither do I. [laughs] AR I’m told it’ll be based on Rirkrit Tiravanija’s cover for the ArtReview Asia cover, which I have here. AR opens computer and shows PP an email with the subject ‘From Studio Tiravanija’. The contents are a photo of hands holding an open copy of Calvin Tomkins’s book Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews (2013). Below the image are four texts: ‘Power Eats the Soul’, ‘Power Is Hungry’, ‘Pay Attention’ and ‘Resist’. PP So this is from Rirkrit? AR Yes. And he suggests you put these out of focus according to his eyeglass prescription, his lens power, which is -4.50. Something like that. PP I did this out-of-focus book for an exhibition in Dublin. He shows a copy of a catalogue: All Hawaii Entrées/Lunar Reggae (2010). AR I see. The vision of power, the power of vision. I have a sense of power in a broader sense after having spent the last two days at the Paris prefecture trying to get my work papers renewed. But, power in the artworld; how is it exercised? Does it have a capital ‘P’? PP In an art context I’m not sure what power is. I mean, I understand the need and the reasons for this type of classification, but I’m very far away from it. I’ve always been concerned more by the project of art than the object of art. From the very beginning, from 1988 or so, I’ve worked with other artists, making exhibitions where each of us negotiates a presence within a space. And the space is a reflection of our conversations. ‘Supremacy’ or whatever is never really the issue. The question is always, ‘What is the project behind the object?’ And we push this equation to its paroxysm, to the idea of ‘What if there were

a project with no object?’ The relations to power are not really there because everything was conversational. There’s a need for a certain flux in the conversation, not for, say, an authorship or a leading role. It’s true, I’ve always tried to choreograph attention, which is what art can do – it can focus attention in a place. My show at the Serpentine [Philippe Parreno, 2011] was like that. So was Postman Time [Il Tempo del Postino, a time piece/opera/group exhibition curated by Parreno and Hans Ulrich Obrist, which premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2007] and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait [a collaboration with Douglas Gordon, 2006], and my Palais de Tokyo show will be too. But it’s a nonauthoritarian process. You don’t tell people, ‘Look there and then there’ and so on. You engage them in a parcours. It’s a bit like travelling without moving. AR What role do art and the artist play in the broader social conversation today? PP Well, I believe of course that art can be quite powerful, that it can change the world. Most of the time it doesn’t, but it can. The French philosopher Michel Serres wrote a book in the 1980s called The Parasite, in which appears this quite beautiful and astonishing notion of the quasi-object. He takes the metaphor of a football, which creates a form of community around it. AR Football as a game? PP No, the object – the ball itself. You know – gesture, movement, position. You have to negotiate with it, and with the other. It’s not above Douglas Gordon & Philippe Parreno, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (film still), 2006, 35mm, colour, sound, 90 min. © the artists/ADAGP, Paris

ArtReview

complete as an object, but it does produce collectivity around it. I think sometimes art can function like this. Which is a paradox, because it assumes that an art object is completed, you know, when in fact it is not. So perhaps you can replace the object with the opus, in the way, for example, that the work of Pasolini still functions as a vector for understanding. There are other vectors, other forces of resistance. I think art can also be a way for an art producer to articulate desires differently. You know, in physics, we say that to understand the world you have to simplify it. For example, we say that the force of gravity is measured at 9.8 metres per second squared, so therefore the rate of the falling object is constant. But in fact it isn’t, it undulates, which makes it more complicated. To simplify it, in order to understand the world, we ignore the force of resistance. I believe that art is what stops people from completely understanding the world, because there are forces of resistance in it that make the universe much more complex. Did I answer your question? AR Not at all. Or maybe. I’m not sure, but it was very good. Let’s go back to football, briefly, and that would allow us to talk about Zidane. Is your reading of Serres linked to the documentary you made with Douglas Gordon about the French footballer? PP No, Zidane, again, came from a conversation with Douglas. We had been playing football in Haifa Stadium and I started talking about, you know, what if we followed one football player we liked rather than the ball and the factual events of the game? When I was a kid, I was always trying to get closer to the TV to see what my hero was doing, why he didn’t have the ball, and Douglas was doing the same thing in Glasgow. It was a shared memory. And the conversation grew into this film with 17 cameras all trained on Zinedine Zidane during a match. It wasn’t conceptual at the start. It became that, of course, but it started because I wanted to see his face in closeup. It’s also, of course, about portraiture.

I’m not sure what power is. I mean, I understand the need and the reasons for this type of classification, but I’m very far away from it

I believe that art is what stops people from completely understanding the world

No More Reality (La Manifestation) (film still), 1991, Betacam, colour, sound, 4 min

November 2013

There’s always, for me, the pleasure of taking an object and not reinventing it but renegotiating the way it becomes public

I believe that art is what stops people from completely understanding the world

ArtReview

Funny. We had to make a film to talk about portraiture. Cinema always needs two characters to make a story. Zidane remains an artwork because it was only about one person.

I bought Tino’s work, which is the first time I have bought a work from an artist. And I thought it was important to buy it, rather than to make an exchange.

AR Zidane is an example of a work of yours that has reached a much wider audience. Was that by accident or design?

AR Why?

PP I think it was conscious. There was, of course, the fact that Zidane was famous. But it was also wanting to bring the feeling of art, you know, into the place where people maybe don’t have that. AR You’ve said before that a lot of conceptual art doesn’t actually need to be seen. But yours does. To exist, it needs to be experienced. It doesn’t exist purely as concept. PP Once again, this is the predominance of the project over the object, which is a bit like a score, you know, its needs to be played, played out, reinvented. Two years ago, I was looking at Boli sculptures from Mali, these objects that are used in rituals. In between ceremonies, the priest or whoever, the guy who takes care of the objects, he feeds them or whatever, so each time when they return to the ritual, their form is slightly different. So people believe that they are alive. I think there is something quite similar in art. When you see, for example, Zidane, first in the cinema and then in a kunsthalle and then in the Palais de Tokyo, where it will appear as a forest of images on 17 different screens, one for each camera, with the sound moving from one screen to another, following the original edit of the film, it’s never the same. It’s quasi-alive. So, yes, there’s always, for me, the pleasure of taking an object and not reinventing it but renegotiating the way it becomes public. Which is what I think the idea of the exhibition is all about. It’s the negotiation that allows a form to become public. A negotiation with the architecture, with the people in charge of it, and so on. AR In your collaborations with other artists – your ‘Annlee’ project [No Ghost Just a Shell, 1999–2002],

for example – you play with the idea of authorship and you share power. Is this a form of resistance, a strategy to oppose power in its broader, more traditional sense? PP Yes. For Annlee, Pierre [Huyghe] and I bought a character from a manga agency, and said, ‘OK, it’s a sign’. A sign that preexists to a community that can be formed around it. ‘Or is it?’ It started like that. Then we decided, ‘OK, and now we’re all going to share the same image’, and with no copyright, we’re going to make it become ‘copyleft’. In the end we decided to give the copyright to the character itself – to give her control. I think Annlee might be the most conceptually determined project dealing with copyright ever. Postman Time was, in a way, also engaging with the same idea – how to be together in the same space, and how to share time. It’s always the same construction, I guess. One is behind the next. Annlee, of course, is still very vivid and present for me. Two years ago, Tino Sehgal told me that he had worked again with Annlee, without asking me or Pierre, which is fine because he doesn’t use any pictures in his work. He played it for me in a gallery space, and I really liked it. It was strange, of course, because this little kid [a child actor playing Annlee] was haunted by an old project of mine. I thought this project stopped, and in fact it came back to me, which is nice. So

above Marquee, 2013, Punta della Dogana, Venice. © the artist facing page Anywhere out of the World (film still), 2000, 3D animation, Digital Betacam, colour, sound, 4 min all images Courtesy the artist’

November 2013

PP Because of the nature of Tino’s work. You know, I think it requires this kind of money exchange. He’s an interesting artist, in that buying the work is part of the work. Now I’m going to show it in the Palais de Tokyo show, along with my Annlee film. AR Where does the work live otherwise? PP In my head. I’m going to be trained now by Tino, to learn how to do it when he comes to Paris to work with me on the Palais de Tokyo show. AR Is art today for a few insiders, or for the many? PP That I don’t know. I mean, for me, I never ask myself the question of the audience. I’m interested by the way in which a form becomes public. So, public, yes, but not audience. Zidane was, for me, extremely experimental, but it did reach a large audience. When I create shows, I try to do the best that I can. You know, develop an idea and be as experimental as possible. And people come and, well, like it or not. I’m not so old, but when I started making art, art centres didn’t have collections, they were all about producing ideas. Now there are many more people into art, and that’s good. But we shouldn’t be basing our work on this. We shouldn’t have to deal with the culture of the festival. Somebody running an art institution should give their best, you know, if we can still use this terminology. For me, the audience is… well, I don’t know what it is. It’s a beast. ar

Philippe Parreno: Anywhere, Anywhere out of the World is on show at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, through 12 January

An Anatomy of Power

Is there any one type of power in the artworld that makes a list like this both consistent and sensible? Is it ruled by visibility and a culture geared towards nothing more than the big event? Do theorists only have power once their theories are activated? And amid dominant categories of curator, collector and gallerist, is it possible for new ‘types’ to emerge within this system? by Nicolas Bourriaud

In French, the English word ‘power’ can only really be translated by the Power 100 list: have these 100 individuals been chosen for their referring to two quite distinct terms: the first is pouvoir, that’s to say puissance, or their pouvoir? Is it a question of their professional functhe potential for action associated with a position or a function. This is tion within the system, or the intrinsic force that they bring to it to the world of the capacity for doing, of commanding or directing. The make it evolve? Looking carefully at the list from previous years, it other term, puissance, might be defined as the force or the intensity of seems clear that both these criteria cohabit harmoniously. But it a being or phenomenon. The writings of Michel Foucault or Gilles would, for example, be a caricature to think that artists should necesDeleuze could, in fact, be read as long commentaries on this distinc- sarily find themselves on the side of power as puissance, while directors tion between power/pouvoir and power/puissance: Foucault questioned of big art institutions should always be on the side of power as pouvoir. the forms of pouvoir that framed human actions, while Deleuze, the The evolution of the artworld, the fashions or the slow movevitalist philosopher, examined individual puissance – the productive ments that shape it, necessarily modify our conception of power. and energetic potential of individuals and social groups. Suffice to Since the beginning of the Power 100 list, we have seen the figure of say that this dichotomy sprang immediately to the curator, the collector, the art-fair director École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Photo: Kos. mind when ArtReview asked me to comment on and the art adviser gain importance relative to Licensed under Creative Commons

ArtReview

museum directors, gallerists and artists – the old three-way conver- in contrast to historical figures such as Clement Greenberg, Pierre sation that once structured the art ecosystem. This ecosystem has Restany or Harald Szeemann, or, more recently, Germano Celant, been reorganising itself according to decision-making structures, figures for whom theoretical activity was inseparable from exhibiand it is economic puissance that now prevails in an ecosystem tion-making. There are now few individuals left for whom the exerthat is in the process of industrialising, and which little by little cise of theory remains inseparable from curating, without being is submerging smaller pouvoirs defined by professional positions subordinated to it. There are even fewer figures (my mental list and status. In short, the world of art increasingly resembles the shrinks here to Daniel Birnbaum, Okwui Enwezor, Maria Lind and world of cinema, albeit without a ‘Hollywood’ to act as its defin- myself) who conceive exhibitions at the same time as running instiitive centre. The particularity of this new artworld system is its tutions. Beneath the surface of an apparently diverse mixing of roles, planetary horizontality, punctuated by economic peaks (New York, the artworld remains a relatively demarcated professional milieu, and London), mountainous studio regions the criteria of institutional power used The evolution of the artworld, (Berlin), consumer outcrops (Moscow, in the Power 100 list privileges those the fashions or the slow movements Beijing, the luxury goods industry) who identify themselves strongly with a clearly determined and defined instiand other promontories. that shape it, necessarily modify our tutional function. There are very few professional conception of power thinkers in this year’s list, even though Nevertheless, the Power 100 list the 2012 edition included Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek. We each year remains subject to the vagaries of the moment, in the jourmight therefore note that the theoretical production that irri- nalistic sense, and the logic of the event is in its DNA: rare are those gates the artworld comes from other professional fields, particu- who read their names in the list each year without having done somelarly that of the university. Neither of these philosophers, for that thing special. These figures operate in a regime of power that no longer matter, has made art the centre of his work, and we might argue needs to realise itself in an event –here Nicholas Serota, like François that they were both co-opted by a field of activity that was not Pinault, appears immovable – though their ranking shifts according a key concern of theirs at the outset. But there is no denying that to the annual artworld weather. Then there are the ‘guests of honour’ art has today become an important sounding board for ideas, the – more fragile positions: the curators of the big biennials of the year, space in which they acquire an unparalleled visibility and opera- or of Documenta, for example. Following them, the shooting stars: tional power. Who knew Rancière before his works had been relayed last year Pussy Riot or Ai Weiwei, heroes of current political events, by the milieu of the artworld, except for specialists in Continental whose presence in the list signifies also the list’s support for them. philosophy? It’s in the interzone that has emerged between the And lastly, the latest buzz of the moment, which constitutes a form of academic world and the artworld that the public reach of an idea considerable power in an environment as ‘viral’ as ours. is henceforth determined. Boris Groys has made a decisive step All that leaves is for me to note the almost total absence of another in this regard, by exhibiting his video montages in a number of sector of activity: education. Despite the growing power of educabiennials. The pouvoir of the artworld is such that it seems able to tion’s transmitter role within the artworld – a power that came to be harbour every other field of creative activity within the frame of defined, five or six years ago, under the heading ‘the educational turn’ the exhibition, as well as through its own commercial systems: – art schools too often disappear into the monoliths of the univerone day it might be philosophy, politics or cinema, the next day it sity system, struggling to gain a visibility of their own. My belief is could be gastronomy (Ferran Adrià, who has already had an exhibi- that the art school can become a major player in the international tion at London’s Somerset House this year, will be exhibiting at New artworld, on the condition that it moves towards the model of the York’s Drawing Center next) or literature... No doubt this is the art centre, placing art and artists at its heart, by opening itself up effect of the artworld’s economic model – far simpler and more further. Since I took over as the director of the École des Beaux-Arts direct than cinema, and more energetic and exciting than the in Paris in December 2011, the school has been transformed into an other arts, since it is based on relationships between individuals: art complex oriented towards education, equipped with a building in contrast to the stockmarket, which dedicated to exhibitions (the Palais Economic puissance now prevails in has hit those individuals hard, the art des Beaux-Arts), a publishing house an ecosystem that is in the process of and the strength of a historical collecmarket consists mostly of rumours and insider trading, allowing for industrialising, submerging the smaller tion of more than 100,000 artworks, big doses of sheer enthusiasm and a collection that we have this year pouvoirs of position and status irrational behaviour. decided to return to active acquisition: But Rancière, Žižek or Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have no other a school should become the first agent, as well as the first collector of power over the artworld than their intellectual – therefore indirect its graduates, projecting itself to the outside world through exhibi– influence. In a way, the Power 100 list has confirmed over the last tions and by curator-led projects. Our graduate show is thus curated decade the structural disappearance of the art critic. Nevertheless, if this year by Gunnar Kvaran, and will from now on be staged in a we take the 2012 list, this suggestion might be refuted by the pres- different venue each year. It remains for art centre-schools to crystalence of Carolyn Christov-Bagarkiev at number one, a curator whose lise a formula that has yet to be defined as such. It is the mission of activity rests on sound intellectual grounds. Similarly, one finds Frankfurt’s Städelschule and its Portikus, Hamburg’s HFBK, CalArts, Beatrix Ruf, Massimiliano Gioni, Chus Martínez, Adriano Pedrosa Nice’s Villa Arson and Paris’s Beaux-Arts to become the figureheads of and Hans Ulrich Obrist on last year’s list: but none of these, even if an international network that does not yet exist. Power, it turns out, they produce critical positions, could be defined as theoreticians, is sometimes simply a question of visibility… ar

November 2013

Power 100 Introduction What are ArtReview and its panel thinking about when they compile this list? Why do they compile it in the first place? What does the list tell us? And is it very wrong to sometimes feel like the Queen of England? by Mark Rappolt

Now that it’s introducing the 12th edition of its Power 100, ArtReview is starting to think about these introductions in the same way as it imagines the Queen (of England) thinks about her annual Christmas message: it wants to say something that is sincere and that it believes in, but it needs to be polite and politic, and maintain some high moral ground, so it’s easier to trot out the same message (with different visuals and a new dress) that it trots out every year. This is particularly the case when, as it does these days, the list attracts a great deal of media interest, largely focused on the individuals on it and the sense of competition any ranking implies. For ArtReview, however, this list is not about any one person (unless ArtReview is writing the entry about that person – then it is about one person), but about the portrait of the artworld that emerges from the list as a whole. ArtReview likes to think that the list is of value as a guide to how art in particular, and culture in general, reflects social and political realities around the world. Reflecting on this question is, of course, one of the main motivations for ArtReview when it comes to producing every issue of the magazine – from the artists it chooses to cover to the themes it addresses in its columns or reviews. But the entries on this list are not reviews. Indeed, perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the list concerns its status as a form of propaganda. Much as every member of ArtReview’s 13-strong ‘power panel’ has an idea of the kind of art and art system they would like to see exist, the reality of where influence and power lies is usually something completely different. For this one issue each year, we don’t choose the kind of power we want to see. We try – and this takes a lot of effort – to think about where power really lies, while putting our own personal agendas on hold. That’s not to say that, as what ArtReview feels obliged to call the ‘phenomenon’ of contemporary art spreads around the world, ArtReview doesn’t find itself wondering about questions like: can art still reflect the specific problems of specific localities? Or, in order to be ‘a success’, does art have to comply with a bland, but universally comprehensible aesthetics and way of thinking about the world? Is ArtReview’s list a symptom of this? Worse still, is it part of the cause? Does art production today reflect the

100

ArtReview

values and debates of society at large? Is art accessible to the many or just a privileged few? And why should anyone care about art in the first place? Such questions are important, but not what immediately decides this list. Instead there are four broad criteria: the extent to which an individual is influencing the kind of art that’s being produced today; that their influence is international rather than simply local; that they have been active in the past 12 months; and that they have some influence over the market for art. Of course, given that the artworld is less than transparent in its financial dealings and privileges judgements of a subjective nature, a large chunk of ArtReview’s ‘measuring’ of power is necessarily the product of speculation, estimation and expert opinion. So what kind of reality might the list, through these factors, be portraying this year? Well, it might be a reality in which there’s a continued shift from public to private resources, and in which the owners of those private resources are becoming more inventive about the way they deploy them. A world in which art’s audience is ever more international, made up of a great, growing metropolitan public, but in which national or regional audiences may become less important. A world in which the culture of contemporary art has become the language through which the fast-growing societies of the East and South declare their presence as equal participants in a world no longer dominated by the old West. For ArtReview at least, one of the most significant publications of the past 12 months (other than its list, which has been weighing heavily on ArtReview) has been Calvin Tomkins’s Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews, released, it should be noted, by an imprint set up by an artist, Paul Chan. Asked whether he preferred artists having the status of pariah, as had been the case earlier in his career, to the general acceptance of artists during the 1960s, Duchamp answers: ‘Oh, yes, of course, it may not be very comfortable but at least you have the feeling that you may be accomplishing something very different from the usual, and maybe something that will last for centuries after you die.’ Even if you wish to sail against the prevailing winds, we hope this list will give you a guide to which way those winds are blowing.

1 Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani

Collector Qatari Last Year: 11 When it comes to sheer buying power, there’s little doubt that the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), headed by Sheikha Al-Mayassa (whose brother Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani became emir of the Gulf state earlier this year, following their father’s abdication), is way ahead of the competition. It is estimated to spend $1 billion per year on art – or roughly 3 0 times what MoMA spent on artwork in its last financial year and a whopping 175 times what Tate invested. No wonder, then, that whenever Sheikha Al-Mayassa is in town, everyone from government ministers to mayors queue up to pay their respects – as British culture minister Ed Vaizey and London mayor Boris Johnson did during her recent visit to the capital. Former Christie’s chairman Edward Dolman – she ‘poached’ him – runs her office, and works purchased by the QMA have been acquired for record-breaking sums. In 2012, a version of Cézanne’s The Card Players (c. 1895) was bought for $250 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold. Other purchases include a $73m Mark Rothko in 2007 – then the most expensive price paid for a postwar work of art at auction – and, that same year, a Damien Hirst medicine cabinet for almost £10m, then the record price paid for a work by a living artist. Back in Doha, the QMA runs the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art (the museum opened in 2008; the architect was coaxed out of retirement to design it, and placed it on a purpose-built island; in 2011, having been recommended by Pei, Richard Serra unveiled an accompanying sculpture, 7, the tallest he has made). The building and its collection are astonishing. The QMA also runs the National Museum of Qatar (due to reopen in 2014 in a new building designed by Jean Nouvel); the Orientalist Museum, the world’s only museum dedicated to Orientalist art; MATHAF, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, dedicated to modern and contemporary art from the Arab region; the QMA Gallery at Katara, a ‘cultural village’ designed to look and feel like a traditional Qatari Al Fereej that soft-opened in 2010; the ALRIWAQ DOHA Exhibition Space, a temporary space next to the Museum of Islamic Art in which many of the exhibitions by major international contemporary artists are currently held; and archaeological projects throughout Qatar. All of that alone, however, is not enough to get the sheikha to the top of this list. Qatar, after all, has fewer than 250,000 citizens (one reason

102

why the country has the highest GDP per capita in the world), a figure dwarfed by the population of visiting foreign workers. And while, as a result of the sheikha’s efforts, Doha may have recently hosted major exhibitions by art superstars such as Cai Guo-Qiang, Takashi Murakami and (currently) Francesco Vezzoli, there’s a limit to its importance if no one sees the shows. And it has to be said, with the best will in the world, that only a certain type of person is going to travel to Qatar to see the exhibitions the QMA puts on. But Sheikha Al-Mayassa’s influence is not merely confined to international art salerooms and the goings-on in the dusty Gulf state. The QMA sponsored last year’s Damien Hirst retrospective at Tate, a version of which is now in Doha, and this year it sponsored a cultural exchange with Britain under the banner Qatar UK 2013, the latest in a series of such ventures designed to boost Qatar’s international standing (2012’s partner was Japan; 2014’s will be Brazil). While Doha is undoubtedly now a key centre for anyone interested in the study of Islamic art, and is developing as a site that holds a wide range of international contemporary art, that’s not to say that Qatar has become a liberal state thanks to the resultant influx of ideas. This summer, for example, three Ancient Greek nude statues due to be exhibited in Doha were returned to Athens after officials refused to display them. Plus, of course, everyone knows about Qatar’s problems with standards and conditions for foreign labourers, thanks to recent controversies regarding the construction of stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. And the authoritarian regime responsible for all this art buying is far from allowing anything like a democracy in the state. Does the artworld care about any of that? The honest answer is no. As others have said that, if and when Doha finds it has bought enough art, there’s going to be a hole in the market that no one else can fill. So the artworld will make hay while the sun shines. More than that, the QMA’s drive to transform a carbon-based economy (Qatar’s oil and gas reserves are the third largest in the world) into a culture-based economy is a living advert for the international exchangeability of contemporary art (ie, it doesn’t matter where or in what context an artwork was made, it’s a commodity that can travel anywhere and sustain its value, if not its meaning). To some people that’s clever forward planning; to others, culture is something you just can’t buy.

ArtReview

top Photo: Brigitte Lacombe bottom left Richard Serra, 7, 2011, in front of the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. Photo: Hugo Glendinning

103

November 2013

2 David Zwirner Gallerist German Last Year: 5 Serra’s earliest and, for many, most important works from the 1960s – essentially everything that led up to his large-scale steel sculptures. Roster-watchers will note that Serra regularly shows with Larry Gagosian, and his appearance in Zwirner’s new space was rumoured to portend a poaching. But the arrangement was aboveboard for all parties, and set the stage for another G-to-Z share: Jeff Koons, who presented a suite of iconic classical statues all sporting blue balls buffed to a brilliant sheen, natch. Way less shiny but of no little significance, DZ also took over representation of the Ad Reinhardt estate. And all of this after rebuilding his own gallery spaces on 18th Street after Hurricane Sandy hit and generously helping many others in the neighbourhood. Quite the year.

3 Iwan Wirth Gallerist Swiss Last Year: 4 Hauser & Wirth turned 21 this year, and as the old birthday song goes, Iwan Wirth has the key of the door. Just don’t try to predict which way he’ll twist it. Who would anticipate, for example, that the Swiss dealer would follow opening a second, 2,150sqm New York space (in the converted Roxy nightclub and roller rink on West 18th St) with an arts and education complex built on a ramshackle Somerset farm, launching next summer? These two projects suggest that the next-city, next-gallery rollercoaster is slowing: Wirth recently said he was ‘bored’ by reflex expansionism and currently shows no signs of opening in Asia or Brazil, though a Los Angeles gallery with estimable new curator Paul Schimmel, late of MOCA, is planned for 2015. They also reflect the accountability, pragmatism and image management that underscore the dealer’s moves.

104

The Somerset project, for example, which includes artist residencies and extensive horticulture projects, chimes with grassroots movements to shore up education in the UK. Meanwhile, Hauser & Wirth’s five venues in Zurich, London and New York, celebrated with the doorstop book Hauser & Wirth: 20 Years (2013), keep spotlighting, and intriguingly departing from, the gallery’s list of 50 or so artists: this year’s shows included an Eva Hesse retrospective, Anj Smith’s painterly reveries, Phyllida Barlow’s suspended asteroidlike sculptures and a survey of Brazilian nonfigurative art between the 1950s and 80s. Wirth’s operation, then, continues to look, if not quite the biggest, then the best and brightest dealership in existence, the owner’s restlessness artful and propulsive. ‘I still feel’, Wirth told a business journal this year, ‘as if we’re just about to begin.’

ArtReview

2 Courtesy David Zwirner 3 Photo: John Millar. © Country Life

Victims of the artworld news cycle (if it has one) could be forgiven for thinking that David Zwirner’s biggest claim to fame is his representation of the young Oscar Murillo, whose paintings are now nearing the half-million-dollar mark on the secondary market. One canny dealer who never flinches from a soundbite has said that there’s a lot of money to be made ‘trading’ this young kid, and Zwirner is the lucky talent agent who will be taking a cut. But Zwirner has been up to other things. The gallery is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and opened a new LEED platinum-rated exhibition building on 20th Street in Chelsea, which is being overseen by the more than able Christopher D’Amelio, who shuttered his own gallery in order to partner up with Zwirner. The first show in that building was a widely acclaimed survey of Richard

4 Larry Gagosian Gallerist American Last Year: 2

4 Photo: John Millar. © Country Life 5 Hans Ulrich Obrist: Photo © Kalpesh Lathigra. Julia Peyton-Jones: Photo John Swannell

‘Chinks in the armour.’ It’s the inevitable cliché of understatement that comes when considering how far the mighty Gogo has fallen, as he stumbles, trips and caroms off the sharp elbows of that granite-edged abyss we know as artworld gossip. From the eye-glazing, lung-bleeding air that he once enjoyed at the summit of this list, Gagosian now finds himself all the way down here at… no 4. How did this happen? What faulty equipment is to blame? ArtReview’s bony finger is pointing at that hack Tom Wolfe, who hasn’t written a really good word since Bonfire (1987) and probably believed ‘Larry’ and ‘Miami’ might offer the right arranged marriage of character and setting to straighten him out of his laughable literary slouch. Others would point to Damien Hirst leaving the gallery after 17 years. Or to Koons showing with Zwirner. Or to Kusama showing with Zwirner. Or to just about everybody wanting to show with Zwirner. There are also those embarrassing tidbits – we call them lawsuits –

involving billionaire Ron Perelman and Jan Cowles. But recall how the New York Basquiat show this spring brought in 4,000 people on the weekend and some 1,000–2,000 visitors a day during the week. Those are museum numbers, for what was arguably a museum-quality exhibition, which Gagosian has become known for, particularly in New York. And lest we forget, nary a museum in New York is free to enter, whereas Gagosian’s shows always are. ‘Free and open to the public’ may be gallery convention, but it’s consistent with Larry’s softer side, which emerged this year when he arranged for the eighth floor of the Seagram Building as the venue for the Pratt Institute’s MFA thesis exhibition after much of Pratt’s Main Building was destroyed by a fire. And Gogo is still doing what he does best: opening new branches, specifically a third London space, this one 2,000sqm, at 20 Grosvenor Hill in Mayfair, bringing the global total to 13. That’s a lot of amour.

5 Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones Curators Swiss/British Last Year: 10 This was a big year for London’s Serpentine Gallery, headed by Peyton– Jones and Obrist. To be precise, it was a 900sqm-big year, for that’s the additional space this bijoux institution gained following the opening (with a show by Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas) of its new Zaha Hadid-designed Sackler Gallery. Other exhibitions over the past 12 months have featured Sturtevant, Rosemarie Trockel and Jonas Mekas. But while London now has to get used to the gallery putting on two shows in Kensington Gardens, that’s not why this pair ranks so high on the power list. Rather, it’s the sheer energy and ubiquity of Obrist within the global artworld. This year also saw the publication of Do It: The Compendium, a 20th anniversary compilation of Obrist’s evolving

exhibition (initiated by the curator with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier) of the same name, created from a series of instructions written by artists. An exhibition of the same title formed the centrepiece of this year’s Manchester Festival. Obrist also opened the second instalment of The Insides Are on the Outside, a group exhibition in Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House in São Paulo, cocurated Expo 1: New York at MoMA PS1 and continued (with cocurator Simon Castets) to evolve 89plus, a long-term international project to ‘map’ the generation born after 1989. Alongside that, Obrist’s Conversation Series (books of interviews with artists) continues apace with this year’s releases, including dialogues with Rosemarie Trockel, Matthew Barney and Tacita Dean.

November 2013

105

6 Nicholas Serota Museum Director British Last Year: 8 corporate support for their programmes: while Tate has to deal with a government grant freeze, he has been a vocal critic of the coalition government’s arts funding cuts over the last year. At the same time, Tate has been busy sourcing further private sponsorship, notably its three-year partnership with global financial advisers EY. All the money has to be good for something, though. Tate Britain’s comprehensive rehang, part of its £45m refurbishment, drew generally positive responses. Meanwhile, Serota continues to extend Tate’s influence on the UK artworld through its ‘Plus Tate’ partnership programme. And as Tate Modern awaits its conclusive reinvention, its subterranean former oil-tank spaces have already become an important venue for performance and time-based presentation. Can Tate get much bigger? And can one institution ever get too big?

7 Beatrix Ruf Curator German Last Year: 7 Beatrix Ruf has been director of the Kunsthalle Zurich for the past 12 years. But that doesn’t describe why she ranks so highly on this list. She’s also associate editor for the art publishing house JRP Ringier; artistic director of the Ringier collection; a member of financial company Swiss Re’s art-commissioning board; on the cultural advisory board of CERN; on the board of trustees of Vienna’s MUMOK; juror for this year’s Absolut Art Awards; nominator for the Prix Pictet; and probably a load of other things that Google doesn’t instantly cough up. Given all that, it will be no surprise to learn that she’s particularly expert in negotiating the relationship between public exhibitions and private collections – increasingly key to the global art scene – and this year launched the first

106

exhibition of the POOL curatorial programme, a scheme in which private collections (this year the Ruf-connected collections of Maja Hoffmann – who sits on the Kunsthalle’s board of directors – and Michael Ringier) open their doors to an outside curator (in this case South African Gabi Ngcobo) so as ‘to position private collecting within the context of contemporary exhibition practice’. This year the Kunsthalle also held a series of exhibitions focused on what Ruf has become known for – established but underexposed artists (Cameron Jamie, Lutz Bacher), and artists who are driving the agenda of the next generation (Alejandro Cesarco, Wade Guyton and Uri Aran). More than anything else, Ruf has a keen eye for artists who are shaping the scene.

ArtReview

6 Photo: © Tate Photography 7 Photo: © Wolfgang Tillmans

Asked by a BBC interviewer whether, after 25 years in the job, he thought it might be time to quit, Tate director Nicholas Serota batted back with a cricketing metaphor, joking, ‘I’ve not yet scored a century’. A hundred years as head of one of the UK’s biggest art institutions might be pushing it, but even at sixty-seven, Serota is in no mood to wind down. Though the financial crash slowed fundraising for the huge Herzog & de Meuron-designed redevelopment and extension of Tate Modern, construction is now in full swing, and the remodelled building is expected to be fully operational in 2016, to better handle its now five-million-plus visitors each year. Big donations in 2013 mean that Tate is close to finding the £215 million needed, with the Wolfson Foundation giving £5m and Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer coming up with £10m. Serota is sanguine about the need for big art institutions to develop

8 Glenn D. Lowry Museum Director American Last Year: 9

8 Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders 9 Photo: Ai Weiwei Studio Gallery

Perhaps tiring of the celebrity-emulating (or -stalking) that all of the big institutions either engage in or are accused of, Glenn Lowry’s institution – the institution – has decided to reengage with academia. The museum, with the help of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has initiated the Museum Research Consortium. Snoozy as it sounds, the consortium includes only one museum – MoMA – but five prominent universities and their art history departments: Yale, Columbia, Princeton, NYU and CUNY. With MoMA curator Leah Dickerman in the lead (she of the best abstraction show since Alfred H. Barr’s 1936 Cubism and Abstract Art), and Hal Foster, David Joselit, Branden Joseph, Emily Braun, Thomas E. Crow and Holger Klein joining from academe, the consortium will no doubt become the mint for a new class of PhD curator-historians who will do a predoctoral stint at MoMA under the tutelage of its curators. From its earliest

days, the museum had placed object-based education at the centre of its John Dewey-inspired programming. But after coming in for a number of academic browbeatings for its grandiose spectacles – particularly from critics such as Foster; remember ‘The “Primitive” Unconscious of Modern Art, or White Skin Black Masks’ (1985)? Of course you don’t – perhaps Lowry has decided that a stronger tie to the university is a logical return to first principles. Never mind that universities are the ones increasingly accused of grandiosity these days. Who could deny such attractive twin towers of ivory? Certainly not the marketplace. Lowry’s billion-dollar institution bought $30-million-plus in art in 2012. Those are numbers that cannot be denied. Warehouse or bank, classroom or chapel, call the museum what you will. Lowry continues to call it work. And he’s good at what he does.

9 Ai Weiwei Artist Chinese Last Year: 3 Not only was he one of the representatives for Germany at its national pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, he also had a solo exhibition, Disposition, across two venues in La Serenissima. That show included Straight, the first project developed using the long steel reinforcing bars retrieved from schools that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and which was also shown at Ai’s first major museum solo show in the US, at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, at the beginning of the year. Why Germany, you ask? Ai is also developing a new studio in Berlin (underneath that of his friend the artist Olafur Eliasson), has been offered a professorship at the city’s University of the Arts (UdK) and will have a solo show at its Martin-Gropius-Bau in 2014. All this as the Chinese authorities continue to hold his passport, meaning that he

is unable to travel, even while his art can. As well as being one of the world’s leading (and wittiest) artists, Ai has become prominent for his social activism and repeated desire to hold the Chinese authorities accountable to the people, through his artworks, his interviews or his blog posts (now collected in book form). In doing so he has been prominent in reconnecting art – the coverage of which is so dominated by questions of economic value in much of the mainstream media – with issues of social and cultural value, and their links to more conventional aesthetics. And that’s not all; in between everything else, Ai found time to release a heavy-metal single and accompanying video, Dumbass, ‘a kind of self-therapy’, according to the artist, in response to his 81-day detention by the Chinese authorities in 2011.

November 2013

107

11 Marina Abramović Artist Serbian Last Year: 35

Curator Italian Last Year: 19 As artistic director of the Venice Biennale, Massimiliano Gioni mostly escaped the customary brickbats this year. The Italian-born, New Yorkbased curator’s international exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace, which more than doubled the number of artists in the previous two curators’ Venice shows, was certainly timely, if not outright zeitgeist-y. It tapped everything from the artefact-fetishising of speculative realist theory to the interior-worlds mood of the last Whitney Biennial, from postInternet aesthetics to the artworld’s current fascination with previously uncredentialed mystics and cranks (Gioni, in this regard, has spoken of wanting to escape ‘the pressure of the new’). But the exhibition also had a measured sprawl and an attitude to visualising knowledge that were its maker’s own. Plus, even if his grand statement had bombed, Venice’s youngest curator thus far (b. 1973) need not have worried overly – he’s got too much else going on. Gioni remains artistic director of the nomadic Trussardi Foundation in Milan, as well as associate director and director of exhibitions at New York’s New Museum, where he’s mounted a string of apposite, sometimes emphatically retrospective shows – among them the institution’s triennial Ghosts in the Machine, Ostalgia, NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star and, seemingly influential on his Venice exhibition, Rosemarie Trockel’s A Cosmos. By 2011 Jerry Saltz was writing that ‘Gioni is now master of his own form of large-scale exhibition as narrative, time machine, pleasurable pedagogy, historical potboiler come to life, and insight’. In The New York Times this year, dealer Philippe Ségalot persuasively asserted that ‘he’s already a brand’. The boy wonder has scaled the mountain that is Venice, delivering his spatiotemporally expansive curatorial approach to the widest of audiences. Where might – where can – he go next?

108

12 Alain Seban & Alfred Pacquement Museum Director Both French Last Year: 14 The announced departure at the end of this year of Alfred Pacquement, director of the Pompidou Centre since the 1970s and one of the most ubiquitous and engaged players in the contemporary and modern art worlds, creates a gaping hole in the art landscape. It also raises an interesting question: is art power institutional or individual? Will the new director have to earn Pacquement’s longtime lock on a top-20 spot on this list, or does it come with the job? One thing is clear: the centre’s central importance to contemporary art is not likely to slip much, and Alain Seban, a politically appointed functionary when he took over as the centre’s president in 2007, and now a very astute and aggressively hands-on art player on his own terms, will maintain a high ranking, alone or accompanied.

ArtReview

10 Photo: Jesse Untract-Oakner 11 © Marina Abramović. Courtesy the Marina Abramović Archive. 12 Seban: Photo: Loic Venance/AFP. Pacquement: © Hervé Véronèse/Centre Pompidou

10 Massimiliano Gioni

If anyone exemplifies the vanishing borderlines within contemporary culture, it’s Marina Abramović. Remember when she was merely an esteemed Serbian performance artist? Us neither. Nowadays Abramović is a branded figure of mobility: Givenchy model, subject of an opera, Uomo Vogue cover star alongside James Franco, inspirer/admirer of Jay Z’s Picasso Baby video/performance (hip hop’s 2013 tribute to Abramović’s 2010 performance retrospective, The Artist Is Present), Solaris marathon-reading organiser and, comically, according to satirical news site The Global Edition, inventor of an ‘Abramović method’ for Lady Gaga to follow. The publicity offensive helped her crowdfund, via more than 4,000 Kickstarter donators, her monument: the Marina Abramović Institute, an OMA-designed nonprofit permanent home for ephemeral and performative art. At this point, Abramović looks like a new kind of artist, one who is present in all cultural registers – and who uses them to get what she wants.

13 Photo: Chris Buck 14 Photo: Thomas Struth 15 Photo: Hubert Becker 16 Courtesy Art Basel

13 Cindy Sherman

14 Marian Goodman

Artist American Last Year: 13

Gallerist American Last Year: 18

She may no longer be the most expensive photographer at auction (Andreas Gursky, as of 2011) or the biggest-selling female artist (Yayoi Kusama, as of this year, according to Bloomberg), but neither is nearly as influential as Cindy Sherman. The cultural trope of selfhood as constructed and changeable descends, in demonstrably large part, from Sherman’s chameleonic art, which has imprinted figures as diverse as Ryan Trecartin, Nikki S. Lee and Lady Gaga. Recently she has returned to using herself as model, addressing ageing via images of plasticised, atrophying Hollywood wives. Yet nothing could be less like the energetic, engaged artist herself: Hamptons homeowner, yes, but she uses the place for eco-cause benefit parties. Meanwhile, visitors to Massimiliano Gioni’s Venice exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace found Sherman, via a twisting, macabre, self-curated ‘imaginary museum’, right at its centre. Of course: where else would she be?

Too-good-to-be-true Goodman. That’s what her artists call her. Actually, no it’s not. But perhaps they should, given the kind of institutional doors that swing wide open and the exhibition opportunities that get served up on platinum platters (silver is so 2005) for her roster: Dijkstra at the Museum für Moderne Kunst; McQueen at the Schaulager; Vō at the Guggenheim; Iglesias at the Reina Sofía; Cattelan at the Beyeler and Palais de Tokyo; Huyghe at the Pompidou; Weiner at the Stedelijk. That’s just a smattering of the nearly 50 nongallery exhibitions in which Goodman’s artists appeared during 2013. Then there were the six in the Venice Biennale, and the one, William Kentridge, who received an honorary degree from Yale and directed a Shostakovich opera at the Met, which really was too good.

15 Gerhard Richter

16 Marc Spiegler

Artist German Last Year: 6

Art Fair American Last Year: 16

Gerhard Richter is only in competition with himself these days. He was already the most expensive living artist (for a $34.2 million painting from 1994) when this year he broke his own auction record as Domplatz, Mailand (1968) sold for $37m. His past, however, evidently doesn’t so much haunt him as provide grounds for new work. Last year, a series of digitally generated Strip paintings were based on a 1990 canvas, and ditto a series of Rorschach-like tapestries, made in 2009 but first shown this year, created using that antique forerunner to computing, the Jacquard loom. Not everyone loves the new direction: ‘antiseptic… disappointing’, said The New York Times of the Strips. But Richter – still questing at age eightyone, and whose website lists 80 exhibitions featuring his art in 2013 – presumably has stacks of reasons not to care.

Under the directorship of Marc Spiegler, with Annette Schönholzer as director of new initiatives and Magnus Renfrew as director Asia, Art Basel’s flagship fair (the one that’s actually in Basel) has consolidated its position as the world’s main contemporary art fair and as one of the most important centres for anyone wishing to connect with anyone else in the global artworld. This year saw the launch of Messe Basel’s revamped, discolike Hall 1, designed by local architects Herzog & de Meuron, and the arrival of 70,000 visitors for the four-day event. Also noticeable was the increase in Asian galleries thanks to Art Basel’s acquisition of Art Hong Kong, this year rebranded under the Art Basel title. While that is still something of a work in progress, Art Basel Miami Beach remains the artworld’s favoured destination for winter sun.

November 2013

109

18 Adam D. Weinberg

Gallerist American Last Year: 17

Museum Director American Last Year: 15

Glimcher Industries – aka Pace – has steadily extended its reach and that of its artists over the past year. Yes, Marc Glimcher ably oversees the global operation, but note that the Rothko/Sugimoto show that opened its London branch last October was the brainchild of Andrea Glimcher, who was also instrumental in the biggest crossover event of the spring: Jay Z’s Picasso Baby, which was filmed at the gallery. Milly Glimcher’s Happenings: New York, 1958–63 was awarded best show in a commercial gallery by the International Association of Art Critics. And Arne Glimcher, not to be outdone, was appointed Officer in the National Order of the Legion of Honour in France (merci!). With a family like this at the helm, there’s little wonder why 13 Pace artists presented projects at the Venice Biennale; or why major James Turrell installations appeared simultaneously at LACMA, the MFA Houston and the Guggenheim in New York.

The anticipation must be killing Adam Weinberg. The Whitney’s new downtown building took full shape last December, when the framing’s final steel beam was hoisted into place, and Weinberg is on schedule with the fundraising, having pulled in around 80 percent of the $750 million needed for the endowment and construction (still slated for completion in 2015). Earlier this summer the museum announced that its elevators would be designed by Richard Artschwager, whose death this year means that the Whitney will possess the artist’s last major work – the only commission for the new building. But with Hopper, Robert Indiana, T.J. Wilcox, Robert Irwin and a major retrospective of New York performance work from the 1970s, not to mention Jeff Koons’s first major retrospective (filling the entire museum and coming in 2014) uptown at the Whitney’s Breuer building, it’s not as if Weinberg can’t find other satisfactions.

19 François Pinault

20 Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Collector French Last Year: 21

Curator American Last Year: 1

A Venice year is always good for a bump upward for this retired French luxury-goods billionaire’s power standing. This year’s exhibitions at his Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana showcases, particularly the Rudolf Stingel show during the Biennale, were exceptionally strong. But though he still throws around serious cash and clout at art fairs and shows, he no longer directs the pulse of the market in the way he did when he occupied the no 1 spot on this list. More and more, he’s a secondarymarket man: Haunch of Venison, his London and New York galleries, once focused centres of contemporary art production, dropped all their artists this year to become private-sale showcases for his auction house, Christie’s.

It is customary for curators of Documenta, Venice, etc, to dip under the radar following their shining moment (unless, of course, they spend the aftermath tetchily flaming naysayers in the correspondence pages of art magazines). Quietude has been Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s response, too. But her well-received Documenta 13 in 2012, which set new attendance records, clearly had a ripple effect: its antihierarchical elevation of nonart objects to art status – mirroring so-called object-oriented ontology, or speculative realism, in curatorial practice – was strongly visible in Venice and elsewhere this year. In the aftermath, Christov-Bakargiev has done what post-big show curators do: take up professorial positions, deliver talks, mentally regroup – secure in the knowledge that she’s helped set the terms of debate for the immediate future.

110

ArtReview

17 Marc Glimcher: Photo Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Arne Glimcher: Photo Ronald James 18 Photo: Marco Anelli 19 Photo: © Marco De Fina 20 Photo: © Nils Klinger

17 Marc & Arne Glimcher

21 Photo: Mila Zacharias 22 Photo: Hugo Rittson-Thomas 23 Photo: Casey Kelbaugh 24 Photo: Patrick McMullan

21 Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda & Brian Kuan Wood

22 Jay Jopling Gallerist British Last Year: 20

Artists Russian/Mexican/American Last Year: 12 From shows at the Aargauer Kunsthaus to the Zona Maco-México Arte Contemporáneo art fair, e-flux is the conduit for finding out what’s happening in the global artworld. Started in 1998, after the three artists sent out an email about a show they were hosting in a room of a New York Holiday Inn and hordes turned up, e-flux continues to mutate beyond its core press-release distribution service. As well as maintaining their individual practices, Aranda, Kuan Wood and Vidokle count a print journal, a theory-minded book-publishing arm, New York and Berlin gallery spaces, the Art Agenda email reviews, a skills-swap forum and the still-pending application to administer the .art domain among their brand’s interests.

Twenty years ago, Jay Jopling opened White Cube in a 4.4 × 4.6m room in Duke Street, London; now, as he approaches fifty, White Cube operates two branches in London and one each in Hong Kong and São Paulo, and represents over 50 artists. Is bigger better, in this case? Jopling remains London’s premier British dealer, but the question remains: what does White Cube, once the default home of Young British Artists, stand for now? Its main-gallery shows have, of late, lacked fire, the real dynamism transpiring in the Bermondsey venue’s rapid-response Inside the White Cube project spaces. To be fair, though, ‘JJ’ is likely quite distracted by running two newish spaces in foreign countries, and he is still capable of lateral moves, as when this summer he invited Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa to curate/filter an open-submission group show, Open Cube.

23 Klaus Biesenbach

24 RoseLee Goldberg

Museum Director German Last Year: 22

Curator South African Last Year: 25

MoMA PS1’s maestro not only views the artworld’s embrace of celebrity as an effective means of advancing contemporary art into alien regions – cf his production of the multivenue EXPO 1 – but also as a force for mobilising the public: in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Biesenbach took to social media to get the word out about the devastation of the Rockaways neighbourhood of Queens, where he has a home. Quickly massing troops of volunteers and A-listers such as Madonna, James Franco, Gwyneth Paltrow, Darren Aronofsky and Anna Deavere Smith, Biesenbach became a de facto ambassador for the Rockaways’ reconstruction. And to entrench that position, he threw the weight of his organisation behind an open call for new ideas for a more sustainable waterfront. So to Biesenbach’s litany of titles – curator, director and celeb-chaser – we would would like to add environmental and urban activist. Bravo.

‘If it’s not fun in this town, why get out of bed?’ asked RoseLee Goldberg, the founder and director of Performa, at the opening of Emmanuel Perrotin’s new gallery on New York’s Upper East Side (The New York Times covered it; look it up). Had it come out of any other mouth, that comment would send one looking for the PR flunkies that let their socialite off the leash. But Goldberg is right, because she is behind arguably the most ‘fun’ biennial on offer among the hundreds out there. In November Performa debuts 13 new commissions from the likes of Subodh Gupta, Rashid Johnson, Raqs Media Collective, Ryan McNamara, Paweł Althamer and others. It’s 25 days of artistic ‘fun’, more than anyone could possibly see. Why get out of bed indeed.

November 2013

111

Claire Hsu 76 Beatrix Ruf 7 (centre, with, from left, the Kunsthalle Zurich’s Boris Magrini, Florence Le Bègue, Martin Schmidt and Monika Milakovic)

112

Rosemarie Trockel 41 Luisa Strina 61 Sean Kelly 89

Sadie Coles & son 55 Vasıf Kortun 68 Jeff Poe & Tim Blum 30

Ai Weiwei 9 Hito Steyerl 69

113

26 Maja Hoffmann

Collector Venezuelan Last Year: 27

Collector Swiss Last Year: 33

No coincidence that the invitation to and poster for Tate Modern’s current Mira Schendel retrospective featured a work belonging to Patricia Phelps de Cisneros: her holdings of modern and contemporary Latin American art are unmatched in breadth, depth and quality, and are the source of innumerable loans and standalone exhibitions. Dedicated to the study and preservation of art from all periods of Latin American history, the eponymous Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros also contains pre-Columbian and colonial art and objects from the Amazonian cultures of Venezuela. Since 1999, it has published 51 catalogues and monographs, often written by Cisneros’s in-house curators. This year the collection launched e-versions of its book-length interviews with major figures like Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, and its curator of contemporary art, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, organised the Mercosul Biennial.

Maja Hoffmann may not be the most visible of artworld power players, but she’s definitely one its most multitasking. Heiress to the Roche pharmaceutical fortune, Hoffmann’s list of activities could easily take up this entire entry: Tate trustee, president of the Kunsthalle Zurich Foundation, on the board of the Palais de Tokyo, New York’s New Museum and Bard College… Hoffmann’s role has always been more than that of art collector, preferring to support activities and make things happen rather than simply accumulate objects. To give this practical shape, in 2004 Hoffmann established the LUMA Foundation, and in 2007 LUMA embarked on its biggest project – the Parc des Ateliers, a €100 million, Frank Gehry-designed cultural complex, in Arles. In July this year, the French planning authority finally gave its approval. In the meantime, LUMA forges ahead with its curatorial training programme POOL.

27 Matthew Slotover & Amanda Sharp

28 Eli & Edythe Broad

Art Fair Both British Last Year: 23

Collectors American Last Year: 26

Swings and roundabouts for Slotover and Sharp. The second Frieze Art Fair New York found them continuing to use nonunionised labour – one likely reason why, although more US galleries signed up this time, the city hasn’t definitively clasped the British interloper to its bosom. Plus, of course, New York already has a fair, and one has to ask whether, longterm, New York can support both Frieze and the Armory Show. Elsewhere London’s original Frieze Art Fair, now in its 11th year, is being revamped, with fewer galleries and more public space, while sister event Frieze Masters is increasingly popular with dealers, though its usefulness to the Frieze brand is uncertain. The same might be said about the Germanlanguage edition of the magazine itself, Frieze d/e. Still, this organisation doesn’t sit still for long. Since much was made of the gastronomic component at Frieze New York this year, anyone for Frieze Food?

Larry’s List has them – well, Eli – at the top spot in its new and highly publicised collector database. Which makes sense, especially when one considers that the Broads gave $28 million for a new Zaha Hadid-designed museum that opened last November in East Lansing, or that the Broads are financing a new Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed Broad Museum in downtown LA, which is getting closer to completion (in 2015) every day. And of course there’s the Broad Contemporary at LACMA. Needless to say, the walls of all these places are the recipients of the Broads’ seemingly insatiable collecting appetite. The Broad Art Foundation adds ‘25 to 100’ works a year – that’s a new purchase every two weeks at the very least – and, together with the Eli & Edythe L. Broad Collection, comprises 2,000+ objects. There can be little doubt that if collecting art could be viewed as a cause unto itself, the Broads would be its biggest activists.

114

ArtReview

25 Courtesy Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros 26 Photo: © Wolfgang Tillmans 27 Photo: Jonathan Hökklo. Courtesy Frieze/Jonathan Hökklo 28 Courtesy the Broad Foundations

25 Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

29 Photo: David Regen 30 Photo: Sam Kahn 31 Photo: Karl Lagerfeld 32 Courtesy Lisson Gallery

29 Barbara Gladstone

30 Tim Blum & Jeff Poe

Gallerist American Last Year: 24

Gallerists Both American Last Year: 34

The notoriously media-shy (or simply media-uninterested) Gladstone continues to build her stellar roster of artists. This year, Ahmed Alsoudani joined the gallery after finding himself cast free by the abrupt shuttering of Haunch of Venison. There’s hardly a biennial that opens without one of Gladstone’s artists on its list: Thomas Hirschhorn in Istanbul, Matthew Barney and Roe Ethridge in Lyon, Wangechi Mutu in Moscow and so on. Then there’s the museum representation: Sarah Lucas at Whitechapel, Anish Kapoor at the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul, Ugo Rondinone at M in Leuven. It’s just another year in the top 30 for the quiet American.

Since picking up two obscure Japanese artists, Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, during the mid-1990s, Tim Blum and Jeff Poe have been on a roll both commercially and critically. (They still rep the mangaobsessed duo, although both bolted their original New York dealer for Gagosian and Pace respectively.) While their LA gallery anchors the Culver City arts district and their booths draw major attention at fairs, Blum and Poe are now expanding their brand beyond by mining once overlooked Japanese work from the 1960s and 70s. Having mounted a meticulously curated show of Mono-ha, spiritually inflected conceptual sculpture, in 2012 – major buyers included François Pinault and Howard Rachofsky – and added several participants in the movement to their stable, they’re opening an office in New York and a gallery in Tokyo.

31 Bernard Arnault

32 Nicholas Logsdail

Collector French Last Year: 28

Gallerist British Last Year: 29

According to Forbes, luxury-goods magnate Bernard Arnault is the tenth wealthiest billionaire in the world. He’s certainly the most moneyed man in France and one of the world’s biggest art collectors. He has a Midas touch in business and bankrolls some of the biggest names and projects in contemporary art (often without the attention-grabbing fanfare that accompanies similar efforts by his compatriots), and his LVMH empire frequently places art at the heart of its identity (last year, Yayoi Kusama’s designs for Louis Vuitton were everywhere). But even billionaires have their problems: at the end of last year, Arnault began legal proceedings following leftwing newspaper Libération’s rather direct reaction to news that the LVMH boss was seeking Belgian citizenship. Still, next spring’s long-awaited opening of his giant Frank Gehry-designed art centre in the Bois de Boulogne means that the indefatigable Arnault is one to watch.

In the summer 2013 diary of his visit to London, preparing works for his show at Lisson Gallery, Liu Xiaodong writes of how difficult it is to persuade locals to invite him into their home. After 46 years, Lisson is still an artworld cuckoo in the unhipsterish nest of Edgware Road, but this unlikely ’hood is the London home to Nicholas Logsdail’s multigenerational family of artists. This last year, weapon-mangling Pedro Reyes and claymation heroes Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg have also been welcomed into the fold. Meanwhile Lisson’s senior artists continue to assert themselves on a global scale – Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor have had significant international exhibitions and Marina Abramović has been, well, everywhere. After opening its first international space in Milan two years ago, Lisson recently set up a by-appointment office in New York: rumour has it that a full stateside gallery is soon to follow.

November 2013

115

33 Monika Sprüth & Philomene Magers

34 Gavin Brown

Gallerists Both German Last Year: 38

Gallerist British Last Year: 40

35 Isa Genzken

36 Steve McQueen

Artist German Last Year: 46

Artist British Last Year: 59

German artist Isa Genzken is about to take a long, fancy American tour. In the past decade or so, her rather prescient work has resonated not only with contemporary audiences but also with a new generation of artists who’ve picked up on Genzken’s visual language of found objects, sculptural collage and assemblage, which the artist began developing in the 1970s. Genzken’s exuberantly ‘grungy’ (and subtly critical) exhibition in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007 didn’t hurt her renewed visibility among artworld insiders, but starting now and continuing into 2014, general audiences in America have a unique chance to examine the artist’s influential oeuvre. Her career-spanning retrospective exhibition begins at MoMA later this month and continues in 2014 to both the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Dallas Museum of Art. Many of the 150 pieces have never been seen in the United States before.

116

From renting a room at New York’s Chelsea Hotel in 1993 for a show of Elizabeth Peyton’s paintings to creating a gallery-cum-bar in that city in 1997, doing things his own way has always been part of Brown’s modus operandi. He has continued in this style as his operation expanded to the West Coast in 2013; while other galleries set up chainstore versions, Brown opened a large warehouse in LA with gallery artist Laura Owens, which she will programme for the time being. And little surprise that many of his influential stable – Jeremy Deller, Mark Leckey and Uri Aran – were prominent at Venice this year. Back in New York the summer-show slot was devoted to the Afrika Bambaataa Master of Records open archive, which saw DJs mixing at lunchtime gigs. Brown has also been running a project space from his own house, promoted only through Instagram, and plans to open a sandwich shop with Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Steve McQueen has had an outlandishly good year. His third feature film, Twelve Years a Slave (2013), a true-story narrative about a freeman sold into slavery that its director describes as ‘a discussion about human dignity’, received a rapturous premiere despite its violent aspects, is heavily tipped for Oscar success and saw McQueen crossing over from art-house to mainstream cinema without compromise. Meanwhile, the largest-ever show of his visual art, at the Schaulager, Basel, redoubled plaudits when it opened in March and showcased the precision, poetry and boldness of his films, photographs and installations since the early 1990s. No real precedents exist for such hugely successful straddling, or collapsing, of worlds. Nor for the impetus McQueen has delivered to both, whether helping legitimate cinematic aesthetics within art or bringing an artist’s mindset and ethical realism to Hollywood.

ArtReview

33 Photo: Dagmar Schwelle 34 Artist Laura Owens & Gavin Brown. Courtesy Gavin Brown’s Enterprise 35 Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans. © Isa Genzken 36 Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

The thing with Sprüth Magers is that they don’t just represent artists who are beloved by curators and the market alike; their artists are also, well, pretty cool. When the gallery staged a Kenneth Anger show successively in Berlin and London, the excitement surrounding the exhibition resonated way beyond the art scene into the fashion and hipster crowd. Add in representation of Kraftwerk (who restaged their MoMA PS1 eight-night run of back catalogue performances at Tate Modern this year), George Condo (“Condos in my condos, I wanna row of”, as Jay Z would have it) and fellow power-listers Rosemarie Trockel, John Baldessari and Ryan Trecartin, and you’ve got a rare thing: power with street credibility. And all that while maintaining a human-size gallery space in London (their inhuman-size one is in Berlin), unlike many of their Mayfair neighbours.

Culture and Power in a Globalised World

This year’s power list of international art personalities seems to indicate a mixed bunch hailing from a variety of cultures, countries and backgrounds – a more global list than in previous years, from an increasingly globalised cultural universe by Omar Al-Qattan

118

ArtReview

What defines this global culture, though? If I look at the Arab world, like those of rural Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine or Syria, however rich which is the region I know best and which shares much with the rest of in origin, once carried into exile by often illiterate first-generation the developing world, I see a number of phenomena which, rather than parents, will quickly be sidelined if not overwhelmed by a generic indicating a greater participation by different discrete cultures in one (and thus symbolic and vacuous) identity such as ‘Islam’, which until universal conversation, point to cultural turmoil, conflict and contra- the modern age was not one homogeneous culture but a religion that diction. It is of course debatable whether in such a connected world formed a central part of a number of very different cultures. as ours discrete cultural entities exist at all, but what is sure is that a The contemporary cultural world also seems to be a place where cosmopolitan, English-speaking elite is now dominating the region’s ideology is mistaken for, or cynically manipulated to seem like, cultural production in ways that were inconceivable only a decade or so cultural authenticity. I have already mentioned the Islamist example, ago. On the other side of the spectrum, large majorities of the peoples but the example of Israel is perhaps a more interesting if equally in the Arab world remain culturally conservative. And yet both groups destructive one. The establishment of Israel required the invention share the same economic and political realities: continued Western of a cultural identity that did not exist in real terms prior to the ninemilitary dominance, an estranged and teenth century and the penetration of From the perspective European Jewish discourse by nationoften disengaged and supercilious elite of a marginalised or occupied culture, that is more closely linked to the West alist ideology. This was not a case of in its outlooks and aspirations than manipulating preexisting cultural or one decimated by civil war, the majority of people at the grassphenomena for the purposes of the his market is repulsive yet irresistible roots; unregulated financial (and art) nation state, but either inventing them markets, dominated by the private sector (or a private sector masquer- from scratch or appropriating them from the local Palestinian culture ading as a public one, as is the case with a number of Gulf ruling or from the cultures of immigrant Jews and forming them into an families disbursing cultural funds, obsessively fixated on imitating ‘imagined community’, as described by Benedict Anderson’s famous European institutions and practices), with no access to democratically formulation. The examples of falafel or pitta bread are particularly distributed public funding for the arts, etc. The globalised market difficult for Palestinians, who see some of their staple dishes reinturns out to be, for many developing nations, nothing but a colonial vented as Israeli specialties, adding insult to the injury of the wholemarket by proxy. sale confiscation of their homeland. The point here is that sheer From the perspective of a marginalised or occupied culture, or one power has won the day over historical authenticity and has marginaldecimated by civil war, this market is repulsive yet irresistible. It offers ized the issue of who invented what and when. Global culture is thus financial and professional opportunities that only a few years ago also characterised by historical parody. were unheard of, and has tempted many talented artists and curators A truly global culture, predicated upon principles of equality, away from their home soil to seek new opportunities in the West or in respect, serious intellectual enquiry and artistic inventiveness must the new cultural hubs of the Gulf, even if the price is a scuppering of at the very least be aware of these power struggles and inequalities at long-held beliefs and certainties. The its core and, if possible, militate against We must ask ourselves what value a exciting prospect for these cultural them. If authenticity is no longer even migrants is that they may finally find work of artistic expression can have if it conceivable because so many world the security and freedom to do what does not at least express a point of view cultures have undergone cultural genothey have always dreamed of doing. cide – to borrow Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The danger however is that they will be swallowed up by a world in ominous phrase describing the destructive effects of capitalism on which artistic expression is made banal by easy money and borrowed Italian peasant culture – we must ask ourselves what value a work of ideas and fashions, and marketing and public relations considera- artistic expression can have if it does not at least express a point of tions rather than the struggles for freedom, equality, authenticity view; if it relinquishes historical accuracy; if it loses sight of issues of and originality that some artists, thankfully, continue to consider as genuine universal concern for humanity or remains stuck in narrow identity politics, conceptual game-playing or formalistic posturing, central to their creative endeavours. Geographically, this exile increasingly means leaving one’s home as so much globalised culture has been in recent years. for the new cultural hubs of the Gulf, which are Western colonies in And to return to the Arab world, the profound upheavals it almost everything but name. Here, however, the traditional struggles has witnessed in the last two years may begin to shake its elites against colonial cultural domination – between an ‘authentic’ local out of their cocoons and force them to reengage with the concerns culture and a powerful colonial one – no longer exist in the same of their fellow citizens. This may also happen in the many other way. It is true that fundamentalist Islamist movements do argue for areas of the world in which social and political protests are taking a ‘return’ to authentic tradition, but they do so in a reality perme- place. Perhaps then it is time to look at an alternative ‘power’ list of people whose work genuinely resonates ated by global markets and technologies that facing page, top Nermine Hammam, among the poor, dominated and marginalare neither authentic nor traditional. It is no The Break, from the Upekkha series, 2012, digital surprise therefore that where local age-old ised grassroots; who can find alternatives to photo, 60 × 90 cm, edition of 3 + 2 AP cultural traditions are weakened by forced violent ideology and dominance through facing page, bottom Nermine Hammam, migration, war or physical destruction, the Sham El-Nessem (Spring), from the Upekkha series, 2012, their inspirational work and who can offer clamour for an Islamic identity – ie, ideology a genuinely universal and liberating voice in a digital photo, 84 × 62 cm, edition of 3 + 2 AP – is loudest, including among second-generaglobal cultural conversation held on an equal both Courtesy the artist and Rose Issa Projects, London tion immigrants in the West. Peasant cultures footing between all its participants.

November 2013

119

Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle & Brian Kuan Wood 21

120

Marc & Arne Glimcher 17

121

Barbara Gladstone 29

122

Brett Gorvy 50

123

Iwan Wirth 3

124

Chang Tsong-zung 65

125

37 Dakis Joannou

38 Victor Pinchuk

Collector Greek Last Year: 36

Collector Ukranian Last Year: 32 Worth an estimated $3.8 billion, the Ukrainian steel pipe magnate and art collector is an undoubtedly huge philanthropic figure, donating vast sums to infant mortality and AIDS causes. He is also a man hellbent on securing his country’s place in Europe, and his gathering together of leading political and cultural figures such as Tony Blair and the Clintons in Yalta this past September is testament to his willingness to deploy funds to assemble powerful people in a room. This also typifies his approach to his biennial Future Generation Art Prize, for which he summons the Carolyn Christov-Bakargievs and Hans Ulrich Obrists of the world to pick the winner of an international open submission contest for artists under thirty-five, who is then awarded $100,000. The exhibition of work by nominees also tours to the Venice Biennale, giving the nominated artists significant international exposure.

39 Thomas Hirschhorn

40 Theaster Gates

Artist Swiss Last Year: Reentry (44 in 2007)

Artist American Last Year: 56

A top-ten artist on curators’ lists for years, Thomas Hirschhorn finally appears to have broken through to crossover popularity. While his manifestolike Timeline: Work in Public Space (2012) stood at the heart of this autumn’s Istanbul Biennial, another work – the artist’s summer installation Gramsci Monument, sited in a South Bronx housing project and titled after the Italian Communist thinker – drove him further into public consciousness. A relational sculpture The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl called ‘the year’s most captivating new art work’, Hirschhorn’s deliberately antimonumental construction was built from materials like cardboard, cheap lumber and tarpaulins. It also featured a free daily newspaper, an art classroom, an Internet centre, a radio station and a children’s wading pool – all enthusiastically embraced by the complex’s residents and, more surprisingly, most of New York’s critical establishment.

The Mick Jagger of social practice, Theaster Gates has become the world’s most recognisable face for twenty-first-century socially engaged art. A populariser of the Robert Johnson-like influence of artist-activists such as Dan Peterman and Rick Lowe, Gates has taken local American attempts at fusing art and social practice global. Besides exhibitions for White Cube’s London, Hong Kong and São Paulo galleries, the Chicago native’s participation in last year’s Documenta 13 has served as a platform for his many current projects. He is the recipient of a significant public commission in his hometown, and his presence has spread to multiple other cities, including Venice, New Orleans and Port-au-Prince. As well as being an adept fundraiser (through private sales and grants from institutions like Creative Capital and the Graham Foundation), Gates’s skyrocketing career confirms his remarkable skill as an artist and impresario.

126

ArtReview

37 Dakis Joannou, Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Photo: © Sebastiano Mastroeni 38 Courtesy Victor Pinchuk Foundation 39 Photo: Romain Lopez 40 Photo: Sara Pooley

‘I’m not looking into works that are very academic or that are only conceptual or in dialogue with art history.’ Such a statement, made by the Greek supercollector to the Artspace website may feel at odds with the zeitgeist, but for Joannou, knowing what he likes and wants to sink his money into has become second nature. He doesn’t need a textbook. And when he decides he’s into an artist, he’ll support them to the hilt: rarely a year passes when Maurizio Cattelan (pictured clowning above with Joannou and collaborator Pierpaolo Ferrari) isn’t in a show at the collector’s Deste Foundation in Athens, for example. The institution provides a much-needed creative space for the ailing Greek capital, and the Deste Prize continues as a major event in the international calendar (this year curators Daniel Birnbaum, Bice Curiger, Beatrix Ruf and fellow collector Michael Ringier were on the jury).

41 Rosemarie Trockel

42 Liam Gillick

Artist German Last Year: 42

Artist British Last Year: 30

41 Photo: Rosemarie Trockel, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2013 / resp. ARS. Courtesy Sprüth Magers 42 Photo: Andrea Stappert 43 Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders 44 Photo : Karl Kolbitz

With its medley of art, nonart and outsider art, playful take on epistemology and wunderkammer vibe, Rosemarie Trockel’s touring exhibition A Cosmos (2012–) looks remarkably timely: an outrider of big-tent shows that have performed similar tricks in the last year or so. It also clarifies the huge influence of the Cologne-based sexagenarian’s postmedium aesthetic. Best known for the détourned craft aesthetic of her big, woollen abstractions, Trockel has been equally busy since the early 80s with books, sculpture, painting, posters, etc. Her who-says-I-can’t-do-this? approach makes her at once one of our most persuasive feminist artists, and one who implicitly questions the value of any limit on creative investigations. For artists who now flit easily between media, between high and low and expert and naïf approaches, she’s the secret sharer. (We’d use the phrase ‘Trockel-down effect’, but we’re above that kind of thing.)

Liam Gillick’s masterfully multidimensional activities have for many years pushed the limit of where and how an artist can make things happen. Artist, writer, critic, teacher – and this year Gillick added movie star to his CV, acting alongside ex-Slits guitarist Viv Albertine in British indie director Joanna Hogg’s new feature, Exhibition. Between takes, Gillick had time to give the prestigious Bampton Lectures at Columbia University, to be published early next year, while focusing on solo shows in Gallery IHN in Seoul and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin.

43 Agnes Gund

44 Wolfgang Tillmans

Collector American Last Year: 44

Artist German Last Year: 43

Sure, her name graces the lobby of MoMA: she’s been on its board since 1976 and she’s wealthy. But real power is enduring, and Aggie’s influence derives not from her chequebook alone but from her tenacity in leveraging broad connections in the service of her passions for art, education and social justice. She chairs the MoMA PS1 board; sits on the New York State Council of the Arts; tirelessly supports arts education for students in the city’s increasingly pressed schools; and heads the Mayor’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, helping to shape New York’s arts policy. She’s recently taken her advocacy from the halls of power, public and private, to The Huffington Post, writing on the value of the humanities and against cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts. Then there’s her personal collection, which mixes work by young artists and greats like Jasper Johns with a scope and finesse hedge-funders’ money can’t buy.

Earlier this year, Wolfgang Tillmans told ArtReview that he wanted, however impossibly hubristic it may be, to capture the whole world through photography. The German artist took a shot at it with his consuming project of recent years, Neue Welt (2012), an exhibition and book capping 20 years of professional practice, based on globetrotting trips that log transformations between the 1990s and now. In that time, Tillmans has made art photography immeasurably more respected, subtly emphasised the political weight of images, diversely explored his medium’s technical possibilities and even, via six years running the Bethnal Green project space Between Bridges in London, operated as a gallerist/cultural excavator/cheerleader. This year a substantial exhibition at Düsseldorf’s K21 will be followed by new work at Maureen Paley. Even while looking back, Tillmans is inevitably surging forward.

November 2013

127

46 Matthew Marks

Artist French Last Year: Reentry (48 in 2006)

Gallerist American Last Year: 39

Crabs, ants, spiders, bees and flu viruses: Pierre Huyghe is widening the ken of art in ways that Marcel Duchamp never imagined. Thinkers are rare in today’s art scenes (hence their almost complete absence from this year’s list). This New York-based artist packs serious intellectual clout. Among contemporary art’s most philosophically attuned presences, and the most fructiferous of the increasingly influential relational aesthetes, his posthumanist, compost-based midcareer retrospective at the Pompidou Centre was the most anticipated – and oddest – show of a very busy Paris rentrée. Paradoxically, if he continues exploring artistic agency in the same manner – manipulating artist and spectator out of the equation and allowing the elements in the middle to determine their own trajectory and value – then his position of influence and power will, in turn, eliminate itself.

This year, Matthew Marks threw a ninetieth birthday party for gallery artist Ellsworth Kelly. To further celebrate, MoMA mounted an exhibition of the nonagenerian’s Chatham Series (1971), 14 paintings that take up serious wall space, and enhanced their permanent holdings through an exchange of works with the artist negotiated by Marks. Kelly isn’t the only member of his stable claiming major real estate. MoMA’s working on a retrospective of Robert Gober; a show of Ken Price just closed at the Met; this summer Katharina Fritsch installed a huge blue cock (as in rooster) on the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square; and a Gary Hume show closed at Tate Britain in September. Things at Marks’s LA and New York galleries in coming months won’t be shabby either, with works by Brice Marden, Fischli/Weiss and Thomas Demand, among others, on view.

47 Anne Pasternak

48 Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi

Curator American Last Year: 48

Collector Emirati Last Year: 84

The past year has brought more firsts for Creative Time, which president and artistic director Anne Pasternak has turned into one of – if not the – preeminent public art and social activism organisations in the United States. It introduced Creative Time Reports, a multimedia publishing programme that gives artists the opportunity to become reporters and to address critical issues that lie beyond the limited precincts of their artworld; its website was selected as a Webby Awards honouree; it turned Grand Central Station into a petting zoo of Nick Cave sculptures; it sent Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures (2012) into space; and it presented Between the Door and the Street (2013), Suzanne Lacy’s first-ever public project in New York City. All this on a mere $3.4 million budget, 75 percent of which goes to the art and artists. That’s commitment.

During the 11th Sharjah Biennial, Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi described the impact on local residents: ‘Now they call the Sharjah Biennial “our biennial.”’ This desire to engage with a grassroots audience has strongly shaped the biennial during Al-Qasimi’s decade at the helm. Through the Sharjah Art Foundation, of which Al-Qasimi is president, she works to stimulate an informed audience for contemporary art and culture in the Gulf region, fostering collaborations, staging conferences and producing exhibitions. Determinedly anti-elitist (though not anti-avant-garde), Al-Qasimi has learned to tread the fine line between provoking debate and causing offence. She sits on the board of MoMA PS1 and was on the curatorial selection committee for the 2012 Berlin Biennial. Her balance of intellect and popular appeal creates a compelling template for emerging hubs of the new artworld.

128

ArtReview

45 Photo: Aaron Davidson 46 Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery 47 Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders 48 Courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation

45 Pierre Huyghe

49 Photo: David von Becker 50 Courtesy Christie’s 51 Photo: Michael Jones 52 Courtesy Sotheby’s

49 Udo Kittelmann

50 Brett Gorvy

Museum Director German Last Year: 37

Auction House British Last Year: 74

Now five years into his tenure as the director of Berlin’s State Museums, Udo Kittelmann is still going strong – his reinterpretations of the institutions’ permanent collections have (mostly) met with wide approval, as have crowdpleasing exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Neue Nationalgalerie featuring big, often German names like Martin Kippenberger and Joseph Beuys (not to mention the four Berliners taking part in Berlin Art Week 2013’s Painting Forever! exhibition). This year, Kittelmann’s reach went beyond Berlin, to the Venice Biennale, where artist Vadim Zakharov asked his old friend to curate his show at the Russian Pavilion. It’s been raining golden coins ever since – in August, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation announced plans to build a new museum for Berlin’s collection of twentieth-century art by 2022. One thing we’d wish for: more exhibitions featuring women artists.

There’s little doubt that the secondary market for contemporary art is on a roll, what with loose monetary policy and inflation fears and rising stock markets equalling bigger dividends. May’s sales pulled in two-thirds of a billion dollars for the auction house. On 12 November, Christie’s will put on the block Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange) (1994–2000), estimated at $35-$55 million, and consigned by Peter Brant. The four others in the series belong to Steven A. Cohen, François Pinault, Dakis Joannou and Eli Broad. That’s expensive company. And chances are that when the hammer falls on Koons’s work it will eclipse the recent $37.1m sale of Gerhard Richter’s Domplatz, Mailand (1968) as the most expensive work by a living artist ever sold at auction. No wonder they exited the comparatively small-change primary market: in March the auction house pulled the plug on Haunch of Venison, the London gallery they bought in 2007.

51 Toby Webster

52 Tobias Meyer & Cheyenne Westphal

Gallerist British Last Year: 51

Auction House Both German Last Year: 75

A rare year that at least one of Webster’s artists isn’t nominated for the Turner Prize was more than made up for by his double whammy in Venice: Jeremy Deller ensconced in the British Pavilion and Hayley Tompkins as part of the three-person Scotland + Venice 2013 show. Back at the two Glasgow spaces Webster calls home, an exhibition exchange with Standard in Oslo was announced. The Modern Institute will reciprocate in due course, before planning subsequent exchanges with other international galleries. With its stable of artists largely consisting of the gallerist’s generational peers – Simon Starling (whose epic CGI video commission has been on show at Tate Britain all year), Urs Fischer (everywhere), Jim Lambie and Cathy Wilkes among them – Webster’s gallery is small enough to be able to instigate such deft manoeuvres, but big enough and respected enough to have the endeavour noticed and cheered on.

This time last year, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art and chief auctioneer Meyer was bringing his gavel down in New York on the biggest single auction in its 269-year history, raking in $375 million, with Mark Rothko’s painting No. 1 (Royal, Red and Blue) (1954) going for $75m. By contrast, London sales throughout the year proved strong, if not earthshattering, but for Westphal – chairman of contemporary art Europe – the auction game may be changing anyway: in October, Sotheby’s expanded its S/2 private sales gallery format from New York to London, effectively muscling in on the business of gallerists and private dealers. Private sales are a growth area for Sotheby’s, so S/2 London plans five selling shows a year. Sotheby’s shareholders seem to like it: the company’s shares have risen continuously, even while billionaire activist investor Dan Loeb has recently been gunning for Sotheby’s CEO William Ruprecht to step down.

November 2013

129

Marina Abramović 11 Massimo De Carlo 77 Pierpaolo Falone & Franco Noero 90

130

Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones 5 Liam Gillick 42

RoseLee Goldberg 24 Richard Chang 70 Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi 48 Ryan Trecartin 64

Klaus Biesenbach 23 Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo 85

131

53 Michael Ringier

54 Tino Sehgal

Collector Swiss Last Year: 55

Artist British-German Last Year: 69 Not yet forty, Tino Sehgal is already a mini-institution. When he received a Golden Lion at Venice this year for his untitled and, as always, officially undocumented work in the international exhibition, it’s unlikely many visitors were wholly shocked. More surprising was the work itself (‘Nothing less than an anticipation of truly dialogical relations in contemporary culture,’ asserted owlish uber-critic Benjamin Buchloh), which took the artist’s signature materials of live bodies interacting in galleries into an offbeat new territory, a male-female pair communicating via a jazz/hip-hop hybrid of beatboxing and scatting. Such interventions demonstrate the flexibility of both Sehgal’s aesthetic and his mind; and the longer he works without accumulating any material traces (save the odd trophy), the more persuasive, timely and slyly inimitable his sustainable, communal model of artmaking appears.

55 Sadie Coles

56 Jeff Koons

Gallerist British Last Year: 49

Artist American Last Year: 58

It feels like Sadie Coles moves galleries a lot. The mild irritation that this represents for visitors, who have to find her new space with each relocation, is far outweighed by the relief for her long-term artists – Sarah Lucas, Hilary Lloyd and Richard Prince among them – who frequently have a fresh space to work with. Coles currently has three galleries. Two are spacious properties, the newest of which, in the heart of London’s West End, is light and airy and was artfully inaugurated in September with a painting show by young American artist Ryan Sullivan. The third is a small, garagelike space frequently used for film or video installations, such as the recent staging of Shannon Ebner’s video Dear Reader (2013). Sullivan and Ebner are not the only younger artists brought into the gallery fold in the last 12 months: Brazilian Adriano Costa, American Jordan Wolfson and Briton Helen Marten have also been included on Coles’s list.

This has been a banner year for commodity fetishism. It stands to reason, therefore, that Jeff Koons also triumphed as the concept’s virtual artworld embodiment. Fresh off a duet of shows at Gagosian and David Zwirner galleries, Koons once again upped the ante on the commoditylike nature of his objects by issuing a limited-edition, champagne-bottle-filled sculptural collectible made for the luxury brand Dom Pérignon. Unlike the 2010 art car the artist ‘created’ with BMW, Koons’s Balloon Venus for Dom Pérignon retails for a mere $15,500 – perfect for bottle service at Steve Wynn’s latest Las Vegas nightclubs. An artist whose 2014 career retrospective at the Whitney is the final show in the iconic Marcel Breuer building, Koons’s penchant for shiny baubles fits the age like an ‘I Warned You This Would Happen’ Marx tee.

132

ArtReview

53 © Ringier AG 54 Photo: Andrew Dunkley, Tate Photography 55 Photo: Juergen Teller 56 Courtesy BMW

Over 200 works of art decorate the working environment of the Ringier media empire – which incorporates an art magazine and the JRP Ringier art publishing house – of which Michael Ringier is chair (and fellow collector Uli Sigg is deputy chair). Art is so much a part of the company that Philippe Parreno designed last year’s annual report (the 16th artist to do so). Ringier’s own collection is one of the most significant in Europe, for which he can count on Beatrix Ruf as his chief adviser. This year, under her auspices, the collection was made available to the inaugural POOL exhibition, which facilitates explorations of private collections in a public context.

57 © Museum Associated/LACMA 58 Photo: Maxime Dufour. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin 59 Photo: Gertraud Presenhuber. Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber 60 Photo: Albrecht Fuchs

57 Michael Govan

58 Emmanuel Perrotin

Museum Director American Last Year: Reentry (40 in 2009)

Gallerist French Last Year: 62

As the Guys and Dolls paean to the joys of a fixer-upper goes, ‘You mustn’t squeeze a melon till you get the melon home’. When Michael Govan quit New York’s Dia Art Foundation to head Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2006, it was very much with an eye to ‘changing its ways tomorrow’; not only did LA lack New York’s powerhouse art status, but even within the city, LACMA was seen as the also-ran, out-twinkled by MOCA, with its art star-studded board. MOCA’s celebrity-spattered fall from grace under the tenure of Jeffrey Deitch coincided with mounting approval for Govan’s quiet but dogged seduction of the city’s artists (including former MOCA board members John Baldessari and Catherine Opie) and art supporters. Govan is continuing to squeeze the melon – his primary focus now is raising funds and popular support for a radical Peter Zumthor-led redesign of the museum and its grounds.

Connaught Road in Hong Kong last year, Madison Avenue in New York (which opened with a Paola Pivi show and 1,000-guest dinner and party across all four floors of the Russian Tea Room) and a giant second locale in Paris: the imperial reach and ambitions of France’s most flamboyant gallerist continue to stretch. So too does his international roster of established (Cattelan, Calle, Murakami, Delvoye) and younger (Arsham, McGinley, Sailstorfer, Takano) artists. This year marks as well a coronation of sorts for the still-youngish Perrotin, with the French city of Lille giving over its giant Tripostal complex for a special 25th anniversary Happy Birthday, Galerie Perrotin exhibition – an honour only previously bestowed on megacollectors Charles Saatchi and François Pinault, and on the French state (in the form of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques).

59 Eva Presenhuber

60 Daniel Buchholz

Gallerist Austrian Last Year: NEW

Gallerist German Last Year: 50

It’s difficult to believe that Austria-born, Zurich-based gallerist Eva Presenhuber has had her own gallery for only ten years (she was previously in a business partnership with Hauser & Wirth). But in that decade, she has fine-tuned a programme that is both formidable and sustainable – stalwarts on her roster include Ugo Rondinone, Douglas Gordon, Angela Bulloch and the late Franz West; newcomers like Oscar Tuazon are a testament to Presenhuber’s eye and her business acumen. She possesses the rare ability to make institutional artists (those with ‘difficult’ work and high symbolic value) just as viable for the commercial art market. In the past three years Presenhuber has anchored herself in the Zurich scene with two new vast, downright museal spaces, one in the Maag Areal and another in the recently renovated Löwenbräu complex.

Not that we take our own cover too seriously, but of the last six cover stars, two (Danh Vō and Wolfgang Tillmans) have been Galerie Buchholz artists (the gallery is run with business partner Christopher Müller), and another Buchholzite is profiled in this edition (Isa Genzken). It seems that we, in common with the wider artworld, are in thrall to Buchholz’s list – Vō has been the subject of solo shows at the Guggenheim New York and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Tillmans has been at K21, Düsseldorf, the MALI (Lima) and MAVI (Santiago, Chile), and Genzken is the subject of a major retrospective at MoMA. Meanwhile Lutz Bacher – nominated this year as one of our Future Greats – has been the subject of solo shows at the ICA, London, Kunsthalle Zurich and Portikus, Frankfurt.

November 2013

133

62 Takashi Murakami

Gallerist Brazilian Last Year: 71

Artist Japanese Last Year: 60

While the majority of sales for Brazil’s commercial galleries are still domestic, income from selling art abroad is on the up. Rather dramatically on the up: an increase from $18 million registered in 2011 to $27m in 2012, according to ABACT, the Brazilian gallery association. Luisa Strina will have generated a good chunk of that through her eponymous space. São Paulo’s oldest and most venerated outfit, the gallery goes to all the major fairs (Strina is on the selection committee for Art Basel Miami Beach) and has been instrumental in developing and supporting the careers of so many artists that are now, or are becoming, stellar names outside Latin America – including the cover star of the September issue of ArtReview, Fernanda Gomes. With Alexandre da Cunha, Cildo Meireles and Pedro Reyes also among the artists the gallery represents, there is a constant calendar of museum shows to offer support, too.

In the past 12 months the Murakami empire has been redesigning its global plan: in October 2012 came news of the closure of Kaikai Kiki Gallery Taipei, Hidari Zingaro Taipei and GEISAI Taipei (officially termed a ‘temporary break’ due to ‘a change in the gallery structure’); in Europe, Hidari Zingaro Berlin presented four exhibitions in 2012, but only one in 2013. However, as the head of Kaikai Kiki (the artist’s art production company), Murakami has successfully introduced his artists into the artworld. Murakami’s personal career is still flourishing: two solo gallery shows (in Hong Kong and LA) and one institutional show, Takashi in Superflat Wonderland, at Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. His debut feature film, Jellyfish Eyes (2013), had its international premiere in April. And the Japanese makeup brand Shu Uemura has announced a cosmetics collection, titled Six Hearts Princes, based on Murakami’s 6HP anime project.

63 John Baldessari

64 Ryan Trecartin

Artist American Last Year: 83

Artist American Last Year: NEW

Few artists are hip enough to have a minidocumentary about them narrated by Tom Waits, but then if, as has been said, LA art constitutes the ‘Cool School’, Baldessari is clearly the Cool Schoolmaster: over several decades and via a long exhale of droll conceptual creations, he’s influenced generations of artists from California and elsewhere. This year the avuncular octogenarian kept typically limber. His late-1980s installations were renascent at Marian Goodman, and Baldessari ventured into territories new with his first show in Russia, at the Garage Center in Moscow. He instinctively gets, too, art’s accelerating integration with other spheres; in The New York Times Baldessari listed among his own influences the clothes of Rodarte and Missoni, suggesting the years haven’t yet caught up with the self-described ‘guy who put dots over people’s faces’. Nor, indeed, have his followers.

Critics were quick to applaud Ryan Trecartin’s campy channelling of the hysteric, egocentric nature of social performance ushered in by reality television and online networking. The artist’s videoworks, in which teenagers and adults appear to run amok in a world of personal branding, tween fashion, terrible digital graphics and extreme, eye-rolling bitchiness are, in fact, tightly scripted works played at hyperspeed, allowing the artist to sneakily touch on identity politics, race, comedy and capitalism’s new assault on the senses. Following his 2011 exhibition Any Ever at MoMA PS1, The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl expounded that he was ‘the most consequential artist to have emerged since the 1980s’. Included in the Venice Biennale this year, and appointed as cocurator of the next New Museum Triennial, Trecartin, it is now clear, will continue to act as navigator of a world in which the only god is the one in OMG.

134

ArtReview

61 Courtesy Galeria Luisa Strina 62 Photo: Kleinefenn 63 Photo: Analia Saban 64 Photo: David X Prutting/BFAnyc.com © BFA

61 Luisa Strina

65 Courtesy Hanart TZ Gallery 66 Photo: Michel Jean. Courtesy Fundación Jumex 67 Photo: © Gautier Deblond. Courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc, Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro 68 Photo: Mustafa Hazneci

65 Chang Tsong-zung

66 Eugenio López

Gallerist Chinese Last Year: 67

Collector Mexican Last Year: Reentry (38 in 2010)

In addition to his roles as gallerist and promoter of Chinese art throughout the world, Chang is now remarkable for his interest in India. The recent Shamans and Dissent show in his Hanart TZ space in Hong Kong grew out of the ongoing West Heaven project he founded in 2010. Other projects from 2013 include the third year of architecture and urbanism exchange between KRVIA in Mumbai and Tongji University in Shanghai (the Same-Same project), an Indian film festival in Hong Kong and an artist residency programme that has just furnished the first Raqs Media Collective solo exhibition in China. At the 2012 Shanghai Biennale (which he cocurated), Chang launched the Asian Circle of Thought, a forum with thinkers such as Ashis Nandy and Paik Nak-chung from across East and South Asia. And he has also made time for JiaLiTang, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to traditional Chinese Confucian li (rite) culture.

Called the Mexican Medici by Forbes, Eugenio López has long been top of a growing heap of Latin American collectors shaping the artworld to reflect their tastes. Among his collection of 2,000-plus works are pieces by Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Cy Twombly and Jeff Koons, as well as homegrown talents like Gabriel Orozco, Roberto Cortazar and Damián Ortega – art stars who owe at least some of their shine to his critical patronage. Last represented on this list in 2010, López reenters after opening Mexico City’s newest art institution: the $50 million David Chipperfield-designed Museo Jumex. The minute it opens (this month) in the capital’s posh Polanco quarter, the museum will become the largest private contemporary art museum in Latin America.

67 Yayoi Kusama

68 Vasıf Kortun

Artist Japanese Last Year: NEW

Curator Turkish Last Year: 86

With a career that includes politically motivated naked art happenings in 1960s New York and kawaii-cute sculptures of oversize pumpkins, flowers and dogs, all covered in the artist’s signature multicoloured dot motif, eighty-four-year-old Yayoi Kusama may not seem the most likely candidate for the title of highest-earning living female artist. Especially when combined with ongoing frail mental health, cited by the artist as the inspiration behind her singular vision. Yet in 2012 Bloomberg valued auction sales from across her career at almost $128 million. This year Kusama has international museum shows touring South America and Asia. A show of paintings, all made this year, opened Victoria Miro’s new London gallery, and she currently has an exhibition at David Zwirner New York, titled I Who Have Arrived in Heaven. In artworld terms, it certainly looks that way.

From the outside, last year, Istanbul seemed just another ‘hyperambitious’ (Kortun’s word) art scene. And then the Gezi Park protests happened. Even before this, Kortun, as the director of research and programmes at multivenue nonprofit gallery SALT, was Turkish art’s de facto spokesperson to the rest of the world and prime instigator of this burgeoning contemporary art capital. A 2012 New York Times article quoted an unnamed artist as noting that ‘there was before and after Vasıf’. As unrest on Istanbul’s streets blew up, the former CSS Bard director gave commentary and insider analysis from the thick of it. He’s navigated the aftermath well too. SALT recently stepped in to help stage an Istanbul Biennial undermined by the city’s volatile political situation, a reminder that if anyone can mediate between Turkey’s politics and the need to sustain its progressive artworld, it’s Kortun.

November 2013

135

Zeng Fanzhi

136

ArtReview

One of China’s most commercially successful painters is not only preparing for a solo exhibition of his own work in Paris, but also preparing to construct his own museum in Beijing to show the kind of art once made by painters in Paris. ArtReview meets a man with an expanded idea of the artist’s role in East–West exchange by Aimee Lin Photography by Wang Tao

Zeng Fanzhi in his Beijing studio

November 2013

137

Fly, 2000, oil on canvas, 200 × 179 cm. Courtesy Fanzhi Studio, Beijing

138

ArtReview

Zeng Fanzhi’s studio is situated in the northeastern suburbs of he also collects furniture, picture frames (dating from the Renaissance Beijing, in Caochangdi, where he has a small and quiet courtyard to the nineteenth century) and objects that were popular with ancient of his own. The studio is luxuriously spacious. Adorning one wall is Chinese literati for their ludic and relaxing qualities (writing instrua 4 × 4m oil painting, Praying Hands (2012), that was shown as part ments, rocks and ‘natural’ sculptures such as root formations). While of the artist’s solo exhibition at the Britannia Street branch of deeply infatuated with traditional Chinese culture, as an oil painter Gagosian Gallery London in 2012. Another canvas, recently finished, Zeng is profoundly influenced by Western art. Accordingly, he owns has been crated up for shipment to Paris, where Zeng’s next solo three oil paintings by Morandi and over 100 drawings by European show, at the Musée d’Art Moderne opens in mid-October. And artists from various periods. Zeng has a photograph of a small oil while this is by no means his first solo museum show, it is his first painting in his Samsung mobile. It’s a recent purchase – an 1880s midcareer retrospective and will present, in reverse chronological painting by Paul Cézanne that was once owned by Paul Gauguin. After order as you walk through the exhibiseveral changes in ownership, the little Zeng has always been a media favourite. tion, more than 40 of his paintings and painting is now on its way to China. sculptures from 1990 to the present day. The exhibition space and Zeng’s Over a dozen awards and trophies collection are a rehearsal for a larger Zeng enjoys considerable fame are lined up under his studio window dream: to build a museum (also to be in China as a result of the prodigious numbers his work has managed to realise at auction. In Sotheby’s called Yuan). The seeds of all this were sown over 20 years ago, when 2008 Hong Kong spring auction, a 1996 oil painting from his cele- the artist, in the company of prominent collector Uli Sigg, visited the brated Mask series was sold for the astronomical price of $9.66 million. Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland. There he saw, for the first time, According to ArtPrice’s latest tally, of the ten highest-priced contem- art lovers entering an open and friendly space in which they could porary artworks sold at auction in Hong Kong between July 2012 and appreciate art at their own leisure. It was “extremely beautiful and June 2013, three were by Zeng. A few days before the writing of this very moving”, he tells me. Of course, during the 1990s, Zeng couldn’t, article, Sotheby’s Hong Kong announced that the Belgian collectors in his wildest dreams, have imagined that he might one day build Guy and Myriam Ullens had put Zeng’s The Last Supper (2001), the largest a museum of his own. and best-known painting from the Mask series, up for auction. Most Things are different now. I pick up a copy of Japanese architect of Zeng’s highest-selling works have come from this series. Tadao Ando’s latest monograph from Zeng’s coffee table; a rendering Zeng has always been a media favourite. Over a dozen awards of the Yuan Museum is on its front cover. It is to be built beside the and trophies are lined up under his studio window, while photos of Liangma River, next to the Embassy District of Beijing, with Ando’s his appearances at various commercial events frequently appear in signature plain concrete adorning the riverside facade. The museum a range of magazines. A year ago, however, Zeng grew tired of the differs from Ando’s earlier, more disciplined neomodernist works, excessive social appearances and media exposure, and has since however, in that the surface features a curve that is sober, calm, but made a successful effort to keep a lower profile. Indeed it was only extremely difficult to construct. “I had planned to announce the via social media postings that we found out that this May he flew museum project next year, but Ando couldn’t wait to publish his in a cinema magnate’s private jet to Venice, where two large-scale architectural design in his new book. Many people who’ve seen the – 2.5 × 10m – oil paintings from his 2010 Landscape series are on show book have come asking questions,” Zeng says. This single building, in the central hall of François Pinault’s Punta della Dogana, a show- situated among high-end hotels in the middle of the city, is currently case for the Frenchman’s private collection of contemporary art. under construction but due to be structurally complete by 2014 and It’s become widely known that in early 2012 Zeng rented the top open a year later. There is an elaborate scale model of it in Zeng’s studio floor of one of Beijing’s many highrises, and subsequently converted it that can be deconstructed layer by layer like a Lego castle. Zeng holds into a 1,000sqm art space called Yuan Space. In old Chinese, the word a red laser pen and excitedly explains the design and future plans for yuan means the origin, the beginning and the source – a concept that each section of the building. one may project the idea of art onto. Several important shows have What’s more surprising to me is that the construction of this already been held there. The latest was a group show featuring young, 8,400sqm building (with three floors above ground and three below) is being funded in full by Zeng. Ando’s local, experimental artists curated by ‘I want to invest on my own… I expect designs are known for their technical Chinese contemporary art expert Karen complexity and the difficulty of their Smith. The summer slot featured painter that over the next 20 years, half my Yu Youhan, who, despite having played income will be invested in this museum’ subsequent construction. Zeng, on the an integral role in the development of other hand, expects the absolute best in contemporary Chinese art (from his early Expressionist painting in everything he does (when he needs anything, such as security, lighting, the 1970s and 1980s to his Pop art in the 1990s, as well as his signif- or museum-quality elevators, he typically requests quotes from the icant abstract painting throughout his career), for political reasons three top companies in the world). As a result, and even as the construchas never had a large-scale retrospective. At the beginning of 2013, tion progresses, it is no longer possible to estimate the total investment. Yuan Space exhibited more than 30 works from Zeng’s private col- “I want to invest on my own, I won’t seek sponsorships and additional lection. These included drawings on paper by masters such as Balthus, investments from my friends until they see the building is up. That Caspar David Friedrich and Giorgio Morandi. This show, Dancing with way I can be more convincing. On the other hand, I expect that over the Virtuoso, has now toured to the Nanjing University of the Arts. next 20 years, half of my income will be invested into this museum.” Indeed, Zeng is a prolific collector, with an interest that spans Finally, he has made mention of his friends. Arguably, in China multiple fields. In addition to paintings, drawings and photographs, Zeng is the artist with the largest group of wealthy friends. He

November 2013

139

consults for art collections of the superrich – both in mainland China and in Hong Kong – and frequently advises them to buy Western classics from auctions. He has influenced a number of the region’s wealthy who have no prior knowledge of art to begin their collections with classics from the canon of Western art-history that are valued well beyond the means of ordinary collectors. Upon completion, the temperature- and humidity-regulated Yuan Museum would be the perfect place to exhibit the masterpieces he helped others to collect. Indeed, he has made detailed plans for the museum’s long-term operations. He wants it to be home to Chinese, Western and contemporary art (as well as a section dedicated to experimental art), and he wants to accomplish this without state sponsorship. For any institution in China to hold an exhibition of classical Western oil paintings, the country’s current laws require an astronomical sum in customs bonds alone, which is why the vast majority of such exhibitions are organised by official cultural institutions backed by diplomatic assistance and state guarantees. For Zeng’s dream to come true, he and his friends must create a heretofore nonexistent art sponsorship tradition among the nouveau riche, where wealthy individuals provide sustainable support for expensive but nonprofit museum projects. Strangely, my conversation with Zeng rarely broaches the subject of his own art. Zeng, like many other painters, is cautious when talking about his own work. When it comes to specific works, he prefers to talk about techniques. People have described different phases in his work with statements such as ‘mixing a contemporary history of China with the artist’s personal history’, ‘signs of Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Balthus and Jackson Pollock may be found on his canvas’, or ‘a combination of Expressionism, abstractionism and traditional Chinese landscapes’. A constant sense of loneliness and tragedy may be found throughout Zeng’s paintings and

sculptures, perhaps reflecting a sliver of his innermost world. And no matter how hard he works to expand China’s collection of Western classics, Zeng prefers to think of his style as an extension of traditional Chinese paintings. People are whispering that he has created a series of paintings on paper, which, while unseen by the world, are a combination of Chinese literary painting traditions and his unique brand of abstractionist language. Zeng has said in another interview that he ‘[likes to] wander outside of the physical world, to be mired in his own thoughts, while still facing this world with sincerity. When [he] was still a student, life was simple. There was no marketplace or galleries… it was a wonderful time.’ To Zeng Fanzhi, it is still a wonderful time, maybe a better one, with the marketplace, the galleries and a midcareer retrospective in an art museum. Zeng, as a sensational individual case study, demonstrates how a Chinese artist, starting with paintings, conquered the modern art marketplace and galleries to become a worldwide influence, and further exerted his personal wealth and authority among the superrich to realise his dream of building a world-class museum. Zeng proclaims that in the library of the future Yuan Museum, visitors, especially students, will be able to view original paintings, sketches and photographs by Western masters up close (as long as they make an appointment), because to his mind there simply is no replacement for seeing originals up close. When he talks about the library, just as when he talks about his museum and collection, I can almost imagine the Zeng Fanzhi of his youthful years, when he started to study oil painting with a neighbour in his hometown Wuhan. That young man, full of energy and passion for art that borders on zealotry, is a distant memory. But the same spirit is still very much alive in the middle-aged man, as he sits quietly beside me. Translated from the Chinese by Frank Qian ar Work by Zeng Fanzhi is on show at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris through 16 February. As this article was going to press, the artist’s The Last Supper (2001) sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $23.3m, a new auction record for a work of Chinese contemporary art

Interior view of the artist’s studio in Beijing

140

ArtReview

Hare, 2012, oil on canvas, 400 × 400 cm (in 2 panels). Courtesy Fanzhi Studio, Beijing

November 2013

141

Paul Schimmel Curator Paul Schimmel spent 22 years building up the international reputation of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles: then, last year, he was fired. A move to a big institution somewhere other than California seemed a distinct possibility. But you can’t take Paul Schimmel out of the LA art scene and you can’t take the LA art scene out of Schimmel. As he embarks on a new adventure with supergallery Hauser & Wirth, ArtReview caught up with him to talk about LA and the move from the institutional to the commercial sector by Jonathan T.D. Neil

Photo: Felix Clay. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London & New York

142

ArtReview

When I sit down for breakfast with Paul Schimmel, he asks the first question, as if he’s conducting the interview and I’m the renowned curator who has recently joined up with one of the world’s three or four truly global, powerhouse galleries, and got the original owners to add my name to the shingle – Hauser Wirth & Schimmel – to boot. We’re at the Langham hotel in Pasadena, not far from the Norton Simon Museum or from where Schimmel lives, and once a regular breakfast spot for him and Richard Koshalek, most recently of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, but once Schimmel’s boss at LA MOCA. I’m in great company. So that question? “What shows have you seen?” I’m not surprised. Schimmel lives for making shows. He’s been doing it since the 1970s, before arriving at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art) in 1978 from the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, where he was responsible for American Narrative/Story Art: 1967–77 (1977), which included John Baldessari, Eleanor Antin, William T. Wiley, Ed Ruscha and Allen Ruppersberg, among other artists of, as Schimmel describes them, the “narrative conceptualist” persuasion. That show travelled west, to UC Berkeley and Santa Barbara, and apparently Baldessari was there each step of the way. “John treated me like a curator,” Schimmel says. “[He] went to every venue and helped me to get the very best work.” And after a stint back in New York at the Institute of Fine Arts and a master’s degree, Schimmel said to his wife, “You watch. My first job will be in California.” That was Newport, where the museum’s holdings of postwar California art grew by a reported 300 percent during Schimmel’s tenure. His second job in California? LA MOCA, which is where, from 1989 until the middle of last year, Schimmel not only mastered the craft of the substantial historical survey – his last show for the museum, which opened in October 2012, Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962, is a case in point – but also shifted the artworld’s (to that point rather moribund) thinking on the history and value – intellectual, aesthetic, commercial – of postwar California art with Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–81 (2011), which tackled the prehistory

of 1992’s Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s, in many ways that era’s and perhaps Schimmel’s career-defining exhibition (if such a narrowing of lens is possible). Why California and why LA? For the art, and the artists. Within months of arriving at Newport, Schimmel met Mike Kelley. His reaction? “I was like, ‘Yes! Thank God I don’t have to figure out how to invent this person.’ This person is here. When you find someone in your own generation who embodies the same kinds of interests, well, I knew this was where I was going to be. And there was no question that doing work deeply committed to the region but with international implications was doable.” There’s little question that he did it, either. And there’s little question that he was able to do it because of his commitment to the community of artists that included Chris Burden and Paul McCarthy, and of course Kelley and others. When I asked Schimmel whether he thought about quitting LA after MOCA’s board forced him out (presumably because he and then new but now former MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch didn’t mix well, but Schimmel wouldn’t say, and no one else is talking either), and following Kelley’s death in 2012, he said yes, he did. He considered New York, and Europe, but in the end he couldn’t leave, “not so much because of my own generation”, but because of the “younger artists, people like Mark Grotjahn and Thomas Houseago and Sterling Ruby and Laura Owens”, and because of that “languorous sense of community” that comes from a “place where you can both make something and show something”. “More than anything else,” Schimmel said, “it was that sense of being part of a community of younger artists who both believe in and appreciate their community and my place in it.” Someone else appreciated Schimmel’s place in that community as well. A few days before we spoke, Schimmel opened Re-View: Onnasch Collection – a survey of Reinhard Onnasch’s nearly unparalleled collection of postwar art from the 1950s to the 1970s (including a number of important works by Edward Kienholz from 1960 to 61) – at Hauser & Wirth’s Piccadilly and Savile Row spaces in London. As Schimmel tells me, “Iwan [Wirth] was very clever. Long before I joined the staff” – this is one of Schimmel’s great gifts: the ability to be modest

Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s, 1992 (installation view). Photo: Paula Goldman. © Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

November 2013

143

and self-aggrandising at once – “he put together a list of four or five Paul McCarthy, figures who embody what Schimmel appreciates most potential people to work on the show, which he’d been trying to do about California artists, their fiercely independent and ambitious for a long time. My name was on the list without me knowing it, and “can-do spirit”, which he traces back to Ed Kienholz himself, one of Mrs Onnasch said – and I’d worked with the Onnasches on the Out a generation of artists who were going to write their own history and of Actions show, and for the Rauschenberg Combines show, and for Hand- “were going to control not just what you see but how you see it”. Painted Pop; so at three different times over the last 20 years I’d worked “Ultimately”, Schimmel says, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel “was with them; I’m a known quantity – and Mrs Onnasch said, ‘Oh yes, the only opportunity to make something from the ground up in Los that would be good, but I don’t think he would do it’. And Iwan says Angeles, with a community of artists with whom I felt completely he looked at her and said, ‘Oh, you never know’.” Indeed you don’t, comfortable. And I believe it’s more than just the opportunities I’ll unless you’ve had the following exchange, as Schimmel told me: have as a curator, but also the opportunity to bring in what I think are “I was opening Under the Big Black Sun and Iwan calls me and asks, still woefully undervalued players in the artworld, which are art histo‘Paul, are you at the Geffen?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I’m going to be rians and curators. There’s a bigger role for these people. Parties are there in five minutes. I want to pick nice; scholarship is the foundation. For Of his new partner, Schimmel says you up.’ I said, ‘I’m in the middle of an me this is the great attraction. Ursula installation.’ And he says, ‘No, no, no. that, yes, ‘there is that sort of inscrutable [Hauser] and Iwan have a real sense of the importance of serious scholarIt’s just right in the neighbourhood. I quality of the Swiss, but it’s also want to show you something.’ I said, ship – taking a more scientific and less combined with an overwhelming joy ‘OK, the break’s at eleven. So pick me a celebratory approach to the work.” up at eleven.’ He takes me three, four It’s not clear when or exactly where and enthusiasm for things. He’s sort blocks away, and shows me just a beauHauser Wirth & Schimmel will open of like a California kid’ its doors. “Downtown is the focus,” tiful warehouse space. And he says, ‘What do you think?’ And I say, ‘I think it’s beautiful.’ And he says, ‘No, Schimmel told me. He has a clear idea of what he wants. A compound really, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘Iwan, no. No. I’m not thinking of buildings, of different spaces, indoor and outdoor, that afford about it.’ He says, ‘OK, what do you think we could do here? What some creative restrictions rather than the ever-looming tabula rasa of would make sense here?’ I said, ‘Well, things should be very different a 4,000sqm warehouse-cum-kunsthalle, plus some amenities that than the kind of programme you would have in New York and there will make it a destination. “LA is a very funny place,” Schimmel admits. should be fewer things, bigger, richer, deeper; and don’t think about “The classic Gertrude Stein line, ‘There is no there there’, really it in terms of how much stuff you can sell here as how much stuff can is true.” So it will be important that visitors to the new space will value the time and, as Schimmel says, “give it over”, because “if you enter into Hauser & Wirth.’ And he says, ‘Exactly.’” Of his new partner Schimmel says that, yes, “there is that sort of put on a great show, tons of people will come”. But, he continued, inscrutable quality of the Swiss, but it’s also combined with an over- “you have to make it rich enough and comfortable enough”, which whelming joy and enthusiasm for things. He’s sort of like a California most Angelenos know really distils down to two things – “Good kid”, but one who learned about California from Jason Rhoades and parking. Good parking”. ar

Re-View: Onnasch Collection (installation view), 2013. Photo: Alex Delfanne. Courtesy the artists and estates, Onnasch Collection, Berlin, and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London & New York

144

ArtReview

Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s, 1992 (installation view). Photo: Paula Goldman. © Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

November 2013

145

146

ArtReview

Isa Genzken As the German artist prepares for her first American museum retrospective, it seems as if, for once, a MoMA press release salted with hyperbole and peppered with accolades such as ‘most influential’ and ‘important’ might actually be on the mark by Martin Herbert

November 2013

147

Some years ago, during a stint of teaching in London’s art schools, by Thomas Struth (who, like her, studied under Gerhard Richter at I began perplexedly wondering if sculpture tutors now simply the Düsseldorf Kunstacademie, though only one of them would later handed out Isa Genzken catalogues to each fresh young arrival and marry him), this stands as the beginning of Genzken’s longstanding then strolled off to the pub. Certainly studio after studio cradled after- engagement with the powerful affect of urban architecture. glows of the sixty-five-year-old Berlin-based artist’s metropolitan Indeed, one could characterise her as an artist deeply responsive bricolage: dangling scraps of colourful synthetic materials, found to atmospheres and intensities – the most up-to-date ones, generally. photographs and newspaper clippings fastened to plinths, aiming to Also in Early Works were photographs of bands onstage and musical look sexily raucous. Most of the evidently hypnotised newbies were instruments in shop windows, and rock has been hugely important savvy enough to edit out paint-drenched mannequins and coloured to her: ‘I remember her generous spirit,’ the similarly visual/musicalPlexiglas. Still, their lairs were drenched in Eau d’Isa. minded Dan Graham wrote in 2008, ‘when, as a student… she introOf course, Genzken didn’t completely invent herself. She works duced my work and mentioned the music of Glenn Branca.’ Genzken in a junk-sculpture tradition that descends from Cubist collage revels in the new. During the late 1970s she began appropriating newsthrough Kurt Schwitters and Robert paper advertisements for the latest hi-fi Genzken’s expressively dishevelled art, equipment and later made numerous Rauschenberg. Her art has also been deeply marked by, and has conversed sculptures of radios, first as readymades reflective of what mankind builds with, Minimalism and Constructivism, and later as wry concrete sculptures and how it simultaneously destroys resisting their pure formalisms and with antennae bursting from their tops. along the way, has been the primary dosing them with worldly content, (She’s clearly fond of these: the format and she’d be nowhere if she’d never returned in World Receiver, 2012.) ‘When template for recent sculpture gotten wide eyefuls of big busy cities. I was photographing the hi-fi adverts,’ But her combination of materials is near patentable, as is her work’s she told her friend Wolfgang Tillmans during an interview for Camera simultaneous voicing of sensuous excitability, consumerist pizzazz Austria in 2003, ‘I thought to myself, everyone has one of these towers and entropic exhaustion. And as much as it evokes (and revels in) at home. It’s the latest thing, the most modern equipment available. a culture gone plastic, disposable and shimmying precariously So a sculpture must be at least as modern and must stand up to it.’ towards oblivion, building and simultaneously destroying, its sense (That photography might be sculptural is something many artists of navigating a flashy, pulsing informational sprawl also chimes with have only lately latched onto; Genzken has always seen it that way.) so-called post-Internet sculptural practice. As a result Genzken’s But modern architecture seems to have struck her most deeply, expressively dishevelled art has been – insofar as pluralism allows and as a result, the artist who says she always looks up, not down, for such a thing – the primary template for recent sculpture. So the appears to have located the most contemporaneousness in New York, aforementioned students might a city she first visited when she was twenty-one. ‘To me New have been aping a diversity of artists visibly in Genzken’s York has a direct link with sculpdebt (Rachel Harrison, Cathy ture,’ she has said. One might Wilkes, Sterling Ruby, Anthea see that in her architectural sculptures from the mid-1980s Hamilton, Nate Lowman, Trisha Baga, etc), no catalogues necesonwards, which resemble at once sary; but that hardly diminishes fragments from and maquettes Genzken’s stature. for buildings and, situated on the In outlining the aesthetic high metal-frame plinths that described above, we’re really every other sculptor uses nowaonly talking about her art since days, look highly contemporary. the mid-1990s, when Genzken Considering her I Love New seemingly started spending as York, Crazy City (1995–6) collages, one sees the sculptural style that much time in the DIY store as she would soon become her halldid combining her purchases in the studio. Prior to that, mark – distorted architectonics her career had been a model of splashed with colour and brisinstinctive aesthetic revision, tling with incongruities – in flat, Oil (detail), 2007 (installation view, German Pavilion,Venice Biennale, 2007). Photo: Jan Bitter. © the artist. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London & New York, her swerving between media diagrammatic form: strips of and Galerie Bucholz, Berlin & Cologne (books, photography, painting, red and silver tape hold together sculpture, films) inspirational in itself. Early Works, an exhibition this receipts, fragmented newspaper reports, pop-cultural imagery and March at the Berlin space of Daniel Buchholz, Genzken’s dealer for a photographs of buildings, netting and metal objects. The vertical quarter-century, demonstrated that she began during the early 1970s sculptures she made between 1998 and 2000, tiled with metal and in a minimalist-conceptualist mode by permuting systems of grey mirrored rectangles and named after friends (including Graham and rectangles. At the same time, though, she was working on Berlin 1973 Tillmans) and herself, are architectural, minimalist, anthropomor(1973), a downbeat photobook tabulating the city’s new modernist phic and obscurely hilarious. They are Minimalism with implicit buildings, making them look dour and alien. Predating similar works subject matter (thanks to their titles), another trope Genzken was

148

ArtReview

pursuing when minimal art was still au courant and that dozens of artists work with now that it isn’t. In her Fuck the Bauhaus: New Buildings for New York (2000) series, Genzken proffered a series of maquettes that were wild amalgams of texture and imagery: sheer Plexiglas sides, twists of orange mesh or yellow coils draped over miniskyscrapers, the shaky structures lashed together with tape. In 2008, she returned to para-architecture, volunteering a series of similarly wild sculptural proposals for the site at Ground Zero, Manhattan, emphasising community projects that would regenerate the area: a disco, a shopping centre, a car park, a hospital (albeit, exemplarily of the series, a pretty abstract one: Hospital (Ground Zero), 2008, is an approximately humanoid shape with a vase of artificial flowers for a head, and a geometric body wrapped in bright green material and perched on a trolley festooned with shot glasses). Genzken would put a shopping centre at Ground Zero, yet so much of her work in the 2000s has been a colourful accumulation of discarded consumer goods. This is key to the propulsive contradiction at the heart of her work, which posits that we live in a beautiful, fucked-up world. Oil, her installation for the German Pavilion (which she covered in orange scaffolding) in the 2007 Venice Biennale, might be her most cogent expression of that position: it was sad and glitzy, with downed astronauts in

one room (whose walls Genzken had tiled with brushed-aluminium plate) and others floating above a blind parade of suitcases embellished with dog photographs and plush toy owls – seemingly shuffling away from a series of dangling nooses – and scads of synthetic, severed heads. Oil, shown in the fifth year of the Iraq War, might have been about the black liquid that defines contemporary geopolitics (and from which our plasticised culture is literally made), but it was also about how objects and images are, nowadays, greasily ungraspable, feeling virtual even when three-dimensional. That sense of slippage and recombination clings to Genzken’s recent work, as in her 2012 show at Hauser & Wirth, London, where a row of busts of Nefertiti atop plinths were accoutred with sunglasses, and the African queen was counterpointed by reproductions of the Mona Lisa at the foot of each pedestal; where collages were spread across the floor of the space and black mannequins wore fashions (eg, trouserless suits and clingfilm) for, seemingly, the year 2057. Drawing more energy from fashion than architecture, then, this work – an intricate riot of shiny metal, heated colour, photographs, disarray, humour, melancholia, energy and weariness – couldn’t be anyone but Genzken’s. She captures, better than any other sculptor, the early-twenty-first century’s signature mix of glitter and doom. ar Isa Genzken: Retrospective is on show at MoMA, New York, from 23 November to 10 March

above Nofretete (detail), 2012, seven Nefertiti plaster busts, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: Alex Delfanne. © the artist. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London & New York, and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin & Cologne opening pages New York, 1981, c-print, 47 × 70 cm (framed: 58 × 80 × 3 cm). Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin & Cologne

November 2013

149

70 Richard Chang

Artist German Last Year: new

Collector American Last Year: 63

Hito Steyerl appears on this list not just because she has had a busy year exhibition-wise (her inclusions in various group shows are innumerable); but, with a PhD in philosophy, she is also representative of the increasingly important artist-as-theorist or theorist-as-artist breed. A new work shown as part of the Venice Biennale, for example, traces ideas around the proliferation and archival nature of digital images through various concepts of invisibility; in doing so, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .mov File (2013) picks up on themes from perhaps the artist’s best-known text, ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’ (2009). Her words and works aren’t just concerned with aesthetics and the vagaries of post-Net culture either; a new lecture/performance video in the Istanbul Biennial traces the connections between the arms industry and art institutions.

Richard Chang is not simply one of the more significant collectors of both Western and Asian art (via his Domus Collection), but also a key broker of ties between the two artistic communities. In part this is achieved through his roles as trustee of moma ps1, the Royal Academy and the Whitney (where he is also cofounder and chair of the Performance Committee), as well as an executive committee member of the International Council of Tate, where he is also a member of the Asia Pacific Acquisition Committee. And in part it is through his being the sponsor or instigator of specific projects and events – this year, among other things, he sponsored and produced a feature-length film by Beijing-based artist Huang Ran, and sponsored Pipilotti Rist’s first China exhibition at the Times Museum in Guangzhou.

71 Thaddaeus Ropac

72 Tim Neuger & Burkhard Riemschneider

Gallerist French Last Year: 66

Gallerists Both German Last Year: 64

Newly knighted by the French state and celebrating his 30th year among the bluest chips in the gallery trade (marked by an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs curated by Isabelle Huppert and a survey show of artists the gallery has worked with over the years, among them Jean-Michel Basquiat, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert & George, Antony Gormley, Alex Katz, Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol and Lawrence Weiner), the Paris-to-Salzburg-shuttling former intern to Joseph Beuys, with two spaces in both cities since adding his giant complex in Pantin to his Parisian base last year, now has his eyes fixed firmly on Asia, adding new artists from the region and doing the groundwork for his first gallery there, in an as-yet-undisclosed location and country.

150

While Berlin galleries have a strong tendency to move and migrate within the city, this dynamic duo has stayed put in a showroomlike courtyard space on Linienstrasse in Berlin-Mitte for as long as most Berliners can remember. It’s a home base for a powerful international artist roster including Olafur Eliasson (whose Institute for Spatial Experiments, a five-year research project, ends this winter), Isa Genzken (who’ll be on a us museum tour in 2014; see entry no 35), Ai Weiwei (now constructing a studio in Berlin and who will show at the Martin-Gropius-Bau next spring), Tobias Rehberger (whose solo show at the Schirn in Frankfurt opens in February) and many others. Next year the gallery celebrates 20 years with exhibitions by filmmaker James Benning in March and Pae White for Berlin Gallery Weekend – which Neuger and Riemschneider helped bring to life back in 2004.

ArtReview

69 Courtesy Hito Steyerl 70 Courtesy Domus Collection 71 Photo: Peter Rigaud / Shotview Photographer’s Management 72 Paweł Althamer, Dla Tima i Burkharda (detail), 2004. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Neugerriemschneider

69 Hito Steyerl

73 Lars Nittve

74 José Kuri & Mónica Manzutto

Museum Director Swedish Last Year: new

Gallerists Colombian/Mexican Last Year: 73

73 Courtesy M+ 74 Courtesy Kurimanzutto 75 Photo: Daniela Paoliello 76 Courtesy Asia Art Archives

Lars Nittve, founding director of London’s Tate Modern, and former director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, was appointed executive director of m+, Hong Kong’s projected Herzog & de Meuron-designed museum of twentieth- and twenty-first century visual culture in 2011. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2017. This year he has been busy building up almost everything else: a curatorial team (with Doryun Chong joining the team from moma as chief curator); the addition of approximately 1,000 works (including Guan Yi’s donation of 26 works of Chinese art) to the collection since the controversial donation and purchase of 1,463 works from Uli Sigg in 2012. Meanwhile, Nittve continues his curating practice with Song Dong’s 36 Calendars in Hong Kong and Lee Kit’s ‘You (you).’ in Venice.

Started in an apartment in 1999, Kurimanzutto is today one of the largest gallery spaces in Mexico City. And yet still the palatial space does not fully reflect the influence of the gallery, which is one of – if not the – most powerful galleries in Latin America. Founded and run by husband-and-wife duo José Kuri and Mónica Manzutto, Kurimanzutto has achieved the kind of monolithic, quasi-institutional status that most galleries can only dream of. Working with some of Mexico’s most established artists, such as Gabriel Orozco and Damián Ortega, they continue to expand their programme with younger international artists such as Colombian Gabriel Sierra and Argentine Adrián Villar Rojas, as well as the Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, going on to expand their influence both in Latin America and abroad.

75 Bernardo Paz

76 Claire Hsu

Collector Brazilian Last Year: 80

Curator Hong Kong Chinese Last Year: 72

Some 400,000 people are predicted to visit Inhotim this year. Not bad for a sculpture park located a long drive from the nearest city. But then Inhotim is a one-off. Aside from a few viewing-room purchases, its founder, Bernardo Paz (who Forbes estimates is worth $817 million), has commissioned most of the work on display at the 2,000-hectare park. He’s been ably assisted by some high-powered curators: after Jochen Volz took a position at London’s Serpentine Gallery last year, Paz was able to get Eungie Joo to move to the remote institution from the New Museum in New York. Large site-specific installations authored by the likes of Olafur Eliasson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rivane Neuenschwander and Matthew Barney are Inhotim’s stock in trade, housed in specially designed pavilions. And it’s expanding – Paz owns a lot more land in the state of Minas Gerais than the bit the park currently covers.

Claire Hsu is one of the key people when it comes to shaping the art map of Hong Kong: she is a committee member for the M+ museum and a guiding force in the Central Police Station Revitalisation Project, which will turn the former police station, magistracy and prison into an arts hub, slated to open in 2015. Since cofounding the Asia Art Archive (aaa) with Chang Tsong-zung in 2001, she has expanded the archive’s function from documentation to include research, exhibition and conversation. Two years ago the aaa started to digitalise its materials into a freely accessible archive. This summer, it soft-launched two digital collections from Vietnam. Other recent additions include materials from the aaa programmes, the Mao Xuhui Archive, the Zhang Peili Archive, Another Life and the Chabet Archive. Further collections to be available online this year include the archives of Fei Dawei, Lu Peng and Zheng Shengtian.

November 2013

151

78 Städelschule, Frankfurt

Gallerist Italian Last Year: 79

Art School German Last Year: new

Massimo De Carlo started the year at his London outpost – a three-floor Mayfair townhouse that has undergone several stages of refurbishment since first opening in June 2012 – with a hefty 15-year retrospective of John Armleder, followed by a separate show of new works by the Swiss artist. The Milanese home camp has been going steady too, but it’s Venice where the gallery’s artists have been most visible. Rudolf Stingel had a big retrospective at Palazzo Grassi, opening concurrently with the Biennale; and at various spots in the city of water one could find other artists from the roster – Roberto Cuoghi, Diego Perrone, Massimo Bartolini, Matthew Monahan, Matt Mullican, George Condo and Jim Shaw – including in Massimiliano Gioni’s Encyclopedic Palace exhibition. De Carlo also joined the Art Basel Hong Kong selection committee. A busy year.

With its roots in the 1817 will of merchant Johann Friedrich Städel and the founding of his ‘Städelsches Kunstinstitut’, the modern Städelschule has in recent decades become a pedagogic powerhouse, attracting an international roster of teachers and students, all committed to its distinctly critical teaching ethos and small student cohort (around 150). Current teaching staff comprise a who’s who of European artworld talent – Douglas Gordon, Michael Krebber, Judith Hopf, Mark Leckey, Isabelle Graw, Wolfgang Tillmans… with Peter Fischli about to join. Incorporating Portikus, which has become a leading exhibition space in its own right, the Städelschule has become a model for the independent, influential teaching-and-exhibition centre. Nevertheless, the school is having to face a tough economic climate and is currently looking for a new director.

79 Budi Tek

80 ccs Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson

Collector Indonesian Last Year: 76

Art School American Last Year: new

This year Budi Tek has spent some of his fortune and much of his time on architecture to house his art: in Shanghai in mid-December, he will hold the soft opening of the Yuz Museum, with the inaugural show dedicated to the local community, featuring works – from more than 1,500 in his collection – created by local artists or related to the local context. These will include Xu Bing’s Tobacco Project (1999–), a newly purchased ($3 million) painting by Liu Ye and a commissioned work from abstract painter Ding Yi. In Jakarta he is creating what he calls a ‘museum-type office’ by relocating his company and the Yuz Museum to a new space; of this, an area of more than 1,000sqm will be reserved for a permanent exhibition. Via his not-for-profit Yuz Foundation, Tek continues in his role as a patron, funding Asia Art Archive, the Indonesian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and Zeng Fanzhi’s retrospective in Paris.

Under Tom Eccles, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard is training a generation of sharp young curators. Alums form a growing network – from staff at alternative spaces in New York to the artistic director of the recent Mercosul Biennial and creative director of the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg. Visiting lecturers, scholars and artists in residence – Luke Fowler developed his film All Divided Selves (2011) there – bolster vigorous pedagogy, while the galleries at ccs and the neighbouring Hessel Museum provide hands-on training and host exhibitions like this summer’s retrospective of Haim Steinbach and Beatrix Ruf’s Helen Marten show. Adding even more heft, the curator, writer, artist and educator Paul O’Neill recently replaced critic Johanna Burton – she remains on staff – as director of the center’s graduate programme, and the library acquired the archives of Colin de Land and Pat Hearn.

152

ArtReview

77 Courtesy Massimo De Carlo 78 Photo: Artmax. Licensed Under Creative Commons 79 Courtesy Yuz Foundation 80 Mark Handforth, Wishbone, 2010; Franz West, Couch, 2004. Photo: Chris Kendall

77 Massimo De Carlo

Global vs Local As the artworld becomes increasingly global, does it run the risk of destroying cultural difference in its efforts to promote art that is legible, easily understandable, instantly translatable and culturally exchangable? And how are today’s artists responding to the challenge of art’s new Esperanto? by J.J. Charlesworth

‘Increasingly, it has become clear that in the emerging global scenario no one cultural form will be enforced on all. Instead, it will be one culture made of many cultures, one history made of many histories – a whole made of disunited fragments, with no imperative to unite them.’ So wrote American critic Thomas McEvilley. In 1991. McEvilley, who died in March this year, was an early and vocal critic of the Western-centric view of art and art history, and saw in the then-emerging discourses of postcolonialism the possibility of a more generous, less strident and dogmatic account of art as a part of a pluralist, multicultural global commons. We can only speculate about what McEvilley might have made of the no 1 on this year’s Power 100: Sheikha Al-Mayassa – a woman, a Muslim, a member of an autocratic ruling elite, a builder of museums, whose mission is to expand her country’s presence and influence in the now-global system of contemporary art. But what one can say for sure is that the critique of the Western-centric art culture that McEvilley and others developed hasn’t necessarily led to a wished-for cultural pluralism, despite the fact that art scenes have exploded into life across the globe during the last 20 years. In the actually existing global scenario of 2013, it might be the case that, even amid all the apparent cultural diversity, one cultural form is indeed being ‘enforced on all’. By contrast to the artworld of 1991, the artworld of 2013 is no longer simply international, but global. There is a difference between the two: where once there were national art cultures, something different has begun to emerge – a single ‘artworld’ that is no longer dominated by a few powerful national scenes. Even well into the 1980s, we might recall, art scenes were closely tied to a specific national context – the influence of New York art, driven by its unprecedented market boom, or the heyday of German painting, bolstered by the substantial (and then-unusual) institutional collecting of contemporary art. Art institutions, collectors and art markets tended to sustain artistic production on a national model: the Tates, Pompidous and MoMAs acted as the ‘top level’ of art’s institutional system, emphasising national and domestic cultural agendas rather than promoting international circulation and exchange. Today the ‘national’ is no longer such an operative concept. There may be thousands of artists from around the world in Berlin

154

or London, for example, but few would argue that there is anything distinctly ‘German’ or ‘British’ about the art that is made. This doesn’t mean that contemporary art before 1990 was nationalistic – artists have for a long time had a fractious and awkward relationship to questions of nation and identity – but that the cultural institutions that supported contemporary art were oriented towards a notion of a national public, rather than an international one; that art schools drew from a domestic student population; and that official bodies tended to be focused on the national context. (And when there appeared to be a revival of a national cultural expression in contemporary art – the Young British Art moment would be a good example – it turned out to be a form of national self-parody, just at the moment when things were changing in the opposite direction.) But after 1990, events took an unexpected turn. As the last, exhausted vestiges of nationalist and colonial perspectives unravelled throughout the Western democracies, as the collapse of the Berlin Wall tore up the old power-map of the world, as network communications began to facilitate new channels of contact, contemporary artists began to detach themselves from the various national and domestic infrastructures that had framed them, developing a new set of networks, contacts and peer allegiances that operated between local scenes. This was the beginning of the age of what today we recognise as the ‘networked artist’ – the artist who finds opportunities in multiple localities across several continents, facilitated by the equally global curator. It was also the beginning of the age of the global biennial, a phenomenon that embodied the speculative, nervous uncertainty of a world that was beginning to realise that the global powers that had previously called the shots were no longer quite so much in charge. So instead of the national centres of London, Paris or New York, artistic communities today operate across a more dispersed, reciprocal set of coordinates – Berlin, Glasgow, Los Angeles, Brussels, Beijing, Johannesburg, Cairo, São Paulo, Dubai, Hong Kong – many still national capitals, but others not. What has changed is a question of perspective. Rather than international contacts and international travel being the exception (it’s easy to forget how costly it was to travel between the big art centres, even into the 1980s), they have become

ArtReview

the norm, or at least the level to which all artists eventually aspire. The twentieth-century paradigm of big, static art centres was, in part, a product of the politics and economics of migration (of European artists congregating in Paris, then Parisian avant-gardists migrating to New York, for example). The dispersed, nodal, twenty-first-century paradigm is the air-miles artworld, the economy class artist, the business class curator… What, though, is the experience of locality in an artworld organised under the banner of the global rather than the national? What, furthermore, is the experience of cultural identity and difference, as national scenes become subordinate to the more disembodied and groundless network of the global? In the first instance, it’s noticeable how the question of cultural identity has started to unravel and mutate. The ethical project of postcolonialism and multiculturalism – a tolerance for cultural difference and a mutual respect for the cultural histories and practices of others – no longer has the same momentum now that the oncedominant West finds itself competing with a rising East and South. While a commonly held respect for cultural differences underpins the possibility of every international biennial and art fair, the acceleration of exchanges between global art centres has had the effect of eroding the stable, static aspect of cultural identity – in order to be legible, understandable and, ultimately, commercially exchangeable, cultural difference is converted into a globally recognisable product, self-consciously preserving identifiable characteristics of cultural difference, for both global and local audiences. Rather than addressing itself primarily to its own community, art that manifests signs of its locality addresses itself to an abstracted, global viewer – this is Lebanese art, created in the awareness that it will be seen by, say, a Korean. This is Egyptian art, to be seen by a Brazilian; this is Turkish art, to be seen by an American. Subtly, the shift is away from the national audience to the global audience; the local then comes to mean merely one of many localities that constitute the global artworld. Ironically, the consciousness of difference homogenises it – an artworld Esperanto. This parallax shift in perspective is perhaps why we see a number of trends in new art that reflect this changing context, particularly when artists make the nature of migration and hybridity the subject of their work. Look over the last year’s issues of ArtReview, and we find profiles on artists Danh Vō and Meriç Algün Ringborg. Vō’s work plays with global location and connection (his dismantled reproduction of the Statue of Liberty, its pieces scattered around the world; his father handwriting copies of a letter from a dead, nineteenth-century European missionary to Vietnam), while Ringborg examines the legal and bureaucratic definition of national identity precisely at the point where migration seeks to cross borders. These are artists who not only comment on the breakdown of identity in the flux of migration and global informational circulation, but who themselves embody these realities, personally and professionally. Hybridity, flux, fragmentation – such themes characterise increasingly the output of artists who circulate in an artworld defined by the tension between addressing a domestic public and a global one. Perhaps the other key trend negotiating the tension between local and global publics is the expansion of a vocabulary of globally recognisable references to common experience, wherever you happen to be from, or based. Current political art, with its extensive attention

to easily transferable concerns such as regional conflict, consumer culture and environmental and labour politics, is the perfect form of a globally recognisable, exchangeable art culture. Similarly, the pressure to globalise accelerates the spread of common intellectual points of reference, as critical production is dispersed across centres, further consolidating artistic communities around common questions. In this way, the very notion of a ‘local’ public or audience is altered; the local audience is one that, by definition, is oriented towards the global artworld institution, while local concerns, tastes and aspirations are made visible only if they find their parallels elsewhere globally. What do these changes mean for the nature of the local? It is, of course, the case that not all artists, not all artworks, are subject to the generalising gaze of the global artworld. Art scenes remain embedded in cities, have their own internal interests, are driven by the biases and enthusiasms of a finite number of individuals in a certain place and time. Local differences persist. But in this new global system, what would it mean to assert a local that is opaque to the global, that was resistant to its forms of translation? There is no going back to a point where the national sphere was the space from which one ‘looked out’. In London in 1993, it was still possible to classify the gallery scene by how inward or outwardlooking a gallery was. But they were mostly British galleries. Today, the most successful galleries in London are outposts of galleries whose origins lie elsewhere, while those who originated here are busy expanding globally. A critical perspective on the local might come to recognise that the most pernicious aspect of the expanding global artworld is its power to recast local differences as an endlessly commodifiable range of essentially impotent, exotic curiosities – there is no space between Takashi Murakami’s globally consumable J-Pop art and Jeff Koons’s universal consumer culture banalities. What the global reveals is that all localities, however different, are essentially subject to the same global forces, whose tendency is to diminish everywhere people’s ability to act democratically to assert their rights and assert their interests. A local that was truly critical of this global form of dispossession, however, would need to locate this shared predicament among the many localities of art. No 1 in this year’s Power 100 is a figure whose mission is to build a museum infrastructure, from scratch, top-down, where there was previously only the desert. This is truly formidable power, as it competes, instantly, at the level that similar institutions have spent decades evolving towards. And a global artworld dominated by such entities is one to which local scenes inevitably become subservient, unable to connect to each other, but mediated by these new gatekeepers of global circulation. The flatter, more cooperative global network that began to emerge in the 1990s is now being reabsorbed in a more hierarchical, monopolistic structure of powerful institutions, whose horizon is no longer national, but global in ambition. In 2013, then, we might suggest a dystopian inversion of McEvilley’s early optimism. It requires only the deletion of one word: ‘Increasingly, it has become clear that in the emerging global scenario, one cultural form will be enforced on all. It will be one culture made of many cultures, one history made of many histories – a whole made of disunited fragments, with no imperative to unite them.’ Today, finding the imperative that unites them is the task of all localities, together, against the power of the global.

November 2013

155

Thaddaeus Ropac 71

156

Lars Nittve 73

157

Zeng Fanzhi 83

158

Nicolas Bourriaud 87

159

Maureen Paley 96

160

Anselm Franke 92

161

Zhang Wei 91

162

Jennifer Flay 99

163

Artist British Last Year: NEW

Philosophers French, American, British, British Last Year: NEW It’s a sign of today’s cross-disciplinary artworld that the ideas influencing it are less and less mediated by the art academy, accessed instead by artists and curators directly from other academic disciplines. So it is with the remarkable growth in interest in the philosophical tendency speculative realism – a viral mutation of Continental philosophy that seeks to rethink age-old assumptions about the relationship of the subject to the world, emphasising an ultra-objective take on human beings and their relationships to material things and forces. Sound complicated? It is. And as a fast-evolving field, it’s hard to pin to any one individual or definite group; but Meillassoux’s 2008 book After Finitude is increasingly referenced by artists, and Graham Harman and other speculative realists had a significant presence in the critical workings of Documenta 13.

With his ecstatic smoke-and-mirrors rhetoric and approachable patter crossbred with a quasi-lusty approach to objects and images, Mark Leckey is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. In recent years, however, it has become apparent that the Turner Prize winner has had a powerful influence on a younger generation of digital natives, and has also acted as an artistic conduit for several of the preoccupations that are circulating within the artworld today, such as animism, speculative realism, economic theory and the history of broadcasting. This year saw new work at the Venice Biennale, a solo show of new work at LA’s Hammer Museum and, back in the UK, a touring exhibition, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, which was a deep consideration of the nature of objects. Leckey has the ability to draw a broad spectrum of audience into his heartfelt technological inquiry.

83 Zeng Fanzhi

84 Christian & Karen Boros

Artist Chinese Last Year: NEW

Collectors Both German Last Year: 70

According to ArtPrice’s ranking of the top ten auction results for contemporary art in Hong Kong between July 2012 and June 2013, Zeng Fanzhi is currently China’s most expensive artist – works painted by him occupy the no 1, no 2 and no 7 spots in the list of most-expensive artworks sold during that period. The highest ranked of these, Society (2001), realised $3,348,800. Auction results tell how this superstar is supported by a new generation of Chinese collectors – a couple of business-minded superrich in Mainland China and Hong Kong. As this year’s Power 100 list is released, he will be the subject of a major midcareer retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Six months after that he will make the official announcement of his new museum project, the Yuan Museum, dedicated to showcasing Western and Chinese figurative art, to be built by Tadao Ando in Beijing and financed out of the artist’s own pocket.

Even though it’s only been open for five years, ‘the bunker’ is a fixed destination on Berlin’s art itinerary. Christian and Karen Boros recast the Third Reich colossus as a showcase for curated selections of their 700-odd works beginning in 2007. Appointment-only tours run through the space’s second exhibition (a new group of works was hung last September, with this exhibition being a bit more low-key than the first), which features plenty of hometown talent: Klara Lidén, Wolfgang Tillmans, Michael Sailstorfer and newcomers Awst & Walther all figure large this time around. Then again, so does Ai Weiwei. In a converted pumping station across town, Christian (who runs part of his ad agency from there) also spearheads Distanz Verlag, a publisher churning out high-quality art books at “two a week”. Meanwhile, Karen has been heading the VIP programmes for Art Basel’s various iterations since 2005.

164

ArtReview

81 Courtesy (from left) Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux & Ray Brassier 82 Courtesy Mark Leckey 83 Courtesy Fanzhi Studio 84 Photo: Wolfgang Stahr

82 Mark Leckey

81 Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier & Iain Hamilton Grant

85 Courtesy Galleria Continua 86 Courtesy Garage Center of Contemporary Culture 87 Photo: Henry Roy 88 Photo: Suki Dhanda

85 Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi & Maurizio Rigillo

86 Dasha Zhukova Collector Russian Last Year: 85

Gallerists All Italian Last Year: 82 Just as well there are three people behind Galleria Continua, because with three vast gallery spaces in three different countries, and artists such as Antony Gormley, Subodh Gupta and Anish Kapoor on the books, they have their work cut out. Another Galleria Continua A-lister, Ai Weiwei, recently made use of the 10,000sqm Le Moulin space (an hour west of Paris) for an architectural project concerning housing in Inner Mongolia; Michelangelo Pistoletto has made new work for a current solo show at Continua’s gallery in the Tuscan town of San Gimignano; and in Beijing, the one space that could be thought of as located in a traditional art centre, Qiu Zhijie and Berlinde De Bruyckere have shown this past year. A lot on? Let’s throw in the latest in a series of exhibitions organised at the medieval Château de Blandy-les-Tours, this time featuring Nari Ward.

Despite being housed in a temporary gallery space in Moscow’s Gorky Park (albeit one designed by architect Shigeru Ban), while Rem Koolhaas’s plans for the conversion of an old Stalinist-era restaurant are realised on a neighbouring site, Dasha Zhukova’s private foundation, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, has not slowed its pace. One of the big draws of this year’s Moscow Biennale is the institution’s current exhibition of new work by John Baldessari, his first solo show in the country. Zhukova has also made some astute staffing choices: Hans Ulrich Obrist acts as international programme adviser, working alongside new recruit Kate Fowle, formerly executive director of Independent Curators International. Neither was Baldessari the only artist who got his first solo outing in Europe east of the Urals this year: Philippe Parreno had a survey of new work in February. You want to be embraced by Mother Russia? Dasha’s the lady to know.

87 Nicolas Bourriaud

88 Victoria Miro

Critic French Last Year: Reentry (56 in 2010)

Gallerist British Last Year: 97

After a brief disappearance into the nether regions of the French Ministry of Culture, our favourite French critic, cofounder of the Palais de Tokyo and father of the omnipresent relational aesthetics movement, returns to a position of institutional power as director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In his first few months, he has dusted away the school’s classicist cobwebs, revitalised its studio programmes and put it on the map as one of the city’s most important exhibition spaces for contemporary art.

With Yayoi Kusama having joined Chris Ofili at David Zwirner, three of Victoria Miro’s established artists now also show with major international galleries that have a significant London presence, the third being Peter Doig at Michael Werner. However, Miro has come back with a major addition of her own this year, in the form of an elegant new gallery space in London’s Mayfair. And other gallery artists continue to maintain a high profile. Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibitions in 2013 have included a yearlong public project in Munich’s main squares and a major sitespecific installation in the old textile galleries at the V&A in London. Meanwhile the ever-popular and populist Grayson Perry becomes the first visual artist to deliver the BBC’s annual Reith Lectures. The recent addition of Kara Walker to the gallery’s roster won’t do any harm either.

November 2013

165

90 Franco Noero & Pierpaolo Falone

Gallerist British Last Year: NEW

Gallerists Both Italian Last Year: 91

Last year, as Sean Kelly prepared to move to his spectacular new 2,000sqm space in Hudson Yards, The New York Times reported his take on being the first gallery in the neighbourhood as: ‘How can you go wrong with a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street?’ Complete with soaring library and dedicated black-box performance space – a potent symbol of the gallery’s commitment to live and durational art – Kelly has had no trouble luring the art crowd, with a mixed programme of theory-rich group shows and starry solos from a tight, museum-friendly list recently joined by crowdpleasing techno faerie Mariko Mori.Offsite, Kelly’s crew has been busy charming wealthy hipsters (via Net-a-Porter collaborations from Terence Koh and Marina Abramović), metropolitan grandees (the 2013 Praemium Imperiale Prize in Sculpture for Antony Gormley) and even children (Leandro Erlich’s Dalston House, 2013). Who needs doughnuts?

Franco Noero has an artist list most galleries would kill for: from Mike Nelson, Simon Starling and Jason Dodge to Tom Burr, Lara Favaretto and Francesco Vezzoli, the Turinese dealers superbly balance international and Italian talent, commerciality and cred. Nor, their rooting in Turin says a little swaggeringly, do they need to be in Milan or Rome to do it. This year, while their artists smoothly scooped up kunsthalle shows and studded biennales, the gallery’s directors opened a new, bigger space to showcase them at home: a Flavio Albanese-converted 600sqm former factory building with a big central skylight, inaugurated with a show by Gabriel Kuri. A section of the gallery, meanwhile, has been given over to nonprofit and publishing enterprises. Noero and Falone mean business, clearly, but it’s their consistently excellent taste and adventurism that makes Noero one of Italy’s most vital galleries.

91 Zhang Wei

92 Anselm Franke

Gallerist & Curator Chinese Last Year: NEW

Curator German Last Year: NEW

Eleven years ago, when Vitamin Creative Space was founded, Zhang Wei had a vague vision of a space that would function between a gallery and a not-for-profit organisation. Today it has evolved into a platform that crosses over multiple disciplines: one defined by a distinctive methodology, based on daily toil with artists, just as a farmer works day-by-day in the field. As a result, the physical boundaries of Vitamin become invisible, and its artists’ activities can be sensed throughout the world. Lee Kit and Koki Tanaka represented, respectively, Hong Kong and Japan at the Venice Biennale; Xu Tan and Duan Jianyu’s exhibitions this year have afforded them each a unique position in the art scene of China; Ming Wong recently opened a new show, Me in Me, at the Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, and Olafur Eliasson published his book Never Tired of Looking at Each Other: Only the Mountain and I and a video piece, Your Embodied Garden (both 2013).

If anyone is refreshing curatorial practice right now it is Anselm Franke, whose three-year curatorial project Animism (2010–13) – quickest off the mark in recent considerations of artefacts as art and objects as endowed with life – sparked discussions that continue still. Formerly director of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp and curator of the KW Institute in Berlin, and curator of Manifesta and other biennials, Franke lately became head of visual arts and film at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Here, via shows including Animism, The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the Outside (with Diedrich Diederichsen) and the current After Year Zero, he’s proved himself a master of the essay-exhibition: rich, sprawling topographies of imagery, research and speculation. We need more ‘infonauts’, Nicolas Bourriaud wrote in The Radicant (2009), sure-footed guides through informational excess; Franke is definitely that.

166

ArtReview

89 Photo: Steve Benisty 90 Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano. Courtesy Galleria Franco Noero 91 Photo: Hu Fang 92 Photo: Jakob Hoff

89 Sean Kelly

93 Courtesy Forrest Nash 94 Photo: Seung Mu Lee 95 Courtesy National Art Gallery 96 Courtesy Maureen Paley

93 Forrest Nash

94 Sunjung Kim

Website American Last Year: NEW

Curator South Korean Last Year: NEW

How much footfall does the average commercial gallery have for each show, do you think? A few hundred people? It’s never going to be 1,250,000 people. And it’s for that monthly-page-view figure that Forrest Nash, the twenty-five-year-old founder of the Contemporary Art Daily blog, appears on this list. At least once a day, Nash, who started the site in 2008 while still a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, posts a series of images from an exhibition, chosen from a brimming inbox of pitches. But Nash’s influence isn’t just that he can exponentially expand a show’s audience; a recent Artforum essay by Michael Sanchez made the persuasive argument that a certain strain of white-light-lit midlevel galleries are catering their shows directly to the blog, and that certain ‘memes’ can be traced in art practices that, though geographically diverse, have all been covered by the website.

Seoul-based curator Sunjung Kim received recent international attention for being one of six artistic codirectors of Gwangju Biennale 2012, a Documenta 13 agent and the artistic director of the 6th Seoul International Media Art Biennale. She is the founder of SAMUSO: Space for Contemporary Art, a curatorial office based in Seoul that aims to create a new form of art institution without an exhibition space. SAMUSO has realised a series of curatorial projects, including a group exhibition, Unknown Forces, in Istanbul, and the solo exhibitions of Simon Fujiwara, Jesse Jones, Lee Bul and Jewyo Rhii in Artsonje Center, Seoul, where Kim worked as chief curator from 1993 to 2004. However, for Kim, the major achievement of the year is The Real DMZ Project 2013, the annual art project that she initiated in 2011, based on research into the Korean demilitarised zone and the border district between North and South Korea.

95 Eugene Tan

96 Maureen Paley

Museum Director Singaporean Last Year: NEW

Gallerist American Last Year: 94

In 2010 Eugene Tan started work as the programme director (special projects) at the Singapore Economic Development Board, oversaw the development of Gillman Barracks, a visual arts hub in Singapore, and more generally set the stage for Singapore’s potential emergence as a Southeast Asian arts hub. In May he was appointed director of the National Art Gallery, Singapore. In addition to directing key museological and curatorial aspects of the gallery’s work, Tan is strengthening the institution’s profile as a leading player in the visual arts scene.

In recent years many of East London’s cluster of commercial galleries have relocated to postcodes SE1 and W1, or disappeared altogether. But not longstanding resident Maureen Paley, whose gallery will be 30 years old next year. Continuing to represent a broad spectrum of international artists, the gallery’s more established lineup, which includes Turner Prize-winners Wolfgang Tillmans and Gillian Wearing, and nominees Rebecca Warren and Liam Gillick, is balanced by shows of artists lesser known or less seen in London. This year the gallery hosted first exhibitions by structuralist LA filmmaker Morgan Fisher and New York artist and activist Tim Rollins and K.O.S. Other shows featured new paintings by Cologne-based Michael Krebber; an immersive installation by photographer Anne Hardy; and text and image works by established ‘walking’ artist Hamish Fulton.

November 2013

167

98 El Anatsui

Collectors All American Last Year: 95

Artist Ghanaian Last Year: NEW

Sure, there are other billionaires who might spend bigger, flashier amounts, but Don and Mera Rubell, who continue to add works to one of the world’s largest private contemporary art collections, serve as a model for any self-respecting collector who wants a public profile. Their private museum in Miami (to which city they were instrumental in bringing Art Basel, back in 2001) serves up a decent programme: current darling Oscar Murillo got an early outing towards the end of 2012. Daughter Jennifer, a food writer turned artist, has had a few shows of her own, including a solo booth for Stephen Friedman Gallery at this year’s Frieze London, and her brother, Jason, worked with Sotheby’s on a curated auction in September.

Although the sixty-nine-year-old Ghanaian-born, Nigeria-based sculptor and teacher has been active since the 1970s, the last decade has seen El Anatsui’s reputation rocket. His breathtaking, shimmering curtains made of thousands of throwaway metal objects – bottle caps, aluminium wrappings, metal graters, printing plates – have wowed crowds across the world this summer, from the Brooklyn Museum of Art to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and the Venice Biennale. El Anatsui’s work, meanwhile, has been yielding record prices at auction and waiting lists at his galleries, as collectors and institutions find in his flowing, abstract ‘fabrics’ both aesthetic wonder and a stoic commentary on globalisation, consumerism and the cultural, social and economic histories of West Africa.

99 Jennifer Flay

100 Eko Nugroho

Art Fair New Zealand Last Year: NEW

Artist Indonesian Last Year: NEW

Under Jennifer Flay’s resolute stewardship, FIAC, the Paris fair she directs, has evolved from provincial sideshow to main event on the international calendar, surpassing London’s Frieze for fair-time fun and frolic while attracting just as heavyweight a slate of top and cutting-edge galleries and artists. It also offers a much more coherent programme of corollary events: Flay, a Kiwi and former Paris-based gallerist who took over as FIAC artistic director in 2003, has delicately de-Gaulised the event; it still has its distinctive French flavour – helped in no small part by a bijoux setting in the Grand Palais – but the focus has widened to the rest of Europe, Asia and beyond.

With his recent exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, participation in the Venice Biennale and collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Eko Nugroho is the star artist on the Indonesian art scene. Having grown up in the period of upheaval and reform after the 1997 Asian financial crisis and post-Suharto Indonesia, he represents a new generation who never waste their freedom of expression. His art, consisting of drawing, traditional shadow puppetry, textiles, installation, sculpture and performance, is normally embedded in local traditions and global popular culture, but marked by strong sociopolitical commentary. He also plays a key role in the local creative community, founding the comic zine Dagingtumbuh, then a similarly titled store; meanwhile, the FFR Project (Fight for Rice, in collaboration with Wedhar Riyadi) is a ‘shop’ project in Yogyakarta that allows other artists to distribute their art.

168

ArtReview

97 Mera, Don, Jennifer & Jason Rubell

The 2013 ArtReview Power 100

1 Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani 11

26 Maja Hoffmann 33

51 Toby Webster 51

77 Massimo De Carlo 79

2 David Zwirner 5

27 Matthew Slotover & Amanda Sharp 23

52 Tobias Meyer & Cheyenne Westphal 75

78 Städelschule New

3 Iwan Wirth 4

28 Eli & Edythe Broad 26

53 Michael Ringier 55

4 Larry Gagosian 2

29 Barbara Gladstone 24

54 Tino Sehgal 69

5 Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones 10

30 Tim Blum & Jeff Poe 34

55 Sadie Coles 49

31 Bernard Arnault 28

56 Jeff Koons 58

81 Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant / Speculative Realism New

32 Nicholas Logsdail 29

57 Michael Govan Reentry, 40 in 2009

82 Mark Leckey New

8 Glenn D. Lowry 9

33 Monika Sprüth & Philomene Magers 38

58 Emmanuel Perrotin 62

83 Zeng Fanzhi New

9 Ai Weiwei 3

34 Gavin Brown 40

59 Eva Presenhuber New

84 Christian & Karen Boros 70

10 Massimiliano Gioni 19

35 Isa Genzken 46

60 Daniel Buchholz 50

85 Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi & Maurizio Rigillo 82

11 Marina Abramović 35

36 Steve McQueen 59

12 Alain Seban & Alfred Pacquement 14

37 Dakis Joannou 36

13 Cindy Sherman 13

38 Victor Pinchuk 32

14 Marian Goodman 18

39 Thomas Hirschhorn Reentry, 44 in 2007

15 Gerhard Richter 6

40 Theaster Gates 56

16 Marc Spiegler 16

41 Rosemarie Trockel 42

17 Marc & Arne Glimcher 17

42 Liam Gillick 30

18 Adam D. Weinberg 15

43 Agnes Gund 44

19 François Pinault 21

44 Wolfgang Tillmans 43

20 Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev 1

45 Pierre Huyghe Reentry, 48 in 2006

21 Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda & Brian Kuan Wood 12

46 Matthew Marks 39

6 Nicholas Serota 8 7 Beatrix Ruf 7

22 Jay Jopling 20 23 Klaus Biesenbach 22 24 RoseLee Goldberg 25 25 Patricia Phelps de Cisneros 27

61 Luisa Strina 71 62 Takashi Murakami 60 63 John Baldessari 83 64 Ryan Trecartin New 65 Chang Tsong-zung 67 66 Eugenio López Reentry, 38 in 2010 67 Yayoi Kusama New 68 Vasıf Kortun 86 69 Hito Steyerl New 70 Richard Chang 63 71 Thaddaeus Ropac 66

79 Budi Tek 76 80 Bard College New

86 Dasha Zhukova 85 87 Nicolas Bourriaud Reentry, 56 in 2010 88 Victoria Miro 97 89 Sean Kelly New 90 Franco Noero & Pierpaolo Falone 91 91 Zhang Wei New 92 Anselm Franke New 93 Forrest Nash New 94 Sunjung Kim New 95 Eugene Tan New 96 Maureen Paley 94

47 Anne Pasternak 48

72 Tim Neuger & Burkhard Riemschneider 64

97 Mera, Don, Jennifer & Jason Rubell 95

48 Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi 84

73 Lars Nittve New

98 El Anatsui New

49 Udo Kittelmann 37

74 José Kuri & Mónica Manzutto 73

99 Jennifer Flay New

50 Brett Gorvy 74

75 Bernardo Paz 80

100 Eko Nugroho New

76 Claire Hsu 72

November 2013

169

Caline Aoun

Almut Linde Radical Beauty 12.10.13 — 24.11.13

The Future of Smart Technology in your Hands

Experimentica Festival of Live Art 06.11.13 — 10.11.13 3 AM: Wonder, Paranoia and the Restless Night 14.12.13 — 02.03.13

15 November - 14 December 2013

noshowspace noshowspace.com 13 Gibraltar Walk London E2 7LH

www.chapter.org /chaptergallery Image: Danny Treacy, Them #25, 2010. Lambda digital C print mounted on aluminium, 215 x 180 cms.

Gallery Art Review Ad 09.13.indd 1

Peter von Kant

03/10/2013 12:32

Private view 25 October 2013 6–8pm 25 Tanners Hill London SE8 4PJ +44 (0)7944 696343 mail@petervonkant.com www.petervonkant.com

David Grandorge Without Sun

FREE ENTRY

SHAKTI: NIKHIL CHOPRA

WOLVERHAMPTON ART GALLERY

26 October 7 December

16 NOVEMBER 2013 - 5 APRIL 2014 Bringing together performance, painting and photography, Nikhil Chopra’s work reflects upon personal histories and India’s colonial past. The artist will be undertaking a live performance over three days from 28 - 30 November 2013 at the Art Gallery.

Open Mon – Sat, 10am – 5pm (closed Bank Holidays) LICHFIELD STREET, WOLVERHAMPTON, WV1 1DU WWW.WOLVERHAMPTONART.ORG.UK

2013 III

14.17 NOV 2013 GRAND PALAIS exhibitors 303 ALAiN GUthArC ANALix ForeVer ÀNGeLs bArCeLoNA AsYMetriA beN broWN beNDANA|PiNeL berNArD boUChe berNheiMer bertrAND GriMoNt boNNi beNrUbi boUroUiNA brANCoLiNi GriMALDi brUCe siLVersteiN CAMerA obsCUrA CAMerA WorK CArLos CArVALho ChAriM CheiM & reAD ChristoPhe GAiLLArD ChristoPhe GUYe CoNrADs DANieL bLAU DANZiGer DAViD ZWirNer DoMiNiQUe FiAt DU JoUr AGNÈs b. eAst WiNG eDWYNN hoUK ÉriC DUPoNt ÉriC FrANCK esPAiVisor

esther WoerDehoFF FeLDbUsChWiesNer FeroZ FiFtY oNe FiLoMeNA soAres FLAtLAND FrAeNKeL FrANÇoise PAViot FrANK eLbAZ GAGosiAN GiLLes PeYroULet GitterMAN GLAZ GrAFiKA LA estAMPA GreVe GUiDo CostA ProJeCts hACKeLbUrY hAMiLtoNs hANs P. KrAUs Jr. hoWArD GreeNberG hUsseNot iLAN eNGeL iN CAMerA iVorYPress JAMes hYMAN JÉrÔMe PoGGi JohANNes FAber JÖrG MAAss KLAUs KLeiNsChMiDt KLeMM’s KoeNiG & CLiNtoN KUCKei + KUCKei LAUreNCe MiLLer Le rÉVerbÈre Les FiLLes DU CALVAire

LUisotti LUMiÈre Des roses M+b M boChUM MAGDA DANYsZ MAGNiN - A MAGNUM MArtiN AsbÆK MeLANierio MeM Metro PiCtUres MiChAeL hoPPeN MiChAeL WerNer MiChÈLe ChoMette MUMMerY + sChNeLLe NAiLYA ALexANDer NiKoLAUs rUZiCsKA obsis oDiLe oUiZeMAN PACe / MACGiLL PArADise roW PAris-beiJiNG PArrottA PArtiCULiÈre Peter LAV Photo & CoNteMPorArY PoLAris PoLKA PrisKA PAsQUer PUrDY hiCKs rAiÑA LUPA rhoNA hoFFMAN robert hershKoWitZ robert KLeiN robert KoCh

robert MANN robert MorAt roLF Art roseGALLerY rx sAGe PAris sChooL oLiVier CAstAiNG siLVerLeNs stePheN bULGer stePheN DAiter steVeN KAsher steVeNsoN sUsANNe ZANDer sUZANNe tArAsieVe tAiK PersoNs tAKA ishii tANit tAro NAsU tAsVeer thADDAeUs roPAC the thirD GALLerY AYA thessA heroLD thoMAs ZANDer toLUCA VAsAri ViNtAGe VoN LiNteL VU’ WestLiCht WiLMA toLKsDorF xiPPAs YANCeY riChArDsoN Yossi MiLo

PUbLishers ACtes sUD AKAAKA ANDrÉ FrÈre ANtiCUAriA PoeMA 20 APertUre booKshoP M ChLoÉ et DeNis oZANNe CoNtrAsto DirK K. bAKKer FiLiGrANes hArPer’s hAtJe CANtZ irViNG ZUCKer Kehrer VerLAG Les ÉDitioNs De L’ŒiL LibrAirie 213 MACK MÖreL oLiVer J WooD oNLY PhotoGrAPhY PhAiDoN rM steiDL sUPer LAbo tAsCheN tissAto NAKAhArA xAVier bArrAL

Avec le soutien de / With the support of

WWW.PARISPHOTO.COM

Classified Advertisements

Mick Peter, A Simple Mind, 2013

Austria

UNIQA UNIQA Fine Art Underwriting is a partner for individual collectors and art institutions across Europe, with offices in London, Vienna, Zurich, Vaduz, Budapest and Prague. Sachversicherung AG, Untere Donaustrasse 21 1029 Vienna, Austria artuniqa.at

Belgium Almine Rech Gallery Daniel Lergon Matthieu Ronsse 9 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 20 Rue de L’Abbaye Abdijstraat B-1050 Brussels alminerech.com

172

Tim Van Laere Gallery Everything and More 24 Oct – 30 Nov Open 11–6, Tue–Sat Verlatstraat 23–25 2000 Antwerp timvanlaeregallery.com

Denmark Martin Asbæk Gallery Cathrine Raben Davidsen 10 Oct – 23 Nov Open 11–6, Tue–Fri; 11–4, Sat–Sun Bredgarde 23, 1260 Copenhagen martinasbaek.com

Galerie Perrotin Ryan McGinley Sophie Calle 13 Nov – 11 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 76 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris perrotin.com

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin George Baselitz: The Dark Side 8 Sep – 2 Nov Open 10–7, Tue–Sat 69 Avenue de General Leclerc 93500 Pantin ropac.net

To Vienna January 19, 1889

Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve Paris Delphine Balley: Measuring the Sky 28 Nov – 5 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 7 Rue de Pastourelle 75003 Paris suzanne-tarasieve.com

Honoured gracious Lady! It seems to me that you are especially fond of heavily spiced and strongly peppered dumplings. Now that I have cleared my conscience in this regard, I remain dementedly yours, etc., etc., etc. Yours from inside a packing case, H.W. P.S. I have at least a half dozen packets of vegetable suet ready for you.

France Galerie Laure Roynette Romina de Novellis: Wool and Roses 10 Oct – 23 Nov Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 20 Rue de Thorigny, 75003 Paris galerie-art-paris-roynette.com

ArtReview

Praz-Delavallade Joel Kyack 23 Nov – 11 Jan Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 5 Rue des Haudriettes, 75003 Paris praz-delavallade.com Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais Yan Pei-Ming: Help! 21 Oct – 23 Nov Open 10–7, Tue–Sat 7 Rue Debelleyme, 75003 Paris ropac.net

Germany Museum Folkwang Thomas Schütte: Frauen 21 Sep – 12 Jan Open 10–6, Tue–Sun; 10–10.30, Fri Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen museum-folkwang.de

Painting Forever!

Jeanne Mammen, Antje Majewski, Katrin Plavčak, Giovanna Sarti

Spain

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

Deutsche Bank KunstHalle

Italy Brand New Gallery James Krone: Waterhome: We Is Somebody Else Ryan McNamara: Ryan McNamara’s Candid 24 Sep – 16 Nov Open 11–1, 2.30–7, Tue–Sat Via Carlo Farini 32, 20159 Milan brandnew-gallery.com Galleria Continua Michelangelo Pistoletto / Etel Adnan to 11 Jan Open 2–7, Tue–Sat Via del Castello 11 53037 San Gimignano (SI) galleriacontinua.com MDC Steve Claydon/Matt Mullican 19 Nov – 20 Dec Open 11.30–7.30, Tue–Sat Via Giovanni Ventura 5 20134 Milan massimodecarlo.it

Norway Galleri Riis Fredrik Söderberg: Jag är den som Begraver Gudar i Guld och Ädelstenar 10 Oct – 10 Nov Open 12–5, Tue–Fri; 12–4, Sat–Sun Filipstadveien 5, NO-0250 Oslo galleririis.com

Andréhn – Schiptjenko Ridley Howard 3 Oct – 10 Nov Open 11–6, Tue–Fri; 12–4, Sat–Sun Hudiksvallsgatan 8, Stockholm andrehn-schiptjenko.com

Collective Gallery Karen Cunningham: Factish Field / Project 1 12 Oct – 10 Nov Open 11–5, Tue–Sun City Observatory & City Dome, 38 Calton Hill, Edinburgh, EH37 5AA collectivegallery.net

To Vienna September 20, 1889 [Extra large postcard] Honoured gracious Lady! Would it be possible to do me a special favour and tell me if the book of poems I sent you brought the appropriate levels of misery? Yours distended and extended, H.W.

Switzerland

Rahmenatelier Kanzlei Picture framing, digital printing and Cruse scans for fine art Rahmenatelier–Kanzlei, Strassburgstrasse 11, CH-8004 Zurich, Switzerland rahmenatelier-kanzlei.ch

Kunsthalle Bern Kaspar Müller 19 Oct – 1 Dec Open 11–6, Tue–Fri; 11–6, Sat–Sun Helvetiaplatz 1, CH-3005 Bern kunsthalle-bern.ch

to 15 Dec Open daily, 10–6; 12–6, Mon Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX southbankcentre.co.uk

Sweden

18 Sep – 10 Nov 10969 Berlin, Germany berlinischegalerie.de

Dayanita Singh Go Away Closer

Emtone Print Company

MDC Rob Pruitt: The Suicide Paintings 14 Oct – 30 Nov Open 11–7, Tue–Sat 55 South Audley Street London W1K 2QH massimodecarlo.com V22 Providing affordable workspace for over 400 tenants 100 Clements Road London SE16 4DG v22collection.com/studios

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013 National Portrait Gallery 14 Nov – 9 Feb St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE npg.org.uk

Thomas and Paul Thomas and Paul showcases contemporary figurative and abstract art, set over three rooms

Boutique litho printer, offering award-winning print services. Brochures, point of sale, leaflets through to building wraps, pop ups and banners, we print it all.

Open 10–6, Tue–Fri; 11–3, Sat 20 Bristol Gardens London W9 2JQ thomasandpaul.co.uk

John Jones Framers Unit 6, Locksbrook Road Trading Estate, Bath, BA1 3DZ emtone.co.uk

Prince’s Drawing School Tuition and courses for those who wish to develop their observational drawing skills

19–22 Charlotte Road London EC2A 3SG princesdrawingschool.org

November 2013

Bespoke picture framing, art installation, fine art conservation, collection management and artwork printing

Clifton Terrace , London N4 3JG johnjones.co.uk

173

USA, New York Clifton Benevento Michael E. Smith 2 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11–6, Tue–Fri 515 Broadway New York, NY 10012 cliftonbenevento.com Foxy Production Mode 1 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11–6, Tue–Sat 623 West 27th Street New York, NY 10001 foxyproduction.com Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art Art at the Core: The Intersection of Visual Art, Performance and Technology 27 Oct – 27 Jul Open 11–5, Fri; 12–6, Sat–Sun 1701 Main Street, PO Box 209 Peekskill, NY 10566 hvcca.org Klaus Von Nichtssagend Jonah Koppel: NONE YET 25 Oct – 8 Dec Open 11–6, Wed–Sun 54 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002 klausgallery.com Lombard Freid Projects Ulrich Lamsfuss: Escape Escapism 1 Nov – 4 Jan Open 10–6, Mon–Fri 518 West 19th St New York, NY 10011 lombard-freid.com MOCA Room to Live: Recent Acquisitions and Works from the Collection 5 Oct – 12 Jan Open 10.30–5.30, Mon–Fri; 10.30–6.30, Sat–Sun 250 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012 moca.org MoMA PS1 Mike Kelley 13 Oct – 2 Feb Open 12–6, Thu–Mon 22–25 Jackson Avenue Long Island City, NY 11101 momaps1.org

174

To Vienna November 26, 1889 Honoured Gracious Lady! In my meditation kit, which Sigismund has in his possession, there is a gastric sieve. Please direct him to give the aforementioned sieve to a reliable tinsmith who could replace the damaged handle with a new one. This is to be carried out immediately. Most sincere and snivelling thanks, H.W. New Museum Chris Burden: Extreme Measures 2 Oct – 12 Jan Open 11–6, Wed–Sun; 11–9, Thu 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002 newmuseum.org UNTITLED Parker Ito, Haley Mellin, Brad Troemel, Artie Vierkant: Trending 27 Oct – 15 Dec Open 11–6, Tue–Sat 30 Orchard Street, New York, NY 10002 nyuntitled.com

USA, Los Angeles

Luisa Strina Marcellus L. 7 Nov – 7 Dec Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 10–5, Sat Rua Padre João Manuel 755, loja 02 Cerqueira César, 1411-001 São Paulo galerialuisastrina.com.br Mendes Wood DM Roberto Winter/Paulo Monteiro 28 Sep – 16 Nov Open 10–7, Tue – Fri; 10–5, Sat Rua da Consolação 3358, Jardins, 01416-000 São Paulo mendeswood.com Mendes Wood DM | Vila Romana Nan Goldin 28 Sep – 16 Nov Open 10–7, Mon–Sat Rua Marco Aurélio, 311, Vila Romana 05048-000 São Paulo mendeswood.com Nara Roesler Julio Le Parc 3 Oct – 30 Nov Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 10–5, Sat Avenida Europa 655, 01449-001 São Paulo nararoesler.com.br

Hong Kong

François Ghebaly Patrick Jackson: The Third Floor 9 Nov – 21 Dec Open 11–6, Tue–Sat 2245 East Washington Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90021 ghebaly.com

Edouard Malingue Gallery Los Carpinteros: Heterotopias to 23 Nov João Vasco Paiva 27 Nov – 18 Jan Open 10–7, Mon–Sat First floor, 8 Queen’s Road, Central edouardmalingue.com

Brazil Baró Pablo Siquier/Mariana Sissia 21 Sep – 18 Jan Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 11–5, Sat Rua Barra Funda 216, Santa Cecília 01152-000 São Paulo barogaleria.com Fortes Vilaça Iran do Espírito Santo 26 Sep – 9 Nov Open 10–7, Tue–Fri; 10–6, Sat Rua Fradique Coutinho 1500 05416-001 São Paulo fortesvilaca.com.br 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

ArtReview

Japan Mori Art Museum Roppongi Crossing 13: Out of Doubt 21 Sep – 13 Jan Open 10–10, Mon–Sun 53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, Tokyo mori.art.museum Tomio Koyama Gallery Satoshi Hirose: Cherubino 23 Oct – 11 Nov Open 12–7, Tue–Sat 1-3-2-7 F Kiyosumi, Koto-ku, 135-0024, Tokyo tomiokoyamagallery.com

Trousers Off To Bethel!

A big thanks to everyone who supported this year’s Bethel Village Fête, attendance was beyond what we imagined and it was a fantastic afternoon with the weather being ‘good to us’ (although it rained during the festivities, it totally failed to dampen enthusiasm). The theme was ‘trousers’, and it was surprising how many of us are closet trouser-wearers. Every conceivable kind of pantaloon was on display: chinos, jeans, plus fours, dungarees, drainpipes, large-rimmed floppy creations, you name it and someone was wearing it. After Bethel Youth Drama performed rock opera ‘Tommy’ to their usual high standard (an impressive feat of memory) there were Vicar rides, a Novelty Dog Show, and a handful of memory-stirring indigenous artefacts. I found myself strolling around in a brown woollen monk’s habit, rope belt and all, higher than a church steeple! If your specialty was guessing the ingredients of cakes, well, you could have done that too! Mrs Satchidananda won for the second year in a row with her correct listing of the contents of ‘Orange Sunshine’ (a strong clean dose in an orange tab that when taken in a pleasant setting can be completely exhilarating). Once again local village ‘bobby’ PC Annette Driscoll, who reports that three babies were born and two deaths occurred (about the statistical average for a fete of upwards of one hundred people), capably handled the policing of the event and the fundraising tombola. We will be making substantial donations to St Basil’s Mushroom Fund and my Argentinean girlfriend Patty. In addition we will be making a donation to Iceland as a big Bethel ‘thank you’ for letting us use its grounds and facilities. We would also like to thank all our sponsors, especially Sergio for the use of his Chevy. The good news is we want to do it again and scrape the stratosphere this time next year!

Turon Travel, Inc.

Serving the Art World Since 1979 Art Fairs & Biennales Quarterly eDirectory Museum Groups & Art Specialist Tours North America Art Basel in Miami Beach ADAA: The Art Show The Armory Show Art Los Angeles Contemporary Art Rio Art San Diego Art Silicon Valley/ Art San Francisco Art Southampton A rt Wynwood Design Miami/ Basel EXPO CHICAGO Frieze NYC IFPDA Print Fair ZONA MACO

Europe Basel ARCO Art International (Istanbul) Art Paris Art Faiir Berlin Art Week DesignMiami/ Basel FIAC Frieze Manifesta 2014 (St. Petersburg) Paris Photo TEFAF Venice Biennal 2013

Asia Hong Kong Art Stage Singapore

artbasel.com | facebook.com /artbasel | twitter.com /artbasel

artreview.com/subscribe

178

For more on artist Michael DeForge, see overleaf

179

Contributors

Omar Al-Qattan

Daniel McClean

Nicolas Bourriaud

is a trustee of the AM Qattan Foundation and chair of the Palestinian Museum and of the Shubbak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture in London. This month he writes on the sticky subject of multiculturalism.

is a practising lawyer specialising in art and cultural property law at Howard Kennedy FSI (London). He is a strategic adviser to international commercial and not-for-profit arts organisations as well as artists and artists’ estates. He cowrote Commissioning Contemporary Art (2013) with Louisa Buck. He has recently cocurated (with Patrick Charpenel) a survey exhibition of the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX at the Fundación Jumex, Mexico City (to February 2014). This month he looks at the legal battle between artist Orlan and pop star Lady Gaga. For further reading he suggests two books he was commissioning editor for, The Trials of Art (2007) and Dear Images: Art, Copyright and Culture (2002).

is the director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.Before his appointment in December 2011 he headed the studies department at the French Ministry of Culture (2010–11), he was Gulbenkian Curator for Contemporary Art at Tate Britain in London (2007–10) and adviser for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev. He also founded and codirected the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, between 1999 and 2006. As a curator, he organised the exhibitions Estratos in Murcia (2008), Altermodern at Tate Britain, London (2009) and Monodrome (Athens Biennale, 2011). He has published several theoretical essays, including Relational Aesthetics (1998), Postproduction (2002) and Radicant (2009). This month he writes on power.

Kwan Sheung Chi

Contributing Writers

is an artist based in Hong Kong. He graduated in 2003 with a BA in fine arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also a founding member of local art groups Hong Kong Arts Discovery Channel (HKADC), hkPARTg (Political Art Group) and Woofer Ten. Kwan was awarded the Starr Foundation Fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council in 2009 to participate in an international residency programme in New York. He is the recipient of the Award for Young Artists 2011, Hong Kong Arts Development Council; and a finalist of HUGO BOSS ASIA ART Award for Emerging Chinese Artists 2013. This month he photographed various Hong Kong-based luminaries of the Power 100.

Omar Al-Qattan, Karen Archey, Nicolas Bourriaud, Matthew Collings, Tom Eccles, Gallery Girl, Paul Gravett, Jonathan Grossmalerman, Sam Jacob, Maria Lind, Daniel McClean, Zarmeené Shah, Mike Watson

Yasuyuki Takagi is a photographer. He was born in Tokyo and studied Media Arts at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He now lives and works between Tokyo and New York, and his clients include Brutus, GQ, Le Monde, The Telegraph and Wallpaper* among others. His personal work has been exhibited at the Capsule Gallery and Corridor Gallery in New York, and ArtLigue Gallery in Paris. He was selected as one of the ten finalists at Hyères festival of photography in 2012. His first book, Petite Foret Profonde,will be published by Funny Bones Editions this month. For this issue he photographed various New York-based luminaries of the Power 100. Mick Peter is an artist based in Glasgow. His work is currently featured in British British Polish Polish: Art from Europe’s Edges in the Long ’90s and Today at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Trademark Horizon at SWG3 in Glasgow, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things at Nottingham Contemporary and The British Art Show 7 (various venues). This month he hijacks the Classifieds.

Contributing Editors Tyler Coburn, Brian Dillon, Hettie Judah, Joshua Mack, Laura McLean-Ferris, Christopher Mooney, Niru Ratnam, Chris Sharp Contributing Artists/Photographers Kwan Sheung Chi, Bridget Collins, Michael DeForge, Lena C. Emery, Philippe Parreno, Mick Peter, Donja Pitsch, Andrea Stappert, Yasuyuki Takagi, Wang Tao

Michael DeForge (preceding pages)

The awe and the awfulness of our outer and inner workings permeate the peculiar comics of Michael DeForge. “I used to have a lot of body anxiety and nightmares growing up. Bodies just give you so much to work with – they’re always so pretty and goofy and awful, all at the same time.” DeForge, twenty-six, Ottawa-born and Toronto-based, juggles a ‘day job’ as a commercial illustrator and a character, effects and props designer on the hit Cartoon Network animated series Adventure Time (2010–) with his prodigious, almost profligate authorial comics. Luckily, he doesn’t need much sleep and instead seems to purge the stuff of his waking dreams onto the page. He’ll even use the altered state of a 24-hour flu to draw an eightpage story that he will soon get Risographed into another limited-edition collectible. For some years, his febrile, at times nausea-inducing graphic aberrations have been coagulating into an interconnected series about his native ‘weird Canada’.

180

This ‘DeForge-iverse’ encompasses Spotting Deer (2010), The Sixties (2012), Canadian Royalty (2012) and Muskoka (2012), as well as Sticks Angelica (2013) and Elizabeth of Canada (2012), two of three longer narratives he is concurrently serialising. Spotting Deer, for example, comes across as some increasingly repulsive yet compulsive wildlife documentary, based on fictional expert Clay Figgle’s third study of the species. The deer in question is ‘actually a kind of terrestrial slug’, while its antlers are ‘colonies of parasitic polyps that are first attached to the deer during adolescence’. DeForge escalates the absurdities, documenting cultural responses to the creature such as abstract paintings, a comedy newspaper strip and a crudely pixelated computer game, as well as certain deers’ adaptation into urban society, providing regenerative ‘psychic meat’ and ‘sporting prosthetic antlers’. He ends with an ironic patriotic flourish: ‘Deer stand proud as stalwart

ArtReview

champions of our most cherished national values: multigrain, diversity and volunteerism.’ DeForge swept the Ignatz Awards for North American alternative comics this September in three categories, outstanding series, anthology and artist, an achievement for a relative newcomer. His new story for ArtReview revives the amorphous business models of the dot-com boom and bust. That queasy unease seeps through here again, as baffled receptionist Terry goes from an awkward first peck with his coworker to the animalistic drive of the mermaid pressing up against the glass wall of her tank. As he told Publishers Weekly, ‘I used to ’shroom a lot, and I was always struck by that buzzing, hyper-defined texture that everything would take on. I usually want my comics to read a bit like that, as if the whole world is filled with a prickly, hostile energy vibrating beneath the surface of everything’. Paul Gravett

ArtReview

Editorial

Publishing

Production

ArtReview Ltd

Editors Mark Rappolt David Terrien

Publisher Patrick Kelly patrickkelly@artreview.com

Production Director Allen Fisher allenfisher@artreview.com

Galleries

Operations Executive Letizia Resta letiziaresta@artreview.com

ArtReview is published by Art Review Ltd 1 Honduras Street London EC1Y 0TH T 44 (0)20 7490 8138

Associate Editors J.J. Charlesworth Martin Herbert Jonathan T.D. Neil Senior Editor, Web Editor Helen Sumpter Managing Editor Oliver Basciano Copy Editor Hettie Judah Editorial Director (Asia) Aimee Lin Art Direction John Morgan studio Design Carol Montpart Pedro Cid Proença Trainee Keren Goldberg Jason Yen editorial@artreview.com

UK, Australasia and South Africa Jenny Rushton jennyrushton@artreview.com Benelux, France, Southern Europe and Latin America Moky May mokymay@artreview.com Northern Europe Indra Moroder indramoroder@artreview.com North America Debbie Shorten debbieshorten@artreview.com

Chairman Dennis Hotz

Distribution Consultant Adam Long adam.ican@btinternet.com

Managing Director Debbie Shorten

Finance

Subscriptions

Finance Director Lynn Woodward lynnwoodward@artreview.com

To subscribe online, visit artreview.com/subscribe

Financial Controller Errol Kennedy Smith errolkennedysmith@artreview.com

Asia, Middle East and Russia Florence Dinar florencedinar@artreview.com

Trainee Georgie Brinkman

Lifestyle Stacey Langham staceylangham@artreview.com

North America ArtReview Subscriptions IMS, 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 500 Virginia Beach, VA 23451-2983 T 1 800 428 3003 UK/Europe/Rest of World ArtReview Subscriptions 3rd Floor North Chancery Exchange 10 Furnival Street London EC4A 1YH T 44 (0)20 8955 7069 E artreview@abacusemedia.com

Charlotte Regan charlotteregan@artreview.com

Reprographics by PHMEDIA. Copyright of all editorial content in the UK and abroad is held by the publishers, ArtReview Ltd. Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden save with the written permission of the publishers. ArtReview cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage to unsolicited material. ArtReview (ISSN No: 1745-9303, uSpS No: 021-034) is published monthly except in the months July, August and February by ArtReview Ltd and is distributed in the USA by Asendia USA, 17B South Middlesex Avenue, Monroe Nj 08831 and additional mailing offices. Periodicals postage paid at New Brunswick Nj. POSTMASTER: send address changes to ArtReview, 17B South Middlesex Avenue, Monroe Nj 08831

Artwork and photo credits on the covers Rirkrit Tiravanija & Philippe Parreno, Power Eats the Soul (20/400) for ArtReview and Power Eats the Soul (20/20) for ArtReview Asia pages 97, 101, 117, 153 Artwork by Rirkrit Tiravanija & Philippe Parreno on pages 120, 121, 123 Yasuyuki Takagi

November 2013

on pages 122, 124, 160, 177, 182 Lena C. Emery on pages 125, 157 Kwan Sheung Chi on page 156 Bridget Collins on page 158 Wang Tao on pages 159, 163 Donja Pitsch on page 161 Andrea Stappert

181

Off the Record November 2013 After a long day of pulling names out of a Philip Treacy Silk Rose and Feather Fascinator, it’s time to party and celebrate our muchimitated but never bettered Power 100. I pick up another glass of the Louis Roederer Cristal 2004 and reflect on the happy coincidence that a case of the fine champagne was hand-delivered by a London staffer of a leading international commercial gallery just that morning as the magazine hit the newsstands. Now here we are, a few hours later, spraying the bubbly on the walls of our basement bar with a bevy of exotic dancers of significantly smaller stature who I understand were sent round by a leading performance artist renowned for her wacky sense of humour. “Great bubbly, this,” I observe to the editor as he balances a plate on the head of a dancer and waves a rolled 500 Hungarian forint note around. He grunts and gestures at the fine Swiss chocolates that had also arrived earlier courtesy of a leading Zurich not-for-profit with a handwritten message, ‘Power is ROUGH ;) xx’. I’m just about to tuck in when the handsome young managing editor sprints in, topless but with his modesty spared by a pair of red Dolce & Gabbana bathing-suit briefs. “We’re surrounded!” he yells, before collapsing into a replica Le Corbusier LC4 chaise longue. “Outside. There must be at least 30 of them. Angry critical theorists shouting that we’re the lapdogs of the wave of late global capital that has infected the artworld.” The managing editor starts sobbing, his tears quickly wiped away by a dancer armed with wet wipes. I spring up, slightly tearing my 3.1 Phillip Lim oversize parka in the process. “Leave this to me, I know how to handle these bearded losers.” As I march up the stairs from the basement, I am filled with a state of perfect outward calm allied with a sense of coiled physical readiness. The doors swing open, and in front of me I see a crowd of mostly middle-aged men who look like they’ve maxed out on their Next storecards.

One of the better-looking ones pipes up: “Your so-called Power 100 is merely the outpourings of subjectivist metaphysicians, a litany of speculative idealism that I reject,” he shouts at me, to the wild cheering of his comrades. I clear my throat. “Look, guys, critical theory is dead. Kaput. Finished in the early years of the last decade. You’re never going to make the Power 100. Now fuck off back to Goldsmiths or France or wherever. We’ve got the exotic dancers in and I’m waiting for a delivery of Benzo Fury by the party-loving interns from Christie’s.” “The world is only world insofar as it appears to me as world,” replies the not unhandsome thinker. “You think that your human experience of existence in the artworld is interesting? My Principle of Factiality clearly shows that things could be otherwise to what they are. Speculative realists should be at number one, two and three!” “We’ve got the Principle of Factiality, we’ve got the Principle of Factiality, la-la la la! La-la la la!” the rest of them sing to the Arsenal tune of “We’ve got Mesut Özil”. It doesn’t quite scan, but it’s clear that they’ve practised the chant, and they break into a conga around me. It might be good-natured, but I know that any moment it could go all Foucault on my ass. “Hold on a minute,” I shout. “If you’re right and there’s a world out there that is indifferent to human knowing and human being, that doesn’t care about our Power 100 list, then surely you wouldn’t want actually to be part of this charade? And if thought cannot access things in themselves but only things as they appear to us, well isn’t this a list as it appears to us and so a good thing?” The crowd falls silent and looks down at its Hush Puppies. “Fuck it, you’re right,” their spokesman finally concedes. “The laws of nature are entirely contingent. What can I know? What can you know? Run away with me, Gallery Girl, and let’s make love while I wear my academic’s leather biker jacket and you wear that Ai Weiwei mask that featured in Anish Kapoor’s YouTube video back in the day.” I can’t say I’m not tempted. These jokers might not have made it higher than the low parts of the list this year, but I suspect the horny Frenchman will one day be top of my table and, who knows, perhaps even the Power 100. But not today, and not this year. I turn and head back inside to the comforting bosom of good hard cash. Still, I know that there’s a storm coming. Gallery Girl

MODERN. CONTEMPORARY. ABU DHABI ART. 20 - 23 November 2013 UAE Pavilion and Manarat Al Saadiyat Saadiyat Cultural District Abu Dhabi, UAE

abudhabiart.ae

Organised by:

Principal sponsor:

Refi ned, rare and in gold: Sunday best watches from NOMOS Glashütte. Available at selected NOMOS watch specialists worldwide. Find your nearest retail partner here: www.nomos-watches.com, or order online at www.nomos-store.com.