ArtReview October 2013 by ArtReview

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October 2013

9 770004 409093

James Franco on identity politics

vol 65 no 7

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Paola Pivi

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HA U S E R & W I R T H

MARTIN EDER THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 31 AUGUST — 19 OCTOBER 2013 LIMMATSTRASSE 270 8005 ZÜRICH WWW.HAUSERWIRTH.COM

TRANSITION, 2013 200 × 150 CM WATERCOLOUR, UV RESISTANT INK, HOLOGRAPHIC GLITTER, SALT, OIL AND EPOXY RESIN ON CANVAS MOUNTED ON ALUMINIUM

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DAVID ZINK YI WHY AM I HERE AND NOT SOMEWHERE ELSE INDEPENDENCIA II

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31 AUGUST — 19 OCTOBER 2013 LIMMATSTRASSE 270 8005 ZÜRICH WWW.HAUSERWIRTH.COM

WHY AM I HERE AND NOT SOMEWHERE ELSE ‒ INDEPENDENCIA II, 2013 11-CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION STILL: JULIO BARRETO, DRUMS

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27 September — 2 November 2013 29 Bell Street, London

Tatsuo Miyajima I-Model

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Liu Xiaodong Half Street

27 September — 2 November 2013 52–54 Bell Street, London

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Adel Abdessemed L’âge d’or MATHAF: ARAB MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Doha, Qatar

October 6, 2013 - January 5, 2014 Curated by Pier Luigi Tazzi

The artist is represented by David Zwirner, New York/London.

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YAYOI KUSAMA White Infinity Nets inaugural exhibition Victoria Miro Mayfair

1 October - 9 November 2013

Victoria Miro 14 St George Street · London W1S 1FE victoria-miro.com

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FAULT LINES Palazzo Cusani Via Brera, 15 Milan October 22 – November 24

Apotome, 2013, video still, super 16mm film transferred to HD video; © Allora & Calzadilla; Courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

www.fondazionenicolatrussardi.com

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JOHN BALDESSARI KEITH ARNATT ANTHONY MCCALL AXEL KASSEBÖHMER MICHAIL PIRGELIS JOHN WATERS STORYBOARD (IN 4 PARTS) SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER 2013

NOTES SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER 2013

1970S SOLID-LIGHT WORKS NOVEMBER – JANUARY 2014

100 X WALCHENSEE NOVEMBER – JANUARY 2014

ADOPTED FEBRUARY – MARCH 2014

BAD DIRECTOR'S CHAIR FEBRUARY – MARCH 2014

ROSEMARIE TROCKEL CYPRIEN GAILLARD STEPHEN SHORE ALEXANDRE SINGH SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2013

FROM WINGS TO FINS OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2013

SOMETHING + NOTHING CURATED BY TODD LEVIN NOVEMBER – JANUARY 2014

THE HUMANS JANUARY – MARCH 2014

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YAN PEI-MING

HELP!

21 OCTOBER – 21 NOVEMBER 2013

PA R I S

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WOLFGANG TILLMANS 14 October - 24 November 2013 MAUREEN PALEY. 21 HERALD STREET, LONDON E2 6JT +44 (0)20 7729 4112 INFO@MAUREENPALEY.COM WWW.MAUREENPALEY.COM

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The Big Issues ok, it’s been brought to ArtReview’s attention that those of you who read last month’s editorial might be thinking that it has issues. It doesn’t! Honest! Brazilians have issues, the Turks have issues, but ArtReview doesn’t. Ever since its publisher swapped the dedicated ArtReview communications satellite for a gmail account (so that ArtReview could ‘share’ information ‘more easily’ with its coworkers), it’s made damn sure it doesn’t have issues. Ask James R. Clapper, he knows… ok, ok, ArtReview hears you: it doesn’t have issues other than the nine it publishes each year. And the two ArtReview Asia ones as well. So 11 issues each year. But those aren’t the issues we’re talking about here… What’s that, you say? Well, yes, of course ArtReview has points that it wants to make. But issues? Issues? Save it for the therapists… What? Greasy iPads (see September)? Yes, ok, that too. Anyhow, the point is that art isn’t always about issues – lmao – and where last issue was about issues, this issue is about individual self-reflection, with a focus on particular artists and the work they produce. This issue, “we’re about people”, as the hr person at the magazine keeps telling it during its mandatory daily counselling sessions. Anyhow, in it (the issue, not the session) we catch up with a bunch of artists to find out why they do what they do. Except in the case of Gianni Colombo, who’s dead. So that one is merely speculation about why he did what he did. But when was art ever a slave to facts? ArtReview still remembers the day when one of the ‘proper’ news journalists at the tabloid rag at which ArtReview first started art reviewing told it that the difference between a ‘journalist’ and a ‘critic’ was that the former’s job was to turn 800 words of ‘solid facts’ into 400 words of ‘news’ without leaving out any of the facts, while the latter, to preserve their ‘critical distance’, prided him- or herself in remaining at all times a total stranger to the facts. There was also some hidden message here about why the people with the facts should be paid more than the people without them… Which is why ArtReview stopped writing for that rag… (continued overleaf)

Dangerous

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But back to the issueless issue. In it, among too many other things to mention here (use the contents page – that’s what it’s for), Paola Pivi, Pierre Huyghe and James Franco give voice to their ideas about what art is and what the point of making and then showing it to other people they don’t even know might be. Those ideas derive from an extremely personal as much as a more generally ideological perspective. And perhaps the power of artworks lies in an artist’s ability to navigate those two extremes. Otherwise art would be like the bizarrely meaningless sign that ArtReview wandered past on its way out of Vienna’s Volkspark the other day: ‘Due to storm entire park area dangerous!’ it said. If the park keepers were going to be that vague, why let anyone in? Unless, of course, they’ve got the same ‘legal team’ as ArtReview, which is already pestering it to remove any suggestion in this column that it might be unfamiliar with any kind of fact… And it’s not just the lawyers. ArtReview’s new designers (this is the second issue of their ‘improvements’, in case you’ve been asleep for the past month) have rapped ArtReview over the knuckles with the steel ruler they use to track the amazing girth of their products (did ArtReview tell you that this one has 5 mm of extra ‘heft’?) and told it it mustn’t ramble on in these editorials. Apparently paper is precious and must ideally be left as white as possible… Mean? Yes, I know, that’s what ArtReview said! “That’s being stingy!” it whined down the phone it was holding with its one good hand (after having, btw, been left on hold to an intimidating soundtrack of Depeche Mode’s Strangelove on continuous loop). Amazingly it turns out that what seems like meanness to writers who can’t stop themselves from rambling is called ‘generosity’ in the designers’ language. The thing is, despite the fact that one of the messages a magazine like ArtReview appears to be banging on about all the time is that art is some sort of international language that crosses boundaries and borders as often as an overworked drug mule, ArtReview is having to learn about new languages and cultures all the time. Take the letters ica. They mean the high-minded Institute of Contemporary Arts here in London, and something very close to that for those ‘friends’ of ArtReview in Philadelphia or Boston. But in Norway (where ArtReview went this past August) it stands for a supermarket chain. Although perhaps it really means the same thing and is nothing more than a genius way of getting round institutional funding crises. In any case, everyone knows that the difference between a supermarket and an art institution (see Tom Eccles’s interview with ex-Guggenheim director Lisa Dennison for more on that) is little more than the choice between one font and the next. Which, dammit, is why its designers now rule ArtReview’s life. Bah! Vive la différence, as they like to say at fiac (where ArtReview will be launching its ‘eagerly anticipated’ power list later this month)… ArtReview :X

Supermarket or art institution?

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Irving Penn Mascara Wars, New York, 2001 © Conde Nast Publications

Irving Penn On Assignment September 13 – October 26, 2013 510 West 25th Street New York City pacemacgill.com

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PILAR CORRIAS, LONDON

KEREN CYTTER MOP VENGEANCE 16 OCTOBER – 15 NOVEMBER 2013

PILAR CORRIAS, LONDON, 54 EASTCASTLE STREET, W1W 8EF WWW.PILARCORRIAS.COM 0044 (0) 207 323 7000 INFO@PILARCORRIAS.COM PILAR-ArtReview-ad-4.indd 1 PILAR 24

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ArtReview vol 65 no 7 October 2013

Art Previewed 31

Previewed by Martin Herbert 33

Grandma Moses on Rosalind Krauss Interview by Matthew Collings 58

Points of View by J.J. Charlesworth, Mike Watson, Hettie Judah, Jonathan T. D. Neil, Jonathan Grossmalerman, Maria Lind, Aoife Rosenmeyer, Sam Jacob & Oliver Basciano 43

Valeria Napoleone Interview by Mark Rappolt 62 Lisa Dennison Interview by Tom Eccles 66

page 33 General Idea, P Is for Poodle, 1983–9 (artist proof, 1983), c-print (Ektachrome), 76 × 63 cm

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Art Featured 77

Paola Pivi Interview by Christopher Mooney 78

Elmgreen & Dragset by Kimberly Bradley 102

David Maljkovic by Oliver Basciano 86

Gianni Colombo by Daniele Perra & Lorenza Pignatti 109

Pierre Huyghe by Christopher Mooney 92

James Franco Interview by Nigel Cooke 116

page 78 Paola Pivi, I Never Danced Before (left), 2013, and Sometimes I Have to Stand for My Safety (right), 2013. Both mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong

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THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO EVERY RULE.

ROYAL OAK DIAMOND SET IN PINK GOLD.

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Art Reviewed 125

exhibitions 126 Sturtevant, by Kathy Noble Richard Healy and Jack Newling, by Sean Ashton Meschac Gaba, by Helen Sumpter £5.34, by J.J. Charlesworth Gilberto Zorio, by Martin Holman Do It 20 13, by Jennifer Thatcher Aquatopia: The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep, by Brian Dillon Gregor Schneider, by Oliver Basciano Corey McCorkle, by Joshua Mack Jonas Mekas, by Brienne Walsh Roving Signs, by Joseph Akel Simon Fujiwara, by Orit Gat Zach Harris, by Ed Schad William Daniels, by David Everitt Howe Ed Fornieles, by Jonathan Griffin Alison O’Daniel, by Andrew Berardini Tobias Zielony, by Gesine Borcherdt Geoffrey Farmer, by Terry R. Myers Nicole Wermers, by Andrew Smaldone Purkinje Effect, by Robert Barry

Momentum 7, by Jacquelyn Davis Art, Two Points, by Keith Patrick Several Species of Small Furry Animals, by Martin Herbert Call of the Mall, by Sam Steverlynck Geraldo de Barros, by Claire Rigby books 152 Your Everyday Art World, by Lane Relyea After Butler’s Wharf, rca The Andrew Project, by Shaan Syed The View from the Train, by Patrick Keiller consumed 157 the strip 162 contributors 164 off the record 166

page 142 Tobias Zielony, Vorhang, from the series Jenny Jenny, 2013. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and kow, Berlin

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Art Previewed

When you look under the rocks and plants And take a glance at the fancy ants Then maybe try a few 31

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BERLINISCHE GALERIE DEUTSCHE BANK KUNSTHALLE KW INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART NEUE NATIONALGALERIE

Painting Forever! – a cooperation of Berlinische Galerie, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Opening within the Berlin Art Week. Painting Forever! is an initiative of the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.

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Previewed Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama – Manhattan 1970–1980 Whitney Museum, New York 31 October – 2 February General Idea Esther Schipper, Berlin 11 October – 16 November Enrico David Michael Werner, London through 2 November

Lee Bul Mudam, Luxembourg 5 October – 9 June Sarah Lucas Whitechapel Gallery, London 2 October – 15 December Unstable Territory: Borders and Identity in Contemporary Art Palazzo Strozzi, Florence 11 October – 19 January

John Baldessari Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow through 24 November In God We Trust Zacheta, Warsaw through 10 November Jan Dibbets Gladstone Gallery, New York through 19 October

Adel Abdessemed Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha 5 October – 5 January

October 2013

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slapstick performers the Kipper Kids, photoThe dog would appear in triplicate, since 1 Rituals of Rented Island is secret knowledge: a study of performance art styles explored by booth fanatic Jared Bark, performer Jill Kroesen there were three artists in General Idea. Three numerous artists during the 1970s in Lower and more: in short, this show reveals the decades on, with aa Bronson the group’s sole Manhattan, the area that filmmaker/performer occluded bridge between the Warhol 1960s and survivor (Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal died of Jack Smith termed ‘Rented Island’. In the middle the downtown 1980s. aids-related illnesses in 1994), Esther Schipper of the decade Smith apparently gave a sevenWhere Rituals’s timeline begins, General is mounting a General Idea show; it will, 2 and-a-half-hour performance, The Secret of Rented Idea was holding its first shows in a shopfront no doubt, still bite. Island, for which nobody turned up; he went in Toronto. Soon after, it was making P Is for A decade ago, the present writer authored ahead anyway. Projects like this characterise the Poodle (1982–3), an installation involving model 3 an article on Enrico David that analysed his topography this archival delve explores, poodles gazing at the Milky Way in a simulaembroidered collages and cutout figures in flourishing with vanished microgenres such as crum of a straw-strewn barn, exemplary of the theatrical mises-en-scène as pretty much all ‘object theatre’, wherein artists engaged directly group’s abrasive, focused satire. When not about sex and contained desire. In retrospect with everyday objects; ‘new psychodrama’ mounting fake beauty pageants or getting into that was too simplistic, but the ensuing years (formal performance modes applied to everyday legal trouble for publishing File, a samizdat have emphasised the Ancona-born, Berlin-based experience); or ‘loft performance’ (self-explanaversion of Life, General Idea effectively owned artist’s focus on bodies, concealing and tory). Here Smith shared airspace with avantthe poodle as symbol, sardonically co-opting its revealing, and artworks as manifestations of jazz musician John Zorn, ‘notorious’ scatological associations with gay men and mild obedience. psychological states. ‘The destiny of the figure

3 Enrico David, Untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 278 × 286 cm. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York & London

2 General Idea, P Is for Poodle, 1983–9 (artist proof, 1983), c-print (Ektachrome), 76 × 63 cm

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ArtReview

5 Anna-Bella Papp, Obelisk, 2013, clay, 30 × 26 × 3 cm. Courtesy Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London

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in my work has often been one of embodiment, ‘Asia’s leading woman artist’, Bul hybridises abstraction fashioned from stuffed tights role-play, to the point of observing that same traditional, organic forms and a morphed, – recognised as among her best works. Following body struggling to recognize itself,’ David told technologised and borderline grotesque reality 2012’s yearlong, self-challenging Situation project The Huffington Post last year, around the time – last year’s The Secret Sharer, for example, was of ongoing shows for Sadie Coles in London, and of Head Gas at the New Museum, New York, with modelled on the artist’s dog but made it an exhibition at Leeds’s Henry Moore Institute its big, miasmic, barely figurative dispersions geometric and cubistic and appearing to vomit that emphasised her art’s traditional sculptural on canvas and its folded screens seemingly a stream of translucent crystals. This, though, qualities, Lucas here takes a victory lap: her first depicting closeups of hair. The paintings return is something of an anomaly in a practice lately London institutional solo sees her remaking in this, his first London show since his Turner focused on pseudo-architectural environments a number of the ephemeral, pungently feminist Prize nomination in 2009, which the gallery that reflect the reshaping effect of our surroundpseudo-anatomies – eg, Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab happily calls ‘contemporary surrealism’. ings. Expect aesthetic fireworks in Mudam’s (1992) – that made her name, as well as Staying with mutated bodies, Lee Bul has high-ceilinged grand hall, where Bul is creating presenting new works. 4 long been interested in dystopian extensions a site-specific work. Back when Lucas first cracked eggs for art, 6 exhibitions with titles like Unstable Territory: of the human form: see her Cyborg works of the 5 Sarah Lucas is clearly one of very few late 1990s, semimechanical, truncated female yba artists still operating with credibility intact, Borders and Identity in Contemporary Art were figures that reflected the popularisation of the salty neomodernism of her Nuds (2009–) commonplace. They’d usually include Mona cosmetic surgery at the time. Regularly termed – knotty midpoints between figuration and Hatoum. More relevant now, this ten-artist show

5 Sarah Lucas, Au Naturel, 1994, mattress, water bucket, melons, oranges and cucumber, 84 × 168 × 145 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Sadie Coles hq , London

4 Lee Bul, After Bruno Taut (Beware the Sweetness of Things), 2007, mixed media, 258 × 200 × 250 cm. Collection Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg & Paris. Photo: Patrick Gries. Courtesy the artist and Foundation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris 6 Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Chicago #2, 2006, c-type print, Chicago, Tze’elim Military Base, Negev Desert. © the artists

October 2013

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suggests, are documentary-makers Zanny Begg reassessment; this 1990s revival makes sense. make it to what’s nevertheless flagged by and Oliver Ressler, whose The Right of Passage Another shifting borderline means that the organisers as a ‘very challenging show’ (2013) explores citizenship rights; politicised parts of the Middle East are now art destinafeaturing a number of works made in Doha. photographer-collagists Adam Broomberg & tions (though others, of course, are zones of Instead, in the world’s richest country, expect Oliver Chanarin, focusing on the faux Arab works including a bicycle made of camel bone, 7 conflict), so an artist like Adel Abdessemed can township of Chicago, Palestine, where the Israeli show in Qatar – a fact that, in turn, sometimes a sculpture of the artist’s wife made from salt army rehearses military actions; and Richard inflects the art itself. The Algerian cross-media and, reflecting a gilded age (for some), a Mosse, whose fresh-from-Venice video installaprovocateur often laces his work with violence gold-plated bas-relief of the artist’s daughters. tion The Enclave (2013) rethinks war photography and apparent cruelty that he’s sometimes No animal-rights controversies cling to by rinsing the civil war-marked landscape of the accused of refusing to take a stand on. His 2009 8 John Baldessari, though the artist did once Eastern Congo with nonnatural colour. During video Usine featured animals (snakes, pit bulls, make a photographic work featuring two live the last two decades the nation-state has eroded cockerels, spiders…) tossed into a pit and left mice in Shakespearean costumes, looking at while nationalism has spiked, digital communito fight it out; his 2008 work Don’t Trust Me, a dead one. More recently, between 2011 and cation has dissolved all kinds of borders (and, an eight-screen video installation featuring 2012, the Angeleno master of laconic conceptuless happily, so have transnational corporations) animals being slaughtered, was pulled from alism worked on a series of art history-related and economic migration has become a huge a planned showing at the San Francisco Art paintings entitled Double: ‘It’s a mindset; some issue. What ‘unstable territory’ means requires Institute. Perhaps not surprisingly, these won’t people think that one thing looks like another

7 Adel Abdessemed, L’Âge d’Or (detail), 2013, gold-plated brass, 113 × 188 cm. Photo: Marc Domage. © the artist, adagp Paris 2013. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York and London

8 John Baldessari, Double Play: Eggs and Sausage, 2012, varnished Inkjet print on canvas with acrylic oil paint, 230 × 182 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Champagne Holdings llc

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for the new emperors

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revolutionary by tradition

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and others don’t. I like that sort of conflict,’ he says. The process found him taking a fragment from a painting by, say, Matisse, Chardin, Hockney or Warhol, and ‘doubling’ it with a text: the name of another artist, for example, or the title of a film or a song. As often with Baldessari, an almost comically modest procedure foments disproportionate effects, overlaps and aporias, new meanings condensing in the gap between edited image and orphaned, ‘wrong’ language. And, fortuitously given that this Russian showing represents the first time that the works have been seen all together, one of the artists involved is Kazimir Malevich. In Florence, the Middle East and Africa; in 10 Qatar, Algeria; in Poland, the usa, and another 9 assessment of changing times. In God We Trust

– its title, of course, the official and sometimes contentious motto of the United States since 1956 – convenes approximately 30 us-based artists (from Edgar Arceneaux to Christian Jankowski to Bill Viola) to consider the varieties of religious experience in America today, from mainstream religion to self-designed spirituality. Beyond that, it aims to consider how, in America, religion tints everything from economics to patriotism, sport to pop culture. Wiki stat: at last count there were approximately 30,000 self-identified druids in the us, so hopefully they’ll get a mention. And finally, talking of hoods, Gladstone Gallery is showing Jan Dibbets’s Colorstudies photographs of car bonnets. Dibbets doesn’t always get his due as a pioneer of conceptual

art photography, but during the 1960s he increasingly began to use colour photography as a form of para-painting that exposed the indexical medium’s capacity for illusionism. In the Colorstudies works, newly printed from mid-70s negatives, Dibbets zooms in on surfaces so that they become virtually abstract; and, way before Richard Prince, he saw car hoods (and doors) as minimal, monochromatic, raindrop-splashed ‘paintings’. These have been shown increasingly in recent years; here New York gets a bright and shiny eyeful. Meanwhile, Dibbets’s vinegary attitude to other art photographers is always entertaining. From a recent interview: ‘[Jeff Wall] invented the light bulb behind the photograph. Very good.’ Martin Herbert

10 Jan Dibbets, Dark Blue Vertical, 2012, Fujicolor Crystal archive paper dpii glued on Dibond, 250 × 125 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels 9 David LaChapelle, Last Supper, 2009–12. Courtesy the artist

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Galerie Hubert Winter

MARTIN BARRÉ FRED SANDBACK curated by Yve-Alain Bois October 10 - November 23, 2013

Breite Gasse 17 1070 Vienna Austria ph +43 1 5240976 (fax +9) office@galeriewinter.at www.galeriewinter.at

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ArtReview and EFG International are proud to present the fifth 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 limitededition poster in subscriber copies of the magazine.

Poster series: No 5

Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli selected by Chris Sharp

Rome-based artist Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli is a maniac. Not only is the unorthodox thinking behind his practice potentially dangerous, he is one of the most disciplined and hardworking artists I have met in years. Having studied philosophy and possessing no formal training in art (aside from a stint as the assistant to his grandfather, the Roman artist Gianfranco Baruchello), Tribbioli is something of an anomaly, insofar as they just don’t make them like this any more. Perhaps the best way to describe what he does is to borrow Harald Szeemann’s term: individual mythology. Driven by complex, self-sustaining systems of thought and a predominantly classical frame of reference, projects are methodically elaborated (and documented) through performance, photography, sculpture, drawing and film over extended periods of time, establishing an uncompromising, hyperintensive working method.

International Practitioners of the craft of private banking

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Points of View J.J. Charlesworth In art, the public sphere isn’t disappearing, it’s relocating

Jonathan T.D. Neil How to value a bankrupt city’s art collection

Mike Watson Why the artworld is the new Communist International

Jonathan Grossmalerman Is it really so wrong to use this space to settle scores?

Hettie Judah Art à porter and the rise of ms a

Maria Lind The rise of the gnomons

Aoife Rosenmeyer In Zurich, artists and the machinery of sex-industry regulation find a new frontline Sam Jacob How culture (and the odd retired military type) shapes our bodies Oliver Basciano Off-space No 15: Collective, Edinburgh

J.J. Charlesworth In art, the public sphere isn’t disappearing, it’s relocating By accident, I’ve got something else to do during Frieze Art Fair weekend this year. Most years, my Frieze Saturdays and Sundays are spent strolling around the fair nursing a hangover, bumping into friends and colleagues, who tend to want to tell me about their hangovers. Often I head for the Frieze talks, because it’s a good place to sit down. And the lighting is dimmer. This time round, however, I’m speaking at ‘Battle of Ideas’, a weekend-long event organised by the energetic and politically hard-to-pin-down think tank the Institute of Ideas. Two days of debate on just about every issue you can think of, from the economy and politics to science, culture and society, ‘Battle…’ is 350 speakers and 2,000 members of the public, all arguing about things that matter. Not an event to attend with a substantial hangover. Not, anyway, when I’m arguing about the relative merits of the private collector, and the rising power of private patronage over the art that the rest of us get to see; questions that, in the current economic and cultural climate, are more fraught than ever. What with the shift away from state spending on the arts, contrasting starkly with the apparently unrelenting boom at the very top end of the art market and the recession-proof good fortunes of the ultrarich ‘1%’, the question of who, exactly, art is for has become a big problem. Whether it’s the influence of big corporate sponsors or of private collectors, artworld people are now on the defensive, faced with a widespread mood of resentment that sees art being ‘tainted’ by the interests of those who patronise it. While activists attack the involvement of sponsors

like bp and Bloomberg for using sponsorship to divert attention from their more controversial business and political activities, wider public disgust for bankers and financiers has quickly rubbed off on the more visible face of the artworld, as many wonder what is so altruistic about philanthropy that serves only to celebrate the benefactor, while everyone else puts up with austerity. Patronage become patronising. The culture of conspicuous consumption that has become characteristic of today’s artworld, and the rolling back of the space of state-funded provision, points us to a very new situation for art’s culture and economy, in which the conditions that defined the production of art since the 1960s are finally melting away. Art now appears even more beholden to private interests. There is, some would argue, no possibility of being ‘outside the system’. But seeing the situation as if it were only a question of private-versus-state patronage – where only state provision could provide an alternative to the market, the ‘outside’ to the system – is really more a lament for past certainties than it is an analysis of where we go from here. Because as one form of nonmarket space (public funding) is dwindling, others forms are expanding – most significantly the global biennial economy – overlapping, but not identical with the commercial artworld, with its own resources, agendas and priorities. The interplay of different publics, different economies, different institutions, is changing fast. The old dichotomy of state and individual patronage is falling away. And while the top end of the art market may be booming, as the

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avatar of ‘conspicuous consumption’, as the elite pastime of those who flaunt their wealth in the very act of hiding it away, it’s fast becoming an anachronistic irrelevance. Other spaces of influence are emerging. Art education (international, networked, poststudio) is becoming a major force. In the uk, new art schools are setting up outside of the orthodox educational sector: here in London, the painter’s magazine Turps Banana is launching its first, yearlong studio programme this autumn (fees: £6k as against, for example, £9k at the Royal College or £7k at Goldsmiths), while the Barbican Centre is supporting the launch of Open School East, a fee-free study programme modelled on the Whitney’s isp. It’s free – but then it’s supported by Deutsche Bank. But as the old consensus wanes, the public sphere of art isn’t disappearing: it’s relocating, redistributing. There’s always private money involved – but then there always was. And the point is not so much where the money comes from, but where it goes, the uses it’s put to, the kind of art it creates, which means that the tension between art’s public and its patronage remains in play. If we want art to be something other than the spectacle of the 1%, we should pay attention to the evolution of this new, post-welfare-state public sphere. So I’ll be speaking at ‘Battle of Ideas’. And they’re not paying me, because I’m paying them. Which is to say that if the Institute is an independent voice in public discourse in Britain, it’s only because I, and many others, support it. With money I make, because of this independent art magazine, from you… and the 1%.

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Mike Watson Why the artworld is the new Communist International During his 1996 party conference speech, Tony Blair famously said, ‘Ask me my three main priorities for government and I tell you: education, education and education.’ In part for the audacity of such a sentence – it sets out to identify three priorities for government and settles for one – and in part for the shift in focus that it at least ostensibly embodied, this line has entered the consciousness so much as to be instantly recognisable 17 years later. On reflection, the sincerity of Blair’s sentiments is questionable. The former prime minister did preside over the introduction of tuition fees after a commitment to keep to Conservative party spending plans in the first term of office, and then a further rise in fees. Indeed it was Labour that commissioned the education review that led to the recent third rise in fees in the uk, to between £6,000 and £9,000 per year. The corporatisation of higher education is a trajectory that crosses over party boundaries and has gained so much momentum as to be beyond challenge through conventional political channels. It is arguably for this reason that education has increasingly taken the centre ground in political and social discourse in the period since Blair made his famous speech. Where education was once seen as a ‘soft’ policy area secondary in mainstream politics to economics, fiscal policy, foreign policy and law and punishment, it is now seen as fundamental to political discourse both at a mainstream and

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alternative level. This shift in focus is arguably motivated by two principal factors. Firstly, the final collapse of Soviet Communism during the late 1980s and early 1990s, followed by a massive collapse in the worldwide economy that started in 2007, and the inability of the political left to mobilise with convincing alternatives to capitalism in the intervening 17 years, has left us in need of new modes of thinking and new strategies for which our current knowledge base is clearly inadequate. Secondly, while the academic left fails to provide convincing alternative social models, funding has been stripped in the uk – and this is increasingly reflected throughout Europe – from the subject areas that might most reasonably be expected to deliver those alternatives. We have a situation in which people need to get into debt to study a narrowing range of subjects that are increasingly reflective of the needs of industry. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, such a system will soon be lending money to as many people as possible to school them in the principles of the financial model which they will pay into when they graduate and begin to work in the interests of that same model. With the nation state in the uk being hollowed out, emptied of its social responsibility and reduced to the position of a defender Cover of issue 6 of the English-language version of The Communist International, October 1919

of the rights of the powerful without losing any of its power to enforce law and intimidate, it must fall to others to pose a viable alternative to the current system. In light of the diminishment of the state’s role, a nonstatist option must be prepared by the political left, regardless of whether individuals personally veer towards a statist vision of politics. This is simply because, following the current trajectory, we will soon have a situation in which the state resembles little else than a malevolent giant guarding the palace against the hordes. Without an alternative to the values that it enforces through a mixture of instruction and coercion, the sum of human knowledge will become reducible to what is useful to the financial machine – the aforementioned ‘palace’. What relevance does this have to art? Well, as Mark Fisher put it, talking at a conference entitled ‘Joan of Art: Towards a Free Education’, organised by myself and held at macro, Rome, in April of this year, the artworld in a sense replaces the Communist International as a worldwide network and refuge for alternative thought. ‘Joan of Art: In light of a convincing Towards a Free alternative existing in reality, Education’ is it is left to the artworld to in residence feign one: to grow an alternawith Gervasuti tive within the empty husk Foundation, left over from the dismantling Venice, for of the state.

the duration of the Biennale

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Hettie Judah Art à porter and the rise of ms a “When Charlotte and I heard that there was a woman in Chelsea not talking or eating, we were there in a New York minute,” coos Carrie Bradshaw over the opening credits of Sex and the City, season 6, episode 12 (2003). Charlotte and Carrie, teetering beneath the weight of their lipgloss and lacquer, join the po-faced arty throng watching a hollow-eyed woman in cotton pyjamas sitting in one of a series of wall-mounted rooms in a gallery. While she is not mentioned by name, that scene, with its meticulous facsimile of The House with the Ocean View (2002), marked Marina Abramovic’s first major incursion into pop culture. This last year, the Abramovic incursion has reached some kind of critical mass – she’s modelled for Givenchy, mentored Gaga, eyeballed Jay-Z, made a movie with James Franco, filmed Norwegians screaming, hustled for the Marina Abramovic Institute on Kickstarter and designed a fashion collection. In December, the Park Avenue Armory in New York will host the Antony Hegarty-penned opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic (2011), directed by Robert Wilson and starring Abramovic alongside Willem Dafoe. It can only be a matter of time before American Vogue launches a Marina-plan diet (honey, red wine and bouts of ritual self-flagellation, perhaps?). Some logic is present. There’s audience crossover with Lady Gaga; Abramovic excels at conveying aestheticised trauma, appealing to the angsty misfits that constitute the devout

core of Mother Monster’s followers. ms a is also a self-pronounced expert in processes of purification, fasting and the slowing down of time – all, as Sex and the City so gauchely hinted, points of near-obsession for people working in the fashion industry. And for a performer like Franco, the power to make people queue around the block then sit down in front of her and weep must be intoxicating.

Is it only a matter of time before Vogue launches a Marinaplan diet (honey, red wine and bouts of self-flagellation)? But pop’s idea of Abramovic and Abramovic actual are two quite different propositions, as Jay-Z discovered when filming his ‘homage’: the six-hour-long performance of his single Picasso Baby at Pace New York. Abramovic swept into the venue from a black limousine and proceeded to scare the bejaysus out of the most powerful rap artist on the planet. During his performance, Jay-Z was unfazed by photobombers, flirts, toddlers and the unholy spectacle of New York gallerists attempting to breakdance, but when Abramovic engaged with him, microexpressions flitted across his face ranging from basic alarm through general discomfort to frank panic. She may have accepted pop’s hug, but she does not conform to the consumerist adhd of pop culture. In person she is a still core that commands

attention, she does not entertain; she exudes control and a certain indifference to audience response. Marina Abramovic doesn’t twerk. By what one imagines to be absolutely no coincidence at all, three of the artists present for the Picasso Baby filming have recently designed garments for Net-a-Porter. Unveiled during couture week in Paris, the Art Capsul garments will be made to order and priced according to the current market value of the artists’ work. Abramovic offers day-of-the-week silk jumpsuits with spiritually improving magnetic inserts, George Condo a saucy frock with a print on the bum, Terence Koh a pearl-encrusted bomber jacket, Vik Muniz an evening gown with a cut-about tropical print and Mickalene Thomas a crystal-crusted cocktail dress. Net-a-Porter has exceptional form in identifying new top-end markets; fashion director Holli Rogers, who initiated Art Capsul, describes it as “on dna as a brand” and there is certainly intimation that this could be the first step along a new path for the retailer. Art says clever, sophisticated, meaningful – it also says big money. Rich people buy art and rich people buy couture, which makes Art Capsul quite the twofer. Let’s hope some of that delicious money went to the artists. Abramovic still has to raise another $20 million to build her oma-designed institute in New York so she’s all about the Benjamins right now. One imagines her pop-culture intrusion-proper has only just begun.

Marina Abramovic, Energy Clothes, 2013, silk taffeta parachute fabric in seven colours, seven magnets per piece. Courtesy Net-a-Porter

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Jonathan T.D. Neil How to value a bankrupt city’s art collection Alfonso Cuarón’s postapocalyptic Children of Men (2006) has something to tell us about the debate that is unfolding over the Detroit Institute of Arts’s collection and whether it should – ‘can’ is a question for a bankruptcy judge – be sold to help pay the city of Detroit’s creditors who include retired public employees, but also institutional investors such as hedge and pension funds that hold municipal bonds, as well as other financial stakeholders. And by this I mean that the film has something to say about the value of art, in both economic and other terms. Just what those ‘other’ terms are is the important question that Cuarón’s movie raises. I’m not thinking of its broad apocalyptic conceit, which finds that all the world’s women have become barren, but just one of the less gruesome of the various descents into hell – suicide as social policy, internment camps for refugees of failed states, etc – that follow from it: the ‘Ark of the Arts’, an enterprise spearheaded by one well-placed culture-loving but apparently humanity-loathing official, Nigel, who has taken it upon himself to collect a lifeboat of masterpieces in the hope of sparing them, and the grand history they stand for, from the civil implosion underway. No ash-heap of history, then, for Picasso’s Guernica (1937) or Michelangelo’s David (1501–4) or – in a smirking bid at speculation – Banksy’s stencilled image of two cops kissing. These feats of human creativity are deemed, by Nigel, to be greater than the populace that cannot be saved, and indeed is not being saved – is, in fact, protesting and rioting and bombing and being rounded up – just outside the Ark’s redoubt at London’s Battersea Power Station. Nigel, who happens to be a cousin of the film’s hero, Theo, comes off as an aloof 1%-er (the dress: venture-capitalist casual; the digs: Tate Modernist) whose kid is so plugged into

some videogame as to appear autistic. But then this is the model of Nigel’s own disaffection, both with the decaying world around him and with his cousin’s request for ‘transit papers’ for a lover’s brother – a fictional pretext, but one still about the potential for human kindness and contact that we’re meant to take as anathema to the values embodied by the Ark and its pathetic inhabitants, human and aesthetic alike. Theo asks his cousin, “A hundred years from now there won’t be one sad fuck to look at this. What keeps you going?” Nigel responds, “You know what it is Theo? I just don’t think about it.” ‘Art’, here, is at once greater and lesser than humanity. Which it is depends on what side of the table one is sitting. On Nigel’s side, human suffering is small compared to the tragic grandeur of human achievement. Such feats are simply great, in principle, regardless of whether we’re around to experience them. Art does not exist ‘for us’; it exists ‘for itself’. Nigel’s denial is consistent with what most of us want to think art is: if you believe in art’s transcendence, then you don’t – indeed you can’t – think about the ‘sad fucks’ who look at it. On Theo’s side, there’s no point to it. Art is at best an epiphenomenon of human sociality, and when the latter is bent on burning itself to the ground, the former can only serve as fuel for the arsonist elect. Survival, not one’s own, but the promise of another’s – an improbable newborn’s in the film’s story – is the only kernel of humanity worth saving, because it’s the only real kernel of humanity at all, and the David looks at once preening and paltry in comparison. In the debate over the dia’s art collection, the Theos would want to see the art sold. Yes, some of the money would go to pay less-than-savoury financial institutions that hold the notes on Detroit’s debt (or insure it), but as much of it would go to the retired public employees – police, firefighters, teachers, etc

– who depend upon Are you a Nigel or a Theo? the city for their income and healthcare: in other words, real people with real needs. Roughly 50 percent of Detroit’s debt, $9.2bn, is pension and associated obligations. And the collection could allegedly net upwards of $2bn all on its own. Recall that, in the film, Theo begins his quest out of self-interest – he wants to get paid – but he does come around in the end. The Nigels want to see the art remain with the city and protected by the museum. Their arguments run from utilitarian (stripping the museum of its masterpieces, a Van Gogh self-portrait for example, would damage the museum’s ability to fully serve its public and attract visitors, which would no doubt contribute to, but more saliently would stand as a potent symbol of, the city’s irremediable destitution) to idealist – the collection was formed in the public ‘trust’, which is inviolable regardless of any constituency’s short- or even long-term interests. And there are many arguments in between, most made in bad faith, to which the Theos and Nigels inevitably point in order to give their claims more purchase – eg, the unions have strong-armed pension contracts with little regard for the city’s fiscal health; pension-fund calculations have long overestimated return projections; bondholders assumed Detroit was too big to fail and expected a state or even federal bailout; globalisation is to blame for Detroit’s diminished tax base; a sale of the museum’s collection will flood the market and so tank it; etc. But at bottom, the value that one ascribes to the art in question is either subordinate to the claims of the creditors – ie, is money – or it isn’t. And chances are, if you’re a creditor – not just in this scenario but in any – you’re a Theo; if you’re not, you’re a Nigel.

Children of Men (film still), 2006, dir Alfonso Cuarón. Courtesy Universal Studios

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Jonathan Grossmalerman Is it really so wrong to use this space to settle scores? I begin this column already in a sour mood. This morning, my horse-riding neighbours churned up the running paths that meander through my beloved Amagansett dunes, turning my usual half-mile jog into a four-hour lumbering death march. Then, having scraped myself of ticks and settling in for a well-earned drink, I was horrified to see Peter Schjeldahl’s New Yorker piece weighing in that the Detroit Institute of Art should sell off its entire collection in order to pay lazy old people’s pensions. To be absolutely frank and not mince words… I disagree. I know, it’s not an easy thing to say. And furthermore, in the spirit of my disagreement, I would like to take this opportunity to call for The New Yorker to fire him. Yes, you heard right. Fire him! I know some of you are probably saying, “Jonathan, doesn’t that seem unduly harsh? Do you really want him to lose his livelihood and all that entails simply because you disagree with him in this one particular instance? Especially after the years of enjoyment and the intellectual nourishment you’ve received from his writing?” Or maybe you’re asking yourself, “Hey! This wouldn’t have anything to do with Schjeldahl’s review of your New Museum retrospective, would it? The one in which he lamented that ‘the egomaniac on a downward slope is a pitiful thing indeed’? Hmmm. Maybe you’re even thinking, “Wait a second! Is it possible that this concerns the 28 late-1980s Grossmalerman

paintings the museum currently holds that would do no one any good should they suddenly flood the market, as admittedly the late 1980s wasn’t Grossmalerman’s strongest period?” No it doesn’t! Stop saying that! I wouldn’t dream of manufacturing indignation for my own personal gain. I don’t use this column to bully my enemies! That would be unethical, and I’m sure it would be breaking some sacred ‘Journalist’s Oath’. After all, I haven’t called for Jerry Saltz to be fired! Even after our ‘crab cake altercation’ at that moma opening. The one that left a waiter and two junior curators ‘horribly’ blinded simply for the crime of being between Jerry and a bank of news cameras. My suit was absolutely ruined. I also have it on good authority that he impersonated me to get into the Jay-Z Picasso Baby video shoot. Imagine my embarrassment at the door to see my name already checked off the list! And Jerry looking uncomfortably back at me from the crowd inside. Unable to meet my gaze before slipping into the frenzied ecstasy of Jay-Z’s genius. I was crestfallen. I had been so looking forward to the chance at being seen as a prop, childishly starstruck by his celebrity. Giddily fawning over Jay-Z as though he were some sort of fantastically expensive ‘art piece’ in a ‘gallery’. A person as ‘art piece’! Imagine!? And Courtesy Jonathan Grossmalerman

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to lose my spot to that weedy little creep! Maybe they should fire Jerry Saltz. No. That’s wrong. If I was really the sort to use my column to settle old scores, I’d spend the rest of it decrying that awful Paul McCarthy mess at Hauser & Wirth… and the Armory… and just about everywhere else you can think of. But I’m not going to do that. Although I do think he risks being overexposed. If he’s not careful I’m afraid his work is going to lose its aura of exclusivity. Why, just the other morning I came across a discarded Paul McCarthy sculpture under a bench in the park… at least I think it was a Paul McCarthy sculpture. Come to think of it, it didn’t really smell like contemporary art. In any case, I can’t be the only one who thinks this whole Disney, mustard and ketchup shtick is getting a little thin. ok… here I go. Hauser & Wirth really should fire Paul McCarthy. That’s what they should do. And if by firing him that just happens to leave a spot open for another middle-aged male artist obsessed with hot fucking, so be it. Other than those three, though, I’m pretty much fine with everybody… well, except for Gary, my server at Bostwicks’s Chowder House in East Hampton, who acts like he’s never seen a man in restaurant with paint on his hands, lips, neck and face area. Fuck that guy! Actually, now that I put my mind to it… there are quite a few people I would like to have fired.

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Maria Lind The rise of the gnomons Anne Tyng (1920–2011) was obsessed with unwillingness to credit Tyng in his work led to geometry. Throughout her profestheir splitting up, after which her elaborasional life as an architect and tions on geometry expanded to both Gnomon Again theoretician she attempted practical and theoretical explorations of to find ways to inhabit it. Not only ‘dynamic symmetry’ and the biological did she design and build the first roots of manmade forms. Around the same habitable space-frame constructime as Robert Smithson researched tion, she also influenced and crystalline structures, she delved into possibly coauthored some of the spirals, organic and nonorganic modes of most exquisite geometric spaces of twentiethgrowth. In many ways Tyng, who was praised by century architecture. As a collaborator and lover Buckminster Fuller, also anticipated computerof Louis Kahn, she made a distinct mark on generated architecture, even prior to her taking buildings signed by him, for example the computer courses in early programming outstanding Yale University Art Gallery (1953). languages in 1967. Together they authored the visionary City The contemporary relevance of Tyng’s Tower (1952–7), a space-frame high-rise merger of Plato’s static geometry and architect designed for Philadelphia but never realised. and sculptor Frederick Kiesler’s experiments Her widely exhibited and published Urban with endless space came back to me shortly after Hierarchy (1969–71) is a utopian urban plan I had encountered the catalogue, in Petrit using the mathematical Fibonacci sequence as a Halilaj’s installation at the Venice Biennale. As generative principle. the first artist to represent Kosovo in Venice, he I was reminded of Tyng’s story when I conceived of a curved, bloblike space recently stumbled upon the catalogue Anne Tyng: constructed out of intertwined twigs and mud. Inhabiting Geometry (2011), published on the Upon entering this cavernous structure, you occasion of an exhibition of her work at the ica could peek through two small holes into a in Philadelphia and the Graham Foundation in brightly lit white-cube space where a giant Chicago. The first time I learned about her was yellow dress was hanging on the wall and two in Nathaniel Kahn’s film My Architect (2003), canaries were dwelling. This was not the first which deals with the life and work of Louis time Halilaj’s spaces have been inhabited. At Kahn. The film is an illegitimate son’s portrait of Kunst-Werke during the Berlin Biennale 2010, his complex father, who had at least one more for example, hens lived on the ground floor, as child out of wedlock, a daughter by Tyng. Kahn’s part of his installation with a suspended rough

wooden structure looking like a geometric but impossible frame for a cottage. Then Tyng returned again, a few weeks later, this time in Pristina. Across the park from the small but impressive Kosovo National Art Gallery (the commissioning body for the Kosovo Pavilion in Venice), in the very centre of the city, sits a big building made up of a cluster of different-sized cubic spaces with small geodesic domes cut in half on top. Covered with a pre-Herzog & de Meuron metal lattice, the building looks like an archaic and yet futuristic vehicle for expeditions into the unknown. It is the National Library, designed in 1982 by Andrija MutnjakoviÁ, who wanted to refer both to Byzantine and Ottoman architectural traditions. Quite unlike anything else I have seen, it employs a form of eccentric geometry, moulding a mannerist modernity. Tyng’s way of achieving a related geometry in transformation was to frequently use gnomons: the geometric figure that remains after a parallelogram has been cut out from a larger parallelogram. By adding them to each other, she created a dynamic system out of a seemingly static structure. I like to think that Anne Tyng would have enjoyed both Petrit Halilaj’s installation in Venice and the National Library in Pristina. Both of them are setting gnomons in motion, in their own way, allowing for eccentric but deeply meaningful developments.

Petrit Halilaj, I’m hungry to keep you close. I want to find the words to resist but in the end there is a locked sphere. The funny thing is that you’re not here, nothing is, 2013, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: Atdhe Mulla. Courtesy the artist

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Aoife Rosenmeyer In Zurich, artists and the machinery of sex-industry regulation find a new frontline Switzerland is famous for several things: chocolate, cheese, efficiency – and prostitution. And if it isn’t surprising when the last in this list becomes a theme for artists, one wouldn’t necessarily expect an artist to play a role in branding the latest evolution of the oldest trade, though that’s what has happened here. Regarding prostitution, Switzerland differs from most European countries for a couple of reasons. It is licensed and written into law as a service provision, which is not to say that this framework for prostitution has ensured that all prostitution is undertaken legally. Authorities concentrate not on its prevention but on ensuring sex workers work within the law (ie, equipped with residence permits and the appropriate licences), while attempting to stop human trafficking and other abuse. Until recently, prostitution by girls of 16 and 17 was also permissible, which led to unpalatable sex tourism; although this particular law has recently changed, it remains a grey area, because while it is criminal for the john, a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old will not be prosecuted for prostituting himself or herself. And in latter years, increased freedom of movement throughout Europe has brought many new prostitutes to a country offering exponentially better earning potential than their homelands. If you’re not in the target audience, you could conceivably – just – remain ignorant of the brothels, the streetwalkers and the designated red-light areas within which prostitutes sit in

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shop windows, but in Zurich one designated location for soliciting, the arterial Sihlquai (which incidentally runs behind the Löwenbräu Areal art hub), became a frontline between local residents, pimps, sex workers and the authorities. The solution, this last August, was to move the trade to ‘sex boxes’ on the city’s northern fringe, where johns can avail of drive-in garages, a topic that has fascinated the foreign press, some of whom have taken it as an opportunity to mock Swiss bureaucracy in action, even if the concept has already been applied elsewhere in Europe. Customers are pointed in the right direction by an understated sign saying ‘Strichplatz’, with a red pictogram of an unfurled umbrella. This symbol has been adopted by the city in line with several international organisations that campaign for sexworkers’ rights, but seems in fact to originate with the Slovenian artist Tadej Pogacar, who employed red umbrellas as a symbol for sex-worker solidarity during a march at the Venice Biennale in 2001. But central Langstrasse remains the city’s main red-light and going-out area, where hipster bars and porn cinemas sit cheek by jowl. It too has been home to several galleries, while off-spaces like Perla-Mode are still going strong. Esther Eppstein’s long-running Message Salon (which hosts work by other artists within

Zurich ‘sex box’. © Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann

Perla-Mode) clearly positions itself site-specifically, but had its own interaction with the law a few years ago when, context notwithstanding, a charge of pornography was made in relation to Petr Motycka’s Projections (2008), a work that aped the format of Are lawmakers an adult comic and was shown also sex on the side of a neighbouring workers? building over several nights while Switzerland cohosted the European football championships. Eppstein’s refusal to pay the fine led to a nearly yearlong process, at the end of which the cultural value of the work was recognised. As the peripheral sex-boxes opened over the summer, so did a theatrical installation in Les Complices, an off-space lead by Andrea Thal close to Langstrasse. For Striche durch Rechnungen (Spanners in the Works, 2013), written by Tim Zulauf, the small retail-unit gallery was transformed, for the short run, by a lurid pink carpet and a few spare props. A single burly actor performed a monologue, slipping between two roles: a law-and-order representative controlling moral misdemeanours, and a sex worker shutting down her business in light of new regulations. The deliberately chaotic production identified some of the absurdities inherent in a city’s authorities controlling the profession: if, for instance, you write the laws that regulate prostitution, do you become a sex worker? While the city is attempting a clean-up job, then, art is pointedly messing it up again.

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Sam Jacob How culture (and the odd retired military type) shapes our bodies Visit the parks of London early in the morning or as the sun sets and it’s as though the city is in preparation for some sort of war. Among the plane trees, groups of shiny-faced young professionals are getting down and giving 20, running back and forth under the watchful eyes of fatigues-clad figures wearing giant military backpacks. If the shouts they issue sound like something from the parade ground, that’s because they are. These civilian troops are subjecting themselves to a thing called British Military Fitness (‘the uk’s No1 for outdoor fitness’). Started back in 1999 by a retired major, bmf sessions are now held at over 100 locations, each session run by a military-trained instructor. The discipline claims that it is ‘a fun and effective form of training using the highly professional skills learned in the military to get people fit’. If it seems perverse that this taste of military life is something you might volunteer for, it’s even stranger to contemplate the idea of paying for it. But then the very idea of fitness is a strange and perverted thing. It’s a function of our biological makeup made redundant by our advanced economies: by the division of labour, by supply chains and logistics, by electricity and motors – a situation exacerbated, furthermore, by vastly increased calorific consumption set against decreasing levels of physical activity. And now that our unnatural habitat no longer encourages physical activity, we have to synthesise it. Hence those fantastic metaphors for the contemporary world: the running machine and the exercise bike. Mile after mile, going nowhere fast.

In this context, military fitness might represent a kind of authenticity – something raw and honest dropped into the cultivated urban parkland. In it we might hope to find the sort of bluntness that modern life never offers us, preferring instead to butter us up, sweet-talk us, and otherwise douse us in saccharine promises. With its military tints of brutal square-bashing, ‘scientific’ training regimes and ruthless discipline, bmf is a fantasy we can participate in, a set of actions we can put our bodies through so that we feel the fantasy within the sinews of our muscle tissue.

The running machine, a fantastic metaphor for the contemporary world: mile after mile, going nowhere fast But it’s just one of many themed versions of fitness that we are offered. Take Nike’s Run to the Beat, a half-marathon organised by the sportswear giant that’s studded with dj’s and finishes at a ‘festival’. Run to the Beat takes the hazy tradition of all those Woodstocks, Glastonburys and Burning Mans and rinses it clean. It has all their sensations of youthful energy but edits out the Class A drugs and the waking up in a half-collapsed tent with a falafel stuck to your cheek. Corporate events such as these wrap up fundamental physiology in slogans, garish colourways and performance fabrics, in such a manner that it feels like a lot

more than just putting one leg in front of another for a very long time. Elsewhere, you can join groups that run around and perform the kinds of public-spirited things you’d ordinarily find orange-boilersuited offenders doing as a consequence of their community service orders. You can cover the city on high-speed architectural tours. You can gloss your activity with mysticism as though it were a form of meditation or a way of communing with nature. You can head down to a club opening its doors in the early morning to ‘rave your way into the day’ at Morning Glory, an event that’s ‘definitely not an afterparty’ but a (sober) prework dance workout. And you can associate the workout with do-gooding, as any one of those emails from distant acquaintances asking you to sponsor a run can attest. And while a fitter population is nothing to complain about, it’s no stretch to see why a sportswear brand might want to sell to those of us who are far from specialist. Much more than a painful route to a functioning cardiovascular system and a trim waistline, fitness is an idea about what it means to have a human body in the twenty-first century. It represents a morality play about choice, self-control and motivation. It’s about the cults of health and youth, about the blissful states of energy and self-fulfilment. But perhaps, most of all, it’s about how the simple actions of our bodies can be rescripted by cultural forces, how moving your arms and legs and pumping blood around your body can become a vehicle for cultural myths and corporate messages.

Courtesy British Military Fitness, London

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Oliver Basciano Off-space No 15: Collective, Edinburgh One of the things I like about my job – or more generally about being somebody who goes out looking at art – is that it takes you to places you would probably never find yourself otherwise. Even if these places are pretty mundane and do not appear in the guidebooks for a good reason. The thought first struck me when I was staying in Genk, the small, rather dull former mining town in Belgium that was the venue for last year’s Manifesta. And it comes to the fore again as the guy in the polo shirt and shorts behind the reception desk at an Edinburgh leisure centre gives me a series of increasingly complicated instructions on how to find a particular room within the sports complex. I already know that, rather than finding Collective gallery’s latest off-site project, I’m going to end up in a Zumba class. I do find the exhibition eventually, installed in a small gym space overlooking the running track. I don’t take up the offer to walk on Heaven Is a Place on Earth (2007), a floor work featuring a grid of red, white and blue bathroom scales by Jacob Dahlgren. Not after I’ve passed all the toned and sweaty squash players on my way here – that would not be a self-esteem boost. A semicircular installation of record players and other audiovisual equipment by Haroon Mirza hums in the corner; a series of c-print triptychs

depicting odd, fictional gym sports by Nilbar Güres hangs on the wall; and a soft fabriccovered sculpture by Rachel Adams in the form of an oversize, comically impractical exercise frame stands in the middle of the room. It’s an odd experience, looking at all this stuff as joggers run round the track on the other side of the glass doors and kids practice football skills on the pitch. The reasons it’s all here, as opposed to in a gallery space, are twofold. The show, Game Changer, is part of a series of ongoing projects that Collective has been staging in venues that were used for the 1970 and 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh or will be used for the 2014 incarnation in Glasgow. There’s obviously ideals of public engagement being appealed to here – something the gallery has had to take seriously since evolving around the early 1990s from being primarily supported by artist subscriptions to receiving a budget provided by the public purse – but it’s an approach the gallery finds curatorially interesting as well. Collective emerged from Edinburgh’s artist populace in August 1984 as an artist-run space, and up until 1990 its primary responsibility was to its subscription-paying artist members. A voluntary committee of artists administered the organisation, programming a mix of solo and group shows of mainly Edinburgh College of

Art graduates. In 1990, however, Collective was under pressure from the Scottish Arts Council (as the body was then named) to ‘professionalise’, if their minimal funding was to be improved upon. The salaried role created as a result of that has now expanded to eight staff positions and a more institutional setup. Happily, younger artist-run spaces, such as Embassy and Rhubaba, have moved to fill the void left by Collective in the city’s art ecosystem. Nonetheless, its history is what ingrains the gallery in the city – more so than many of its institutional peers that were professional from the off. Collective is relocating, moving a steep but very pretty ten-minute walk away from the space in the heart of Edinburgh old town where the gallery has been located for over a decade, to the city’s handsome, domed Victorian former observatory building. And it is using this time between locations to encourage its would-be visitors to explore the city. Besides the leisure centre show, there’s a series of audio tours – the current one a poetic exploration authored by Ruth Ewan and Astrid Johnston – which lead the listener around Edinburgh, a form of programmatic self-reflection perhaps for a gallery that has had such a long and varied position within the capital.

Rachel Adams, Improver 1, 2013 (installation view, Game Changer, Meadowbank Sports Centre, Edinburgh). Photo: Tom Nolan. Courtesy the artist

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MAX WIGRAM GALLERY

LUIZ ZERBINI PAPAGAIO DO FUTURO 9th October - 9th November 2013

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9th October - 9th November 2013

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Cortesi Contemporary

Rosa Barba Will Benedict Kerstin Braetsch Matthew Brannon Maurizio Cattelan Dan Colen

Roberto Cuoghi Elmgreen & Dragset Haris Epaminonda Wade Guyton Elad Lassry Jacob Kassay

Jason Martin Paola Pivi Anselm Reyle Markus Schinwald Ned Vena Francesco Vezzoli

OUT OF THE BLUE curated by Alberto Salvadori 11 October – 7 December 2013

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info@cortesicontemporary.ch www.cortesicontemporary.ch with the support of:

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Great Critics and Their Ideas No 25

Grandma Moses on Rosalind Krauss Interview by Matthew Collings

The amateur painter known as Grandma Moses – the name was conceived by a journalist – was born on a farm in upstate New York in 1860. Her real name was Anna Mary Robertson. She married a labourer who died in 1927. They had ten children, five of whom died in infancy. She turned to painting in her late seventies and, through shrewd promotion and mass-media interest, became the most successful folk artist in history.

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grandma moses Hello, dear, I’m delighted to be interviewed by you. And surprised: I paint my landscapes. I don’t make a fuss. artreview Well, there’s a lot to make a fuss about. You lived to be a hundred and one, in 1952 Lillian Gish portrayed you in a tv docudrama (one of the first ever made), in 1955 the famous journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed you on colour television (one of its first outings) and in one year alone, 1951, 16 million Grandma Moses Christmas cards were sold. That cbs documentary was honoured by the Hollywood Academy. You received an award from President Truman. President Eisenhower commissioned a painting from you. You published a popular autobiography. You were on the cover of Time as well as Life. Your paintings were on posters, plates and draperies. You were an artist and a wildly successful mass-media creation. As a historical figure, you stand for a whole new way of thinking about art. gm Goodness! ar You’re the blueprint for Tracey Emin, for example, the self-made outsider who touches the hearts of the people. The difference with you is that it’s not just a rags-to-riches story but a never-too-late one as well. You were eighty when you had your first exhibition. And it was only four years earlier that you painted your first painting.

gm It’s an interesting phenomenon and interesting to compare it, as you say, to Emin. How clever you are! Let me see now, what is it that the times require, which that young lady fits? The aim of emancipation, I suppose, and an end to hierarchy. She personifies a utopian ideal of art, that anyone should be able to do it. And what was it that was required for me in the mid-twentieth century? I had a 21-year run as an exhibiting artist. The beginning was 1940, my first show. It was held at Galerie St Etienne, in New York, run by Otto Kallir, a Viennese immigrant who knew all about the tradition within Modernism of naive or outsider art, and who also, as it happens, introduced the works of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt to the us. He titled my show What a Farm Wife Painted. After a couple of years the mass-media whirlwind began – at that time the media served aims slightly different to those of 50 years later, when the Emin myth was created. above Anna Mary Robertson Moses, Going to Church, 1945. © Scala Archives. Courtesy private collection, London facing page Anna Mary Robertson Moses. © Picture Alliance/dpa

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ar What were its aims in your time? gm Well, it always serves power because it’s always in the control of the powerful. And the mode, which as Marx explains is really a process, by which the powerful have kept their power for some time has been capitalism. But capitalism evolves. It doesn’t always take the same form, although it is always a bit invisible. In any case, its different evolutionary stages require different illusions. What my landscapes stood for, therefore, was honesty. They stood for wisdom that is homespun. And they stood for a warm sense of reassurance. Those landscapes look a bit like reality, with perspectival space. But they are honestly achieved, without tricks or slickness. They are art done by a good and simple person. One who might have been making a quilt or some embroidery, or cooking pancakes: these wholesome things associated with life on a farm. So, yes, Grandma Moses means simplicity, but not just that: simplicity is always complicated, actually. A socialist, for example, perceives society with a simple clarity: exploitation exists and is in fact the basis of the order by which everyone lives. Capitalism demands that most live only a half-existence so a tiny minority can do what they like. So ‘Grandma Moses’ means

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a different kind of simplicity to the simplicity of a political radical. The name stands instead for a placatory simplicity. The simple illusion of a good past, an honest past, manifested like the Holy Spirit rather magically in rural landscape painting done by someone entirely untrained.

deregulation that had been under way since the 1970s. Art is the lightning conductor for discussion about such changes. It doesn’t create them. It expresses what’s already under way. Artists are helpless, basically, and it’s not just the naive ones who are naive.

ar What’s wrong with training?

ar You said a mouthful there, Grandma.

gm Look at the original model of the outsider artist. The sophisticated elevation of the primitive is found in the first wave of avantgardism in the 1910s. Strip away all artificiality. The mode of purity: the non-academic approach to expression: the artistic voice that speaks directly from the soul: the voice from within. It is found in Kandinsky’s essay ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’. Malevich proposes the primitive as truth in his paintings in bright colours and simple shapes of peasant life, which preceded his starkly minimal geometric paintings of 1913 onwards, Black Square, Black Circle, White on White Square and so on. It is the same outsider purity, the truth of the untrained, that Picasso and his group of supporters and admirers perceived in 1908 in the figure of Le Douanier Rousseau, the naive artist – when they staged a ceremonial dinner for him in that year. My own spin on purity, the myth around my work, which was concocted by art promoters and amplified by the mass media from 1940 onwards, was one of honest rural simplicity plus stunning success, a success that had an element of magic about it. Through the magic and the myth you could access a different world where life is better, while still remaining signed up in reality to the status quo. You can go on with things as they are but also feel as though your life is changed. Then like a recurring phantom the model was renewed in relation to Emin. With her the purity statement is something like: ‘Here’s my honest darkness, identify with it and share my pain.’ Abortions, rape, abuse, despair, were needed in a naive artistic visionary mythology appropriate for an age in which new ideas of merit in society had taken hold. They required certain rituals of taboo busting. Politeness, boundaries, restraint – these had to be broken down. The economic parallel was the global programme of financial

gm Yes, I’m feeling like taking my nap after all that. Do you have any more questions, young man? ar Well, who’s the highest-level naive-ist now? gm Although older than Emin, Marina Abramovic’s earlier historical status as just another performance artist has given way to a new sort of absolutely singular quintessence of invisibility. She has been transfigured into pure purity, or pure artworld sentimental honouring of purity. Her act is not weighed down by objects, which might require knowledge of traditions of making in order to tell if the objects are any good or not. In her performances where she stares across a table at any member of the public who might wish to stare back at her, goodness becomes entirely moral. It’s no accident that when celebrities want to get in on art, or we should say when promoters want to get celebrities in on it, she is the goodness model they now draw on. We saw it earlier this year when Jay-Z performed a marathon six-hour rap session at Pace gallery in New York. The rapper’s skill – a skill that can be seen to be done, because, after all, rapping is quite hard – is purified by art, so it is elevated above mere rapping. The impurity of mere skill falls away. The purity of all-transcending, fashionable, multimillion-dollar, vaporous, blue-chip, current art-type goodness emerges.

Abramovic is the goodness model celebrities now draw on. We saw it earlier this year when Jay-Z performed a marathon six-hour rap session at Pace gallery in New York. The rapper’s skill – a skill that can be seen to be done, because, after all, rapping is quite hard – is purified by art, so it is elevated above mere rapping

ar I see you’ve got the last issue of October in your apron pocket. Have you read it through? gm Yes, I carefully studied the illustrations of Jenny Holzer’s Redaction Paintings. These are paintings she has been working on for several years. They are based on government documents pertaining to the military that have been redacted. The source material is enlarged and transposed onto canvas, and the solid black rectangles become a socially relevant updating of the historical form of the monochrome, apparently. It’s sweet that the author swallows the bait! ar What do you think of Rosalind Krauss’s idea of the expanded field? gm I go along with it. Art cannot just be decoration for corporate people. It has to challenge the powers that be. ar But earlier you suggested art kind of goes along with those powers. gm I did, you’re right. I suppose the whole art thing just has its mysterious way, doesn’t it? ar Ha ha, I guess. Well, is there anything else you’d like to be asked about? I know! What about skill? You mentioned it in rap. Presumably rappers have a sort of hot naive energy to begin with and then they get better as they rap more. They get more skilful. Do you think 21 years was long enough to develop skill in painting? Or did you stay naive? gm As you suggest, skill is a matter of familiarity and experience, of repeating actions, internalising methods so they come more naturally. There is a skill to my painting, yes, the placement of things, pacing out incidents, playing off contrasts, making the pictures look coherent if not realistic. There is also a certain parallel in looking, a skill to it, so the viewer develops appropriate responses, and stylised forms are seen as such, with roughness of execution registering as rhythm and not as mistakes in a hopeless attempt to create a painting version of a photo. ar No one talks about you now though, do they? gm Fuck off.

next month The Archangel Gabriel on Jeffrey Deitch at la moca

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Great Collectors and Their Ideas No 2

Valeria Napoleone Interview by Mark Rappolt

Valeria Napoleone is an Italian collector based in London. Her collection, much of which is displayed in her home, consists entirely of works by women artists. She is also a patron of Studio Voltaire, a not-for-profit space in South London.

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artreview You collect only works by women artists. Was it a decision to collect women artists, or a decision not to collect men? valeria napoleone It wasn’t related to men, not at all. It’s not one versus the other; it’s not in opposition to something. It’s really because I was so fascinated by this language, and the more I looked around and the more I met the artists in New York during the late 1990s [where Napoleone was based at the time] whose work I first bought – Andrea Zittel, Shirin Neshat, Ghada Amer – all of these artists I met at the very beginning of my life as a collector. I really liked meeting the artists and seeing what was happening at the time, and dealing with people – which is contemporary art – so I started buying artworks. So it was really a fascination about issues, and it was something that I felt totally absorbed by and interested in. I felt it was very different from what was coming before, so another element was that I really knew about discrimination in the artworld against women. The fact that Guerrilla Girls were quite active at the time, and I was studying them anyway in books. I was really fascinated by the works of women at the time – like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and women artists who really were talking about different things. I knew the situation within galleries, the women being represented really poorly at museums, but this wasn’t the major thing for me. The fact was that I felt these artists were really speaking to me. It was a personal fascination that I had – it sounds quite arrogant to say that it was from the very beginning, but I felt I wanted to create a collection of work mainly by women. I felt like, ‘Oh, it’s going to go for a long time hopefully.’ It’s not like random buying – I buy this or I buy that – I just continued, and the more I continued the more I met these artists, and at the beginning I met a group of artists from Williamsburg. At the time I used to go very often to Pierogi 2000, as it was called at the time. I was spending time with Joe Amrhein [an artist and founder of the gallery] and going through his flat files [chests of flat drawers holding portfolios of artworks in a variety of media], and also being introduced to all these artists in Williamsburg. ar Had you met them before you started collecting their work? vn I mark the beginning as one Sunday night when I went to Pierogi and bought a photograph by Carol Shadford, an unknown artist. But it’s a black-and-white photograph that really is the very beginning – a black-and-white photograph of soap bubbles. From afar it looks very abstract, but as you approach it and you come closer, you see in the bubbles that there are faces and bodies of women. I felt it was really talking about how

many women feel trapped and isolated in their little world or big world, whatever, by domesticity. So that was really the very beginning, and then from then on I just started building little by little, and meeting artists again and going to studio visits. Carol was really one of the first artists I met and [whose work] I bought. Eventually I got to know groups of artists, and they were coming home for dinner, but I was really engaging with them since the very beginning.

many things affect my collecting – the fact that an artist’s work is too expensive at a certain point, the fact that the gallery that deals with the work isn’t a gallery I have a great relationship with…

ar Let’s say you met an artist whose work you liked and maybe had bought, but in person you didn’t get on with them at all – would that change how you felt about the work?

too predictable, so that is the element of surprise

I think they’re works by artists who contribute to the contemporary language nowadays. I look at the work more than looking at the fact that it is work by women. Obviously that is a given fact. Each artist deals with the element of feminism and femininity in a different way. Some artists are feminists, but you don’t see it in the work, and some artists aren’t feminists. There is an element of feminism in that every artist in the collection is a woman, definitely, but it operates at different levels vn It’s not about an inclusive collection – everything that goes on is such a personal relation to my personal taste and direction and vision, and what I’m attracted to and what I feel is relevant. I never really had a bad experience that would make me say, ‘No!’, but meeting the artists definitely influences my direction and my decision. Many times I met the artist and I felt, ‘Well, she’s not in it for the right reason. She’s not focused on the right direction and she’s not strong enough.’ This is an element that would probably influence me – and why not? I’m not afraid of that, because again, it’s not an attempt to curate whatever goes on in the world of women’s art. It’s ok if it affects me, because facing page Photo: Robi Rodriguez

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ar What really attracts you to a work? vn Surprise and materiality. I have to say I’m very ‘materic’. I like texture and I like substance, and I’m probably very Italian in that. It becomes as well. But the work goes together with the artist. I don’t like work that is too calculated and too perfect. ar You mentioned discrimination against women in the artworld earlier. Do you think the work you’re attracted to presents these issues in any way, or highlights those issues? vn First of all, I think they’re works by artists who contribute to the contemporary language nowadays. So I look at the work more than looking at the fact that [it is work by] women. Obviously that is a given fact. Each artist deals with the element of feminism and femininity in a different way. Some artists are feminists, but you don’t see it in the work, and some artists aren’t feminists. There is an element of feminism in that every artist in the collection is a woman, definitely, but it operates at different levels. An issue is present and it’s very important, as much as all the formal issues there, but it’s definitely very important in the collection. ar How does your husband feel about it? And the rest of your family? vn I think he feels just as much a part of it as I am. It’s interesting, he looks at them as great artists, and he doesn’t look at them as women. He’s not 100 percent up-to-date in what is happening in what I buy and everything. He has his own opinion on some artworks, and has more connection to some than others. He’s never discussed the fact that they’re women and he doesn’t relate. Actually, since the very beginning he’s been very supportive, and he’s been really in for the surprise and for the ride. He’s just respecting the focus in this direction, because he’s seen it a lot. As the collection grows it becomes stronger and stronger in terms of the direction, but again I think when we discuss the work it’s always about the strength of the work and of the artist. To my children and to him I always say, ‘It will grow on you guys.’ Also many times he told me, ‘I don’t really know what you find in this work. I don’t really connect.’ And I say, ‘Well, it’s ok, you don’t have to like everything. Actually, it’s fine. This is important to the collection according to me, and it’s really a decision that

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I connect to, but if you don’t like it, either it will grow on you eventually, because the more you live with works the more you connect – it’s like meeting people – or if you don’t connect, that is ok. ar What about with your children? Let’s say at some point they inherit the collection and they just go, ‘Do you know what, we really never got it, and never understood this,’ and then they just throw it in a big bin? vn I’ll make sure if they inherit it they get it; otherwise they won’t inherit it. ar Is it important that they have a connection with it? vn Absolutely – this is why I think it’s important that they live with it. It will be part of their memories. I have memories of where I grew up with my parents with all of these beautiful objects, and that also created my taste and created my sensitivity to beauty. It was so important. I think my children may not be interested really now – and they’re not – but they’re fascinated by several pieces here and there. Unconsciously, it is definitely something that will stay with them, because it stretches your mind. There is no doubt when you live with these things around you that there is a hidden message to your brain and to your heart and to your memory that is going to stay. I think it’s just a memory of childhood. If I had a gallery separated from the house, that would be different. Then it would be really difficult to make the connection… ar Is the collection partly in storage and partly in your home? vn Yes, it’s in storage unfortunately. I mean, it’s not my plan to have a gallery. I think I like to live with the works, and I’m not sure what type of gallery it would be. Definitely not the Valeria Napoleone Trust or Foundation – definitely not. My work has always been connected with being a patron, and supporting what is going on. So if it’s going to be a gallery or something, for me, Studio Voltaire has been giving me this gallery thing. ar How did you get involved with them? vn It was probably seven years ago – I don’t count them. They occasionally sent me emails or they were getting in touch with me, and I was in the neighbourhood visiting a schoolfriend of my son, and I thought, ‘I’m going to pop in.’ So I called in and fortunately the directors were in, because at the time they weren’t as busy as today. I loved them. I’ve liked them since the very beginning, it’s just a feeling with people. I like the space. There was a group show at the time,

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and it was actually the members’ show. They had an external curator curating. I just connected with the space and with the whole thing, and these two people [at the time Joe Scotland, still director, and Sarah McCrory, who has since left]. I told them, ‘Great. I want to help you – to become a patron.’ They didn’t have any patron scheme. Also I said, ‘I want to be hands-on involved. I don’t want to just hand you a cheque at the end of the year,’ and that started it. So very informally helping. ar You’ve talked about your collection being a private thing, but it seems that you also feel that that comes with some public responsibility…

You feel that you’re in a healthy environment and artists are in a healthy situation, but let me tell you, the young spaces and the young artists are struggling. They keep on struggling because nobody is looking in their direction, as it’s always been. So this is why I feel this responsibility, but naturally in my collection I also nurture this. It’s really this moment when people are not yet looking in the artists’ direction that I’m interested in vn I feel the responsibility to show my collection beyond friends and family. So this is why I feel a responsibility to the artists who are young, so they need to be exposed. So this is why I host dinners for Studio Voltaire here, to put artists in touch with galleries, curators, and just to create moments where people can communicate with each other and create. Things happen all the time – projects – so Studio Voltaire is another way of contributing to the contemporary art form nowadays. Being a patron is as important as being a collector for me. I just couldn’t be the collector and sit, as you say, in my living room, looking at this work and saying how beautiful it is and that is it, and not sharing and not helping the artist, and not helping the institution where I feel my intervention is really most needed. It makes the biggest difference.

ar There is a lot of talk now, particularly in somewhere like London, about how the commercial galleries are getting bigger and supporting artists whose work sells at the top end of the market, or smaller with lower costs and lower capacities to support artists. Do you think that makes patronage as you describe it more important? vn I think the way in which the artworld is going is there is more and more money devoted to bigger names: bigger galleries are attracting big money and bigger artists. So all this money coming from all directions is certainly not helping the youngest, and the most cutting-edge or the smallest alternative spaces. Definitely they need more and more. You feel that you’re in a healthy environment and artists are in a healthy situation, but let me tell you, the young spaces and the young artists are struggling. They keep on struggling because nobody is looking in their direction, as it’s always been. So this is why I feel this responsibility, but naturally in my collection I also nurture this. It’s really this moment when people are not yet looking in the artists’ direction that I’m interested in. ar Do you travel much for art? vn I travel for art, but I’m not a fanatic about it. ar You’re not competitive? vn No, not at all. I mean, I don’t go to the opening of the events. I don’t go to the opening of Art Basel. I go at the weekend and I go at my own pace. I want to look at the art and I want to discuss it with people, so I travel when I feel it’s necessary to travel, meaning I do probably two or three art airs maximum, besides Frieze London. Meaning New York because it’s important for me. I was born as a collector in the States and I lived there a long time, so I want to be present and see what is happening there in terms of the young American artists. Also, Berlin is one of my favourite places to travel, so there are really specific places that I know that are quite challenging for me, where I can do a lot of studio visits, New York and Berlin. Whenever I go for art fairs, I stay longer and I dedicate more time to studio visits than to the fair. So, yes, I travel, but it’s very contained and very focused on what I do, because I don’t want to do everything, because your brain absorbs only so much, and quantity doesn’t mean quality. There are some key places I think you need to be constantly, because there are a lot of collectors who are based in a place in Europe, and they’re European collectors. Americans are American collectors, and they have different types of collections. I would like my collection really to be seen as international and as quite global, and not being linked to my tastes as being an English collector or an Italian collector.

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Whitechapel Gallery Humphrey Jennings Spare Time (film still), 1939, 35mm, transferred to DVD, duration: 15min, courtesy BFI stills.

In collaboration with

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Contemporary Art Society

Nothing Beautiful Unless Useful The first in a year-long series of displays exploring the theme of art and philanthropy The Whitechapel Gallery Collections Programme is supported by:

17 September–1 December 2013 Whitechapel Gallery Aldgate East / Liverpool St. Free Entry

whitechapelgallery.org contemporaryartsociety.org

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Other People and Their Ideas No 9

Lisa Dennison Interview by Tom Eccles

When Lisa Dennison joined Sotheby’s auction house in 2007, it brought to an end a 29-year career at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where she had been director since 2005. During her time at the Guggenheim, working with Thomas Krens (director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation from 1988 to 2008), the museum launched ambitious and controversial plans to become a global art brand, opening and proposing new outposts around the world, with a mixture of success (Bilbao) and failure (Las Vegas). But the idea of the global art museum seems to have stuck, so what was the institution thinking during the development stages of this now-established ideal?

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artreview You left the Guggenheim Museum in 2007 to become executive vice president of Sotheby’s North America, where you are now chairman of Sotheby’s North and South America, after having been at the museum for almost three decades. That must have been an astonishing journey. Today it’s commonplace to judge that time with pretty harsh admonitions and handwringing. I like the fact that you seem to take a different tack. Can you tell me what positive developments you think came out of that period at the museum? lisa dennison I think Tom Krens started a very important conversation, one that seems even more relevant today as museums are questioning their ‘business model’, so to speak. Tom believed that museums were eighteenthcentury institutions (think Diderot’s encyclopaedia) in a nineteenth-century box (think beaux arts palace) and that we needed to think about what the twenty-first-century museum would look like, both in response to a more global world and to the demands of art that had become, in some cases, outsized for many traditional institutions. So the idea of a global network of museums, sharing collections, was in my mind an incredibly positive development. Too many great collections sit in storage, never to see the light of day. In the collectionsharing scenario, there was also a way for the Guggenheim to annex hard-to-come-by funds for building collections – through Bilbao, for example, where the Basque government put hundreds of millions of dollars into the collection, and through Deutsche Bank, where corporate money was leveraged to commission artists to create works that would become part of the collection, to the Guggenheim Las Vegas, where the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the Guggenheim formed an alliance partnership, agreeing to share parts of their collections with each other in shows for Las Vegas, New York, St Petersburg or other venues. Of course, another significant effect of the global network was using culture, and great architecture, as a linchpin for economic development. Some may argue, legitimately, that there have been downsides to the proliferation of museums across the world, often built by star architects, and that the container can become more important than that which is contained. But the horse is out of the barn, so to speak, and we have seen some incredibly fabulous museums or museum extensions built by the likes of Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel and of course Frank Gehry, among many others. We are also seeing a lot more joint acquisitions and collectionsharing partnerships develop. For me, these are the most positive developments from the Krens years at the Guggenheim.

ar In the early 1990s you were involved in the acquisition of a large part of the Panza Collection, which seemed at the time to indicate a significant shift for the Guggenheim towards minimal and conceptual practices. While much of the press focused at the time on the sale of works by Kandinsky and Modigliani at Sotheby’s to fund this acquisition, I remember the museum making great efforts to suggest this was the start of a prolonged engagement with art from the 1960s and 70s. And then that seemed to get dropped. Obviously the idea was continued to great effect by Michael Govan at the Dia Center, later in the form of Dia Beacon (he was an acolyte of Krens at the time of the Panza acquisition). What happened at the Guggenheim? Did the building projects take over? Did that idea of focus fail to meet the kind of business model that is necessitated by a global museum?

Another significant effect of the global network was using culture, and great architecture, as a linchpin for economic development. Some may argue, legitimately, that there have been downsides to the proliferation of museums across the world, often built by star architects, and that the container can become more important than that which is contained. But the horse is out of the barn, so to speak, and we have seen some incredibly fabulous museums or museum extensions built by the likes of Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel and of course Frank Gehry, among many others. ld The Panza acquisition was actually not a shift. It was an opportunity to bring the collection forward and fill in some essential gaps. The museum had not done much collecting in the 1970s and 1980s, other than through the vehicle of a young talent show sponsored by Exxon, where grant money was made available to buy works of emerging artists. When Tom Krens took over as director, we altered that course, first by establishing acquisition committees, whose dues went to the purchase of contemporary art. But when

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the Panza opportunity presented itself, we all saw it as an opportunity to continue the legacy of the original mission of the foundation – to collect nonobjective, or abstract, art. In essence, it would provide continuity, bringing the heritage of Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian forward to include such artists as Judd, Flavin, Marden, Serra, Mangold and Ryman. The acquisition of 350 works by predominantly American minimal and conceptual artists gave the collection a depth and quality of postwar art that was in many ways commensurate with its prewar holdings. I think it is fair to argue that this acquisition was indeed the start of a prolonged engagement with art from the 1960s and 70s. There have been a multitude of shows drawing from this collection in venues around the world, and these exhibitions have provoked a great deal of scholarship, as well as providing the opportunity in many cases for the fabrication of works that hadn’t previously been made. In addition, in 2010 the Guggenheim launched the Panza Collection Initiative with the support of the Mellon Foundation, a very ambitious project to address the long-term preservation of artworks of the 1960s and 70s. Indeed, they hired Jeffrey Weiss, former Dia director, to spearhead this initiative, as well as a dedicated conservator, and they established an international advisory committee. Using a case-study method, they are aiming to develop a broader framework through which to address the long-term sustainability of other variable, ephemeral or fabrication-based artworks of this era. This information will be widely shared, and is very important, I believe, because as we’ve recently seen with the decision of the Flavin estate to fulfil editions that weren’t made during the artist’s lifetime, the rules for the preservation of this art have yet to be written. So I would argue that rather than ‘dropping’ the engagement, the museum took a very responsible course. As for continuing acquisitions – the future may hold some interesting possibilities should the museum decide, after the contractual time expires, to sell some of the works from the Panza Collection and reinvest the funds to broaden their holdings. They have, for example, many Rymans from 1972, and if some could be sold to purchase works from other periods of his career, this would be interesting both for the market in general as well as for representation of Ryman in the Guggenheim collection. I also think if you look at the ongoing acquisitions programme, there has been a very strong effort to acquire works that continue the legacy of Minimalism. In 2004, for example, I organised a show with Nancy Spector called Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated): Art from 1951 to the Present that drew from the collection

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supplemented by loans. The show had a prologue that established a postwar genealogy for Minimalism, followed by a selection of classic Minimalism and postminimalism, and then looked at successive generations, including how artists of the 1980s and 90s resuscitated the principles of Minimalism in their work. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Charles Ray and Rachel Whiteread were all included. The curators of the Guggenheim today, among them Nancy Spector, Jeffrey Weiss and Carmen Giménez, drive the acquisition policy of the museum, and certainly show a penchant for a more minimal and conceptual aesthetic. Indeed, the James Turrell exhibition currently on view, which was initiated by Tom Krens during his tenure at the museum, demonstrates the kind of commitment that the acquisition of the Panza Collection engendered. The mere fact that you are raising this question shows that Tom will not be remembered for one of the most significant contributions to the Guggenheim’s collection building endeavour, but rather for building endeavours and the globalisation of the museum! ar You make a compelling and pretty convincing case. And maybe it’s time to reassess that legacy. But part of the problem seems to me how and what the Guggenheim was communicating. Am I wrong or was the message constantly one of drumming up growth and globalisation, satellites and starchitects during that period? There was a sense, albeit from the outside, that the museum drifted apart from the art community. Would you just say, ‘Well, Tom, the art community changed, it expanded and the museum responded and acted as a catalyst to that change’? ld That was exactly what I was thinking! Communication. We obviously didn’t do a good enough job communicating our message in a way that was universally understood by the art community. But the artworld lives in a tabloid culture. ‘We care about art’ doesn’t exactly make headlines, but ‘We are building a museum for the twenty-first century, complete with globalisation, starchitects and satellite museums’ does. We were the hero and villain at the same time. Of course we cared about art. Everything we did was in the service of art. Building outposts abroad to show our collection and to make acquisitions was about the art. Plus, the economics of the situation were important, and extremely creative ways to raise funds in an increasingly constricted economic environment. But somehow it got lost in translation. When I became the director of the New York museum in 2005, it was partly to help refocus attention on the mothership, so to speak. It was an announcement that yes, we were a global museum, but we also had

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a strong commitment to our headquarters in New York. So we were innovators and traditionalists at the same time. Of course, there is a point to be made about our programming during the Krens years – Armani, motorcycles, China, Brazil, Africa… taking on huge continents and thousands of years of art. This was all a little bit out of the box, but yet… Harold Koda, the curator who brought us Armani, went on to realise amazing shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including the popular Alexander McQueen exhibition. The Art of the Motorcycle looked at a design object through a 100-year history, and had great sociological import as well. And as for the big encyclopaedic blockbusters, we brought art to New York that might otherwise have never been seen outside the confines of a local setting, and contextualised it in a way that served the layman and the art professional as well. Anyway, I heartily agree – it is time to reassess that legacy!

And generally today, most corporate support comes from the marketing department rather than the philanthropic arm, which means there needs to be a real payoff for the dollars spent. Often, museums have to invent programming to match the corporate gift, which leaves the basics underfunded. Museums are forced today to think about shows that will get people through the gate, because income from admission, bookstore, cafés is ever more important ar Now with more than five years’ distance since leaving the Guggenheim, but still with a pretty keen eye on developments in the not-for-profit world, what do you think are the biggest challenges facing museums today? Of course, affording new acquisitions would be high on the list. Recently you suggested to me that the museums in New York should share resources such as joint memberships. I think you were also hinting at the fact that museums are essentially competing for the same resources (board members being one!) and that another model might not only be desirable but also necessary. I’m also interested in your thoughts on programming. You were a curator for many years; how do you view the health of our museums today?

ld The biggest challenge facing museums today is sort of the same as the biggest challenge facing museums yesterday – raising money. But it has gotten more challenging for several reasons. One of the most serious is that corporate support has dwindled. Certainly during 2008/9 it was an easy thing for companies to cut support from their budgets. And generally today, most corporate support comes from the marketing department rather than the philanthropic arm, which means there needs to be a real payoff for the dollars spent. Often, museums have to invent programming to match the corporate gift, which leaves the basics – operations, acquisitions, building programmes and capital campaigns – underfunded. Museums are forced today to think about shows that will get people through the gate, because income from admission, bookstore, cafés is ever more important. And then of course there is the cost of expansion. In nyc today, we have Dia and the Whitney raising money for new building projects; moma too is in an expansion mode; and so is the Met with the addition of the Whitney’s Marcel Breuer building as part of their extended campus. And yes, museums are essentially competing for the same resources – corporate and foundation dollars, and individual giving. Board members too! And certainly one of the biggest threats is the gigantic global galleries – the Gagosians, Zwirners, Paces, Hauser & Wirths of the world – that are doing museum-quality programming, and entry is free of charge! Plus, they can be more reactive to the ‘zeitgeist’. The lead time for these shows is a fraction of the time it takes museums to mount an exhibition. There are so many art experiences competing for the viewer’s attention, with art fairs, biennales, auctions, gallery shows – does anyone have time to visit the permanent collections of museums any more? So how do museums stay relevant, and particularly in a world that is changing before our eyes through the power of social media? Being interdisciplinary certainly attracts audiences. Museums play a strong role as cultural conveners – a place where people assemble, to engage with the art, and to engage with each other in discourse around what is presented. There is no competition on that front from the other art venues. The quality and relevance of the programming is especially important in this context. The ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity is important. So is the relevance to a local audience. And while this shouldn’t be a leading criterion, the ‘spectacle’, or entertainment value, also comes into play as a driver of attendance (think Tim Burton at moma; Alexander McQueen at the Met; Turrell at the Guggenheim; Carsten Höller at the New Museum…).

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For the survival of museums, sharing resources is definitely one part of the solution. We see this in terms of museums that share acquisitions, especially for large-scale installations that are shown once in a blue moon, or for works that can be fabricated each time they are put on view. Partnerships where museums agree to share programming and acquisitions and not charge each other is another part of the solution. But I don’t think you can share board members, unless there is an outright merger of institutions and their boards. I think the future will bring more and more consolidation of institutions in order for the smaller ones to survive. The mechanics of how this will happen will be interesting to watch.

ar If you were starting out today, do you think you would choose to work in the museum or auction world? ld It’s a hard question, because clearly the auction world is such an exciting place in today’s market-driven artworld. If I was fresh out of school, for example, I think the opportunities are better and the growth potential is more interesting in the auction world (we are talking 2013). But in the 1970s, when I graduated college, I think the museum world was the better option. I wouldn’t have given up my 30 years in the field for anything, and felt very satisfied having risen through the ranks and climbed the curatorial ladder. But the role of a curator has changed so much today. I think curators spoke with a different kind of authority when I was starting out (as did critics). Today,

curating a show is more of a collaborative effort, with an artist, an exhibition designer and even sometimes the lender all having their say. Also, the administrative demands of curatorial work are rather huge in today’s world. Most curators speak of not having the time or space for thinking, for reflection, for the kind of scholarship that is so important to the field. And curators have to actively fundraise for their projects and acquisitions, which is extremely difficult. What’s interesting to me is that with the porousness of boundaries between institutions today, one can move from the museum world to the commercial art world, or vice versa. Case in point: Sotheby’s lost two talented employees recently to the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum.

The Art of the Motorcycle, 2001 (installation view, Guggenheim Las Vegas). Photo: David Heald. © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

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Sergio Calderon & Recycle Group: Last Space Remaining

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39 Dover Street London W1S 4NN

27.09.13 – 24.10.13

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Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk

Lutz Bacher: Black Beauty Lutz Bacher, The White Horse, 1981. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz and Greene Naftali Gallery

25 September – 17 November 2013

Media Partner Supported by: This exhibition is made possible with support from Galerie Buchholz, Greene Naftali Gallery and ‘The Lutz Bacher Exhibition Supporters Group’

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is a registered charity number: 236848

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Art Featured

And don’t spend your time lookin’ around For something you want that can’t be found When you find out you can live without it And go along not thinkin’ about it 77

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Paola Pivi The Alaska-based Italian multimedia artist takes time out from preparing for a major us gallery show to explain why she doesn’t really talk about art Interview by Christopher Mooney

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artreview

Nice to see you.

paola pivi Nice to… hear you. I don’t think India allows video. Let’s switch off the cameras so that we can talk. ar Okay, done. So, I think the last time I saw you was at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in Beverly Hills. And now you’re holed up in an undisclosed location in India, with a show in London and another coming up at the new Galerie Perrotin in New York. pp Yes. The London show first. It was Once upon a Time (A Dream by Paola Pivi) with Massimo De Carlo at Carlson, a very special show for me because it paired my works, including a couple of new ones that I had been working on for years, with new works by the Italian painter Carla Accardi. Do you know her work? It is fantastic. I cannot remember her exact age, and it would not be polite to say, but her first show was in 1950, and her work is as beautiful and fresh today as it was then. I have always had a great love for her as an artist and a person, and there are some similarities between our work – my art is made of simple gestures, as are her abstracts. That was the starting point for the idea of a show together. It was my idea and I was going to curate it, but as I am unable to leave India, Massimo had to select her paintings. I dreamt of this show for a long time, and in the end I was not even able to see it, because of my situation in India. ar Do you want to talk about your situation in India, or no? This is about the adoption of your child, right? pp This is about the custody and guardianship of the little boy for whom we have initiated custody and guardianship proceedings, yes. We have good lawyers, but it’s a complicated situation. We are the first in history to bring to court and expose some authorities of the Tibetan community in exile, which most people, including myself before all this started, believe are above all suspicion. But, actually, the people that we have brought to court are exactly the opposite, and they’re reacting in the same way that I would expect the mafia in Sicily to react, persecuting us illegally and brutally. So suddenly I have woken up to a new reality. I am living what I only saw in movies, you know? Being persecuted, under threat, having to move, it’s unbelievable. ar

It sounds like a nightmare.

It is.

ar And complicated. I’m not sure this is the best forum to discuss it. pp No, and it’s also important for us to talk about art.

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ar The September show in the new Galerie Perrotin in New York has two elements, right? pp Yes, Emmanuel [Perrotin] has granted me the huge honour of having the first show in his brand-new gallery on Madison. There are two exhibition rooms on two floors, so I am thinking of a show with two elements. The first one, on the ground floor, is all worked out in my mind – polar bears. But the other one is kind of stuck inside my head. I was planning to work on the self-immolators of Tibet, but now I feel very confused about the whole issue.

I never had any inclinations towards animals, and then all of a sudden they started popping up everywhere Like much of my art, they’re just visions that come into my head, that I then make real ar Let’s talk about the part that is done, then. The polar bears. pp The polar bears. Which come from my life in Alaska. ar

How did you end up in Alaska?

pp [In 2005] I pretended to be a journalist following the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and I had the time of my life. A year later, Massimo De Carlo was teasing me, saying, you know, “How come this year you’re not risking your life again in Alaska?” So I tried to sign up for the race but didn’t get in, and then I just decided to move there.

I do believe in change. Changing of one’s thoughts is the utmost example of progress and evolution. It is very hard for people to change the way they think ar

And you love it.

pp It is a perfect dream. Until Anchorage I moved all the time. Now I hope it will be my home for the rest of my life. ar I’m just down the coast from there now, in the British Columbia rainforest. pp

Are there bears?

I saw two today.

How do you cope with them?

ar There’s never been an attack, but there are many close encounters. Problems usually arrive when a young one gets separated from its mother. pp This sounds familiar… Which brings us right back to my problem in India, because they want to separate this little boy from us. ar

Where in India are you right now?

pp We don’t tell anybody, because when we say it, even to 100 percent reliable people, it just gives us a feeling of anxiety, so we just have this rule that we don’t talk to anybody. ar

How long have you been in India?

Many months now.

ar ok. Well, it feels odd to change the subject, but… let’s go back to the bears. And the other animals in your work. pp The first animals that came into my art were the two ostriches on the boat [Untitled (Ostriches), 2003] when I was living on the tiny island of Alicudi in the Mediterranean, a perfect cone-shaped island with no flat land and no cars… Suddenly, because of this place, two ostriches came into my art. I was completely surprised. I never had any inclinations towards animals, and then all of a sudden they started popping up everywhere. At the beginning, I welcomed them more like characters, you know, beautiful divas that were coming to me with all this charisma and beauty. And then, ten years later, in Alaska, I was talking with my friend, the Inupiaq performance artist Allison Warden a.k.a. aku-matu, who told me that every human being has a memory of a past when we were very closely connected with animals. Right then and there, I understood myself. ar So do you have a bear spirit, is that your particular animal? It seems to be the one that you’ve worked with the most. pp Well, I never thought about it, but yes, I’m obsessed by bears. ar The bears that you’re showing in the Perrotin, what are they made of? pp Urethane foam and plastic. There’s no real animal in them, they’re sculptures. They look real, but they’re not. And they’re covered with feathers. ar

What kind of feathers?

pp Turkey feathers, I think. The last order said ‘turkeys’ on it, which I never knew before. So actually there is a ‘real animal’ part in them. ar

Why did you choose feathers for the fur?

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above I’m a Bear, So What?, 2012, photographic print mounted with Diasec, 165 × 125 cm. Photo: Attilio Maranzano. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong preceding pages Untitled (Zebras), 2003 (installation view, High Line Art, 2012, New York), billboard. Photo: Hugo Glendinning

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pp A few years ago, I wanted to do an artwork with taxidermy bears – a polar bear and a grizzly bear dancing together – but I didn’t want to commission the killing of two bears for art. This artwork might come about someday, if I get organised. Maybe a park will give me the bears’ carcasses after they die – of natural causes. Or an accident. But while waiting for that, I had this other vision of the standard bear, and so I did it. Like much of my art, they’re just visions that come into my head, that I then make real. ar

Are they lifesize?

pp They are exactly lifesize, which means they’re humungous. ar

And scary?

pp Only one will be clearly in an aggressive mood. You know, with an aggressive mouth and body language. But I guess they all touch on some ancestral fear. A friend in Alaska, Stephen Blanchett, of the band Pamyua, told me that once he killed a bear because, you know, he had to, the bear had become dangerous. He said when he was cutting it up it was exactly like a human body. ar

ar Why do you make this association between the Arc de Triomphe and an elephant? pp I don’t know. Maybe history. You know, Hannibal getting to ride the elephants. This is an image that has always stuck inside my imagination. I don’t even know if it’s a true story, but it is what we are told in Italy. ar

Would it be a real elephant?

pp A real elephant, yes. Of course, the day of the performance there would be no visitors on the top of the arch, or at least none in the area where the elephant would be, which would be enclosed by some fence, you know, a visually minimal fence. Viewers would see it from the streets, from the ground. ar Would there be any other element, like the sculpted cups of cappuccino with your live leopard piece [One Cup of Cappuccino, Then I Go, 2007]?

Are you a meat eater?

pp Oh, yes, I love meat. I would eat it exclusively if I could.

ar The animals that you have used in the past – the leopards, ostriches, llamas and so on – have come from circuses? pp They have been trained animals born in captivity that work in the movie industry. ar

pp I think, after the elephant on the Arc de Triomphe and the giraffe on the skyscraper, I’ll be done with live animals. But never say never, right? ar Are there other animals that you would like to work with? Not live ones, but of your own creation? pp

Yes, whales and cockroaches.

Really.

pp Actually, to tell you the truth, after meeting my husband, Karma, who’s a Tibetan Buddhist, I find it harder to imagine using live animals in my work, because I feel more for the animal. I can still do these works, with the same precautions and care that I used in the past, but I find it harder. In fact, the project of the giraffe on the skyscraper has changed into a completely different project, for which I will need to collaborate with an architect and an engineer in the design of a skyscraper. It will still involve a live giraffe, but I reshaped the project to avoid having to make the animal fly. ar Are other aspects of your thinking and life changing?

ar And would you ever work with a live bear? pp

pp I do believe in change. Changing of one’s thoughts is the utmost example of progress and evolution. It is very hard for people to change the way they think.

Oh my god [laughter].

ar I understand that at one point you wanted to do a giraffe on La Défense in Paris? Did that ever happen? pp A live giraffe on top of a skyscraper, which is what La Défense is. It hasn’t happened yet. ar Are there other animal visions you would like to realise? pp I attempted to do an elephant on top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. That I think would be really good. But the monument is in the hands of the war veterans, and they don’t particularly like the idea. ar Is it important for you that it be the Arc de Triomphe, or could you find another monument? pp The Arc is so perfect! I have never come across any other building that made me think of an elephant.

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So it should be pretty easy to find a trained bear.

pp No, the only elements would be the elephant and the Arc de Triomphe. It would be so easy, too, because the Arc de Triomphe is low enough that you could reach it with a stable crane, similar to an elevator, so an elephant could be brought up there in a container. A trained elephant from, for example, a circus, travels on the road in a container all his life, so it could easily hang out up there and not be stressed out by the experience. And I could take a picture of it from a helicopter.

Untitled (Airplane), 1999, Fiat G-91 airplane. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong, and Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan

You do not really talk about your art, do you?

pp No. Visions are part of my process, and it is very simple, you know, because I think from instinct, from the very deep core of me, where it’s not even me any more. That’s why when I talk about art, it is like a child talking. I don’t have elaborate theories about my art, because I think it is the art that is the interesting thing, and to elaborate on it just doesn’t serve any purpose for me. Wow. I have just realised that this is the first time I have spoken about art in… four months. So thank you. But let’s talk again when my situation is not so complex… Paola Pivi: Ok, You Are Better Than Me, So What? is on show at Galerie Perrotin, New York, through 26 October

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Camion Vertical, 1997, photographic print mounted on aluminium, 182 × 112 cm. Photo: the artist. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong

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David Maljkovic If our future is haunted by the past, does that mean we need to look back to look forward? And if we’re constantly turning our heads to look this way and that, how do we know where we are right now? Such questions, and their political and sociological implications, form the basis of this artist’s work… by Oliver Basciano

Could an artist like David Maljkovic have come to the fore 20 years ago? There’s nothing in his work that is technologically new – his films are on 16mm, and the sculptural installations that they’re framed through, akin to crude minimalist theatre sets, are the product of basic fabrication processes. The artist’s sculptures use traditional materials and do not look like they would have needed prior computer modelling; his photographs and collage works do not display any digital manipulation. Yet the answer is no, David Maljkovic’s work could only have been made this millennium. It’s not the medium that is new, but the world that the work is part of. It is a practice that is both symptomatic and reflective of our contemporary malaise, in which the spectre of the past is forever present and a radical vision of the future is unimaginable in the way it was for previous generations. Progress isn’t what it used to be, you see. Playing with and mixing up notions of past and future is a recurring feature of the Croatian artist’s work. The references within a film will pivot back and forth, or the film will wrong-foot the viewer as to its historic setting. In the first part of the Scene for New Heritage trilogy (2004–6), a subtitle suggests the series is set in the future: May 2045, to be precise. Yet the opening scene shows only a crude attempt to visualise that promised future scene: a contemporary saloon car, entirely wrapped in silver foil, cruises down a country lane; the metallic material conjuring up references to early tv sci-fi, twentiethcentury robots and the dawn of space travel. Its destination is a 12storey curving, monolithic building with a similarly reflective facade: a monument, a bit of further research elicits, erected in the mountain forests of Petrova Gora, Croatia, for victims of the Second World War. Arriving at the building, the passengers of the car congregate

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with others who have also come to the site in foil-wrapped vehicles. The original function of the building, now in disrepair, is lost on this throng – its purpose long forgotten in the transition between our present and theirs. In an incomprehensible yodelling ‘language’ (subtitled in English for the viewer), these people of the future discuss the function of this historic artefact. “Times were different back then,” one howls. Another answers, “Yes, times that don’t matter to us!” Or is time itself irrelevant to the future? In the film Out of Projection (2009), the disorientation of time is less theatrical – perhaps more mundane – but nonetheless affecting. The 18-minute work intersperses images of a group of older people watching a track on which prototype cars are being tested with muted interviews with the spectators, former Peugeot engineers who used to work at the facility. A simple conflation of the past (represented by the retired workers), the present (the production of the film, the interviews) and the future (the prototype vehicles, some quite outlandish in their design) takes place. The present isn’t simply now, the film says, it is a conflation of the past and possible futures. The work holds up a mirror to the contemporary idea of hauntology, the term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (with recourse to Marx and Hegel) that addresses the preoccupation and fetishisation – the haunting – of contemporary culture by the past. Yet it cannot fail to be the product of it too. A sense of place and architecture is fundamental to the artist’s work – both onscreen and offscreen – but it is a use that is in service to Maljkovic’s meditation on the spectral nature of the past’s effect on the present. At the Baltic in Gateshead, the second stop for his current touring retrospective, Maljkovic used false walls to create a

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Images with Their Own Shadow (film still), 2008

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corridor that ran around the perimeter of the entire exhibition space. columns. The effect of these silent posing women isn’t glamorous but Our confrontation with the artworks was momentarily delayed unsettling – dreamlike. as we were filtered through this passageway, encountering along If dreaming is connected to memory, then perhaps the hallucithe way the backs of film projectors, their lenses directed through natory feel of Maljkovic’s work is a signal that his use of Modernism holes in the wall, through which we first saw the exhibition, fleet- isn’t just a case of fetishised retrofuturism. The teachers of Ancient ingly and obscured, before the final reveal via an entrance at the far Greece would advise their students that being able to visualise places end of the space. In his 2010 exhibition for the Glasgow International and images that might ‘hold’ their memories – a type of time travel – festival, Maljkovic wanted to show Images with Their Own Shadow was the key to mnemotechnic success. Focusing on the link between (2008) in a space devoid of institutional history or ghosts of previthe empiricism of buildings and the abstract notion of time (a link ous shows that might have haunted the repeat visitor to a preexisting that explains the purpose of memorials and the preservation of sites gallery. The artist found an empty shop space – a raw, concrete bunker of sorts – in which he was able to show his film, an archive audio of trauma), the artist uses decaying architecture to further underline the idea of the past as being an active interview with Vjenceslav Richter, In an incomprehensible yodelling facet of the present, both in the work one of founding members of exat-51, a group of Croatian artists and archi‘language’, people of the future discuss and the wider world. While the details tects interested in geometric abstracof Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 claim that the function of a historic artefact tion, spliced with images of trendywe have reached the ‘end of history’ looking younger people standing silently next to various Richter have been rightly derided as neoliberal cheerleading, the wider statesculptures. Modernist design and architecture, Soviet brutalism ment that capitalism has subdued the fight for political and cultural and the utopian intentions they recall are recurring presences in progression does seem to ring true. Hauntology is a symptom of this Maljkovic’s art. Lost Memories from These Days (2006), for example, lack of political development. In Maljkovic’s work the past and future returned to the Italian Pavilion, designed by Giuseppe Sambito, are conflated because the politically utopian visions of the future that of the 1961 Zagreb Fair, which Maljkovic had featured in his earlier the artist portrays – from the design ideals of exat-51 to the various film These Days (2005). Built in a rare meeting between the West and facets of modernist architecture referenced – are only to be found in Yugoslavia as a piece of Communist propaganda, the building now sits derelict. In the (six-minute) later film, silent, vacant female mod- the past. His films feel floaty and hard to pin down because they operels – almost alien in their washed-out beauty – lean against cars. The ate without a clear delineation of what is now, of what has gone and of wheels of the vehicles are clamped into geometric white sculptures what is to come. We might term this style of filmmaking antirealist, that mimic the bases of the building’s unique inverted-pyramid but perhaps it is just a true reflection of our place in time. ar An exhibition of work by David Maljkovic is on view through 19 October at Metro Pictures, New York; Maljkovic’s show Sources in the Air is at Galleria d’Arte e Contemporanea (gamec), Bergamo, from 4 October through 6 January

Out of Projection (film still), 2009

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Scene for New Heritage Part 2 (film still), 2006 all images © the artist. Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Berlin & London

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Pierre Huyghe Through a series of works that attempt to consider art as an ecology that can either be manipulated or set ‘free’, Pierre Huyghe has become one of the most influential artists and thinkers of our times. For him, making art – and perhaps life itself – is like building a compost heap. So as a major retrospective of his work opens in Paris, ArtReview asked the Frenchman about issues of intensity, leakage, transformation and the essence of things. And he asked us not to use the idea of a retrospective as an excuse to jump straight into the past by Christopher Mooney portrait and studio photography by Andrea Stappert

Tick Talk Time: The Encounter and the Event ‘At the Zoological Institute in Rostock, they kept ticks alive that had gone hungry for 18 years. The tick can wait 18 years; we humans cannot. Our human time consists of a series of moments, ie, the shortest segments of time in which the world exhibits no changes. For a moment’s duration, the world stands still’ Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, 1934 In retrospect, as I reflect back on the human moment I spent in a Paris café with Pierre Huyghe last June, it should have come as scant surprise that the words ‘encounter’ and ‘event’ peppered so many of his declarative statements. Linchpin terms of contemporary French philosophy since Alexandre Kojève’s well-attended Hegel class at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (ephe) in Paris during the 1940s, the two words have fuelled contemporary French art and its curation since the whole relational aesthetics funfest centred around the Palais de Tokyo in Paris during the 1990s. Huyghe, one of France’s most philosophically attuned contemporary artists, is not only a founding member of the relational art movement, but, during this particular encounter, was talking to me about his biggest public event and encounter to date: his hometown retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, 25 September to 6 January Time ticks on, new questions emerge: was the selection of the event’s opening and closing dates determined by Huyghe’s One Year

Celebration (2003–6), a calendar of new public holidays conceived by artists, architects, musicians, writers and art critics? These include Celebrate the Shoelace Day, Interspecies Love Day and the No 1 Celebration, ‘a celebration which takes place with nobody there’. Can someone tell me which Huyghe-generated celebrations fall on 25 September and 6 January? My present self-centred perceptual lifeworld (or umwelt, to use the Jakob von Uexküll-coined term preferred by biosemioticians, posthumanists and the biosemiotic-inspired posthumanist artist Pierre Huyghe), though Googleenriched, does not contain the full calendar; and, eyeless and deaf, the tick detects her prey by the smell of butyric acid in mammalian skin glands; she then drops blindly towards it, hoping to land within boring range of suckable warm blood. If this is, as I suspect, a working analogy for contemporary art-criticism, then what is the butyric acid of contemporary art?

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Looking Back: The Tenses Shift, the Context Widens ‘Retrospective (noun): an exhibition showing the development of an artist’s work over a period of time: a Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective’ New Oxford American Dictionary, version 2.2.1 (143.1), 2005–11

The Huyghe retrospective is a celebration of two decades of ongoing and ever-evolving Huyghe events and encounters. Celebrations, social rituals and all of time itself – human, calendric and anachronistic – are reimagined in many Huyghe works, first as events and encounters, then as artefact. His film The Host and the Cloud (2009– 10), based on a ‘real situation’ series of scripted and unscripted encounters between 50 ‘witnesses’ (Huyghe’s preferred word for performance spectators or gallery/museum visitors) and a host of performers in the defunct Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, was shot on Halloween, Valentine’s Day and May Day. Another film, Streamside Day Follies (2003), also based on an

unscripted event/encounter, centres on a Huyghe-contrived community parade and feast in a new fictional/real housing development in New York’s Hudson Valley. La Saison des Fêtes (2010) was a garden of Halloween pumpkins, Valentine’s Day roses, springtime cherry blossoms and Christmas trees. It is now a film that, along with the vestiges and documentary elements of these other ‘entities’ (another key Huyghe word, borrowed from the philosophy of language), will be present inside the Pompidou, while others – including a reclining Modigliani nude recast in concrete, with its head obscured by thousands of live swarming bees – will be enclosed in a special extension jutting out into the courtyard.

The Open: Artist and Animal ‘The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails’ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916

A unique series of human moments, an artist’s retrospective is a form of bildungsroman – like the Joyce one quoted from above. In looking back, the tenses shift, contexts widen, nouns take on new meanings, and deictics – ‘here’, ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘that one there’, ‘last Thursday’ – behave erratically. That a Huyghe retrospective is a particularly unstable entity is best reflected by the second phrase uttered by the artist in my presence: “I have no manifestos, but let me just say that it would be nicer to talk about the recent things rather than to just jump into the past.” Past and present are ever-present Huyghe values, as are fiction and reality, but these do not come up in this interview as often as the aforementioned ‘event’ and ‘encounter’, followed closely by ‘language’, ‘code’, ‘protocol’, ‘role’, ‘elements’, ‘markers’, ‘rules’, ‘conditions’ and

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‘behaviour’. Many of these are von Uexküll designations, as prismed through the philosophical works of thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben. Huyghe’s first words, however, are these: “First, I am going to move closer…” He pulls his chair in tighter to the table. “And put this sugar…” He places a sugar cube under one end of my iPhone, raising its built-in microphone off the table. It is a deft and astute intervention, a felicitous mise-en-scène. The artist chuckles at his handiwork and tucks into a plate of fish. (Fish, uncooked and alive, are on the retrospective’s menu, as are other living organisms.)

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Untilled, 2011–12 (installation view, Documenta 13, 2012, Kassel). Photo: © the artist. Courtesy the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York & Paris, and Esther Schipper, Berlin

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above The Host and the Cloud, 2009–10, performances, Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, Paris, 31 October 2009 (Halloween), 14 February 2010 (Valentine’s Day) and 1 May 2010 (May Day). Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York & Paris facing page Pierre Huyghe’s studio, Paris

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Language Is a Thing ‘Everything physical takes precedence: rhythm, weight, mass, shape, and then the paper on which one writes, the trail of the ink, the book. Yes, happily language is a thing: it is a written thing, a bit of bark, a sliver of rock, a fragment of clay in which the reality of the earth continues to exist’ Maurice Blanchot, ‘Literature and the Right to Death’, 1947 The works in the Pompidou retrospective are not so much curated as, to borrow a favourite phrase of the artist, ‘just dropped’ into the show’s space and duration. Huyghe’s work is as much about artistic agency as it is about anything else. To describe his method and art – not what it means, since he leaves that up to its beholder, but what it does – he eschews ‘practice’ and ‘process’ and opts instead for ‘compost’. This is not a metaphor: Untilled (2011–12), for example, the site-specific ‘biotope’ Huyghe set up at Documenta 13 last year, was held in the compost area of Kassel’s Karlsaue Park. The heterogeny of built, found and just-dropped entities included, along with plants, animals and piles of this and that, the beehived Modigliani nude, an uprooted tree once planted by the German artist Joseph Beuys and a bench by the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. “The compost is the place where you throw things that you don’t need or that are dead,” Huyghe says between bites of fish. “I used the same methodology for Untilled, using personally important markers and dropping them within that place. You don’t display things. You don’t make a mise-en-scène, you don’t design things, you just drop them. And when someone enters that site, things are in themselves, they don’t have a dependence on the person. They are indifferent to the public. You are in a place of indifference. Each thing, a bee, an ant, a plant, a rock, keeps growing or changing.” The idea, then: indifferently sharing specific Huyghe spaces and times causes the identities of the things and beings contained within – art, bee, artist, spectator – to break down, dematerialise. The container becomes a growing medium, where new events and encounters occur, and new art takes root and thrives. Huyghe’s ecosystem aquariums (the largest was presented at the Frieze Art Fair, London, in 2011; the smaller Zoodram 2, 2010, is in the retrospective) are further riffs on the same theme. Each is a microcosmic theatre whose real-life aquatic performers, selected by Huyghe for their specific behaviour traits, create unscripted and plotless narratives that play out in real time but are not time-based. The context and conditions

imposed by the artist, however, more or less ensure a predictability: for example, the star of one aquarium, a hermit crab, quite naturally makes its home in the bronze cast replica of Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910) that the artist submerged in the tank. Otherwise, the players are left to construct their own stories and, in so doing, potentially reflect or elicit emotional encounters with the land-based lifeforms gazing in at them through the glass. Huyghe’s work with human performers, as individuals, groups and communities, is similar. “If you consider each entity as a written element – every artist and performer has a style, a way to write a language, just as a writer or a musician does. What I’m interested in here is to have this language written within reality, meaning a mineral reality, a biological reality, a physical reality. As in a compost, right? You throw a piece of lettuce or a banana or I don’t know what and there will be a metabolisation. It’s not that the banana disappears, but it will do something else, right? It will achieve a different intensity of being a banana. That’s what I’m interested in, this banana-ness, and this variation of intensity and how things leak into each other.” While there are no bananas in the retrospective, there are, among the 60-odd leaking entities in this indescribably protean array, films, sculptures, happenings, live ants and spiders (first seen as Umwelt, 2011) at the Esther Schipper gallery in Berlin), machine-generated snow, rain and fog, a puppet, music, mind-altering plants, books, works occasioned by the reading of books, works occasioning and occasioned by a South Pole expedition (including a large ship made of slowly melting ice) in turn occasioned by an Edgar Allan Poe story, and a frisky white dog with a painted pink leg named Human – the same Human that gambolled artistically around the Karlsaue for 100 days last summer. (At the time of this writing, Influenced, 2011, gallery price, ex. tax, €35,000, a piece first shown at Esther Schipper consisting of ‘a person in a space carrying the flu virus’ – either already sick with it or having volunteered to be injected with it – is not included in the retrospective’s list of works.)

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At the Time of This Writing: The Last Words ‘Time, which frames all events, seemed to us to be the only objectively consistent factor, compared to the variegated changes of its contents, but now we see that the subject controls the time of its environment. While we said before, “There can be no living subject without time,” now we shall have to say, “Without a living subject, there can be no time”’ Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, 1934

The retrospective itself is perhaps best conceived of as, to use Uexküll’s word once again, an umwelt, a ‘sense island’, ‘significant environment’ or ‘cognitive map’. These definitions are Uexküll’s, to which should be added biologist Herman Weber’s: ‘the totality of conditions contained in an entire complex of surroundings which permit a certain organism, by virtue of its specific organisation, to survive’. Now add the word ‘art’, or define ‘organism’ as art – art that barely needs an artist or a public and is almost self-generating – and you begin to get a sense of the moment where Huyghe is, if not already, then

certainly headed: “It would be interesting if I could take this indifference towards something that will keep going over the course of a long period. Find a site to do things with no timeframe, with no constraint. Not that I don’t like constraint, but not the same constraint all the time. Not the constraint that is always dictated by what the museum thinks you are going to do or perceive. So to free myself from that, maybe I will find a site to build something, to develop something, maybe with technology, that I could see over the course of time be deeply transformed and materialised. I’m interested in that direction.” ar A retrospective of Pierre Huyghe’s work is on view at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, through 6 January

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above Zoodram 4, 2011, live marine ecosystem, aquarium, resin mask of Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910), 135 × 99 × 76 cm. Collection Ishikawa, Okayama, Japan. Photo: © Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy the artist facing page Pierre Huyghe’s studio, Paris

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ULLA VON BRANDENBURG SUSI JIRKUFF HANNES BÖCK 19. 9. – 10. 11. 2013

secession Friedrichstraße 12, A-1010 Wien, www.secession.at

MOSTYN’s new season of exhibitions

20 July – 13th October 2013 26th October - 5th January 2014

20thOctober July – 13th 26th - 5thOctober January 2013 2014

20thOctober July – 20th October 26th - 12th January2013 2014

Dear Portrait Women’s Art Society

Franco Vaccari Nina Beier

Uprisings: Uprisings: John Henry Newton Becca Voelcker

Twenty contemporary The firstsignificant in a series of exhibitions about the history the of MOSTYN, artists explore idea featuring an historical presentation of the portrait, and their on the Gwynedd Ladies' Art Society subjects explore the artists alongside works by contemporary and the artworks. artists.

20th July – 13th October 2013

Annette Kelm

26th October - 5th January 2014

Dan Rees Supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

12 Vaughan Street Llandudno LL30 1AB Wales UK

@mostyn_wales_ mostyn

+44 (0)1492 879 201 mostyn.org

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Shakti Contemporary art responses to historic South Asian collections

Harminder Judge Bilocation, Meadow Arts commission 2013

Nikhil Chopra / Shezad Dawood Harminder Judge / Reena saini Kallat Desmond Lazaro / Jagannath Panda Bharti Parmar / Ravinder Reddy Sharmila Samant / Tallur L.N.

DANIEL SILVER

D I G 12 September — 3 November 2013

Kedleston Hall

22 June - 31 October 2013

Powis Castle

22 June - 3 November 2013

Oriel Davies

14 September - 6 November 2013

Wolverhampton Art Gallery 16 November 2013 - 5 April 2014

www.meadowarts.org

Free entry Tuesday — Sunday 11am — 6pm The Odeon Site, 24 Grafton Way (off Tottenham Court Road) London WC1E 6DB www.artangel.org.uk

Meadow Arts Co. Ltd. is registered in England & Wales 4888760, Charity no. 1125145

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Elmgreen & Dragset Anxieties rise as mischievous work takes a dark turn between summer in Munich and autumn in London by Kimberly Bradley

Rosa, 2006, gilded brass, steel, fibreglass with epoxy, garments, shoes. Photo: Mariano Peuser. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong

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Stephan Hall and partner Li Li Ren creOn the way to a monolithic former waterated a replica of the Fourth Plinth on pumping station on a leafy residential Munich’s Wittelsbacherplatz (the plinth street in the now-modish Berlin neighwas later retrofitted into a one-room bourhood of Neukölln, a chatty taxi driver tells me that he long ago delivapartment by Alexander Laner); Elmgreen ered revellers to blowout parties at this & Dragset’s own It’s Never Too Late to Say address. Since 2008, however, the buildSorry (2011/13, in which an older man ing has been the studio, apartment and shouts the phrase through a silver megacreative hub of the artist duo Elmgreen phone on Odeonsplatz, not far from where & Dragset. Shafts of natural light penetrate the main hall’s cathedral- Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch occurred, each day at high noon) began high interior through soaring vertical windows. Depending on when in March. Works by such artworld figures as Ragnar Kjartansson, one visits, the near-divine rays might illuminate mostly empty space Martin Kippenberger, Henrik Olesen, Sissel Tolaas, David Shrigley, – or, on the other hand, tons of objects. It’s a reflection of an artistic Peter Weibel, Kirsten Pieroth, Ed Ruscha and others came later. practice that, lately, has been wavering between provocatively public A Space Called Public ran until 30 September and was a success (one day when I was visiting, a group was waiting at noon for the and pensively private. The duo – the fifty-something but youthful Michael Elmgreen megaphone man), but was not always easy. As Elmgreen has often is from Denmark, while the Norwegian Ingar Dragset is about a dec- stated, public art is something you have to surrender… to the pubade younger – first garnered wide attention with irreverent pro- lic. One of the trickiest projects was Berlin-based Pieroth’s Berliner jects like the stocked-but-locked Prada store in the Texan desert near Fütze (2001/13), which relocated a Berlin mud puddle to Munich. Marfa in 2005 and the swish The Collectors interiors (and a fictional, “It was almost impossible to find a spot where the ground wasn’t dead-in-the-water collector, Mr. b) in the Danish and Nordic pavil- level,” laughs Dragset (the puddle also irritated natives not accusions at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Londoners, too, recently got a long tomed to such grime). public dose of their sensibility with Powerless Structures Fig 101 (2012), There is of course a dramatic contrast between orchestrating an elfin boy on a rocking horse, which sat atop Trafalgar Square’s artistic interventions in a ‘safe’ location and the real-life political public acts reaching fever pitch as 2013 marches on. “Many kinds of Fourth Plinth for 18 months until early July 2013. This year, Elmgreen & Dragset’s projects are equally high- art stop being relevant in desperate situations,” says Elmgreen. In profile but, as the studio’s variable state reveals, hugely divergent. Munich, though, Weibel’s video, Every Place Is Heterotopic (2013), acts as The studio was nearly empty the first time I visited, in January 2013, an intermediary. His large black screen is strategically placed across for a chat about their public-art project in Munich, called, cheekily, from the outdoor tables at the fancy Schumann’s Tagesbar. Every so A Space Called Public. If one looks at what was set to launch later that often, its algorithm finds and broadcasts brutal protest scenes from month, the emptiness made sense: Munich’s cultural department the Internet, in flashy bursts that café-goers cannot ignore. had given them €1.2 million and carte blanche to liven up its pubOn another visit, in early July, Elmgreen & Dragset’s studio is lic spaces with art. Instead of doing it themselves, the two enlisted filled with a hodgepodge of furnishings and objects from all peri15 other artists and collaborations into the project, which rolled ods and origins. A golden rocking-chair sculpture stands in a corout bit by bit, from January until the official opening on 6 June ner; an antique trunk is propped against a tiled pillar. Ornate 2013. “We were meant to pep up a very polished city with art and antique candlesticks lie atop a stack of shipping palettes. A darksome grit,” says Elmgreen. “Munich is so perfect that they vacuum wood desk is covered with papers and architectural models; a swingy chaise invites a rest not far from a stuffed vulture ominously the streets at 10pm.” perched on a branch. Taped lines on the floor By the opening, 17 public-art stations dotIt’s Never Too Late to Say Sorry, delineate rooms. In the midst of it all, on the ted Munich’s centre; all slightly facetious inter2011/13, Odeonsplatz, Munich. floor, is a marble plaque inscribed ‘Tomorrow, ventions in a city where most confrontations Photo: Leonie Felle. occurred decades ago. In January, Irish artist 01 Oct 2013 – 02 Jan 2014’. Courtesy the artists

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Elmgreen & Dragset are together in Berlin (Elmgreen now here the criticism is social and hits a sensitive, relevant nerve. The lives part-time in London) making final preparations for Tomorrow, story and its three-dimensional manifestation is a commentary on an extensive exhibition this autumn at London’s Victoria and public shifts in power, aesthetics and priorities, and how they affect Albert Museum. The two emerge from the upstairs kitchen and our most private ambitions and situations. living areas, looking at ease, if a little tired. “I won’t be curating After being disinfected – nothing gets into the v&a that could anytime soon again,” quips Elmgreen, happy with A Space Called have bugs or anything else that’s unsavoury or damaging – the Public but visibly weary of the organisation that working with so objects now arranged in the studio will be transferred to their corremany artists and countless municisponding rooms at the museum. They ‘Failure and disappointment are pal authorities involved. The focus offer visitors clues about the archinow is on the future. tect’s obvious homosexuality, his emofar more interesting than success; it’s tions and obsessions. “You’ll be able to Opening 1 October, Tomorrow will where the better stories lie’ be a complex spatial installation on crawl into Swann’s bed and touch most view in the 160-year-old museum’s former textile department. A show of his things,” says Elmgreen, “whereas normally everything at the like this would normally take place in the museum’s design and archi- v&a is behind glass.” Some 100 objects from the v&a archives will be tecture galleries, but, as Elmgreen explains, “When we got the com- added to the mix (and of course kept out of reach: at a preview press mission, we walked around the museum. We learned that the textile lunch in Munich, V&A curator Louise Shannon mentioned the fun galleries had been closed off for eight years. Of course, we knew this she was having finding pieces in otherwise fallow museum archives). was exactly where we’d like to do the exhibition.” “By the way, we found a great album we can use for his notes,” Like The Collectors, Tomorrow is interior space based on an intricate says Dragset softly to Elmgreen, as if Mr Swann were real (for a secfictional narrative. Five rooms will be reconfigured to represent the ond, I start believing that he is), while I closely look at the vintage inherited grand apartment of an elderly architect named Norman eyeglasses on the architect’s desk. I ask whether it’s difficult to cope Swann, a scion of Britain’s upper class and architect specialising in with such different commissions as they’ve had this year, and both social housing. The septuagenarian Mr Swann, however, failed to look at me incredulously. It’s clearly no problem at all. Elmgreen build anything. V&A visitors see the protagonist’s home as he is & Dragset manage to fit their mischievous, cerebral ideas into mulabout to move out, having lost his family fortune. A modern kitchen tiple frameworks with shows as accessible as they are multilayered. is the sole space already converted by the new tenant: a younger man They poke fun at convention, but one gets the feeling that lately it might be less about mirth and more about exposing the Western named Daniel Wilder, who was the architect’s student. “Failure and disappointment are far more interesting than suc- world’s current anxiety. Tomorrow approaches very melancholy tercess; it’s where the better stories lie,” says Dragset. Elmgreen contin- ritory. “This is much darker than work we’ve done before,” says ues: “Tomorrow is a commentary on the disappearance of old British Elmgreen, eyes growing large. “It’s about our fears, it’s about the society. The insane real-estate market in London is just one aspect; future and the past, about legacies lost and our incapacity to comthe exhibition represents the overall failure of the European experi- pete.” Deep, but both still emit belly laughs when we all decide on ment. No one here knows how it will continue.” If many of the artists’ a term for a show that London and the world will certainly enjoy previous projects have tended more towards institutional critique, nonetheless: “Tomorrow is post-Venice.” ar Elmgreen & Dragset: Tomorrow is on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from 1 October through 2 January

Powerless Structures, Fig 101, 2012, bronze cast, dimensions variable, the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London. Photo: James O Jenkins. Courtesy the artists

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High Expectations, 2010, mixed media. Photo: Fidelis Fuchs, onuk. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong

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Culture Now Join us for our series of lively Friday lunchtime conversations for the culturally curious, with key figures from the contemporary arts scene.

4 Oct Arthur Baker with Gregor Muir

12.10.13–10.11.13

Factish Field | Project 1

18 Oct Shannon Ebner with Stuart Comer

Karen Cunningham

25 Oct Roger Hiorns with Clare Lilley 1 Nov Adam Chodzko with Katharine Stout Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to watch them all online: youtube.com/icalondon www.ica.org.uk/culturenow With thanks to Maryam and Edward Eisler. Media Partner:

City Observatory | City Dome 38 Calton Hill Edinburgh EH7 5AA ++44 (0)131 556 1264 mail@collectivegallery.net www.collectivegallery.net

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Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH 020 7930 3647 The is a registered charity, no. 236848.

Image: Karen Cunningham, Fib, 2013, still from HD video.

Cluster by Helen Booth

An Abstract View

Open Daily 12pm – 6pm

13 Sep – 20 Oct

Free Exhibition

The

Site: f f O tel o H s e g rid Old Self

0ctober 1st-November 6th Private view October 3rd

FEATURING POLLOCK KRASNER AWARD-WINNING ARTIST HELEN BOOTH The exhibition coincides with the release of the publication ‘An Abstract View’, written by Richard Unwin and published by Thomas and Paul.

A Journey

Thomas and Paul, 20 Bristol Gardens, Little Venice, London W9 2JQ Phone: 020 7289 6200 | www.thomasandpaul.com

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Through L o nd o n S ubculture 1980s to : Now

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

ABU DHABI ART 2013 GALLERIES AB Gallery Agial Art Gallery Art Sawa ARTSPACE Athr Gallery Ayyam Gallery Bait Muzna Gallery Carpenters Workshop Gallery Cheim & Read Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, L.L.C. eoa.projects Gagosian Gallery Galeri Zilberman Galerie Brigitte Schenk Galerie El Marsa Galerie Enrico Navarra Galerie GP & N Vallois Galerie Janine Rubeiz Galerie Kashya Hildebrand Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Galleria Continua Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde

Hanart TZ Gallery Hauser & Wirth Horrach Moya Hunar Gallery kamel mennour Kerlin Gallery Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery Lam Art Gallery Lawrie Shabibi Leehwaik Gallery Leila Heller Gallery Lisson Gallery Meem Gallery October Gallery Paul Stolper Gallery Salwa Zeidan Gallery Sfeir-Semler Gallery The Breeder The Park Gallery The Third Line Tina Keng Gallery

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9/3/13 10:58 AM 10/09/2013 17:26

Gianni Colombo

by Daniele Perra and Lorenza Pignatti

From the end of the 1950s until his premature death in 1993, the Italian artist developed a series of works that anticipated the participatory artworks of today

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above After-Structures, 1966–7 (installation view, Galleria l’Obelisco, Rome, 1966) preceding page Spazio Elastico, 1974

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After-Structures, 1966 (installation view, Galleria il Centro, Naples, 1966). Photo: Gianni Ummarino

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Bariestesia, 1974–5. Photo: Mario Carrieri

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Milan, 1959. A group of young artists comprising Gianni Colombo, where presence is transformed into absence, emptiness into fullness. Davide Boriani, Gabriele De Vecchi and Giovanni Anceschi establish Consequently, viewers find themselves immersed in an unstable space Gruppo t. The following year they are joined by Grazia Varisco. ‘t’ that establishes a feeling of estrangement and disorientation. as in ‘Time’, intended to be understood as motion and transformaIn other series, such as Topoestesie (1977), Bariestesie (1974–5) and tion, investigated in a spatial dimension. The members of Gruppo Architetture Cacogoniometriche (1978), the artist manipulated architect worked together for about ten years before going their separate tural space by designing oversize angular structures which visitors were invited to traverse, with the structure then tilting or tipping ways, continuing their research independently. They were a motley group, looking for a phenomenological to alter the viewer’s sense of balance. These are devices that question approach in which the interaction between work and the space repetitive and unconscious acts – the practice of walking or climbing around it is fundamental, as was the use of industrial materials, a ladder or staircase for example – that determine the direction and neon, elastic strings, modular attitude of the body. Right from his first solo show, Colombo structures. Rather than the fashAlmost 20 years after the artist’s created works that required activation ionable Bar Jamaica – then closely death, Colombo’s work is making associated with artists of the a considerable comeback. Most on the part of the viewer: environments, older generation, including Lucio recently in the form of a February solo situations, itineraries and passages Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Enrico show at Greene Naftali in New York, Castellani – Gruppo T would meet at the Bar Titta. They wanted and its inclusion in the summer group exhibition Push Pins in Elastic to stand out; they were Rockers, as Giovanni Anceschi once said. Space curated by the artist Gabriel Kuri at Galerie Nelson-Freeman, Despite this, they were not at a loss for contacts and conversations, Paris. His work has also been the subject of major solo exhibitions at thanks to their collaboration with Manzoni at the Galleria Azimut the Neue Galerie and Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz (2008), at the (founded in Milan by Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, the exper- Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich and at the Castello di Rivoli, Turin (both imental gallery’s eight-month existence spanned 1959 to 1960). 2009). His works have additionally appeared in major group exhiFontana was their first collector, and their works were produced as bitions such as the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008), the 54th Venice multiples in a nod to the production techniques then favoured by Biennale (2011), Italics (2008) at Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Erre, Variations industrial design, but also to distance the works from the artworld’s Labyrinthiques (2011) at the Centre Pompidou, Metz, and Ghosts in the cult of the author. Machine (2012) at the New Museum, New York. Right from his first solo show, Miriorama 4 (1960), where he Of course, it’s not as if his work was unknown before all this. displayed a series of kinetic works that required activation on the During his lifetime it was included in seminal exhibitions such as part of the viewer, Colombo (1937–93) created works in the form of Kunst Licht Kunst (1967) at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Lo Spazio environments, situations, structures, itineraries and passages. They dell’Immagine (1967), in Foligno, the Trigon biennial, Graz (1967 were apparatuses that worked autonomously, establishing their own and 1973), the controversial Documenta 4, Kassel (1968), Räume und set of rules. From the early transformable objects like Rotoplastik, Environments (1968) at the Städtische Museum, Leverkusen, and Die the kinetic Strutturazioni Pulsanti from the early 1960s, works made Sprache der Geometrie at the Kunstmuseum in Bern (1984). But it was in from lighting effects like Cromostrutture, 0-220 Volt (1973–7), After- the wake of his 2006 solo exhibition, Gianni Colombo: Il Dispositivo dello Structures (1964–7) and Zoom Squares (1967–8), and environments such Spazio, curated by Marco Scotini (who since 2004 has been director as Strutturazione Cinevisuale Abitabile (1964), to the well-known Spazio of Archive Gianni Colombo and who curated the Castello di Rivoli Elastico (for which he won an award at the 1968 Venice Biennale), the show with Documenta 13 director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev) at Milan-born artist presented artworks that required the direct partic- the Rotonda di via Besana in Milan, that a new reading of his oeuvre ipation of the user, an involvement began to emerge. ‘My works have the character of the body and mind within rules That show marked a shift from of a self-test. They weren’t made to obtain that must be respected, with varithe idea of a constructivist, analyables set in motion by the creator. tical and technological Colombo, information, but to emancipate “I’ve always said that my works attributed to him over the years the viewer from his state of perception’ have the character of a self-test. by various Italian critics, to one that They weren’t made to obtain information, but to emancipate the placed more emphasis on his dadaist-surrealist links, which were viewer from his state of perception, making him aware of what formulated by the artist himself as a part of a thesis on Max Ernst and concerned him,” Colombo stated in an interview with Jole De Sanna Dadaism, completed as part of his diploma at Milan’s Accademia di Brera in 1959. For Colombo, Ernst was not only a leading pioneer of published posthumously in 1995. Colombo set out to stimulate the eyes, minds and bodies of those the plastic arts revolution but also a master of subversion. From the who experienced his works. He did not want to create purely visual German artist Colombo learned not to be afraid of playing games or phenomena involving light vibrations or kinetic effects, but rather to of the sense of estrangement caused by an unpredictable situation that challenge consolidated moments of perception on every level. Spazio interrupts the accepted structures of real space. And so, from the dadaElastico is composed of a darkened cube-shaped space, in which a ists he adopted the idea of teamwork (both as a member of Gruppo t grid of moving fluorescent elastic strings lit by black light reveals the and in his subsequent work) and a refusal to accept art as a sublimated basic stereometry of its geometric form. The effect is akin to seeing activity that separates the perceiving subject from his or her own body a photo negative, where the relationship between black and white, or surroundings. It is from this that the ironic-playful component line and volume, is inverted with respect to any sense of the ‘real’; present in his works arises.

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Gianni Colombo, late 1970s. Photo: Oliviero Toscani

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Colombo was drawn to the idea of transformation: an unex- work by Colombo in one of his own solo exhibitions, to illustrate the pected paradigm in which space acquires the ability to show us the existing dialogue and symbiosis. way we experience it, transforming the spectator into the object of For Scotini, “In Colombo there’s something that goes beyond art itself. And it is here that the artist places himself in dialogue with Eliasson’s ‘orientation devices’. Perhaps an attitude that is much the nonsense of Buster Keaton, and that the transformability of space closer to Carsten Höller’s ‘laboratories of doubt’ or ‘confusion becomes his stylistic feature. Colombo loved the slapstick comedies machines’. Or again the ‘powerless structures’ of Elmgreen & of early silent film. In a photomontage created with Gabriele De Dragset, with their declared Foucaultian background. Indeed, the Vecchi for the exhibition Amore Mio in 1970, he composed a projec- duo’s alterations to the white cube at Portikus at Frankfurt in 2001 tion made up of frames from movies by Mack Sennett, Luis Buñuel, can be viewed as a sort of development of Colombo’s project at the Fritz Lang and Buster Keaton. In Studio Goniometrico (1977) Colombo Kröller-Müller Rijksmuseum at Otterlo in 1980. In the former case redesigned the prefabricated home Keaton had wrongly assembled the reduction of a perfectly rational structure into a flexible space in his short One Week (1920), presenting it alongside Topoestesia and with a curving floor and skylight; in the latter, the distortion of four a frame from the film. In slapstick comedies the settings relate to pathways that follow those made in 1937 by [Henry] Van de Velde in the bodies of the characters who the Dutch museum.” Colombo was drawn to the idea of inhabit them, where the former are Even Maurizio Cattelan, an artist transformation: an unexpected paradigm absolutely distant from Colombo’s transformable and the latter malleable. Both are the site of action and in which space acquires the ability to show working method, is unable to resist experimentation. referencing the earlier artist. Cattelan us the way we experience it The body is the other aspect that recently photographed the collector determined a rediscovery of Colombo. As the philosopher and critic Dakis Joannou in the same pose and with the same work in which Jean Louis Schefer wrote, in Colombo’s devices the body does not the photographer Oliviero Toscani had photographed Colombo in guide the actions; it simply absorbs them. Another critic, Guy Brett, the late 1970s. went further, likening the way in which the work of Colombo unites Yet, despite this rising interest, much remains to investigate the eye and the body to that of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. Despite regarding Colombo’s oeuvre. All his early ceramic works, for one different approaches, both artists investigate the way in which the thing, which were acquired by Thomas H. Lee and Ann Tenenbaum. manipulation of physical behaviour allows the body to recuperate And Colombo’s esteem for and friendship with the Irish artist James an awareness of itself. Coleman during the 1960s, the only trace of which lies in an extraorBesides the curators and critics, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur dinary correspondence held in the Archivio Colombo in Milan. ar Eliasson has stated on various occasions that Colombo’s work deserves more consideration, on the grounds that the ideas the Italian Gianni Colombo’s Spazio Elastico (1967–8) is included in Zero, Museu experimented with a few decades ago remain pertinent to contemOscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, through 3 November. Two other installations, porary artistic discourse. At one point Eliasson, as he revealed in an Topoestesia (Itinerario Programmato) (1965–70) and Strutturazione interview with curator Marcella Beccaria, thought about including a Pulsante (1959), are on display at the Museo del Novecento, Milan

Studio Goniometrico, 1977, study of a frame from Buster Keaton’s One Week, 1920 all images Courtesy Archive Gianni Colombo, Milan

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James Franco What does a successful actor hope to gain by entering the field of visual arts? Is his celebrity an asset or a burden? And does his ‘other’ career give him advantages the painter who’s interviewing him would like to have? Interview by Nigel Cooke

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For some time now, James Franco’s relationship to visual art has been gathering momentum alongside a high-profile acting career, itself notable for its creative diversity and scope. So much so, in fact, that a distinctly self-reflexive thread runs through much of even his most mainstream media activities, with the actor frequently playing with his identity and exploring the boundary between playing a character and being himself. This year saw his uk exhibition debut at Pace London, with an installation that took this kind of fracturing of identities further. Using his own filmic identity as a linchpin, Franco’s show, Psycho Nacirema, played out the complexities of his relationship to the world of cinema in a multimedia deconstruction of Hitchcock’s movie Psycho (1960). A meticulously reproduced Bates Motel became the vessel in which Franco could unpack a multilayered and ambivalent relationship to movies, one that is marked by both celebration and alienation, warped by conflicting forces and narratives, and refracted by layers of reality and personae. I had met Franco some years ago, and was aware then of his growing interest in visual art, although it had not at the time found an outlet. Curious to learn how he had reached the point of making full-scale art exhibitions, I caught up with him at the opening of Psycho Nacirema and learned that I had unknowingly played a part in the decision. In the email conversation that followed, we discussed how this came about and what the business of artmaking brings to his proliferating creative output. nigel cooke When we first met some years ago, at the premiere of Spider-Man 2 [2004], I remember you spoke about a lacuna in your relationship to the film as a ‘work’. As an outsider, this surprised me. Lazily I had perhaps assumed the opposite, mistaking the aura of the cinematic spectacle and all the sonic enhancements as proof of a deepening involvement. As it’s all exaggerated and unreal and you as an actor are so centralised, it’s not hard to imagine that the feedback from the project is equally enlarged and crystalline. But clearly that’s not the case. How did the journey begin from this arena to that of visual art? james franco You’re right, about a lot of things. We had a conversation after the premiere and I asked you if you had a hard time talking about your work, because I had just gone through a long day of press where I was asked the same questions a million times: basically what I did to prepare and what it was like to work with Sam [Raimi], Kirsten [Dunst] and Tobey [Maguire]. You said that you had no problem talking about your work, which stunned me, because I suddenly realised that you were working in a field in which you were in total control of your medium. As a painter, all

the decisions were yours, and because of that you could talk about why you made such decisions and the concepts behind your reasons. It was an epiphany. As an actor working in film I was not the person behind most of the creative decisions, especially in a film as large as Spider-Man 2. I was part of a larger project. I have since come to

Actors are in the strange position of getting the most attention while usually having the least amount of control over a project. This can be a maddening place to be, and you see a lot of actors rebelling against it in various ways appreciate the collaborative process of filmmaking, but only because I have carved out a space where I can do work with complete control. I was able to break out of the mould, which has allowed me to accept my role as an actor in film. Actors are in the strange position of getting the most attention while usually having the least amount of control over a project. This can be a maddening place to be, and you see a lot of actors rebelling against it in various ways: some get political, some do a lot of charity, some go into directing, some get into drugs. I found that my rebellion needed both to allow me to escape the film world and simultaneously

I want the presence of the artist to be felt in the installations. I want the viewers to be immersed in the space. I want film to be broken apart so that its individual components are made discrete again. But once I confer this independence, I then put it back together with messy fingerprints over all of the pieces to find a way to reengage with it. That is why so much of my work examines films and everything surrounding films: persona, celebrity, filmmaking, performance, reality, simulacra, time, rumours, etc, but through other mediums. As so many of my favourite artists use film as a source for their work (whether they used

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moving images or not), I realised that I had a special position: I could also use film as a source, but I was also deeply in the film world. This made my reuse of film powerful and unique, because I could straddle the line between worlds. nc This unique position comes across with a hands-on directness in the Pace show, almost as if your life in movies has opened up the possibility for a kind of manual thought. It was if you were driven by a kind of bathetic rematerialising of quite hallowed cultural material – converting scenes and aspects from Hitchcock’s Psycho into frenetic paintings, shower curtains, oversize guestbooks, carefully patinated reconstructions of motel rooms, etc. Not to mention the fact that the ‘blood’ smeared around the entire show was cadmium red acrylic paint, not used to emulate the look of real blood but existing purely as paint. It seemed more a metaphor for authorship and artistic legitimacy through the convention of the painted mark. There is a kind of entitlement, even irreverence to this kind of heavily material engagement with film. Would you agree that your taking control of the creative process manifests itself in a mostly material way, maybe growing out of the manual production side of art – painting and sculpture, in other words? jf Yes, exactly, I want the presence of the artist to be felt in the installations. I want the viewers to be immersed in the space. I want film to be broken apart so that its individual components (performance, set design, wardrobe, art direction, props, scenic-backdrop paintings, etc) are made discrete again, ‘pulled through the screen’ and once again bestowed with their distinct artistic properties away from the film. But once I confer this independence, basically by creating an installation that is dependent on film as an artistic ‘adaptation’ of a film, I then put it back together with messy fingerprints over all of the pieces. The seams show too, because commercial film would normally erase them. It’s the nature of the medium, making it very hard to distinguish the work of all the different artists and crafts people who contribute. But in the Psycho Nacirema installation, the point is to distinguish all the parts, to give each object an individualised identity as an art piece. This is one of the reasons for the final layer of red paint over everything, to give a sense of the artist’s mark as a kind of signature. Without such markings, then, the set will revert back to its status as set, and the props will just look like props. The emphasis is material because then film is turned into a physical medium, and made strange, in the [Viktor] Shklovsky sense. The presence of the person handling the materials is then foregrounded, the polished status of the work eradicated.

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One aspect of my life is consumed by this public persona. It is not really in my control

I found that if I embraced my situation rather than ran from it, then I could access something unique

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nc The unfamiliarity you seek is pivotal in your case I think, as your status as a movie star puts certain conditions in place. For most artists, their persona is very much in the background. At one of my shows, for example, no one is that interested in who made the work, really. They take the work as the ‘thing’. With you, there is the juggernaut of your public profile, and what you represent for many people in popular culture. This must be a hard thing to ‘make strange’; you on the screen, you in a photograph – these are things many people want to see. Is the inclusion of yourself in the work – photographs of you in costume particularly – an attempt to make strange your own filmic iconicity, break it down and revitalise it, reclaim it even? And is there a danger that the magnetism of your image is just too strong for that, and you end up centre stage anyway? jf Yeah, exactly, one aspect of my life is consumed by this public persona. This is something that is created by me and by others. It is not really in my control. It is made up of the roles I play, the things I write, the interviews I give, the way different magazines and newspapers write about me, the way people talk about me; it is a big amorphous thing. When I was a younger actor I tried to control this thing, to make it into something cool, by being very particular about what I said and what I let get out into the public. I used to try to keep this public persona away from my creative work, to hide behind my work as much as possible. But I realised that there was no real way to escape it. I also realised a few other things: 1) that it was something different entities were using to sell their own products. So, if they were using this public persona for their own purposes, why shouldn’t I reclaim it and use it for my purposes? 2) I realised that my particular place in the world and the pop culture universe was fairly unique, that being in mainstream media was not a very common experience, so if I brought that into my work, it would allow for unique content. In art school everyone is taught to find his or her

‘voice’, to develop a unique art language and subject matter. Well, I found that if I embraced my situation rather than ran from it, then I could access something unique. And my use of myself in the work does complicate its significance. I am an actor by profession, so my identity is already fractured. By using this identity in the artworld I can claim this fracturing for my own purposes. And I can address the kind of fracturing that we all experience as subjects in this contemporary world. In a film I am trying (usually) to stay within the parameters of the film’s reality. In the artworld I can underline the roleplaying aspect of my work at the same time that I am playing the role. In

appeared almost out of context, and you’re right, a dialogue is then formed about how the context contributes to the meaning of the image and the sense we build of who you might be. But James Franco in film or a photograph has a kind of built-in success at the same time, in that you are a professional actor and model, in demand and known to be so. In the paintings, on the other hand, you don’t have the same security. It is very hard to pin them onto your public persona at all, and in this there is a kind of vulnerability that takes our perceptions of your persona in a different direction. As you mentioned earlier, any ease I might have in talking about my work comes partly from being in control of the whole process. But another aspect also grows from the correspondence I have with the paintings privately, a process of learning about the persona that makes the work. Maybe I’m bound to say this, but to me paintings in general seem more interior, always already the product of a kind of alter ego or fractured self. I felt that yours had more than just a symbolic role in the show (paint = artistic signature). It was a part of your identity that couldn’t rely on the ‘you’ of mainstream culture in any way, and in that there was something different at stake. Does this factor into your thinking?

a show like Psycho Nacirema my public persona takes over, but that’s ok, because I have incorporated it into the show already. So, if my persona as an actor hovers over this show, or becomes the centre around which it finds its ultimate definition, it’s ok, because I have made room for that. It is me and it isn’t me, in the best way.

jf Yes, there is very much a private self that is interacting with the work as it’s being made. But this private self is being plugged into a larger machine. I set up the pieces and architecture of the show as a collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock, with Fatty Arbuckle and with the collective perception of the work and legends of these men. I know that the collaborations were actively fuelled from my side, as if I were a necrophiliac having relationships with corpses. I have pulled specific, loaded sequences from the work of Hitchcock and Fatty in order to engage with them. By isolating and framing the shower sequence from Psycho, and juxtaposing some of Fatty Arbuckle’s silent shorts with depictions of the alleged rape and murder of Virginia Rappe, I give myself very potent obstacle courses in which to insert myself.

nc One thing that strikes me about your public persona taking over is the ‘insulation’ it might provide you in the art environment. In some sense the sight of you within the show is arresting, in that you have

above James Franco, Venice Diary, 2013. Courtesy the artist facing page James Franco, Psycho Nacirema, 2013 (installation view). Photo: Damian Griffiths. Courtesy Pace London

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There is very much a private self that is interacting with the work as it’s being made. But this private self is being plugged into a larger machine

My aim is to make the boundaries between visual forms, between high and low, personal and impersonal, between fiction and nonfiction all fluid and blurred

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But because there is a public connection to the material I’ve selected, especially in the case of Psycho, there is also an interaction with that collective public understanding. In these collaborations or creative excavations, it was important for me to go back to the original sites where their work was created: the Universal set for Psycho, and the actual room in the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Now, this is the Bates Motel that Gus Van Sant built for his version of Psycho [1998], but it is still the actual place where Hitchcock made his film. I like the fact that we shot our ‘remake’ in the location where Van Sant – one of my favourite directors – shot his remake of Hitchcock. The Fatty films were shot in the actual hotel room at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco – room 1221, I think – where Fatty had attended the party that led to accusations of rape and murder. During the actual filming at those locations, where the actual guys lived and created, I am entering that

private space a painter enters when he is interacting with the canvas. I am not sure how the subjects for your paintings arise, but my guess is that there is a gradual evolution as the persona, or alter ego you describe, latches onto a subject in his mind while at the same time the paint on the canvas starts to define what’s in his mind in return. Because performance uses the body rather than paint, my work starts to emerge as I engage with the sites and the work of these other guys. The work is captured by a camera to be edited, so I think the editing

process is the closest parallel to your constant repainting (as I saw when I visited your studio years ago). I saw that you started with an image and then painted over it many times. You have spoken about this as a way to understand what you want to paint. Your search seems to take place on a single canvas, a search for the ‘final’ form. In a way that is what film editing is like, but in the digital age we can save each step of the way. Your approach effaces each incarnation as you go. So, my engagement with the subjects, my ‘collaborations’ with Hitchcock and Fatty, or whomever the subject might be, go through many different stages and result in many different forms. My aim is to make the boundaries between visual forms, between high and low, personal and impersonal, between fiction and nonfiction all fluid and blurred. The blurring takes place in all artwork, but I want to emphasise the blurring so that it becomes one of the main aspects of the work. ar James Franco’s monthly art diary will begin in the November issue of ArtReview

above James Franco, Venice Diary, 2013. Courtesy the artist facing page James Franco, Psycho Nacirema, 2013 (installation view). Photo: Damian Griffiths. Courtesy Pace London

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Galerie 1900-2000, Paris • 303 Gallery, New York • A arte Studio Invernizzi, Milano • Martine Aboucaya, Paris • Air de Paris, Paris • Algus Greenspon, New York • Applicat-Prazan, Paris • Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo • Art: Concept, Paris • Alfonso Artiaco, Napoli • Balice Hertling, Paris • Catherine Bastide, Brussels • Guido W. Baudach, Berlin • Bortolami, New York • Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin • Luciana Brito, São Paulo • Broadway 1602, New York • Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York • Bugada & Cargnel, Paris • Bureau, New York • Campoli Presti, London, Paris • Capitain Petzel, Berlin • carlier | gebauer, Berlin • castillo/corrales, Paris • Bernard Ceysson, Paris, Luxembourg, Saint-Étienne, Genève • Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles • Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin • Sadie Coles HQ, London • Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing, Boissy-le-Châtel • Paula Cooper, New York • Raffaella Cortese, Milano • Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux, Paris • Chantal Crousel, Paris • Ellen De Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam • Massimo De Carlo, Milano, London • Elizabeth Dee, New York • Dependance, Brussels • Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv • Eigen+Art, Berlin, Leipzig • Frank Elbaz, Paris • Essex Street, New York • Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo • Carl Freedman, London • Peter Freeman, Inc., Paris, New York • House of Gaga, Mexico D.F. • Gagosian Gallery, New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Beverly Hills • Gaudel de Stampa, Paris • gb agency, Paris • GDM, Paris • François Ghebaly, Los Angeles • Gladstone Gallery, New York, Brussels • Laurent Godin, Paris • Marian Goodman, New York, Paris • Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town • Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt • Greene Naftali, New York • Karsten Greve, Paris, Köln, St. Moritz • Alain Gutharc, Paris • Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, London, New York • Max Hetzler, Berlin • Xavier Hufkens, Brussels • In Situ / Fabienne Leclerc, Paris • JeanneBucher / Jaeger Bucher, Paris • Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver • JGM. Galerie, Paris • Jousse Entreprise, Paris • Annely Juda Fine Art, London • Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe • Karma International, Zürich • kaufmann repetto, Milano • Kisterem, Budapest • David Kordansky, Los Angeles •

Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin • Krinzinger, Wien • Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery, Seoul, New York • kurimanzutto, Mexico D.F. • Labor, Mexico D.F. • Yvon Lambert, Paris • Le Minotaure, Paris • Simon Lee, London, Hong Kong • Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong • Lelong, Paris, New York, Zürich • Lisson, London, Milano, New York • Loevenbruck, Paris • Florence Loewy, Paris • Mai 36, Zürich • Marcelle Alix, Paris • Giò Marconi, Milano • Matthew Marks, New York, Los Angeles • Gabrielle Maubrie, Paris • Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf • McKee Gallery, New York • Meessen De Clercq, Brussels • Mendes Wood, São Paulo • kamel mennour, Paris • Metro Pictures, New York • Meyer Riegger, Berlin, Karlsruhe • mfcmichèle didier, Brussels, Paris • Francesca Minini, Milano • Massimo Minini, Brescia • Victoria Miro, London • Monitor, Roma • Jan Mot, Brussels, Mexico D.F. • mother’s tankstation, Dublin • Motive, Brussels • Nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Wien • Nagel Draxler, Berlin, Köln • Neu, Berlin • Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt • neugerriemschneider, Berlin • New Galerie, Paris, New York • Franco Noero, Torino • Nathalie Obadia, Paris, Brussels • Office Baroque, Brussels • Guillermo de Osma, Madrid • Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles • Pace, New York, London, Beijing • Parra & Romero, Madrid • Françoise Paviot, Paris • Peres Projects, Berlin • Galerie Perrotin, Paris, Hong Kong, New York • Plan B, Cluj, Berlin • Jérôme Poggi, Paris • Praz-Delavallade, Paris • Eva Presenhuber, Zürich • ProjecteSD, Barcelona • Almine Rech, Brussels, Paris • Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles • Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York • Regen Projects, Los Angeles • Michel Rein, Paris • Denise René, Paris • Nara Roesler, São Paulo • Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Paris • Andrea Rosen, New York • Tucci Russo, Torre Pellice (Torino) • Sophie Scheidecker, Paris • Esther Schipper, Berlin • Gabriele Senn, Wien •

Natalie Seroussi, Paris • Sfeir-Semler, Beirut, Hamburg • Shanghart, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore • Jessica Silverman, San Francisco • Skarstedt, New York, London • Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv • Pietro Sparta, Chagny • Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London • Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam • Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp • Daniel Templon, Paris, Brussels • The Approach, London • The Third Line, Dubai • Tornabuoni Arte, Firenze, Paris, Milano • Triple V, Paris • UBU Gallery, New York • Valentin, Paris • Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris • Van de Weghe, New York • Vedovi, Brussels • Anne de Villepoix, Paris • Vilma Gold, London • Jonathan Viner, London • Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing, Guangzhou • Waddington Custot, London • Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen • Michael Werner, New York, London • White Cube, London, Hong Kong, São Paulo • Jocelyn Wolff, Paris • Xippas, Paris, Genève, Athens • Zak | Branicka, Berlin • Thomas Zander, Köln • Zeno X, Antwerp • Zlotowski, Paris • David Zwirner, New York, London

LAFAYETTE SECTOR WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE GROUPE GALERIES LAFAYETTE C L E A R I N G, Brooklyn, Brussels • Crèvecoeur, Paris • Freymond-Guth Fine Arts, Zürich • hunt kastner, Prague • Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam • PSM, Berlin • Ramiken Crucible, New York • Rodeo, Istanbul • Semiose, Paris • Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam Index 07/25/2013

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Kukje, Seoul kurimanzutto, Mexico City Lehmann Maupin, New York Lisson, London 303 Gallery, New York Long March Space, Beijing Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid Maccarone, New York Helga de Alvear, Madrid Kate MacGarry, London The Approach, London Mai 36, Zurich Laura Bartlett, London Giò Marconi, Milan Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Matthew Marks, New York Marianne Boesky, New York Meyer Kainer, Vienna Tanya Bonakdar, New York Meyer Riegger, Berlin The Breeder, Athens Victoria Miro, London Broadway 1602, New York Stuart Shave/Modern Art, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, London New York The Modern Institute, Glasgow Buchholz, Cologne Franco Noero, Turin Cabinet, London Overduin and Kite, Campoli Presti, London Gisela Capitain, Cologne Los Angeles Sadie Coles HQ, London Pace, London Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin Maureen Paley, London Pilar Corrias, London Peres Projects, Berlin Corvi-Mora, London Perrotin, Paris Chantal Crousel, Paris Francesca Pia, Zurich Thomas Dane, London Gregor Podnar, Berlin Massimo De Carlo, Milan Eva Presenhuber, Zurich Eigen + Art, Berlin Project 88, Mumbai Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf Rampa, Istanbul FGF, Warsaw Raucci/Santamaria, Naples Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo Almine Rech, Brussels Marc Foxx, Los Angeles Anthony Reynolds, London Carl Freedman, London Rodeo, Istanbul Stephen Friedman, London Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg Frith Street, London Salon 94, New York Gagosian, London Esther Schipper, Berlin Annet Gelink, Amsterdam Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich A Gentil Carioca, Sfeir-Semler, Beirut Sommer Contemporary Art, Rio De Janeiro Goodman, Johannesburg Tel Aviv Marian Goodman, New York Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Greene Naftali, New York London greengrassi, London Standard (Oslo), Oslo Karin Guenther, Hamburg Stevenson, Cape Town Jack Hanley, New York Luisa Strina, São Paulo Hauser & Wirth, London T293, Naples Herald St, London Timothy Taylor, London Max Hetzler, Berlin Team, New York Taka Ishii, Tokyo The Third Line, Dubai Alison Jacques, London Vermelho, São Paulo Martin Janda, Vienna Vilma Gold, London Johnen, Berlin Vitamin Creative Space, Casey Kaplan, New York Guangzhou Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna Wallspace, New York Kerlin, Dublin Barbara Weiss, Berlin Anton Kern, New York Michael Werner, London Peter Kilchmann, Zurich White Cube, London Tina Kim, New York Wien Lukatsch, Berlin Johann König, Berlin Max Wigram, London David Kordansky, Los Angeles Wilkinson, London Andrew Kreps, New York Zeno X, Antwerp Krinzinger, Vienna David Zwirner, London

Focus 47 Canal, New York Altman Siegel, San Francisco Ancient & Modern, London Arratia Beer, Berlin The Box, Los Angeles Casas Riegner, Bogotá Chert, Berlin dépendance, Brussels Essex Street, New York Fonti, Naples Freymond-Guth Fine Arts, Zurich Gaudel de Stampa, Paris Hollybush Gardens, London Ivan, Bucharest Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf Limoncello, London Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo MOT International, London Take Ninagawa, Tokyo Plan B, Cluj Raster, Warsaw Supportico Lopez, Berlin

Frame Aanant & Zoo, Berlin Vlado Martek amt _ project, Bratislava Petra Feriancova Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo Koki Tanaka Johan Berggren, Malmö Ryan Siegan-Smith Sandy Brown, Berlin Ilja Karilampi Carlos/Ishikawa, London Pilvi Takala Hilary Crisp, London Elodie Seguin Fluxia, Milan Marlie Mul Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami Ian Cheng Grey Noise, Dubai Mehreen Murtaza hunt kastner, Prague Zbyněk Baladrán Emanuel Layr, Vienna Benjamin Hirte Maisterravalbuena, Madrid Néstor Sanmiguel Diest Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo Genilson Soares PSM, Berlin Eduardo Basualdo Southard Reid, London Prem Sahib Various Small Fires, Los Angeles Andrea Longacre-White VI, VII, Oslo Eloise Hawser

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Art Reviewed

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Sturtevant Leaps Jumps and Bumps Serpentine Gallery, London 28 June – 26 August Heavy beats thud through the Serpentine Gallery. Wallpaper featuring, Warhol-style, the repeated image of an owl – the words ‘stock image’ printed on each – cover the first gallery’s walls, surrounding a light sculpture – GonzalezTorres Untitled (America) (2004) – the ‘original’ of which was shown as part of Felix GonzalezTorres’s posthumous retrospective at the Serpentine in 2000. If I didn’t know any better, I would think I was in an exhibition of work by a hip, young ‘post-Internet’ (a term seemingly used to refer to anything vaguely digital) artist. Sturtevant, however, was born in 1930. The work on display in this exhibition dates back as far as the 1970s, but seeing the recent digital work, alongside earlier ‘repeats’, serves to emphasise the relationship between what she produced pre- and post-Internet. For much of her career, she has remade or repeated other artists’ works: Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol all ‘appear’ in this exhibition. The brilliance of Sturtevant’s work lies in how she approaches ‘remaking’: she never refers to images of the ‘original’. Instead she creates from memory, performing the same processes as the artist – producing an end result that somehow channels the ‘aura’ of the original, rather than being a like-for-like copy. Moreover, she has always had an uncanny sixth sense for

the zeitgeist: the artists she has repeated are all now considered canonical; yet when she repeated their works they were contemporaries who had not yet passed through the sieve of art history. Her first show of Warhol’s ‘piss’ flowers took place in 1965, only months after his. At the Serpentine, the remakes are interspersed with more recent works such as the nine-channel video installations Elastic Tango (2012) and Blow Job (2006), both of which use a myriad of found still and moving imagery, forming pop-cultural commentaries (at points a parody of today’s digitised sexuality – the plasticity of a ‘porn aesthetic’, for example, is alluded to via closeups of glossy dolls’ asses). The relationship between Sturtevant’s earlier remakes and later digital work is emphasised in Pacman (2012): a remake of the ubiquitous computer game designed by Toro Iwatani in 1980. The original game was acquired by moma’s design department in 2012 and exhibited in 2013. Whether Sturtevant knew of this acquisition, I am unsure, but it’s a fact that epitomises the conceptual feedback loop inherent in her work: just as the ‘real’ game has been institutionalised, she remakes it as art. What differs here in respect to her early work is that rather than recreating Pac-Man at around the time of its creation, it was made 32 years later.

In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, Sturtevant stated, ‘Authenticity currently is nonexistent due to the imposition of cybernetics.’ The term ‘cybernetics’ was formulated by the American mathematician Norbert Wiener during the 1940s to explore the feedback systems between animate and mechanical things. Cybernetics has gone through many incarnations since: today’s digital–human relationship forms an infinite network, one that British artist Mark Leckey (who shares Sturtevant’s interest in cybernetics in the digital age) has described as a prosthesislike ‘artificial God’ – in that the cyclical repetition of digital communication has become an extension of being human, one that is omnipresent and endlessly replicating itself. When discussing the cultural ramifications of this, Boris Groys recently wrote that ‘in the modern age, ritual, repetition, and reproduction have become the fate of the entire world, of the entire culture’. Yet perhaps the Internet has served to emphasise how ‘authenticity’, to some extent, has always been ‘performed’: in that stock images are used universally and the ‘self’ is now publicly staged and broadcast. Perhaps what Sturtevant is getting at, via her entire body of work, is that ‘authenticity’ has never been a form of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, but instead has been always subject to repetitious simulacra. Kathy Noble

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Richard Healy and Jack Newling Rowing, London 11 July – 3 August Rowing’s Reverse Repeat programme is a framework that enables two artists ‘to collaborate on a single exhibition, create two independent solo shows, or some mixture of the two’. The inaugural show pairs Richard Healy and Jack Newling, who both work sculpturally, exploring the relationship between an object’s perceived status and its symbolic potential. This exhibition has two stages. Part one saw Newling’s body of work, Attachment, in the main gallery and Healy’s Prone Positions in the smaller cabinet room. Part two sees Healy expand his presentation for the main gallery, with Newling downsizing for the cabinet room. Healy’s Out of Office (all works 2013), made for the cabinet room in part one, comprised a folded beach towel, a travel vaporiser and a 12-pack of bottled mineral water, each item presented on a separate shelf of a three-tiered unit. The result was a simple but effective visual haiku, an acerbic paean to clerical absenteeism. These same elements are reused in the three larger pieces currently showing in the main space, Arrangement, Arrangement II and Arrangement III, less-uniform structures

with multiple shelves that also feature a scented candle on a steel pole, a floral arrangement in a blown-glass vase and a QuickTime movie (an aerial view of a simulated modernist building) on a flatscreen. Four lithographs are also shown: palm trees, harbour scenes and poolside views made from pages appropriated from travel brochures. The titles – Aaaah, Aaaaaah, Aaaaaaaah and Aaaaaaaaaah – designate these promotional vistas as kitsch, the enigmatic logos stamped into their surfaces (six parallel bars indented by another work, Prone, two embossing plates designed by the artist) further underlining their shopworn character, perhaps qualifying them as ‘remaindered’ stock. It’s understood that Healy is dealing with ‘constructed’ atmosphere and ‘received’ cultural wisdom, but his main display feels inert, too procedural in its irony compared with the earlier Out of Office, whose poetry of ennui is more mysterious. Like Julian Opie, Newling turns the sculptural object into an image of itself. His painted plaster versions of ketchup dispensers (LikeMinded, Emotionally Distant) and shampoo bottles (Kept in Mind), though instantly recognisable, are

so inscrutable as to deny their own physicality. The two amber pint glasses that form Cheerful are more abstract, due to the cleaner finish and sharper edges. These works (augmented with paintings in part one of Reverse Repeat) occupy nodes of a continuum, at one end of which are objects, at the other end of which are images. They have pictorial or objectual direction, without arriving at a final state. Their finish may seduce you, but it’s this that holds your gaze. Perhaps the lessons learned from this portmanteau experiment revolve around the contraction and expansion of works. In part two of Reverse Repeat, the components of Healy’s work are too diffuse to operate as anything other than signposts of contemporary culture, but within a more compact structure (the three-tier shelving unit of part one) they cohere into something more than semiotic. With Newling, it’s the opposite: bunched together on shelves in the cabinet room, his objects look slightly hammy, like props; further apart, they are more effective, especially when, as in part one of Reverse Repeat, they function within a wider ensemble of more painterly elements. Sean Ashton

Richard Healy, Prone Positions, 2013 (installation view of part two of the exhibition, main gallery). Courtesy the artist and Rowing, London

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Meschac Gaba Museum of Contemporary African Art Tate Modern, London 3 July – 22 September Each of the 12 themed spaces in Beninese artist Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art (1997–2002) integrates artworks with objects from everyday life that, from a Western perspective, might once have been viewed as belonging to either European/North American or African culture. So there is the Game Room, which features table-size sliding puzzles, the elements of which can be reconfigured to recreate the flag designs of various African countries, next to an oversize chessboard with one set of pieces covered in enlarged photocopies of euro banknotes and the other in copies of American dollars. Then there’s the Art and Religion Room, in which a cross-shaped, basic wooden shelving system contains, among other items, a menorah, a statue of Buddha and plastic Virgin Mary ‘holy water’ bottles, alongside items that may be fetishes or trinkets, such as peacock feathers, shells, a car’s wing-mirror and a horse’s hoof. And in each room references are made to two different forms of marketplace – the Beninese

street market, evoked through the methods of display, for example, or the financial markets, highlighted by Gaba’s recurring motif of banknotes, employed in a variety of ways, including as cut-out circles that Gaba applies to the surfaces of other objects. The equal cultural value of Western and non-Western art practices should be a given, but how these different practices are presented can still be problematic. It’s questions around this that Gaba’s work asks. What is the function of a museum? How is contemporary art from Western and non-Western cultures shown within it? Gaba began this project in 1997 during a residency at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie, adding to it room by room until it reached its current form in 2002. He may have initiated it from a concern that there wasn’t a space within the existing museum structure for the work he wanted to make, but there are more complex aspects to Gaba’s conflation of his actual life with the artworks that he makes.

This is best demonstrated in the Marriage Room, which contains gifts from and video documentation of Gaba’s wedding, in 2000, to Dutch design curator Alexandra van Dongen. The wedding took place in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum – Gaba’s response to an invitation to participate in a show there. That a museum is both the location of the event and the context in which elements from it are subsequently shown, along with the way that the gifts are laid out to evoke a market-style display, again cleverly brings to the fore questions about how art is defined and valued. In a year that will see the first African art fair held in London, coinciding with Frieze, Gaba’s exhibition seems all the more relevant. If the overarching point of his Museum is that contemporary African art is no more definable or homogeneous than contemporary ‘European art’ or contemporary ‘American art’, then he makes it very well. Helen Sumpter

Museum of Contemporary African Art, 1997–2002 (installation view, Tate Modern, London), tarot card reading in the Art and Religion Room. © the artist

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£5.34 Carl Freedman Gallery, London 18 July – 24 August £5.34 is not much money, and an odd amount at that. Not like buying a flatscreen for £299, or a paperback retailing at £6.95. It’s more like the total on a receipt from a hardware store, for some bits you might need if you’re an artist making a sculpture, to be curated into a thoughtful summer group show. The shop-bought and the hand-wrought is where sculpture seems to have ended up for the seven (mostly) young London-based artists brought together for £5.34. It’s curated by Jess Flood-Paddock, an artist whose own work makes a virtue of prone forms and underpowered production values, like the cheerful Snacks 15 (all works 2013), a floorbound, oversize coffee-bean lump painted blue and brown, with stuck-on canvas strips. ‘Coffee-bean’ is a hopeless analogy anyway, but Flood-Paddock’s show wants to be about this lack of resolution, between the ordinariness of materials and a distinctly unheroic act of making – a sculpture of fiddling rather than forming or forging, of sidelong hints rather than loud assertions. It’s low-energy sculpture, barely distinguishing itself from the everyday stuff it’s made of. So Nathaniel Cary’s reproduction of David

Byrne’s huge grey suit from the Stop Making Sense tour lies crumpled on the floor, jacket in one corner, trousers in another. It looks amateurishly handmade, not machine-manufactured, full of the absence of an animating human body. That absence of human form is a recurrent gesture: in Cary’s A Tixel Is a Portmanteau, a rickety laundry dryer (made from scratch) on which hang thin gauzes printed with images of hands gesturing at nonexistent touchscreens; in Florian Roithmayr’s customised display banners, one showing a silhouetted figure breathing in an inhaler, the other an upraised index finger on whose tip sits a translucent contact lens; or in Rupert Ackroyd’s blankly sincere remaking of a Georgian high-back settle, a taupe-painted wooden seat shaped to cosy the occupant against eighteenth-century draughtiness. It’s not just the absence of bodies that’s at stake here, but absence as such – things embedded with the trace of other things – but only just. Nicolas Deshayes’s white acetate tabletops retain the vacuum-formed contours of vaguely turdlike forms. Apparently they were shaped from yams, but Deshayes was also thinking of Henry Moore maquettes – again,

the nonfunctioning, not-quite-there version of ‘proper’ sculpture. Owen Bullet’s Shaft, meanwhile, is an alternating stack of stone blocks and wooden props, a peculiar invocation of the structures and depths of a mineshaft, inverting such a hidden hollow into a totem pole. This wavering between the humbly made thing and the thing-absent makes for sculpture that is fugitive and indistinct, a smart move against the overbig, the overshiny and the overpriced. And for that, Fergal Stapleton’s inclusion is key. A generation older and FloodPaddock’s stablemate at Carl Freedman, Stapleton makes sculptures that retreat rather than proffer: The Dust II and III are small sheets of translucent coloured acrylic in which appears the vague impression of some loose change – ten pence pieces and suchlike. Resting on these sheets are rectangles of worn paper, scribbled on in colours that recall the tones of a battered £5 note. What is not there is, weirdly, what is most present. In an artworld debate yo-yoing frantically between the virtues of the virtual and the material, it’s good to see work that reminds us that sculpture’s materiality is only a door to things unseen. J.J. Charlesworth

Nathaniel Carey, Stop Making Sense (Father Tongue), 2013, cotton and polyester blend, cotton twill, acrylic, dimensions variable. Courtesy Carl Freedman Gallery, London

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Gilberto Zorio Blain/Southern, London 9 August – 28 September ‘My works are meant to be energy itself,’ said Gilberto Zorio in 1972, ‘because they are always living works, or they are works in progress, or works for the future.’ Since he emerged as a young artist from the Turin avant-garde during the late 1960s, Zorio has pursued the fusion of idea and form with remarkable consistency, using unconventional formats and often unlovely materials as means to explore what the critic Germano Celant described as ‘the precariousness of events, the “relativity of things” and the potential energy of the world’ to be transformed. Although Zorio has been internationally recognised for several decades for work that has become part of the definition of Arte Povera, it is surprising that this one-man exhibition is his first in London and that his British solo debut occurred only five years ago, in Milton Keynes. Comprising 12 works that span 45 years, the show effectively introduces the main threads of Zorio’s forward-thinking practice. Emblematic of the precursory position in subsequent conceptual developments that his experimental process has won him is Microfoni (Microphones, 1968), which is made up of several microphones suspended from the ceiling by cables: visitors can broadcast themselves while standing on concrete blocks placed unsteadily on ball bearings. The significance of this work has not faded. Its primary material is sound, with the voice as catalyst, and neither is under the artist’s control.

Thus the artwork only becomes active and meaningful once a spectator’s words reverberate in the surrounding space through an amplifier set to echo and distort whatever it receives. Because the effect is contingent on location and user, the outcome is always different. For that moment, and in the memory in which it lives, the environment is transformed, with the spectator becoming the performer within it. This is one example of how Zorio takes hold of the connections and boundaries of the spaces in which he shows to generate sensations of fluidity and creative instability. On this occasion sound travelling down a cable from a microphone in the front area emerges from the loudspeaker in the rear gallery, a room dominated by a tall breezeblock structure. Movement around its perimeter seems obligatory and reveals the construction’s footprint to be a five-pointed star, the most recurrent of several emblems with dynamic cultural, historical and political associations applied by the artist throughout his career. The star’s interior is inaccessible except that through small gaps between bricks a glass alembic is visible, its liquid contents glowing yellow with diluted phosphorus and fluorescein. The mechanical, mythical and chemical spheres repeatedly interrelate to unleash experiences involving light, heat and noise that engage multiple senses and not just the eye. When not actually kinetic, as in the sculptural

assemblage Canoa Siviera (Canoe Ladle, 2013) periodically hissing and revolving overhead, installations arch tensely or assume elevated positions, like the projecting javelins and crucible in Compasso (Compass, 1980), which point with the concentrated force of a throw towards a future moment implied by the open space in front. At intervals the gallery lights switch off and sparks fizz from an upright metal star to illuminate momentarily streaks of phosphorus painted on the wall. As with nature, theatre is integral to Zorio’s expression; scale and surprise accentuate ephemeral ideas that, over time, get restaged and replayed with baroque restlessness. More subtle, and highly eloquent of Zorio’s enduring themes, is Piombi II (Leads II, 1968). Two crudely shaped lead pans contain solutions: yellow copper sulphate in one and blue-green hydrochloric acid in the other. Copper wire hung from the ceiling connects these volatile elements and facilitates a reaction that causes coloured crystals to form, which eventually climb the cords. In its own time, the object will patiently make itself, at once a carefully constructed artwork and an organism undergoing unpredictable change. Distinguished by the reciprocity of material, form and concept that inevitably challenges the viewer, this show at last supplies a London audience with a missing chapter in the sourcebook of how art’s contemporary practices emerged. Martin Holman

Microphones, 1968, microphones, amplifier, tape echo, concrete blocks with ball bearings, wicker, dimensions variable. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Blain/Southern, London

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Do It 20 13 Manchester Art Gallery 5 July – 21 July On a bridge inside Manchester’s colossal Arndale centre two attractive young performers are interpreting Theaster Gates’s instruction-work How to Catch the Holy Ghost or Get Arrested in a Shopping Mall (2012), an offsite event for the Hans Ulrich Obrist-curated Do It exhibition, part of the Manchester International Festival. The man is earnestly struggling to repeat a line – a bit of a tongue-twister – from a church hymnbook: “With souls refresh”. Gates’s directions for an impromptu sermon encourage you to “open your heart” and “feel something”, but it’s a tough call in the soulless surroundings of one of Britain’s first ‘us-style’ shopping malls, especially for an arty crowd anyway disdainful of bland chain-stores. Security guards look on, bored; there’s no threat of arrest here. Do It 20 13 marks the 20th anniversary of Obrist’s generative exhibition project, conceived with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier, which consists of an ever-expanding collection of artists’ instructions from which institutions are invited to curate their own customised displays. There have been over 100 official installations, as well as tv and online

incarnations, and countless unrecorded home versions. The version hosted by Manchester Art Gallery was developed with Peter Saville and Richard Wentworth, a coupling that explains why the design of the show is an odd but likeable mix of slick graphics (instructions stencilled in large font on the wall of the main gallery) and diy support structures, such as Wentworth’s clunky viewing ramp, which also doubles as a display platform for piles of a4 take-home instructions. If the idea to unreservedly just ‘do it’ à la the Nike slogan seems very un-British in the Arndale, there are fewer inhibitions in the gallery, particularly in the Active and Games rooms, where visitors are actively encouraged to participate in the works. In fact, Do It 20 13 feels like an experiment in just how much participation it is possible to generate (artist–artist/ visitor–artist/visitor–visitor) before an institution collapses into complete chaos. Everywhere you look, from toilet to lift to in among the permanent collection, there are yet more instructions, as if they are multiplying virally. The main space stinks of fried shrimp paste,

as a volunteer cooks up Rirkrit Tiravanija’s recipe instruction. In the foyer, a toy poodle sits patiently on a podium, while later a live vulture is set loose in the main gallery. A team of ‘cleaners’ in red T-shirts branded ‘Sweeping… continuing daily’ sweep coloured slips of propaganda around the galleries, making visible the immaterial labour of institutions. This is Suzanne Lacy’s activist interpretation of Allan Kaprow’s original instruction, one of several artists’ homages to artists who have died since the project began. Do It connects to a wider history of artists’ instructions throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and for Obrist it also provides a continuum through his curatorial career, a symbol of his relentless energy, obsessive networking and more-is-more philosophy. It is a project that shows an unusually uncynical side to the artworld – generous, witty, touching and surprising. Nonetheless, Do It is a paradox: a project that both challenges artistic authorship, and thus the economy of original objects, yet leans heavily on the currency of celebrity art brands (not least Obrist’s) and their ever-expanding global distribution. Jennifer Thatcher

Theaster Gates, How to Catch the Holy Ghost or Get Arrested in a Shopping Mall, 2012 (performed at Manchester Arndale, 2013). Photo: Joel Fildes. Courtesy the artist

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Aquatopia: The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep Nottingham Contemporary 20 July – 22 September It’s customary now to speak of the oddities discovered on remote excursions to the ocean floor as if they were aliens from the outer reaches of the cosmos. All those crepitating spindly creatures, or globular beings hardly distinguishable from their demersal medium, have so matched our extraterrestrial predictions as to sink into our minds like a plumb line the idea that the sea is our century’s scientific frontier. There is something of this deep-space bestiary about Aquatopia – an ambitious transhistorical trawl curated by Alex Farquharson – but this richly stocked and strange show is a reminder too that other fantasies have long exercised the sunken imagination. Chief among them: our figuring the deep as past or potential home. You can see this tendency in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) – the Nautilus as floating bourgeois parlour – or in the Victorian craze for aquariums, which in Aquatopia is alluded to by frond-filled stage sets designed by

Henry Emden in 1903 and taxonomist Ernst Haeckel’s illustrations of the forms of sea creatures. The underwater films of Jean Painlevé intensified and perverted the nineteenth century’s aquatic gaze; his Love Life of the Octopus (1965) is a late instance of investigations begun during the 1920s, when images from his jauntily soundtracked studies of crustaceans and sea horses appeared in Georges Bataille’s journal Documents. The show includes playful diversions of this genre: Hannah Wilke’s video Hello Boys (1975), in which the artist’s face looms behind aquarium glass, and Alex Bag and Ethan Kramer’s slapstick mock-documentary Le Cruel et Curieux Vie du la Salmonellapod (2000). According to such works, even when they’ve come some satiric distance from the original urge, the deep ocean is a fantastical residence, exotic and ancient: Verne’s ‘perfect Pompeii escaped beneath the waters’. But fantasised homes have a tendency to turn unheimlich, and a good deal of Aquatopia is

consequently given over to monsters that at their most extreme and estranging seem to resemble ourselves: from Hokusai’s Tako to Ama (Pearl Diver and Two Octopi) (1814) to Shimabuku’s collection, in Octopus Stone (2013), of transitional objects found among the coils of inquisitive cephalopods. The most alarming and suggestive property of the deep ocean and its denizens is exactly this tendency to mimicry and mutation, and the two most substantial videoworks in Aquatopia confirm as much. The Otolith Group’s Hydra Decapita (2010) concerns a mythical sci-fi race conjured by the Detroit techno group Drexciya: superpowered amphibians descended from drowned Atlantic slaves. And Mikhail Karikis’s multiscreen SeaWomen (2012) shows octogenarian divers from the North Pacific island of Jeju, whose breathing technique makes them sound like aquatic mammals of another species – our briny twins. Brian Dillon

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, The Rescue of Minamoto no Tametomo by Goblins (detail), c. 1851 (printed). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Gregor Schneider Süßer Duft Edinburgh 2013 Summerhall, Edinburgh 2–25 August I walk into a gloss-white corridor. White floor, white ceiling, white walls. The dazzle almost hurts the eyes. I open the door at the end. A room: white floor, white ceiling, white walls. There’s a door to my right, and a door straight ahead. I can hear the muffled sound of men talking and laughing. I take the door to the right. White floor, white ceiling, white walls. I walk this second corridor and try the door at the end of it. As the door opens, the sound of chatter gets clearer but then abruptly stops. I walk in. Black floor, black ceiling, black walls. Ten naked black men. The men, previously chatting among themselves, are now uncomfortably silent. Well-built, penises flaccid, they stare at their feet. I stay with them for approximately a minute, but don’t attempt to talk to them. The room is warm and smells slightly of sweat. I leave through a second door, and out of the exhibition space, into the daylight. The facts of Gregor Schneider’s new installation work, titled Süßer Duft Edinburgh 2013 (Sweet Scent Edinburgh 2013, 2013), commissioned as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, are as above. The core of the work however – in all its manipulative, emotive, uncomfortable brilliance

– lies in my reaction. Or rather it lies in the different reactions of each visitor; or rather the reactions of each visitor according to that person’s gender, sexuality and, perhaps most contentiously, race. I spoke to a friend afterwards – a straight white female. She said she had felt uncomfortable and, though she knew it was ‘just an artwork’, threatened to be in a room with so many naked men. She wasn’t expecting it; she had not given consent. Me, I’m gay, white, male. Dark rooms full of naked men mean different things in gay folklore. You don’t have to be a regular at the sauna to experience the clandestine frisson of the situation. This wasn’t threatening; it was exciting. I asked my friend if the fact that all the men were black made them more threatening. Whether she, despite her impeccable, politically correct liberal credentials, was tapping into the stereotype that Katheryn Russell-Brown, the academic criminologist, has dubbed the ‘criminalblackman’. She answered no, of course not. I mentioned to her a blog post, written by Questlove, the drummer from the Roots, on New York magazine’s website that I had read recently. In it Questlove says he’s forever considering

whether the way he looks – a tall, well-built African American – could be construed as threatening. He tells the story of a woman alone in a lift with him who, when he offered to press the right button, refused to tell him the floor she was getting off at. My friend said she’d read it. I haven’t asked anyone of the same skin colour as the men in the room about Schneider’s installation. I haven’t asked a black male – who would, perhaps, neither feel the situation dangerous or, presumably if heterosexual, erotic – whether it spoke to him about black history. Whether the work successfully asked questions about being historically silenced, on being socially disenfranchised. Whether this person would mind my casual queer objectification of the men. Whether he took the work as a commentary on another form of objectification, slavery. I would ask whether he thought the installation comments on situations like Questlove’s, when the musician notes that, in a car park, he will ‘wait and wait in cars until I feel it’s safe for me to make people feel safe’. With Süßer Duft Edinburgh 2013 Schneider poses a lot of questions, but leaves them hanging, ready for us to provide the answers. Oliver Basciano

Süßer Duft Edinburgh 2013, 2013 (installation view). Photo: Peter Dibdin. Courtesy the artist

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Corey McCorkle Maccarone, New York 7 June – 19 July Over the past decade or so, the American videomaker and sculptor Corey McCorkle has countered the dry analysis of contemporary neoconceptualism with work that leavens theory with poetic association. He has, for example, distilled dandelions into wine on a noble Irish estate and filmed feral dogs roaming an unfinished zoo in Istanbul; in the process, he probes how craft transforms dross into art and how culture stands as a bulwark against our own baser nature. Consisting of two works, and remarkably spare even by the standards of his own glancing, metaphorical references, McCorkle’s most recent show offers a deep disquisition on habit, art and ethics. There is Crevice (both works 2013), a cut in the gallery walls the width of a folded sheet of paper that forms a line slightly above eye level. It admits light from the outside but never illuminates the otherwise dark space. Diagonally opposite it, a silent video, titled Monument, of a black horse, his eye sockets empty and matt,

plays on a loop. In place of a press release, McCorkle has left a copy of Georges Bataille’s monograph Lascaux ou la Naissance de l’Art (1955) on a counter in the gallery for viewers to consult as they wish (60 percent of the Palaeolithic paintings in the Lascaux caves in southern France depict equines). Bataille wrote extensively on the unstable relationship between matter and mind, experience and image, and his book, also a nod to Plato’s cave, makes it clear that McCorkle’s subject is the genesis of art in the human need to represent and tame the natural world. Crevice, expanding the reference to Plato, indicates that images are but shadows of a greater truth – literally the world outside the gallery – while the work’s often sharp intensity suggests that faith in art, theory and craft blinds us to it. The horse becomes an allegory both of the limits of sight and the possibility of values beyond our own needs. In his stall he feeds on hay, and

bridled in a ring, he sways his head as if sensing the surroundings through vision recalled (his eyes were removed several years ago due to disease). He exists for his own sake, rather than for his usefulness to people. As it’s the animal’s imperfection that renders him hauntingly beautiful – an avatar of ‘Horse’ rather than a horse; the type rather than its token – McCorkle seems to suggest that it’s our limitations, or our ability to accept them, that can engender moral transcendence. In writing on Lascaux, Bataille discusses a universal yet impossible goal of understanding these prehistoric artists through their paintings, as if the urge, rather than the image, is itself the foundation of culture. It’s all very heady and slightly spiritual, and McCorkle moots the ideas through deft and subtle associations and oppositions. But the work never coalesces to become a forceful example of aesthetic incandescence; rather, it remains a discussion of it. Joshua Mack

Monument (stills) from, 2013, hd projection, 5 min 36 sec. Courtesy the artist and Maccarone, New York

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12/09/2013 08:58

Jonas Mekas Outlaw: New Works Microscope Gallery, New York 27 June – 29 July One of the best things about getting old is that you can do whatever the fuck you want. Or so the old people say. Such is the case with Jonas Mekas, whose latest exhibition at Microscope Gallery is inspired by his lawsuit with the gallerist Harry Stendhal. The ninety-year-old Mekas, who is best known for his avant-garde films and criticism, has accused Stendhal, his former dealer, of selling some of his works without giving him his cut, including 40 stills of Elvis Presley, to pay an outstanding personal bill of $90,000 at Cipriani Downtown. For the past four years, the pair has been involved in an expensive legal battle that, according to Mekas, has not yet been resolved. This exhibition, Mekas says, is dedicated to all artists who have gone through similar trials with their galleries. As a founder of Anthology Film Archives, and a legend in his own right, Mekas is properly suited to be such a knight in shining armour. But only a few people will really know that this battle was being waged, because the exhibition is staged at a tiny gallery in Bushwick, a

neighbourhood that, despite its popularity in the media, has yet to be heavily trafficked by the mainstream artworld. The works in the show are meant to be shocking, but they might not be for gallery natives, who will be familiar, for example, with the language used in Outlaw: Letters from the Gallerist to the Artist (all works 2013), a series of 12 black-and-white Xerox collages culled from borderline-illiterate BlackBerry emails sent by Stendhal to Mekas. ‘Just remember I never lose,’ reads one line. Another: ‘don’t fuck with me I will bury u and piss an ur u drunken oldman piece of shit’. Remove ‘oldman’ and you have a good picture of many a dealer–assistant relation. Much of the work doesn’t have any artistic merit. Mekas’s 12 collages look like newspaperclipping letters sent by a serial killer to his next victim, only on each of them there is also a photocopy of a woodcut of Dante descending into Hell, as if to remind the viewer that she is looking at an artwork. The letters appear again in a video, Sing. Sing to Me, Blackberry, in which

Mekas pans the camera over copies of the emails while he sings along to a concertina in the background. “My great love for money/For money/Would have put me in Sing Sing,” he chants. If you didn’t have the emails as a reference point, you’d think you were listening to a song by Bob Dylan. The darkness in Stendhal’s missives is countered by Fragments of Paradise, a series of 12 acrylic and watercolour drawings and photographic prints from Mekas’s video archive. Mostly featuring blossoming flowers, they seem more the output of an old lady in her dotage than the Father Time of avant-garde film. Untitled (#4) features five haikus about Paris enclosed in a vine of painted flowers. Untitled (#5) features a filmstrip of flowers in a meadow enclosed in a vine of painted flowers. You get the gist. Perhaps what Mekas doesn’t give a fuck about is showing work that, earlier in his career, couldn’t have been sold by anyone, especially a dealer allegedly desperate to pay off his debt at Cipriani. Brienne Walsh

Outlaw: Letters from the Gallerist to the Artist (#4), 2013, acrylic and Xerox collage on paper. Courtesy the artist and Microscope Gallery, New York

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Roving Signs Matthew Marks Gallery, New York 12 July – 16 August A measure of progress can be found in the distance between obsolescence and nostalgia. For artist Terry Winters, who organised this show, the latter looks to veil the former with a shroud of mythical reverie. And with his curatorial endeavour, Roving Signs, which takes its title from a Gold Rush miner’s melancholy ballad, Winters weaves a narrative that finds in vernacular technology a means to reconcile the effects of industry. Among the artists included, the spectre of Beat Generation polymath Harry Smith looms large. Widely known as an ethnographer of American folk music – the Smithsonian has released a box collection of his recordings – Smith was also a maddeningly prolific collector of archaic ephemera. A bearded Arachne, Smith had, at the time of his death, been working on a thousand-page compendium of string figure formations – the practice of forming pictographs through the manipulation of string, which dates back to prehistory. Winters, enamoured after first encountering Smith’s twined creations, curated an exhibition of them last year for the journal Cabinet.

Deprived of their animating function, the delicate twists, whirls and knots comprising the 18 figures included in the group show come off as static, albeit absorbing, abstractions. Their framed presentation lends the figures an archival quality, a document of a manual tradition lost to the digitless digital age. Elsewhere, Rosie Lee Tompkins’s hanging patchwork quilt, Half-Squares Medallion (1984), summons bygone folk techniques. But in its alternating hues of lilac and aubergine, Tompkins’s random assemblage of geometric polyester and sateen patches presages the rise of the catchall qr code. And then there is John Cohen’s Inserting Final Passes of Welt Using a Needle (1956), which captures the well-worn hands of a Peruvian Q’eros Indian nimbly weaving with the aid of a loom. If Tompkins’s abstract compositions rely on probability, Cohen’s images document an adherence to more sacred geometries. A conceptual thread drawing many of the works together is Winters’s interest in the patterns and form of line, a subject on which his own works often dwell. The series of six

monochromatic lithographs that comprise Anni Albers’s Line Involvements (1964) lambently suggest the swirls and eddies of Smith’s twiddled creations. In contrast, the dozen aerial shots that make up the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s looped slideshow, Autotechnogeoglyphics: Vehicular Test Tracks in America (2006), echo Albers’s sinuous creations, albeit on a geographic scale. A testament to the marring legacy of American expansion and extraction, the aerial images offer the industrial age’s rejoinder to the Nazca Lines. In a small chapbook accompanying the exhibition, a poem by Winters opens with the lines, ‘Archaic rites/from the new lost city’. Progress, it would seem, is best mourned by the past. The sense of wistfulness coursing through Winters’s exhibition is tempered by the terms of its departure. Situated at the gallery entrance, Rachel Harrison’s Apple Multiple (2008), a synthetic apple dotted with pins inserted in the region of a bite, mordantly recalls the story of Eden’s fated duo. The price of knowledge was expulsion from paradise. A devil’s bargain, indeed. Joseph Akel

Roving Signs, 2013 (installation view). Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

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11/09/2013 17:59

Simon Fujiwara Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex) Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York 28 June – 9 August Simon Fujiwara remembers an old photograph of his mother in the arms of her Lebanese boyfriend on the beach in Beirut during the 1960s. The thirty-one-year-old artist has made a name for himself by developing performative pieces based on his personal and family history. Earlier work, for example, interposed the story of a hotel his parents owned with the process of writing an erotic novel (Welcome to the Hotel Munber, 2008–10), as well as the artist’s first sexual awakening and a piece of art on view at a museum near his childhood home (The Mirror Stage, 2009–12); so the focus on his mother’s relationship with ‘another man’ (before meeting his father) is a natural theme for Fujiwara. What seems like another in a series of similar works on comparable subjects develops, however, to reveal not only the allure of Fujiwara’s practice but also a tension that is both political and personal. Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex) is a strand of stories that stem from one object – that photograph of his mother – which the artist recreated

in his Berlin studio by hiring actors as stand-ins for his mother and her then-boyfriend. The layers of narrative here are multiple, and they are reflected upon in a 20-minute video playing on a white backdrop that was used as part of the set for the pietà image. The actor, an Arab man living in Berlin, recounts how he is always typecast in the role of a terrorist. Fujiwara admits that he chose the guy because he found him attractive, which leads the artist to explain the titular King Kong complex: that is, the association of the other – in this case the large, hairy, dark Middle Eastern man – with sexual virility, violence and passion. But it’s not Fujiwara’s fascination with the Arab man that is interesting here, it’s his simple question in the voiceover, when he wonders what would have happened had his mother married her Lebanese boyfriend: “Would I have been born in Beirut? Would we have survived?” Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex) is an expansion of a commission for the Sharjah Biennial in

the uae, where projects tend to emphasise their Arab or Middle Eastern dimension. The main subject reflected upon in the piece is not a complex relationship with racism as much as it is a strong tension with the locale: its history, its politics and its personal connection to the artist, both enticing and frightening. The result is a much more nuanced and intimate reflection on the Middle East than any pinpointing of this or that leftist stance. Stepping into a darkened side room beyond the main exhibition space, one would expect to see the pietà photograph, perfectly executed. Instead there are three large prints: the actress who plays Fujiwara’s mother alone in her bathing suit; another in which, in a subversion of conventional gender roles, she holds the man, albeit by using an elaborate swinglike construction that allows her to support his weight; and a third in which the actor sits in his bathing suit in that same swing, smiling, looking vindicated. Orit Gat

Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex), 2013 (installation view). Photo: Lance Brewer. © the artist. Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York

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Zach Harris Echo Parked in a No Vex Cave David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles 29 June – 17 August Perhaps an indication of the richness of Zach Harris’s artistic practice is the wild variance with which viewers describe the references and precedents for what they see. One can churn into the discussion everything from Tibetan mandalas to Islamic tiles to Kandinsky, but nothing specific seems to stick very long. Instead, the word ‘vision’ steps forward. Harris’s painting conjures visions, in the sense that he imagines the inner tremors that remain unseen in the ordinary world, the vibrancy that animates our idea of something beyond us, whether an afterlife, a heightened state of consciousness or parallel dimensions. The completed works, made from wood and often distinguished by exquisite carving on their surfaces, read somewhere between folk objects and aged devotional panels or even icons. They feel ancient, like riddles from another time whose keys have been slowly lost over generations. Harris seems a romantic of the sort who processes a world of broken forms, as travellers once regarded the buried ruins of Rome or

revelled in the depressed interiors of decaying European estates. These forms had purpose, but now that purpose has fallen from memory, and Harris aesthetically wanders in this rich and mysterious space. Wheel in Picture Light (2011–13) is an accumulation of diamonds that seem to originate from the bent crag of a mountain, and a floating mass becomes what may be a temple. Surrounding the painting is a band of yin-yang symbols, which would read as insufferably hippie in lesser hands (especially in Los Angeles), but which Harris somehow pulls off. Cumulatively, these symbols offer folk cosmologies that transcend the dubious or campy through their exquisite crafting and art-historical density. They’re at once serious paintings and the efforts of an eccentric, but an eccentric who has been at work long enough to refine his efforts into something solid and believable. The largest painting in the show, Belvedere Torso/Finger Scales (2012/2013), could be seen as a statement on the scale of an altarpiece, and it is

a remarkable joy of seeing the work in person that the rest of the pieces in the show teach you how to view it. In terms of relief, there is almost none in the painting, just a simple routered edge. After encountering the carving and patchwork relief of the other works, however, your eye is tricked into seeing the shadows as chiselled and optically deep. From a tiny landscape of Stonehenge-like standing stones emanates a series of hallucinatory mountains that become, if not a godhead, then, at minimum, echoes of the infinite. Are these paintings spiritual visions? The answer is no: they are too nostalgic, too reliant on prior aesthetic ideas of what visions are supposed to look like. Instead, they are visions in a late-nineteenth-century-symbolism sort of way, when one could reach back into an art-historical past just distant enough to appear fresh and newly mysterious. The Pre-Raphaelites come to mind, as does the Nabi group, not in how Harris paints but in how he longs for lost ritual, how he assembles traditions into a synthetic but hopeful resonance. Ed Schad

Blind Spot, 2011–13, water-based paint, wood, 118 × 97 cm. Photo: Brian Forrest. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

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William Daniels Luhring Augustine, New York 29 June – 23 August William Daniels’s solo exhibition of paintings is almost too boring to write about. Apologies to those who work there and who support Daniels’s practice, but for all this talk about painting being ‘dead’, from Yve-Alain Bois to David Joselit and back, and about how it’s not very dead at all – look at how its most interesting examples veer into social networks, institutional critique, performance, etc – Daniels’s painting really is the deadest kind. It does nothing to update the medium in any interesting way, which means it merely holds wall space for rich people with antiquated taste. Hovering between figuration and abstraction, Daniels has created a series of oil paintings based on classical arches. Each painting features two foregrounded rows of them, one atop the

other, and they veer slightly in space, as if floating. The backgrounds are a series of thin horizontal stripes. There are eight canvases in total, and with the exception of the very first in the series, Untitled (all works 2013), whose background/foreground relationship is a bit vague, all look more or less similar, the only slight differences being their colour and whether the foreground or background is emphasised. In one, the arches are more pronounced. In another, it’s the background that pops. There’s nary a straight brushstroke in sight. Rather, each motif is composed of dozens of different but related colours, a technique somewhat akin to the refracted surfaces of Cubism, but more manic and less geometric. In one arch alone, red, blue and green fold into each other yet don’t

compete. The dude’s got skill, that’s for sure. Too bad it’s employed to such redundant ends. Maybe it’s a question of misplaced mediums. More interesting is the process Daniels uses to make the work. With an image or vague shape in mind, he forms almost sculptural tableaux out of tin foil (formerly, he used cardboard). Taking a picture of this scene, he then paints sections of the photographs onto board. The paintings are more interesting as jpegs, where they appear very graphic; the canvases, in contrast, look flat. Photographs of his tin foil creations would be more alluring, as would the tin foil maquettes themselves, which raises the question of why Daniels is painting at all. Is it because he should, or is it because he can? David Everitt Howe

Untitled, 2013, oil on board, 104 × 95 cm. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

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Ed Fornieles Despicable Me 2 Mihai Nicodim, Los Angeles 13 July – 10 August If Britney Rivers didn’t exist, someone would have to invent her. She is the epitome of Generation Y narcissism and vapidity, a creature who gives fullest expression to her life on Facebook and Instagram, whose pronouncements are specially keyed to halfbored, half-horny social media browsers. Her Tweets include such gems as: ‘Cute guy emails 2 ask me out on coffee date but “sent from droid” so now i’m like :-/’. I’m Facebook friends with her. You should be too. In actual fact, Britney Rivers only exists because Ed Fornieles invented her. It remains unclear just how far the fiction of her identity stretches. ‘Selfies’ on Instagram show that Rivers is a flesh-and-blood, twenty-something woman, but I suspect that Fornieles holds the passwords to her online profiles. For Fornieles’s exhibition Despicable Me 2, Rivers is someway between a virtual muse and a subjective lens picked up by

the artist. He would like us to believe that it is she who is calling the aesthetic shots, even if she only truly exists in his imagination. Surprisingly, perhaps, the show contains no digital media, unless one counts the portraits installed at the back of the space: headshots of three young women and one man, culled from the Internet, with teeth or eyebrows digitally erased. Photographs on shaped lightboxes also punctuate the sprawl of objects placed on rectangles of carpet. Pink and blue wads of chewed bubblegum, titled Not Fade Away (all works 2013), float like clouds high on the wall. The First Time is a seven-foot-high lightbox displaying a photograph of an erect penis standing like a sentry at the entrance to the melee. Aside from close-up self-exposure, what else appeals to Britney Rivers? Candy colours, mirrors, glitter, confetti and fairy lights, apparently. The works’ obvious relation to

infantilism is conflicted and self-mocking. Pony Hoof consists of a large soft toy brutally impaled – not even hanged! – on a gallows. Several sculptures include casts of Stewie Griffin, the baby from the animation Family Guy, debased with cigarette butts, glitter and a snap of a beefcake in his briefs. There are around 40 artworks on the checklist, but it is hard to discern which piece belongs to which title. This is surely deliberate. The model of network culture is innate for Rivers’s generation – a generation to which, give or take a few years, Fornieles also belongs. Despicable Me 2 is less an ideological critique than an ambivalent embodiment of Rivers and her culture. Is it she or he who is despicable? Probably both. As Rivers/Fornieles declares in the press release: ‘It’s all about jokes, lolz and likes. Everything else is bullshit.’ Jonathan Griffin

Despicable Me 2, 2013 (installation view). Courtesy the artist and Mihai Nicodim, Los Angeles

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Alison O’Daniel Quasi-Closed Captions Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles 20 July – 17 August Rogue Wave (group show) la Louver, Los Angeles 18 July – 28 August The theft of sound begs for tangible variations in shape and colour. When drawn in pictures, sound always appears in arcing waves or as curved lines to illustrate its expansion through space. These lines grow thinner and longer as the sound spreads out, disappearing as they travel further and further into unhearability. But how does one capture sound visually beyond the simplest of abstractions that can never begin to express the nuances of voices, music, noise? Alison O’Daniel attempts just this. Inspired by a rash of burglaries targeting the tubas of high school marching bands in Southern California, O’Daniel is creating a feature film, The Tuba Thieves, the narrative of which follows a young couple, one of whom is a deaf drummer, in what the artist calls ‘a din of stolen instruments, purposeful silence, and alternative communication’. A score structures the film, arranged by three composers: Ethan Frederick Greene, Christine Sun Kim and Steven Roden.

None of the film is being shown here, but each object in the show is an embodiment of the soundtrack to that movie in production. Simply framed out of rough plywood, these sound replacements dangle from ceilings with delicate chains, kaleidoscopic windows looking into a possibility of sound. Necklace chains droop elsewhere into space, holding up only themselves as they sway in the air, like wind chimes that never chime but only cast spider’s webs of shadow. From a cluster of plinths, raw and painted, hoops hang in the air and on the wall – quiet portals between different states, different senses: tactility, sound, vision. On view crosstown at another gallery, la Louver, O’Daniel does happen to be screening a scene from The Tuba Thieves. A faceless traveller drives through a terrible storm as a radio sputters through stories about Hurricane Sandy. A moving truck stuffed with plants has its translucent scrims shaken by some unseen force. The plants shudder individually, each to its own sound, and then all

together in a seismic chorus – all incidentally scored by a deaf composer. The idiosyncratic story of the film is only hinted at here, but the evocative fragments of both the scene and the objects made alongside it uniquely embody the possibility of sound as abstraction, seismicity and object. Sound made physical obviously weirds the divide we set between senses, but seismic bass, a vibrational surge that shimmies up limbs and shivers the sweat right off the skin, is music too. Sound metamorphoses into tactility. A metaphor transfers one state to another, it bypasses the hesitancy of simile, which hedges its bets with ‘like’ and ‘as’, and leaps into equal exchange: this is this. A metaphor abandons the literal for the poetical, makes sharing experiences, life, visions possible in ways that strict and basic expressions cannot. Alison O’Daniel’s objects are metaphors, not stand-ins for sound but sound for the soundless, with texture and movement and colour giving utterance to objects, scoring together a symphony things. Andrew Berardini

Warnings on the Radio, 2013, wood, rubber, chain, paint, 64 × 93 × 14 cm. Courtesy the artist and Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles

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Tobias Zielony Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 21 June – 30 September ‘Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible,’ wrote Susan Sontag in On Photography (1977). Using the example of Diane Arbus’s posing pariahs, she bid farewell to a medium that gets us accustomed to the abysmal in the world, that takes the pain away from us – and, with it, our ability to empathise. Born four years before this text was published, Tobias Zielony photographs male prostitutes, drug addicts and unemployed youth in their environments. Yet in doing so he not only goes beyond the mere suffering of others, but also beyond the documentary photography of the 1980s, when Nan Goldin and Larry Clark photographed their friends shooting heroin and made the format fashionable again. For the Berlin-based Zielony, people on the edge of society are not victims or outlaws surrounded by an aura of morbid glamour; they are the narrators of their own stories. This was already the case in his series Trona (2008), for which Zielony photographed teenagers in an impoverished desert city in California among scrap cars, wire fences and rundown houses. Here, methamphetamine has left its traces on bodies, as have the poses of a completely mediatised, consumer-oriented world, which the

residents use to stage themselves defiantly in front of the camera. In the Berlinische Galerie, quotes are projected next to the series – sentences like ‘I hate it here’ zoom us into the emotional world of the residents, to which Zielony establishes a Wolfgang Tillmans-style relationship of proximity and distance: he invades their world, asks them to pose and captures exactly what is behind these gestures. An atmosphere of deprivation and loneliness spreads, inscribing the images with a timeless existentialism. His newest series, Jenny Jenny (2013), premiered here, transfers this view onto the red light district of Berlin’s Potsdamer Strasse – however, without directly exposing the environment as such. In 40 photos, six women rummage in their handbags on the side of the road, casually steady themselves on the bed or lean, nearly naked, against a mirrored wall. Their gazes are not demanding, as the direct stance of bodies marked by piercings, scars and impressions might imply; rather they tiredly drift through or past the camera’s gaze. Photographed in analogue format without artificial light, these are quiet, almost affectionate portraits. Zielony grouped them with photos of empty city squares, a bouquet of flowers or skyscrapers lit by the

streetlight: in their resemblance to scenery or backdrops, these function as substitutes for the protagonists’ inner worlds. It is in such references to emptiness – some of the images almost surreally colourful, others a gloomy chiaroscuro – that Zielony inscribes his documentary work with a poetic, fictional aspect. In a world full of images, ceaselessly supplied by advertising, music videos, etc, in which seduction and demand have become the basic drivers of bodily expression, Zielony sets a stage upon which the failures of society are acted out. The illusory promise of happiness in the postmodern world finds its broken mirror in the women’s self-portrayal and their quest for oneself. Zielony does not hold up this mirror to us ‘to show that this is not the best of all possible worlds’, which Luis Buñuel once said was his reason for making films. Rather he lets the women tell their stories – and in Trona and the other series, they revolve around the end of youth in the age of pop culture. Zielony’s protagonists are hurt, but they don’t come across as victims or as habitués of some distant subcultural scene – rather, they deeply affect us. Gesine Borcherdt Translated from the German by Emily Luski

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Geoffrey Farmer Let’s Make the Water Turn Black Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich 23 May – 18 August Between the first version of this capricious installation (at redcat in Los Angeles in 2011) and the most recent remix (with others to come), Geoffrey Farmer presented a work at Documenta 13 of stylistic and material focus that was tailormade to be the visitor favourite it became. Leaves of Grass (2012) incorporates thousands of images cut from the pages of a full run of Life magazine that were attached to sticks like paper dolls and arranged in rough chronological order. As an extended frieze with a front and a back, it enabled its viewers to file past a twentiethcentury picture parade of particular social and visual impact, almost as if it were lying in state. Without seeing this work in Kassel I likely would not have fully appreciated how adept Farmer is at invoking the movement we make around the perimeter of his installations. So, as the magazine images of Leaves of Grass flipped through us rather than vice versa, this current installation, one that Farmer categorises in a wall label as a ‘sculpture play’, stubbornly maintains the expected relationship between sculpture and viewer, at least until certain things

start to happen, things that set up other things that surely would happen either the moment we left if not years later. During my first visit to this new version of Let’s Make the Water Turn Black, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. But that didn’t interfere with what immediately came across as a mindful playfulness enacted by a menagerie of sculptural objects, some of which are animatronic and would on occasion come to life: a wooden stick waving for a moment in a small clay pot, the arm of a mechanical cactus engaging a set of chimes and plenty of coloured lightbulbs (often positioned as the eyes or nose of a human or animal-like assemblage) turning on and off along with the theatrical lighting of the space, as well as the cut-and-paste soundtrack of the entire work that includes clips of popular songs and radio broadcasts, as well as sound effects (like thunder) and various musical instruments. Spanning the figurative to the fantastic, the ‘indigenous’ to the ‘modern’, Farmer’s sculptures wear their influences without apology, and I very much appreciated being encouraged to

recall the inspirational early work of Mike Kelley, as well as more obscure connections to aspects of the work of Wallace Berman. The direct connection to California comes from Farmer’s title. Lifted from a 1968 song by Frank Zappa, it indicates the extent to which the performative aspects of Farmer’s overall production (lights, sound, movement, music, etc) mirror the West Coast collage aesthetic of Zappa’s compositions. I got this much more during my second visit, as the symbiotic relationship between the temporal structure of the installation and the first years of Zappa’s life literally played itself out, starting with snippets of songs and broadcasts from 1940, the year of his birth. Just as I was succumbing to the work’s layers of activities and references while moving with rapt attention around the boundary of its raised stage, the lights changed dramatically, creating a twilight moment as the voice of fdr came over a loudspeaker – “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy” – and, for a moment, it was as if both time and I stood still. Terry R. Myers

Let’s Make the Water Turn Black, 2013 (installation view, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich). Photo: Lorenzo Pusterla. Courtesy the artist, Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, and Casey Kaplan, New York

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Nicole Wermers Austern mit Senf (Oysters with Mustard) Galleria S.A.L.E.S., Rome 6 June – 26 July One could be forgiven for initially thinking that Nicole Wermers is an artist exclusively dedicated to reworking aspects of Minimalism: after all, her work is clean, formal and cerebral. Yet importantly, and invariably, it is also more than just the specific object itself. In any event, the German-born artist is known internationally for sculptures that verge on the functional, and she plays with this modus operandi in her latest exhibition at Galleria S.A.L.E.S., which features works conceived during a year’s stay at the Villa Massimo in Rome. In the main exhibition room, Wermers has positioned four plinths to bear Abwasch Skulpturen #5 – #8 (Dishwashing Sculptures, all works 2013). Renaissance still-life painting serves as the art-historical reference point for these works, whose arrangements each consist of artfully piled kitchenware, the objects holding each other up and in place, inside a modified dishwasher basket. Here, though, Wermers inverts the format of still life by swapping two-dimensional elements for real objects that contain or comprise animal forms, like a ceramic pink flamingo or lobster, while other objects, such as plates and

bowls, feature plant and floral patterns. The figurative elements in the objects touch upon the original content found in the still-life painting referents the artist is pulling from: it’s an involving art-about-art dialogue, but the game doesn’t end there, because the pieces Wermers is working with are found objects. Accordingly, the sculptures nod to the objet trouvé tradition inaugurated by Picasso. Every piece, as the exhibition title’s reference to foodstuffs might suggest, bears a history of function that precedes its current status as art: a curvy-bladed knife, a mezzaluna, to chop garlic with, perhaps; or a piece of fine china designed for a particular dish. It’s impossible to say with any surety how the object functioned before it became art – it’s up to the viewer to create the context – but it’s clear, at least, that the Abwasch Skulpturen’s functionality was already tested in the past. By contrast, the 51 white readymade wardrobe hooks that make up the installation Restaurant, in the gallery’s backroom project space, haven’t ever been used. This fact, and the contrast it creates, gives the kitchenware sculptures a personal aspect that effectively

prevents the entire exhibition from just being an exercise in formal concerns. In a more subtle way, however, this aforesaid intimacy can also be found through the intervention of the human hand in the wardrobe hooks: each one is covered with several layers of wall paint, giving it a sense of painterly warmth, and as a result, the installation feels intimate rather than cold or industrial. The personal, then, turns out to link the two sets of work in the show despite their differences in form and content. Additionally, the viewer’s uncertainty in relation to the art object’s ambiguous purpose permits Wermers to assimilate seemingly contradictory ideas by overlaying the impression of a single authorial voice. That said, by no means do these reflections on Wermers’s work indicate a major shift has occurred in her practice. The sculptures, after all, are made up of shapes – ellipses, for example – that resemble other geometric forms she’s experimented with over the past decade. It’s not a matter, then, of an artist changing her vocabulary, but rather of her quietly expanding it. Andrew Smaldone

Auster mit Senf (Oysters with Mustard), 2013 (installation view). Courtesy Galleria S.A.L.E.S., Rome

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Purkinje Effect Galerie 1900–2000, Paris 22 June – 27 July First on your left as you enter is a drawing, no more than a half-metre square, offering a window onto a strange kind of Eden. Giant flowers, twined like musical clefs, shade tiny trees through which goat-thighed imps frolic and drink toasts. A microcosmic Cockayne rendered in a spidery greyscale, it’s seemingly hellbent on leaving as little white space unfilled by fairytale whimsy as possible. But this is not an illustration from Tolkien nor a preparatory sketch for some phantasmagoria of Bosch or Enki Bilal. The signature identifies it as a product of the spirit world, by ‘Victorien Sardou, medium’. There is something of the night about Purkinje Effect. Curated by artist Laurent Grasso for the Palais de Tokyo’s Nouvelles Vagues season of new curating talent, its title derives from the nocturnal distortion in colour contrast first noticed by Czech anatomist Jan Purkyne. Grasso cheerfully admits that he is no curator. Nonetheless, the selection testifies to a strain of research and adept juxtaposition that has long characterised his endeavours – in particular, perhaps, last year’s solo show Uraniborg, at the Jeu de Paume across town. Working on that, Grasso became fascinated by a grotto built by Huguenot craftsman Bernard Palissy in the surrounding Tuileries gardens. So he was

immediately struck, upon delving into Galerie 1900–2000’s collection, by a sketch (Quartier des Animaux chez Zoroastre, Bernard Palissy, c. 1860) by the aforementioned Sardou, a dramatist, apparently under psychic dictation from Palissy himself, now resident on Jupiter and living next door to Zoroaster (whose home, in florid curlicues, the drawing depicts). Palissy’s ghost is not the only spirit haunting this exhibition. The death mask of Paul Éluard hangs austere and impassive, marred by bullet holes received during the liberation of Paris when it hung in André Breton’s studio. The two surrealists had been fascinated by death masks since their discovery, in the late 1920s, of a book by Ernst Benkard. Éluard confessed to Breton he had dreamt about an anonymous girl whose mask he’d seen in that book, and consequently took the unusual step of posing for his own cast. Hence Éluard’s death mask was shot while its model still lived. Elsewhere are a full moon in miniature by Picabia amidst a dense swirl of nautical blue (Point, 1951); a strutting portrait of the actress Musidora, star of Louis Feuillade’s Vampires serials; and an oil painting by Dorothea Tanning (Une Lune dans l’Autre, 1958) from the moment when her more figurative dream images burst

into blushes of abstract colour. Each one the inhabitant of a liminal twilight world. The three of his own works that Grasso has included might be situated both before and after all of these. Two 2012 paintings from his Studies into the Past series, depicting a flock of birds swooping through a forest clearing and an eclipse over a medieval cityscape, involved professional restorers advising Grasso on how to match the velvet hues of Renaissance oils, though no cinquecento Florentine ever depicted such marvels. The neon Purkinje Effect (2013), meanwhile, spreads art nouveau-esque tendrils from its gleaming lettering, though that material was unknown to the belle époque. All three works look backward while reaching forward, spreading light while hinting at darkness. Grasso’s selection delights in the narrative powers of objects and the dreamlike crossing of paths. In a vitrine, the open pages of the surrealist journal Minotaure present Breton’s famous essay ‘Le Message Automatique’ (1933), and facing it, a reproduction of Sardou’s Quartier des Animaux chez Zoroastre. Purkinje Effect accordingly revisits Surrealism through surreal eyes, more like a baroque cabinet of curiosities than a standard museum show – and all the better for it. Robert Barry

Purkinje Effect, 2013 (installation view, from left: Anonymous, Portrait of Hans Bellmer, c. 1945, vintage gelatin silver print, 25 × 19 cm; Francis Picabia, Point, 1951, oil on cardboard). Courtesy Galerie 1900–2000, Paris

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Momentum 7 Various venues, Moss 22 June – 29 September The Nordic Biennial, aka Momentum, takes place in the town of Moss on the outskirts of Oslo. For the seventh edition, two Scandinavian curators harbouring diverse practices – Power Ekroth and Erland Hammer – decided to ‘agree to disagree’: that is, to create two parallel exhibitions. Theorists might refer to this thematic conflict as ‘positive antagonism’, wherein friction stemming from disagreement can fuel change or motivate a redirection of energies. What matters more than deciding to get along, or otherwise, is what results: combined energies, going against the grain or doing or saying nothing. Revolts and rebellions can be useless if the idea behind an action is misinformed; motivations should aim for transparency. Whether or not art can be apolitical is a question for this event. Art is perceived to be as significant as a transformative political revolution by only a handful of appreciators. Unlike Momentum 6, which involved five Scandinavian curators, a single theme and more exhibition spaces, the current biennial downplays collaboration. This year, Momentum Kunsthall – a former brewery in the city centre – is the primary exhibition space, with Heilmannparken, a nineteenth-century garden, and the entrance area to Møllebyen and Momentum Kunsthall providing additional space. The curators have divided these spaces, with Ekroth focusing more on the external public areas. No singular conclusion arises from either curator’s work; how one views these radically different exhibitions remains the responsibility of a searching audience. Still, both curators confront thematic relevance, questioning its necessity. The artists in Ekroth’s share of the biennial, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, do not fit into any prepackaged concept; they cajole the viewer to enter other worlds (the title references Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), some of them delusional yet deserving inspection. In Tower of Babel (2011), Iranian artist Goran Hassanpour shares his sculptural interpretation of Babylon based upon how he privately imagined this utopia to

be at an amorphous point in time – when the world was sublime and unfettered. Together, these works invite viewers to reexamine their approaches to the truisms and fallacies of art as tool or saviour. Ekroth suggests in her text for the exhibition one political axiom inspired by Marx & Engels: ‘Art is both “base” and “superstructure”… Every-day life [is] where all transactions between people happen within the “base”, where the forces and relations of production such as the division of labour and property exist; the relations into which people enter to produce the necessities of life. Then there is the ‘superstructure’ which can be described as whatever else we need to make the base function: the laws, the economic structure, the ideology and the history of the society – and how one regards oneself within the society is of course part of this.’ Forces at the base (eg, the Internet) affect the superstructure (eg, culture and education), yet art is considered the conjoining thread and ticket to move among these spheres – and citizens, for Ekroth, must reevaluate how the base relates to the overarching schematics via frank confrontation and analysis of these components. Highlighting forces that manipulate creativity, Ekroth emphasises in her text the importance of artists’ freedom to create and viewers’ freedom to respond accordingly. Attempts to understand and embrace slippery paradoxes affecting the real world and the world of dreams take precedence. In Dutch artist Gabriel Lester’s silent film The Blank Stare (2013), characters gaze into the camera, daydreaming, amidst uninterrupted thoughts and otherworldly inscapes. ‘It is nearly impossible for an artist to create any resistance [to an artworld which views artists as production machines],’ the curator observes. ‘This leads to the daunting conclusion that the ultimate resistance today would be to simply stop acting or producing.’ Certainly, no curator wishes paralysis on any arts community. Yet how to avoid being part of the production machine – Ekroth: ‘We are now driven by not only our libido or desire (to

facing page, top Gabriel Lester, The Blank Stare, 2013. Photo: Vegard Kleven. Courtesy the artist, Gallery Fons Welters, Amsterdam, and Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai

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consume), but also by the new normal’ – remains a conundrum. Pointedly, Swedish artist Johan Zetterquist shares various unrealised suggestions for Momentum, one being Proposal No 29, A Monument Celebrating the End of Capitalism As We Know It (2013), hinting at a desire to free himself from the system’s shackles. Erland Hammer’s Dare 2 Love Yourself, primarily located on both floors of one side of Momentum Kunsthall, is not nearly so sociopolitically engaged or phantasmagorical. Trust yourself and your instincts, his title suggests; steer clear of what others expect. Elsewhere, Hammer quotes the Sufi mystic Rumi, and his focus leans towards the introspective and spiritual. ‘The artists were not invited, nor were any works chosen or developed, based on any kind of relationship to the exhibition as whole,’ he remarks in the catalogue: ‘…I want everything to look good. I curate exhibitions visually. I think about politics when deciding who to vote for, not when installing sculpture.’ Works such as Bjarne Melgaard’s Untitled (2013) and Charlotte Wankel’s Portrett av Ingar Wankel og Elisabeth Wankel (1940), for example, emphasise Hammer’s affinity for abstract painting. He’s uninterested in forcing viewers to engage with hot topics or historicity; if an exhibition is a circus, he refuses to balance on the tightrope. After seeing both halves, I harbour an image of Ekroth in a psychedelic garage with the artworld’s hood up, grease caked beneath her fingernails, while Hammer floats unhindered somewhere in a self-designed, somewhat egocentric realm. Some may argue that one exhibition is ‘better’, more ‘desirable’ than its counterpart; this is reductive. More appealing is how this dichotomy provokes one to consider the vulnerabilities of each show-as-unit and the biennial as a whole. Consider how Ekroth’s tenets of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ apply to this event. Positive antagonism often unleashes buried sentiments begging for either utility or release. In short, the curators’ playfulness and defence of individualism is duly noted. Jacquelyn Davis

facing page, bottom Johan Zetterquist, Proposal No 29, A Monument Celebrating the End of Capitalism As We Know It, 2013. Photo: Vegard Kleven. Courtesy the artist

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Art, Two Points: Barcelona Lives Contemporary Art Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (macba) 18 July – 6 January CaixaForum Barcelona 19 July – 29 December ‘Less is more’, as Mies van der Rohe famously said. Considering that the architect’s Barcelona Pavilion for the city’s 1929 International Expo is a key reference point in this exhibition, the organisers might have paid heed and honed down its 400 works by 125 Catalan, Spanish and international artists. And yet this achievement deserves to be acknowledged as a tour de force, one that is not without political significance. Earlier this year, macba was crippled by a €1.5 million deficit unpaid by Spain’s central government. With this coming on top of earlier stringent cuts, the museum was not only forced to look to its own collection, but to that of the bank-funded ‘La Caixa’ Foundation to stage this cost-effective mega-survey that seeks to reevaluate ideas of ‘contemporariness’ (their term) from the unique perspective of Barcelona. And therein lies the problem. There are moments when it is possible to forget the curatorial agenda and simply marvel at how well Spanish art fares in this international context. In particular, the macba galleries connecting the Informalist painters of the 1950s and 60s (Antoni Tàpies, the Madrid-based El Paso group) to the painters who dominated in the following two decades (Ferran Garcia Sevilla, Frederic Amat, Miquel Barceló, José Manuel Broto, José María Sicilia) display incredible verve.

But thereafter we are returned to a reading filtered through the evolution of Barcelona’s own self-image, historical moments that feel imposed on the local artists and bewilderingly irrelevant to those from further afield. Through wall texts, stock footage and other archive material, these key stages in Barcelona’s awakening take us in a progression from the 1888 and 1929 Expos, through the Civil War, dictatorship and democratic transition, to the 1992 Olympics and the city’s subsequent restyling as a post-Fordist service economy catering to tourism. Curiously, there is no direct reference to the property-bubble collapse, the single most important consideration post-2008. Anachronistically, there’s Hans Haacke’s Shapolsky et al…, a work from 1971 exposing property scandals in Manhattan. And we have Manolo Laguillo’s record of the pre- and post-Olympic building bonanza, but macba already committed itself to reading this photo archive in a positive light with an exhibition back in 2007, before anyone saw the economic perils of unbridled development. So where are the indignados, artists like Ruben Santiago whose political narratives give voice to the present-day protests on the streets? Undoubtedly, the intention is to demonstrate both the vertical and horizontal – the

importance of local context intersecting with the general flow of the international avant-garde – but the net effect of this intrusive framing is to emphasise how often Spanish art has coat-tailed on external influences, at times compensating by overelaboration. However, this tendency towards the baroque and the carnivalesque does come into its own (the exhibitionist burlesque of José Pérez Ocaña, the processional events of Perejaume, the kitsch food-based work of Antoni Miralda), though yet again this important component to ‘contemporariness’ is absent from the present show. The second half of the exhibition is staged at the imposing CaixaForum, but while there is a degree of collection sharing, the massed holdings of one of Spain’s largest saving banks are predictably blue-chip, though the presentation is mercifully free of overblown readings, and the homogeneity of the international cast is interspersed with some interesting local talent. Both venues present an opportunity to catch up on artists who have escaped the ubiquity of the international circuit and are too little seen; artists like Ignasi Aballí, Joan Rom, Pep Duran, Pepe Espaliú, Antoni Muntadas, Ana Prada, Antoni Llena and Joan Rabascall, to name but a few. Just remember to blinker up and ignore the info boards. Keith Patrick

Juan Muñoz, La Naturaleza de la Ilusión Visual, 1994 (installation view). Courtesy macba, Barcelona

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Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict Veneklasen/Werner, Berlin 6 July – 14 September For their widely unloved 1969 double album Ummagumma, Pink Floyd recorded the slice of varispeeded musique concrète that gives this 13-artist group show its protracted title. A cheery festival of chirps, giggles and rumbles, the track feels – between its appellation and its execution – at once ancient and modern. And as such, and beyond the presence of vintage Floyd stage speakers in the final room, it fits this ambitious exhibition. The track’s ‘voices’ are electronically produced but sound organic; and Several Species…, in parallel, is concerned with the human self, and how it might be perceived even when absent. That’s addressed upfront in the opening room, where Aaron Curry’s hulking Phantom (2010), a planar sculpture whose architectonics suggest a man crossed with a bull and whose white surfaces are dashed with graffiti, revisits modernist conflations of the human and animalistic (see Picasso’s Guernica, 1937, for example) through a skateboarder’s eyes. Nearby are a very lengthily titled Gerard Byrne photograph dated 2010–13 depicting the verso of a painting of Christ and the Samaritan woman, and Nicholas Byrne’s painting Roleplay No 1 (2007–13), where flecked, Delaunay-ish chromatic tones surround a featureless head pitched

between manifesting and dissolving. In each the human figure is spectral at best, almost a rumour; and the works of the Byrnes establish a mystic mood that’ll restate itself, amid halfway-articulated bodies, further in. A quartet of large graphic woodcuts by Andrea Büttner, for example, depict a priestly figure (Father, 2010), tents and, in Bread Pebble (2010), a stone that, in this context, might transubstantiate. Laid out before these, poignantly stranded in a large area of floorspace, is Esther Kläs’s neo-postminimalist 0/2 (2013), a shallow, greyish concrete cast resembling a canoe or manger. Add another (again, too prolixly titled for this context) Gerard Byrne photograph from his 2008 series of artificially lit, unpopulated roadside images that visualise the staging described in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and the not-quite-there figure is reframed again. Now it might be that of God. The spiritual, here, is pan-denominational if not outright nebulous, however. In Pietro Roccasalva’s You Raise the Blade, You Make the Change (2008), a loosely Baconesque painting of a bellboy is accompanied by a film canister containing the sequence in Tarkovsky’s iconpainter epic Andrei Rublev (1966) when a hot-air balloon rises, gifting the worldly controller of

a lift – and ascent and descent per se – with metaphysical airs. That the everyday can draw us outside ourselves is reaffirmed nearby via Kōji Enokura’s sublime monochrome photographs of disproportionately poignant near-nothing events: creamy light on tarmac (p.w. – No 29, 1972) or, in Symptom-Floor, Water (p.w. – No 50) (1974), oddly geometric pooling liquid in what might be a hospital. The self notes such transitory sights, as we’ve all done in life, and brushes against something ineffable. Yet such experience is interiorised and cannot be directly communicated, only gestured towards or framed, as in Manon de Boer’s Dissonant (2010), a film in which a dancer first listens twitchily to classical violin music and then dances in silence to her memory of it. Much else here clearly harkens back to Modernism and earlier, suggesting that abstract and semiabstract modes pioneered then offered a valid space for addressing barely articulable transcendent issues; and that, since these haven’t become irrelevant, the aesthetics might live on too. This subtle, carefully weighted show succeeds in asserting that. And in redeeming the self-indulgent sonic wasteland that is Ummagumma, it performs a minor miracle of its own. Martin Herbert

Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict, 2013 (installation view). © and courtesy Veneklasen/Werner, Berlin

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Call of the Mall Hoog Catharijne, Utrecht 20 June – 22 September 2013 Shopping malls are often characterised by their dull, generic architecture. ‘If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen the mall’, goes the saying (and book title by Dutch scholar Rob Kroes). Entire libraries of scholarly volumes have already been dedicated to malls, which seem to be a theoretician’s guilty pleasure. Dreadful to walk around, they nevertheless make for an interesting case study. These artificial capitalist cocoons try to create the illusion of a public realm, though they are in fact highly secured, semiprivate spaces. The temperature is constant; beggars or dodgy people are not welcome. You won’t see any graffiti, litter, seedy bars or porn shops, like in real city centres. In this ‘safe haven’, shopping itself (rather than the objects purchased) is the ultimate goal. With the provision of tearooms, restaurants and movie theatres, shopping has become an experience – an awful marketing term that has permeated various other domains in our society, including museums with their bookshops, cafés and other facilities. Here, the biggest shopping mall in the Netherlands celebrates its 40th birthday with a thorough renovation and an ambitious group exhibition. Thirty artists were invited to reflect on the very nature of the mall, and the majority

of the works are new commissions. Maze de Boer refers to the year 1973 (the title of his work), when Hoog Catharijne – then Europe’s biggest covered shopping centre – was inaugurated. Entering one of the underground parking lots, one comes across a row of cars, including a Fiat 600, Volvo 142 and Opel Manta. Back then, these were the latest models; that they now almost look antique is reinforced by the grey gloss (to match the car park floor) in which they have been sprayed. The same sense of obsolescence seems to be looming over shopping malls in these times of small-scale and online shopping. Hence, this exhibition considers changes to the known ‘mall format’. Alongside Ester van de Wiel’s installation of community gardens on the rooftop (De Tuinfabriek (The Garden Factory), all works 2013) or Melle Smets’s local radio station collecting stories of passersby (Radio Homo Ludens), Mexican artist Antonio Vega Macotela posits an alternative economic model. His installation, The Idea of Gift, consists of a wishing well made according to a Mexican tradition. When visitors exchange an object of personal value, they receive a coin they can throw in the well to make a wish. Hence the exchange upon which this work is based is one without a clear

outcome; the opposite of the usual ‘you get what you pay for’. Pilvi Takala could not be missing in an exhibition on this subject. The Finnish artist often plays with conventions of our contemporary, bureaucratic society; in Utrecht, she calls part of the mall a ‘freezone’ where one can skateboard, give dance lessons or act as a living sculpture – innocent activities that are nevertheless forbidden in the strongly regulated mall. Another logical inclusion is Sylvie Fleury, whose C’est la Vie! reenacts an earlier performance piece in which two models in Yves Saint Laurent dresses featuring the classic Piet Mondrian motif walk through the mall. Because of its surprise effect, the work seems to function better in a mall than in a museum setting – which is also the case when it comes to most of the performances taking place here. Showing work in public – or, in this case, semipublic – space is often tricky. As Call of the Mall is set in one of the busiest hubs in the Netherlands, with an estimated six million passersby, it clearly needs to offer accessibility. Its strength lies in the fact that it does so without ‘selling out’, by presenting works both clever and critical. If you’ve seen one, you’ve not necessarily seen them all. Sam Steverlynck

Sylvie Fleury, C’est la Vie, 2013, performance. Photo: Jannes Linders. Courtesy the artist

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Geraldo de Barros Jogos de Dados e Sobras sesc Vila Mariana, São Paulo 11 July – 8 Sept In a slightly too-small space, to he’s-behind-you chants from a children’s performance in the room next door, the setting for this exhibition of two groups of works by the artist Geraldo de Barros (1923–98) is São Paulo’s sesc Vila Mariana, one of an egalitarian network of art and leisure centres (sescs) that spans the length and breadth of Brazil. sesc, which owns a number of de Barros’s works, has also just published a book covering the entire trajectory of the photographer, painter and designer’s career, Geraldo de Barros: Isso. Mounted on wires stretched from ceiling to floor, the 55 geometric sculptural forms of de Barros’s Jogos de Dados (Games of Dice, 1980s) dominate the space, hanging in clusters facing this way and that. Close to the centre, the originating piece, Pai de Todos (Father of Them All), is a hexagon comprising 12 rhombuses, pristine in its mathematical precision, the simplicity of its black, white and grey colours, and its smooth, almost textureless expanses of Formica. De Barros, who was also a founder of the furniture companies Unilabor (a workers’ cooperative) and Hobjeto, made Jogos de Dados after the first of a series of strokes robbed him of the power of speech. Simple and unproblematic at first glance, the virtual planes created by

the Formica shapes impact on you slowly, as your vision cycles through the possible changes in perspective, feeling the flat planes turn concave, then convex, then flat again. That simultaneous mystery and simplicity at the heart of geometry are the foundations of de Barros’s lifetime spent as an artist and designer. Starting out as a painter, he began also working in photography in 1946, going on to create the exquisite series of abstract images ‘Fotoformas’. Using his camera, a twin-lens Rolleiflex 6x6, as well as manipulating negatives by superimposing, scratching and painting on them, de Barros drew photography into his practice as a highly creative form of printmaking. The success of those experiments, ironically, took him away from photography: a 1950 exhibition, Fotoformas, at Museu de Arte de São Paulo led to a period of scholarship in France and Germany, where he turned to painting again, leaving aside photography as a medium for the next 40 years. Following a career that saw him play a leading role in Brazil’s Concretist movement, and a 1960s Pop art period, as well as furniture design, he returned to photography at age seventy-three, two years before his death, when, albeit further debilitated by strokes, he created Sobras (Leftovers, 1996–8), the second

series in this sesc exhibition. From boxes of mainly family snapshots, plus a few remnants of the ‘Fotoformas’ material, de Barros sliced into negatives, reimagining what must have been deeply familiar scenes to make the more than 200 artworks, displayed in this exhibition as slides projected onto two screens, with a third screen showing parts of the process of their creation. A cat, eyes glowing in the flash, crouches on top of a wardrobe, a web of incisions crisscrossing the space overhead. Areas of static are introduced into skies, onto horizons and radiating around people. A small boy in spectacles cycles along a pavement, into a void formed by a neatly excised rectangle in the centre of the photo. A man looks over battlements at a featureless abyss – a sky that has been sliced away. Unsettling, and exquisitely executed with the aid of de Barros’s assistant, the photographer Ana Moraes, the mildly dystopian works are full of voids real and imaginary, faces caught off-guard in snapshots, and inspire complicated ideas about memory, family and life; about geometry, maths and science; and perhaps even about fuses blown along neural pathways, waiting to swallow people up. Claire Rigby

Jogos de Dados e Sobras, 2013 (installation view). Photo: Alexandre Nunis. Courtesy sesc Vila Mariana, São Paulo

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Your Everyday Art World by Lane Relyea mit Press, $24.95/£17.95 (hardcover) Mobile phones, the Internet, social media, file sharing – we’ve become habituated to the presence of networks in our day-to-day. But more than that, the network has become a dominant metaphor for life in the twenty-first century, regardless of all the technology; and ‘networking’, the mix of personal life and professional activity, is the mark of every ‘creative’ freelancer. In Lane Relyea’s engagingly critical account of developments in art since the beginning of the 1990s, he argues that what characterises the artworld today is the dominance of networked forms of organisation, mobility and fluidity; a world of temporary projects and impermanent events, of revolving biennials and footloose artists globetrotting through a flux of transient allegiances and ‘weak ties’; a world that replaces the old, static, topdown institutional relationships of the past – the studio, the art object, the gallery and museum. Relyea thinks there’s something a bit wrong with this giddy, rootless new artworld. Drawing on current critiques of neoliberal economics and immaterial labour – especially Eve Chiapello and Luc Boltanski’s voguishly influential The New Spirit of Capitalism (2007) – Relyea draws parallels between the transition to postindustrial, service-based capitalism and the rise of art practices that, while privileging social contexts and interpersonal relations (1990s ‘relational’ art and second-generation institutional critique), were also the product of an intense and novel form of international networking between groupings of young artists making connections between Los Angeles and Glasgow, New York and Cologne – artists who were all about ‘talk and travel’.

In the extensive second chapter, Relyea offers a compelling description of the interconnected groupings of artists who emerged from particular art-school centres at the turn of the 1990s; from Glasgow’s Environmental Art course (Douglas Gordon), from la’s CalArts and Pasadena’s Art Center (Dave Muller, Jorge Pardo), from New York’s sva and the Whitney’s isp (Mark Dion and Andrea Fraser), and the associations between these and other curators and dealers in Europe and America. Narrating the early careers of these now well-established figures, Relyea examines how the seeds of a poststudio attitude were sown among cohorts of young artists influenced by an earlier generation of teaching artists, themselves rooted in the radical developments of the 1970s and 80s. Mix this with a big dose of ambition and initiative, local, cliquish DIY shows combined with a focus on travel and making contacts, and what developed was a vibrant, pragmatically internationalist circuit which quickly rose to institutional recognition by the end of the 90s. Relyea’s account takes issue with the progressive or utopian rhetoric that characterised much relational art and ‘New Institutionalism’, seeing the art as a harbinger of the rootless, nomadic and ephemeral art culture that now defines the global art network. In the networked artworld, Relyea pessimistically concludes, all that counts is connectedness, not meaning, and this hollow transience becomes synonymous with the condition of postindustrial working life: ‘Artists and designers are made into role models for the highly motivated, underpaid, short-term and subcontracted creative types who neoliberals imagine will staff their fantasy of a fully freelance economy.’

Persuasive as Relyea’s narrative is, his network metaphor tends to become an allconsuming explanation for everything – almost an active entity in its own right, rather than the outcome of a complex interaction of historical forces inside and outside the artworld. Relyea adroitly identifies some of these: the international transmission of postconceptualist practice through teaching; the breakdown of the cultural authority of the museum; the idealising of a diminished, micropolitical scene of ‘everyday life’ in 1990s art. But because he tends to stop at the borders of the artworld, only then to look out on a big, bad and essentially indistinct ‘neoliberalism’, important historical contexts of the 90s remain in the shadows: the waning of national polities in favour of supranational political institutions, for example; or the ascendancy of the multiculturalism and relativism of the cultural left; and underpinning these, the paradox of prosperity during the 1990s and early 2000s – the ‘long boom’ that actually enabled all this travel and talk, all this radically tinged sociable networking and increasingly well funded artmaking. Together, these are the economic, cultural and political foundations of the placeless, internationalised and introverted artworld of today, which might be described, discussed, acted on. But labouring too much under the influence of poststructuralism, Relyea can find little room for the agency of any subject, a subject that is ‘actively produced by signifying operations and practices rather than existing outside and prior to them’. If you’re produced by the system, there’s little you can do. It’s your everyday artworld – get used to it. J.J. Charlesworth

After Butler’s Wharf: Essays on a Working Building Royal College of Art £14 (hardcover) Creating a cohesive piece of writing as a collaborative exercise can be a tricky undertaking. So hats off to the 13 graduating students from this year’s Critical Writing course at the rca, who wrote and compiled this selection of short essays on the history of South London’s Butler’s Wharf – the 50 warehouses built during the 1870s, east of Tower Bridge, to store tea and spices unloaded from the Port of London. The same buildings fell into disuse and dereliction after the 1960s, only to be redeveloped, by Terence Conran and Fred Roche during the 1980s, into the mix of flats,

shops and restaurants that occupy the site today. During the downtime decade of the 1970s the wharf was rented at low cost as live/work/exhibition spaces by some 100 artists and performers – Derek Jarman and x6 dance collective (who later became Chisenhale Dance Space) among them. It’s this period that forms the book’s central thread, and in particular the group of early video and performance artists, including David Critchley, Belinda Williams, John Kippin and Kevin Atherton, who occupied and worked together to put on exhibitions and events on the first floor of block 2b.

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Through various approaches – a fictional conversation between Terence Conran and the ‘Mr Butler’ who was the first recorded trader from that site; an excerpt from a 1987 interview between Jarman and Simon Watney; a lunchtime musing in Conran’s Pont de la Tour restaurant; a response to two photographs documenting fires that occurred at the wharf in 1931 and 1979 – what’s revealed is not only a vivid illustration of a building past and present but a reminder of the creative benefits of all forms of collective endeavour. Helen Sumpter

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The Andrew Project: 1000 and Something Portraits in Toronto, Berlin and London 2010–2013 by Shaan Syed FormContent and s1 Artspace, £17 (hardcover) The effect of nonpresence lies at the heart of The Andrew Project. How something that is gone, made invisible or immaterial, can nonetheless provoke consequences: the dog that didn’t bark. Consequently The Andrew Project is an enigmatic one. Authored by London-based painter Shaan Syed, the book is an attractive clothbound volume containing, without explanation or direct contextualisation, over 1,000 photographs of the same poster – a line drawing of a handsome man in his forties, captioned ‘Andrew’ in handwriting underneath – flyposted in different urban locations. Few of the posters are intact, but despite their various stages of decay and destruction, they show the slightly curled quiff of Andrew’s hair

and the definition of his jaw, and reveal that the top two buttons of his shirt are undone. The posters both memoralise their subject and allow him to slowly – with each tear, defacement and obliteration by rival flyposters – disappear. A pullout booklet contains several texts and projects by Syed’s peers. Some relate formally to Syed’s projects: London-based abc News reporter Jeffrey Kofman’s article on how he came into possession of a ripped portrait of Muammar Gaddafi that had once hung in the colonel’s palace, for example, or artist Ruth Claxton’s series of museum-shop postcards, from each of which she has unnervingly scored surface strands. Others tackle Syed’s interests more opaquely. Critic Chris

Fite-Wassilak writes on the semiotics of the speech bubble, noting that while for the comic reader they ‘cover up’ the background, for the characters within the animation they can either be thought of as a circumnavigable object or an invisible one. Jeanine Woollard offers three sets of passport photos in which a person (perhaps the artist) has entered the photobooth with various printed illustrations of faces masking her own. Photographer and curator Nicholas Muellner tells the story behind his tourist photograph that purports to show Mount Rushmore (the viewer can’t be sure, as it’s shrouded in fog). Taken together, the project is a melancholic, philosophically ruminating one: a rather beautiful paean to absence. Oliver Basciano

The View from the Train: Cities and Other Landscapes by Patrick Keiller Verso, £14.99 / $26.95 (hardcover) As the title of this collection of essays suggests, for filmmaker Patrick Keiller the urban landscape is shaped by the opposing forces of stasis (the view) and motion (the train). Within that, of course, is an argument for film (as opposed to photography) as the supreme medium for recording the built environment. Keiller trained as an architect (during the 1970s), and his meditations on that environment in Britain, here encompassing the early 1980s to around 2010, investigate its evolution from the physical wasteland wrought by late capitalism (the Thatcher years) to a kind of environment occupied by a population with a more transcendent sense of place and space brought about by the digital revolution. In the first instance the neglected space of the British city is a mark of decline, in the second that still-neglected space (Britain has had a crisis in the development of housing and public space for the past 50 years) is a fertile ground for cultural success (being neglected, it allows for the integration of immigration, and for its native inhabitants to have a vivid imagination when it comes to dreaming of elsewhere). In an early text about the decline of the Liverpool docks (an essay linking changes in economic structures to changes in urban structures), the author remarks that it is ‘the result not of the port’s disappearance, but of its new insubstantiality’, before describing how newer ports boast that their employees (the few that are now needed) are people experienced in managing automated warehouses rather than people with

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any notion of the maritime life. The impoverishment of the city reflects the impoverishment of labour conditions. In one of Keiller’s classic later texts, ‘The Dilapidated Dwelling’ (an attempt to understand why, despite the nation’s technological and economic progress, Britain’s housing stock is left in a state of decrepitude and disrepair), the ‘experience of dilapidation is tempered by the promise of immediate virtual or actual presence elsewhere’. At this point a confession: partway through this book, I realised that I had edited one of the essays included in it, which was included in a collection of texts about London in the postcolonial era. Many of Keiller’s ideas are ideas that shaped my own, both then and now. And the places he describes are places I know or grew up around. I have a sentimental attachment to this book. It is to Keiller’s credit as a writer that you don’t need to have one. Nor do you need to know too much about his work as a filmmaker (London, 1994, Robinson in Space, 1997, and The Dilapidated Dwelling, 2000, are among his key works) to connect to these texts. Although, in a way, the collection operates as a journal of the author’s artistic development and his increasing comfort with film as a medium. As Keiller is evolving as an artist (moving from found footage to filmed footage, black and white to colour, 16mm to 35mm, etc), he’s also evolving as a writer. From the drily academic ‘The Poetic Experience of Townscape and Landscape’, in which the author introduces his overarching project, inspired by

the surrealists and Situationists, Walter Benjamin and Michel de Certeau, of testing whether or not it is possible to transform the world by presenting a wilfully subjective view of it; to a later essay such as ‘London – Rochester – London’, an account of a trip to Charles Dickens’s prefabricated Swiss chalet (given to the author in 1864 by an actor friend) in Rochester, in the company of the architect Cedric Price, in which the poetic project of subjectivity is presented without the theoretical baggage: buildings and landscapes provoke thoughts about history and politics connected to the lives and experiences of the two travellers, delivered in an almost epigrammatic fashion. A passing Citroën ds reminds Keiller of Alison Smithson’s book as in ds (1983), which had just been republished at the time of the trip (2001), while Price is instead determined to talk about the colour of the driver’s jumper, a type of green that for Price recalls tastes in interior design from the 1930s, but is also the indescribable colour of the covers of an out-ofprint clothbound book of watercolours (images of children and sandy beaches from the 1930s), the finding of which Price uses as a test of quality for secondhand book dealers, but whose title, Serious Business, leads the travelling companions to discuss ‘whether (or not) it is becoming increasingly difficult to imply nuance in written language in the way this title did’. Naturally Keiller’s writing, with its elegant fusion of poetics and academic research, frequently demonstrates that it is not. Mark Rappolt

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ALBANIA / Gallery On The Move, Tirana // AUSTRIA / Galerie Altnöder, Salzburg / Artelier Contemporary, Graz / Projektraum Viktor Bucher, Vienna / Charim Galerie, Vienna / Galerie Chobot, Vienna / Galerie Heike Curtze, Vienna / Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Vienna / Galerie Frey, Vienna/Salzburg / Lukas Feichtner Galerie, Vienna / Galerie 422 Margund Lössl, Gmunden / Raum mit Licht, Vienna / Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna / Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna / Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz / Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna / Christine König Galerie, Vienna / Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna / Knoll Galerie, Vienna/ Budapest / Galerie Konzett e.U., Vienna / KROBATH, Vienna/Berlin / Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna / Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz / Galerie Lindner, Vienna / Galerie Lang Wien, Vienna / Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Salzburg/Vienna / Galerie nächst St. Stephan - Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna / OstLicht. Galerie für Fotografie, Vienna / Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna / Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska, Salzburg / Gabriele Senn Galerie, Vienna / Galerie Schmidt, Reith i. A. / Galerie Silvia Steinek, Vienna / Kunsthandel Heinrich Steinek, Vienna / Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck/Vienna / Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna / Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz // BELGIUM / Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels // BULGARIA / 0gms Gallery, Sofia / SARIEV Contemporary, Plovdiv // CZECH REPUBLIC / Drdova Gallery, Prague / POLANSKY GALLERY, Prague / SVIT, Prague // ESTONIA / Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Tallinn // FINLAND / Gallery Taik Persons, Helsinki // FRANCE / Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris // GERMANY / AANDO FINE ART, Berlin / Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich / Galerie Crone, Berlin / Galerie Robert Drees, Hannover / Galerie Christian Ehrentraut, Berlin / Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin / Galerie Hollenbach, Stuttgart / Galerie Jochen Hempel, Leipzig / Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, Germany / Galerie MaxWeberSixFriedrich, Munich / Kai Middendorff Galerie, Frankfurt / Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin / Galerie Sherin Najjar, Berlin / ph-projects, Berlin / Galeria Plan B, Berlin/Cluj / Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin / taubert contemporary, Berlin / TEAPOT, Cologne / ŻAK | BRANICKA, Berlin/Krakow // HUNGARY / acb Galeria, Budapest / Erika Déak Gallery, Budapest / INDA Gallery, Budapest / Kisterem, Budapest / Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest / TRAPÉZ, Budapest / VILTIN Galéria, Budapest // IRAN / Shirin Art Center, Teheran // ITALY / Galleria Goethe, Bolzano // LATVIA / ALMA Gallery, Riga / kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga // LITHUANIA / The Gardens, Vilnius / Galerija Vartai, Vilnius // KAZAKHSTAN / IADA, Almaty/Paris // POLAND / BWA Warszawa, Warsaw / COLLECTIVA, Poznań/Berlin / Czułość, Warsaw / Galeria Stereo, Poznań / Le Guern Gallery, Warsaw / lokal_30, Warsaw / Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw / Raster, Warsaw / Starter Gallery, Warsaw // ROMANIA / Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest / :BARIL, Cluj–Napoca / Club Electroputere, Bucharest / Experimental Project, Bucharest /Ivan Gallery, Bucharest / JECZA Gallery, Timisoara / Kilobase Bucharest, Bucharest / Salonul de Projecte, Bucharest // RUSSIA / 16thLINE Gallery, Rostov-on-Don / Gallery 21, Moscow / Nadja Brykina Gallery, Moscow / Glaz Gallery, Moscow / Marina Gisich Gallery, Saint Petersburg / Galerie Iragui, Moscow / Pop/ off/art gallery Moscow/Berlin / Regina Gallery, Moscow/London / RuArts, Moscow / Triumph Gallery, Moscow / Ural Vision Gallery, Yekaterinburg // SLOVAKIA / Gandy Gallery, Bratislava / Krokus, Bratislava / Roman Fecik Gallery, Bratislava // SLOVENIA / P74, Ljubljana // SOUTH KOREA / Gallery H.A.N., Seoul // SWITZERLAND / Galerie Clemens Gunzer, Zurich / ribordy contemporary, Geneva / Scheublein Fine Art, Zurich // TURKEY / Cda-Projects, İstanbul / Galeri Nev Istanbul, Istanbul / Sanatorium, Istanbul / Galeri Zilberman, Istanbul // UAE / Carbon12, Dubai // UKRAINE / MIRONOVA Gallery, Kiev // UNITED KINGDOM / Division of Labour, Worcester / Gazelli Art House, London/Baku / Hada Contemporary, London / Ibid, London // USA / Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York/Geneva / Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York / Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles

Vienna International Art Fair 10—13 October 2013

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www.viennafair.at www.facebook.com/viennafair blog: thenewcontemporary.com

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The Armory Show Piers 92 & 94

March 6–9, 2014 • New York City • thearmoryshow.com

Armory

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Consumed

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A selection of lps, limited-edition and otherwise, from the Vinyl Factory and xl Recordings

Atoms for Peace, Amok £19.99 King Krule, 6 Feet Beneath the Moon £19.99

Toilet Paper, I Always Remember a Face, Especially When I’ve Sat on It £25

Jeremy Deller, English Magic £20 Jeremy Deller, English Magic, 2013 Atoms for Peace, Amok, 2013 King Krule, 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, 2013 We went record shopping. We were supposed to be getting records by visual artists from London-based shop and label Vinyl Factory. But we got distracted and came lumbering back to the ArtReview offices with 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, the new King Krule album, and Amok by Thom Yorke and Flea ‘supergroup’ (gross word) Atoms for Peace. The King Krule lp is a weirdly crisp slice of darkwave, simultaneously aggressive and depressive. Amok sounds like a really good Thom Yorke solo album. kingkrule.co.uk atomsforpeace.info

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Back to the matter at hand. You know when musicians make ‘art’ and we all laugh? Bob Dylan’s pasticheImpressionism that he seems enthusiastic about ruining his reputation with, for example. How come it works much better (by and large) the other way round? Admittedly Jeremy Deller is unlikely to trouble the charts with his ep English Magic (also pictured overleaf), in which the Melodians Steel Orchestra covers three classic British songs: Symphony in D Minor (1955) by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Voodoo Ray (1988) by A Guy Called Gerald and The Man Who Sold the World (1970) by David Bowie. But it’s the Top 40’s loss, as it’s quite joyous. vfeditions.com

Toilet Paper, I Always Remember a Face, Especially When I’ve Sat on It, 2013 Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Ha! The jokers! Ha! This jaunty compilation album is a continuation of the artists’ Toilet Paper collaboration. Featuring, among others, the artists Coldcut, Judy Garland and Cornelius, it provides the listener with a surreal, eclectic experience, akin to being in a really good dive bar somewhere in a provincial, down-at-heel European town. vfeditions.com

ArtReview

12/09/2013 09:01

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

Catherine Yass, Sleep (Swamp) £300

Ross Iannatti, Hysteresis No 24 Price on request

Ross Iannatti, Hysteresis No 24, 2013, silicone-coated nylon fabric, sodium azide, residue, wood, 122 × 117 cm. Photo: Joachim Schulz. Courtesy Croy Nielsen, Berlin October is art-fair time in London, and while the crowds might squeeze through the turnstiles at Frieze, Sunday Art Fair – with the open-plan setup of Ambika p3, its usual home on Marylebone Road, and its focus on smaller international galleries (including Croy Nielsen, Berlin, who will be showing this grubby, silicone-coated nylon wall sculpture – is perhaps a more considered, enjoyable, affair. ArtReview is media partner this year, so come join us at the fair bar, 17–20 October. sunday-fair.com Catherine Yass, Sleep (Swamp), 2009, giclée print, 70 × 55 cm. Courtesy Vital Arts, London What’s that? You’ve got the hunger? You’ve bought one edition and now you think you’re Steve Cohen, but that nice interactive bank-clerk avatar on your online-banking site doesn’t agree? Well, get thee to Multiplied, a whole fair dedicated to editions. There you’ll find works akin to this giclée print by Catherine Yass at prices that won’t result in financial sad-face. multipliedartfair.com

Fábio Flaks, 9 Gramas Price on request

Fábio Flaks, 9 Gramas, oil on fabric, 40 × 40 cm. Courtesy Galeria Pilar, São Paulo Now that you’re a big-time collector, you can’t just hang around London hoping someone you know will see you in one of those bmw vip cars that swing round the periphery of Regent’s Park. No, now you have to go international, bag yourself an adviser, then sit back and let the fair passes come pouring in. The Royal College of Art graduate that you’ve tricked into assembling your ‘collection’ will no doubt tell you Latin America is where it’s at, so bog London off the moment the October circus is over and get a plane to Santiago for Chaco, the Contemporary Art Fair of Chile. If we were ‘steering’ your choices, we’d say, ‘I think with your brains and great taste you’ll love this work by Fábio Flaks. feriachaco.cl

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Beatriz Milhazes, Ova Rosa £4,250

Beatriz Milhazes, Ova Rosa, 2013, mixed media on paper, 50 × 30 cm. Courtesy Whitechapel Gallery, London If buying original work, even from younger artists, is still a bit beyond budget, editions – such as this colourful collage – are the way to go. Seven London-based nonprofit galleries – the Serpentine, Studio Voltaire and the Whitechapel among them – are running a budgetboosting booth at the Frieze Art Fair under the banner Allied Editions. Each of the institution’s directors take turns on the tills – so if you fancy seeing Hans Ulrich Obrist playing ‘gallerist’, stop by, 17–20 October. alliededitions.org

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María Fernanda Plata, Untitled, 2013, wallpaper, acrylic, cutouts, 67 × 84 × 14 cm. Courtesy Casas Riegner, Bogotá Price on request

ArtBo is where the big boys and girls of Latin America hang out. Bogotá’s art bazaar rivals ArtRio and Art Basel Miami Beach in terms of where the bulk of the continent’s art business gets done. It is also a good showcase of the city’s burgeoning domestic scene, and one of the best

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operators in the Colombian capital is Casas Riegner, who will be showing this work by María Fernanda Plata among the works on its stand. And now Consumed is off for a long lie down somewhere without strip lighting and iPad-wielding sales people. Relaaaaaax. artboonline.com

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For more on artist Isabel Greenberg, see overleaf

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Contributors

Andrew Berardini

Brian Dillon

was born in the United States and writes for a living. He edits, curates and teaches sometimes too. His writings have been published in Mousse, la Weekly, Public Fiction and Purple. He is cofounder, with Sarah Williams, of The Art Book Review. This month he reviewed Alison O’Daniel’s solo and group exhibitions at Samuel Freeman and la Louver, Los Angeles. For further reading he suggests Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet (1914) for illuminating gems like the following: ‘Let’s buy books so as not to read them; let’s go to concerts without caring to hear the music or to see who’s there; let’s take long walks because we’re sick of walking; and let’s spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.’

is uk editor of Cabinet magazine, and reader in critical writing at London’s Royal College of Art. Objects in This Mirror, a collection of his writing on art and other things, is published by Sternberg Press in October. He is working on a book about the essay as form. For further reference he would suggest reading Philip Hoare’s The Sea Inside (2013) and watching Jean Painlevé’s film about seahorses, L’Hippocampe (1930).

Christopher Mooney splits his year between a cramped apartment in the centre of Paris and a 3 × 3m utility shed on an island at the extreme fringe of the British Columbian rainforest. This month he interviews Italian artist Paola Pivi and profiles French artist Pierre Huyghe. For further reading he suggests Pivi’s catalogues It Just Keeps Getting Better (2008) and It’s a Cocktail (2010), Amelia Barikin’s excellent Parallel Presents: The Art of Pierre Huyghe (2012) and Jakob von Uexküll’s hugely enjoyable A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans (1934). Also helpful: Giorgio Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal (2004); Jacques Derrida’s 1997 address ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am’; and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838).

Nigel Cooke is an artist who has exhibited widely since 1999, and is represented by Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles. A book of his writings was published by Andrea Rosen Gallery in 2012 and featured some of his columns for this magazine. His solo show at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, last May is being followed by an exhibition of new works at Stuart Shave/Modern Art this month. For further reading on the themes raised in his interview with James Franco for this issue, he would suggest Viktor Shklovsky’s 1925 essay ‘Art as Technique’ from his collection Theory of Prose, as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho and Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake.

Kimberly Bradley is an American writer heading up on ten years in Berlin, which makes her, as they say in German, an alte Hase (old rabbit). This month she interviews Elmgreen & Dragset. While discussing the duo’s upcoming show at the V&A, Jean Baudrillard’s The System of Objects (1968) was briefly mentioned; and the artists generously gave Bradley a copy of their catalogue Trilogy, which deals with the themes of celebrity culture in the artworld, powerlessness and social inequalities. The catalogue is meatier than most and a must for anyone who’d like to understand the duo’s oeuvre. Contributing Writers Joseph Akel, Sean Ashton, Robert Barry, Andrew Berardini, Gesine Borcherdt, Kimberly Bradley, Matthew Collings, Nigel Cooke, Jacquelyn Davis, Tom Eccles, David Everitt Howe, Gallery Girl, Orit Gat, Paul Gravett, Jonathan Griffin, Jonathan Grossmalerman, Martin Holman, Sam Jacob, Maria Lind, Terry R. Myers, Kathy Noble, Keith Patrick, Daniele Perra & Lorenza Pignatti, Claire Rigby, Aoife Rosenmeyer, Ed Schad, Andrew Smaldone, Sam Steverlynck, Jennifer Thatcher, Brienne Walsh, Mike Watson

Lena C. Emery Contributing Editors was born in Germany, grew up in Singapore and moved to Paris in 2002, where she undertook a ba in fine arts at Parsons Paris. In 2008 she started working as graphic and print designer for Acronym and Stone Island before dedicating herself fully to her photographic work in 2010. Emery now lives in London.

Tyler Coburn, Brian Dillon, Hettie Judah, Joshua Mack, Laura McLean-Ferris, Christopher Mooney, Niru Ratnam, Chris Sharp Contributing Artists/Photographers Lena C. Emery, Isabel Greenberg, Andrea Stappert

Isabel Greenberg (preceding pages)

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth (published in the uk this month by Jonathan Cape) is sure to confound librarians. It’s not a learned encyclopaedia at all, but a playful yet wise graphic novel, in which Isabel Greenberg rewrites humankind’s origins. In her appendices she claims to document an unrecorded period predating the Permian and Mesozoic eras, before the first reptiles, when our planet had three moons, and a civilisation of which no trace survives, except for some supposed ‘incredible subterranean cave paintings’. From cave art it’s a relatively short jump to comic art. Illustrated in woodcutlike black ink accented in grey and sporadic colours, Greenberg’s stories feel familiar but quirkily altered, because she builds

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them from her researches into legends, world religions and folklore. As she explains, “I liked how many of their themes were universal – competitive siblings, jealous lovers, childless parents, parentless children – and crop up over and over, because they are fundamentally human.” Greenberg’s variations on the Old Testament, The Odyssey and mythologies subvert expectations and revel in the storyteller spinning a good yarn, telling tales within tales, even if they sometimes may be his undoing. Her narrator is the first man from the North Pole to meet and fall in love with a woman from the South Pole. As polar opposites, unable to touch, kept apart by magnetism, they connect by blowing each other kisses on pieces of paper or swapping sides of

the bed to wrap themselves within the other’s body warmth. To pass the long winter together, he tells her about his life and his quest for a tiny but vital missing piece of his soul which she restored to him. To puncture any pomposity, Greenberg interjects sudden modern phrases like ‘brill’ or winking asides to readers. She shows how early earth people are playthings of meddlesome gods Bird Man and his son and daughter. They observe humans through “a big pool, but also use toilets and chamber pots as other little windows, like changing the channel on the television. I thought if I were a god looking down on earth, it would probably be like an ongoing soap opera!” Greenberg is watching and has a second part set in different lands already in the works. Paul Gravett

ArtReview

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Music credits Lyrics on the spine and on pages 31, 77 and 125 are from The Bare Necessities, written by Terry Gilkyson and featured in the Disney film The Jungle Book (1967) Photo credits 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

on the cover Paola Pivi, photographed by Karma Lama/Culture Brothers, with Life Is Great, 2007, mixed media, 203 × 198 × 112 cm. Courtesy Massimo De Carlo, Milan, and Galerie Perrotin, Paris, New York & Hong Kong on pages 92, 97–8 Andrea Stappert on pages 152, 157–8, 161, 166 Lena C. Emery

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Off the Record October 2013 “Thank God the artworld never changes, gg.” I stare at my Christian Louboutin Pour Lili 120 pleated leather sandals. The bus we’re on trundles down the Caledonian Road. It’s been a long hard stretch inside Pentonville Prison for my friend Belgian Phil. Once he was a leading collector of Young British Art, but an incident involving a reneged-upon promise of first refusal on Chapman Brothers sculptures, a blameless White Cube sales intern and a shotgun ended in a lengthy sentence at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in North London. “Indeed, Phil, indeed. Art will remain constant, my friend. In a few stops we’ll be at King’s Cross and then it’s a quick jog to Regent’s Park for Frieze.” “Jog? What’s happened to my vip car? Indeed, what’s happened to my vip pass? What’s that printed-out-ticket thing you’re holding?” He peers at the piece of paper in my hand. “Fifty quid? You’re paying fifty quid for each ticket? But don’t we get in free?” “Erm… times have changed a bit, Phil. You know, you were away for a long time and they refreshed the vip manager a few times, and then the list organically evolved, and…” “But what about you? Surely you have a vip card?” “Well, I did, but last year’s column about the fair didn’t go down so well. Matthew Slotover rescinded my pass and demanded that I never refer to that cover photo of him for Fantastic Man again.”

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“What, you mean the one on the cover of issue 15 with the tagline ‘Mastermind of the Frieze art empire’ that you sent to me in prison? That cover made me very popular – my fellow inmates used to book it for 15 minutes of quality private time. Who would have known that prisoners could be so interested in contemporary art?” Phil looks into the middle distance, momentarily distracted before snapping out of it. “But fifty quid?” “Well, Phil, these days you get two fairs for that price. Frieze and Frieze Masters, and Frieze is even better value for money, as it’s a smaller tent that’s more fresh and focused.” “ok…” I can hear the hesitation in Phil’s voice, but then he perks up. “Well, as long as all my favourite drinking buddies, like Martin Klosterfelde and those girls from Rivington Arms, are there to welcome me again, I don’t really mind.” I look outside and see a municipal swimming pool. I am filled with an almost unbearable melancholy. Suddenly clutching Belgian Phil by his now-faded two-tone Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggystyle Coat Jacket, I confess. “Look, Phil, things have changed. It’s not the artworld that you knew and loved. A curator was top of the Power 100 list last year!” Phil looks stunned and upset. He topples sideways into the aisle of the bus, upsetting the Tesco bags of a tall, elegant African lady who is heavily wrapped in traditional dress. “Who?!” he asks. “Cote ti!” admonishes the African lady. “Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev,” I reply to both. Each looks at me blankly. “I know, I know,” I add, flustered. “Look, we were under pressure. The editor wanted us to be – you know – more intellectual than just nominating David, Larry or Iwan again.” Phil picks up a mango and, after cupping it very gently and rolling it between his palms, hands it graciously back to our African beauty. “This is Africa’s year,” she intones. “This week at parties you must say how you skimmed Frieze in order to spend more time getting acquainted with sub-Saharan contemporary art at 1:54, the boutique contemporary African art fair at Somerset House, where you acquired a number of works with the intention of gifting them to a leading European museum.” Phil looks at her in wonder, and then back to me. The bus slows and I motion to get up. He shakes his head. “No, gg. You are right. The world has changed. You must go alone to Frieze. I will stay here with this kind lady. A new world awaits me: Africa.” He shuffles across the aisle, inadvertently stepping on his new friend’s Aso-Ebi, the traditional family dress of Yoruba persons. The dress rips, revealing a distinguished English gentleman sporting a set of rimless glasses. “Hold on,” I cry. “You’re not an anonymous African lady. You’re Sir Ni…” But the man has stuffed the mango in my mouth and now strikes me firmly on the head with a ready-made Tesco value lasagne. The Belgian pushes me down the bus stairs with the cruel force that he must have used on the unfortunate White Cubette all those years ago. Dazed, I look up and see Phil and his new friend lean over the top of the stairs. They shrug their shoulders and burst into a P-Square-style Alingo dance routine. I fall out of the bus, alone, the lights of the Euston Road fading in autumn’s chilly embrace. GG

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