ArtReview September 2014 by ArtReview

Sorrow-be-gone vol 66 no 6

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

Brazil

17Se ptember — 1 November 2014 52 Bell Street, London lissongallery.com

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg The Gates of the Festival

Marina Abramović White Space

17 September — 1 November 2014 27 Bell Street, London lissongallery.com

HA U S E R & W I R T H

MATTHEW DAY JACKSON FAMILY 30 AUGUST — 8 NOVEMBER 2014 LIMMATSTRASSE 270 8005 ZÜRICH WWW.HAUSERWIRTH.COM

‘Commissioned Family Portrait’ consists of 82 photographs of the artist and his family. These photographs were made using a Beckman & Whitley high-speed rotating mirror framing camera, operated by engineer and scientist Tim Samaras (1957—2013). This technology was developed in the 1950s and used primarily during military weapons testing, in order to analyze the efficacy of explosions and shockwaves from nuclear detonations. The camera is capable of capturing over a million frames per second. The artist and his family are the only human beings ever to have been photographed by this camera.

COMMISSIONED FAMILY PORTRAIT (DETAIL), 2013 82 FRAMED PHOTOS FRAMED, HUNG 1.27 CM / 1/2 IN APART EACH PHOTO: 15.24 × 20.32 CM / 6 × 8 IN FRAMED

HAUSER & WIRTH

PAUL McCARTHY WS SC 13 SEPTEMBER – 1 NOVEMBER 2014 23 SAVILE ROW LONDON W1S 2ET WWW.HAUSERWIRTH.COM

ROBERT DUVALL, 2014 ACRYLIC PAINT AND COLLAGE ON PANEL WITH GESSOED CANVAS 335.3 × 243.8 × 17.8 CM / 132 × 96 × 7 IN PHOTO: FREDRIK NILSEN

JEAN-PASCAL FLAVIEN DAYS, BETWEEN PLACING AND DISPLACING SEPTEMBER 19 – OCTOBER 25, 2014 CHRISTOPH KELLER ANARCHÉOLOGIE SEPTEMBER 19 – OCTOBER 25, 2014 /GROUND FLOOR/

ABC – ART BERLIN CONTEMPORARY DANIEL STEEGMANN MANGRANÉ SEPTEMBER 18 – 21, 2014

ESTHER SCHIPPER SCHÖNEBERGER UFER 65 D –10785 BERLIN TEL: +49 30 374433133 WWW.ESTHERSCHIPPER.COM

HA U S E R & W IR T H SOMERSET

GARDEN OPENS 14 SEPTEMBER LANDSCAPE DESIGN BY PIET OUDOLF

PHYLLIDA BARLOW: GIG 15 JULY – 2 NOVEMBER 2014

PIET OUDOLF: OPEN FIELD 15 JULY – 5 OCTOBER 2014 DURSLADE FARM, DROPPING LANE, BRUTON, SOMERSET BA10 0NL WWW.HAUSERWIRTHSOMERSET.COM

Jason Rhoades PeaRoeFoam September 11 – October 18, 2014

David Zwirner 537 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011 212 517 8677 davidzwirner.com

R O B I N

having been there September 18–November 8 407 Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street Central, Hong Kong lehmannmaupin.com

R H O D E

JULES DE BALINCOURT blue HourS 6 September – 18 october 2014

PARIS

FRANCE

7 RUE DEBELLEYME

T 331 4272 9900

ROPAC.NET

Pling Pling. Installation detail at the Venice Biennale, 2009.

6 S E P T E M B E R — 31 O C T O B E R 2 0 14

1 3 S E P T E M B E R — 1 8 O C T O B E R 2 0 14

SOLEIL DOUBLE SOLEIL DOUBLE SOLEIL DOUBLE SOLEIL DOUBLE

graphic design : deValence, Paris

L AU R EN T GR A SSO

76 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris

475 Tenth Avenue, New York, 10018

Armando Andrade Tudela Galeria | 28.08.14 - 27.09.14

Cristiano Lenhardt Gabriel Lima Rodrigo Cass

Art Rio

10.09.14 - 14.09.14

Frieze London

15.10.14 - 18.10.14

Galpão | 03.09.14 - 18.10.14

Carlos Bevilacqua

Galeria | 02.10.14 - 08.11.14

Luiz Zerbini

Galpão | 01.11.14 - 20.12.14

Coletiva / Group show

Galeria | 19.11.14 - 20.12.14

FIAC

23.10.14 - 26.10.14

Independent Projects Marina Rheingantz 06.11.14 - 15.11.14

Art Basel Miami Beach 04.12.14 - 07.12.14

Art Review - opção

ArtReview travels so you don’t have to Have you been busy this summer? ArtReview has. No slacking here. Rather, it’s been travelling far and wide to bring you the best of global visual culture this summer (OK, ArtReview stole that bit from one of the CNN-style culture programmes it’s been watching on late-night hotel TV). First it was in Oslo to visit ‘Congo Village’ (a ‘humanzoo reenactment’ by artists Lars Cuzner and Mohamed Ali Fadlabi), which turned out to be far more nuanced, albeit no less sinister, than those crumbs of information might suggest (see ‘Points of View’ for the full loaf). Later, in a rather different part of the world, ArtReview was presented with a further example of the shifting sands of cultural confusion and colonial legacies when it stumbled across a straw reindeer perched on railings along the tributary to the Amazon River that runs past the city of Belém. Now, while ArtReview likes to think of itself as an entity that gets to the heart of the matter, it’s sorry to report that it never got to the bottom of the question of what that reindeer was doing there. Baked in humid heat, in the north Brazilian port, ArtReview was on the second week of a trip to Brazil to produce its third annual focus on the Latin American country, the fruits of which you are about to sample (don’t dribble the juices down your chin). Before the reindeer incident, ArtReview had visited a witch in the nearby market who had persuaded it to buy various spells, one of which, crudely labelled ‘sexo’, she had been particularly adamant about. Although it’s far too confident in its ‘animal’ magnetism to have been put off by the insinuation that lay behind the magic-woman’s sales pitch, ArtReview was a little miffed by the way she later began to undermine what it had taken to be some sort of genuinely ‘authentic’ exchange between two cultures by producing a scrapbook full of pictures of her posing with other tourists to whom she had seemingly delivered the same patter. Although they all seemed genuinely in need of a bit of sexo. Still, all this made ArtReview wonder whether the idea of a ‘Brazil’ focus was something achievable. Was trying to distil the recent cultural issues and manifestations of an entire nation into 20-odd pages of what ArtReview’s media-studies professor liked to call ‘reportage’ even possible, given that the narrative of globalisation is that the local no longer exists? Is ‘local culture’ just something to feed to tourists, and/or to be enacted through grossly offensive pastiche (as in the Congo Village)?

Horny

At some point on its parched walk back to the French-themed hotel ArtReview was lodging in, desperate to find a water vendor who would accept its R$50 note for a 40 centavos bottle, ArtReview decided that although we might seemingly live in a globally connected (see its interview with Felipe Ehrenberg, early adopter of mail art and author of this month’s artist project, if you think this is just a neoliberal, postInternet thing) postplace, postpassport world, a world where a Catalonian can grace the cover of a magazine marketing its Brazilian focus (though as ArtReview finds out, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s work is firmly imprinted with a Latin American psyche), fundamentally cultural specificity still exists. You just have to dig a little deeper to find it. While the outside world has an image of Brazil as either a place of urbane, cool Modernism or tropical exoticism, the locals have far darker concerns, be they narco-violence, the legacy of slavery in the northeast or the human cost of urbanism in the country’s biggest cities. More importantly, while ArtReview might, not everything else travels. Still 20 minutes away from home and by now rather alarmingly dehydrated, ArtReview was just getting to grips with all this when it received a phone call from its minions in ArtReview Towers. “Good news!” base camp cried, oblivious to the phone bill it was racking up. “Graham Harman is going to write a primer on object-oriented ontology, so the artworld can hear the theory from the horse’s mouth and not just the half-arsed ‘interpretations’ it finds in dozens of press releases these days.” With that, ArtReview sighed contentedly, its cracked lips no longer capable of forming words. “The worry over how humans relate to each other is only the tip of the iceberg,” it semiheard the minion gibbering. “We have the whole of the reality, seen and unseen, to think about now.” “Start worrying about the phone bill first,” ArtReview croaked before hanging up. On the outside, ArtReview may have now been crawling along on its knees whispering “água… água…” to anyone who cared to notice, but on the inside it was thinking that Brazil isn’t just the people, or just the art, but also its environment, its myths, its thoughts, its trees, the witch, the spells, the sex… Brazil is the straw reindeer… The straw reindeer is Brazil… Then, before ArtReview’s head began to spin even more wildly out of control, it suddenly remembered the vial of liquid sexo…

Horny

Does Yellow Run Forever?

Paul Graham 510 West 25th Street New York September 5 – October 4, 2014

pacegallery.com

pacemacgill.com

MAX WIGRAM GALLERY

JOSE DÁVILA

DAYLIGHT FOUND ME WITH NO ANSWER

24 SEPTEMBER - 25 OCTOBER 2014

106 NEW BOND STREET LONDON UK WWW.MAXWIGRAM.COM INFO@MAXWIGRAM.COM T +44(0)2074954960

ArtReview vol 66 no 6 September 2014

Art Previewed 31

Previews by Martin Herbert 33

P.D. Ouspensky on Spiritualism Interview by Matthew Collings 68

Points of View by Jonathan T. D. Neil, David Claerbout, J. J. Charlesworth, Maria Lind, Mark Sladen, Oliver Basciano, Hettie Judah, Jonathan Grossmalerman & Karen Archey 51

Graham Harman Interview by J.J. Charlesworth 72 Charles Esche Interview by Oliver Basciano 76 The Law and Its Ideas by Daniel McClean 80

page 34 Sehee Sarah Bark, Vanished Landscape, 2013, digital pigment print, 87 × 130 cm. Courtesy the artist

September 2014

Art Featured 91

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané by Chris Sharp 92

Daniel Lima Artist project 130

Art, Urbanism, Modernism, Power... by Claire Rigby 98

Yevgenia Belorusets by Raimar Stange 138

Arto Lindsay by Tobi Maier 104

Art Without Relations by Graham Harman 144

Culture and Vultures by Oliver Basciano 114

Things to Do with ArtReview! (in Copenhagen) 148

Felipe Ehrenberg Artist project 121

Meriç Algün Ringborg Artist project 151

page 104 Bloco Cortejo Afro, Salvador, Bahia, 28 February 2014. Photo: Rosilda Cruz/SecultBA

ArtReview

Art Reviewed 167

Exhibitions 168 The Shape of a Right Statement, by Robert Barry Pablo Bronstein, by J.J. Charlesworth Play What’s Not There, by Mark Prince Adriana Varejão, by Kathy Noble Enantiodromia, by Ben Street A.R. Hopwood, by Helen Sumpter Melanie Smith, by Charlie Fox Corin Sworn, by James Clegg Larry Clark, by Brienne Walsh Chatbots, Tongues, Denial, and Various Other Abstractions, by Orit Gat Jeff Koons, by David Everitt Howe Tara Donovan, by Jonathan T.D. Neil Made in L.A. 2014, by Andrew Berardini Jon Rafman, by Bill Clarke Tony Greene, by Jonathan Griffin David Hendren, by Ed Schad Kerry James Marshall, by Keith Patrick Venice Architecture Biennale, by Justin McGuirk Enchanted: The Poetics of Wonder, by Mike Watson Susan Philipsz, by Sara Arrhenius Andreas Angelidakis, by Michelangelo Corsaro

Festival International d’Art de Toulouse, by Violaine Boutet de Monvel Liam Gillick, by Olga Stefan Manifesta 10, by Gesine Borcherdt Michael Krebber, by Mark Prince Vito Acconci, by Mark Rappolt Bayrol Jiménez, by Gabriela Jauregui A Room Not of One’s Own, by Iona Whittaker books 198 The Mind’s Eye: The Art of Omni, edited by Jeremy Frommer and Rick Schwartz Mapping It Out: An Alternative History of Contemporary Cartographies, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist #ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader, edited by Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian You Are Here: Art After the Internet, edited by Omar Kholeif thE stRiP 202 oFF thE RECoRD 206

page 171 Vermelho Carnívoro, 2014, oil and plaster on canvas, 99 × 99 cm. Courtesy Victoria Miro, London

ArtReview

FutureGreats 2014

ArtReview and efg International are proud to present the fourth in a series of six specially commissioned poster projects featuring unique artworks created by artists following their selection as 2014 FutureGreats. Each artwork is reproduced in ArtReview and is available as a full-size limited-edition poster in subscriber copies of the magazine.

Claudia Comte

With her fresh attitude towards well-known abstract forms, genuine explosive energy and humorous research, Claudia Comte has come to occupy a central place in the Swiss art scene and seems to be everywhere at the moment. Her advantage: she can produce fast and has a lot of ideas ready, simply waiting to find the perfect matching place in which to be realised. From shaped canvases to zigzag wall paintings, optical patterns, monochrome surfaces, monolithic blocks or organic shapes, her vocabulary doesn’t leave any field of abstraction unexplored. Giovanni Carmine

Art Previewed

That which kills the guard 31

David Zwirner Books New York & London

Previewed Taipei Biennial 13 September – 14 January Gwangju Biennale 15 September – 9 November From All Sides: Tansaekhwa on Abstraction Blum & Poe, Los Angeles 13 September – 8 November Nel Aerts Carl Freedman, London 5 September – 4 October

Cildo Meireles Luisa Strina, São Paulo through 27 September

Marine Hugonnier Baltic, Newcastle through 16 November

Here and Elsewhere New Museum, New York through 28 September

Daniel Buren Baltic, Newcastle through 12 October

Broomberg & Chanarin Museo Jumex, Mexico City through 28 September

ABC: Art Berlin Contemporary 18–21 September Cally Spooner GB Agency, Paris 13 September – 11 October

6 Fouad Elkoury, Color Snapshot, Place des Canons (Beirut 1982), 2014, c-print, 40 × 60 cm, in Here and Elsewhere, New Museum, New York

September 2014

For non-Taiwanese who’ve read Tao Lin’s novel – finds humans and the natural world united in being ‘attacked by a techno-industrial Taipei (2013), the eponymous city may currently system now clearly detached from civil society’. be synonymous with twentysomething anomie, MacBooks and anomie, then, may still calibrated drug-taking and the improvising of MacBook movies in McDonald’s. Since 1992 it has be relevant touchstones here. Five hundred miles west, the Jessica 1 also hosted the Taipei Biennial – being surely 2 Morgan-curated Gwangju Biennale, Burning best placed to do so – whose ninth edition is Down the House, is almost certainly the first stewarded by Nicolas Bourriaud. In his 52-artist/ biennial named after a 1983 Talking Heads track collective project, The Great Acceleration, named for the rapid and self-reinforcing nexus of whose title, in turn, derives from a chant at changes overtaking the planet since the latter Parliament-Funkadelic concerts (though the half of the last century, the French curator, Brooklyn Museum used it for a feminist show theorist and director of Paris’s École des in 2008). P-Funky PR: ‘This hedonism by the Beaux-Arts emphasises links between specuP-Funk crowd on the dance floor was then lative realism, environmental concerns and turned into an anthem of bourgeois anxieties humanity’s acquiescent ensnaring in the digital. by the New York-based band,’ we’re told, and ‘this dual meaning of pleasure and engagement The Anthropocene era – so he theorises with serves as the defining spirit of the 10th Gwangju assistance from work by Camille Henrot, Mika Biennale’, which explores processes of change, Rottenberg, Neïl Beloufa, Roger Hiorns, Laure Prouvost, Maria Loboda and many others destruction and transformation – with political

overtones related particularly to tiger economies. More than 100 artists from over 35 countries will tear the roof off the sucker (or insert your preferred architecture-based P-Funk reference here), including at least one of Morgan’s curatorial favourites: Urs Fischer will be re-creating his New York apartment at 1:1 scale, ‘replicating the interior walls through three-dimensionally illusionistic wallpaper’, which will serve as a base for other artists’ work. Henrot will be here again, as – increasingly expectedly – will be several deceased artists, including Yves Klein, David Wojnarowicz and Birgit Jürgenssen, speckling a list that’s otherwise fulsomely internationalist. One more blast from the East. This month Blum & Poe continue illuminating non-Western abstraction (following their admired surveys of 3 Mono-ha) with From All Sides: Tansaekhwa on Abstraction. Tansaekhwa, or ‘monochromatic painting’, the first Korean art movement pro-

1 An-My Lê, Raven Skiway, Greenland Ice Cap, 2008, archival pigment print, 102 × 144 cm. Courtesy the artist

2 Sehee Sarah Bark, Vanished Landscape, 2013, digital pigment print, 87 × 130 cm. Courtesy the artist

ArtReview

3 Ha Chonghyun, Conjunction 77–8, 1977, oil on canvas, 120 × 240 cm. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

5 Cildo Meireles, Projeto de buraco para jogar políticos desonestos (Project hole to throw dishonest politicians in), 2011, acrylic on canvas, 120 × 70 cm. Photo: Edouard Fraipont. Courtesy the artist

4 Nel Aerts, Er is geen coupe meer (No more for you sir), 2014, acrylic on wood, 61 × 70 cm. Courtesy the artist

moted internationally, encompassed a group flowing and frayed – in one previous show a figurative sculpture morphed into a wax candle of artists operating primarily between the 1960s and 80s, its five key members – Ha Chonghyun, edition used for sealing letters; she also lets Kwon Young-woo, Lee Ufan, Park Seobo and children colour in murals for her. This exhibiYun Hyongkeun – highlighted here. The group’s tion promises a dialogue between painted tendency was towards collapsing distinctions unlucky clown/sad drunk fictional portraits that separate painting from sculpture, oil (recalling figures one might see in the early from ink painting and ‘object from viewer’. hours at a 24-hour bar) and wheeled, usable Concurrent with Minimalism, the works sculptures; the advance image we’ve seen – mostly in harmonious, still-fresh cream, – a scratchy yet monumental painting shutwhite and earth tones – emphasised the tling between the comic and the lachrymose – suggests restlessness inherent even in Aerts’s observer’s presence, a move that extended outwardly static inclusions. beyond any artworld hermeticism in thenAmid the military dictatorship of 1970s authoritarian South Korea. Naturally, a big Brazil, a hugely important and politicised scholarly catalogue trails the show, led off by the curator, Tansaekhwa expert Joan Kee. 5 example of mobility in art was Cildo Meireles’s The active participant has faced changing Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project (1970), made when Meireles was still in his early 4 responsibilities over the years, as see Nel Aerts’s show at Carl Freedman. The mid-twenties, twenties, for which he added comments to Coke bottles – instructions for making a Molotov Antwerp-based Aerts likes to keep her art

September 2014

cocktail, or political critiques – then returned them to circulation. In tune with the networked art of the moment (as was a contemporaneous project using modified banknotes), it nevertheless hardly summarises Meireles’s oeuvre, which has ranged from tiny (9mm) minimalist sculptures to large-scale installations like the cacophonous tower of differently tuned radios, Babel (2001), and the darkly allusive Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) (1987), with its canopy of 2,000 suspended bones, floor of money and column of communion wafers hovering between. In 1976 Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Anne-Marie Miéville made Ici et Ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere), planned as a pro-Palestinian documentary comparing the lives of one French and one Palestinian family, but expanding out to question its own ostensibly transparent form. The film has been artworld-influential – see Kerry Tribe’s excellent 2002 two-screen video

7 Broomberg & Chanarin, Runway Built on the Set of Catch-22, Guaymas, Mexico, 1969, 2014 Courtesy the artists and Colección Uribe

9 Daniel Buren, 7 Lines of Electric Light: White & Orange, 2011 (installation view), woven fibre-optic, LED (white, orange), metal boxes, dimensions variable. © the artist, ADAGP Paris and Lisson Gallery, London 8 Marine Hugonnier, Apicula Enigma, 2013, 35mm film, 26 min. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Max Wigram Gallery, London

Here and Elsewhere, which adopts Godard et a few easy links here with the previously menal’s formal motif of a father questioning his tioned exhibition. The mutability of archival daughter – and continues to be so. Seven years source material and thus of history itself is since a Bronx Museum show of the same title/ emphasised, here, as Broomberg & Chanarin, reference point (is the artworld running out formerly photographers/editors at Benetton’s of exhibition titles: discuss), the New Museum’s Colors magazine, edit together offcuts from the original film – shot on the Mexican coastline, 6 Here and Elsewhere loops back to the Middle East, marking the apparent influence that the apparently since it looked more like wartime original film had there. Bringing together over Sicily than Sicily did in the late 1960s – into 45 artists from 15 countries, including Lamia an ersatz nature documentary. Added to that, Joreige, Anna Boghiguian, Etel Adnan, Akram though, was the pair’s discovery that one of the Zaatari, the show thus offers a neat back-andplanes used in the film was buried somewhere forth: that the truth- and objectivity-querying on-set. They thus set out on an archaeological methods of a film engaging with Palestine expedition to uncover it, but, we’re informed, can be seen refracted in the approaches ‘that’s not what they found’. Suspense! Marine Hugonnier’s films over the 8 of Middle Eastern artists of recent times. 7 past decade – such as her Afghanistan paraAnother 1970s film triggered Adam travelogue, Ariana (2003) – have explored Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin’s project Dodo at Jumex: specifically Mike Nichols’s 1970 and expanded upon territories opened up adaptation of Catch-22, and we could make by Godard and ethnographic filmmaker Jean

ArtReview

Rouch concerning the hinterland between documentary fiction and truth, in Hugonnier’s case steadily burrowing into questions of what ought to be seen and what is more usefully withheld. In Apicula Enigma (2013), on show at Baltic, Hugonnier emphatically resists shaping reality, filming a bee colony in the Austrian mountains and making the process – and the contingencies – of framing and filming it into the very material of her work, subject and making being collapsed together in the use of the beehive itself as a camera obscura. Rigorous attention to production and context is redoubled by the show’s pairing with an exhibition by 9 Daniel Buren. That towering figure of conceptual art is best known, of course, for his 1965 decision to organise his shows around sitespecific deployments of 8.7cm-wide vertical stripes. In recent years, though, Buren’s done other things, and the Baltic show offers

fibre-optic works from his 2011 Electric Light more of an event than a cluster of gallery series, reliefs, paintings and sculptures. booths herded under one roof, with last year’s The region-specific, local-gallery-driven fair boasting a number of site-specific works; art fair is evidently on the rise. In Copenhagen, it also synergises with Berlin Art Week, when CHART – Denmark’s first fair focusing on conthe city’s institutions typically open new exhitemporary art – is about to launch its second bitions (including, this time, Ryan Trecartin edition, held in the Charlottenburg Museum at Kunstwerke and Katharina Grosse at N.B.K.). and involving Scandinavian and Nordic galleries And if ABC does decide to slick up, no doubt exclusively, ranging from savvy young names there’ll be plenty of retrospective complaints like Oslo’s VI, VII to Copenhagen’s upscale that it’s no longer sufficiently Berlinesque. Bo Bjerggaard and Reykjavík powerhouse i8. The staging and mediation of language As added incentives, that Copenhagen is a 11 has been Cally Spooner’s terrain since she culinary epicentre will be reflected in the graduated from Goldsmiths in 2008, sometimes dining options available, and the excellent expressed in disjunctive video, scrambled talks programme is organised by, well, us. novellas and radio plays, more often in perfor10 Meanwhile, Berlin’s annual art fair, ABC (AKA mances that scrape denatured, formalised or Art Berlin Contemporary), active since 2008, artifice-related phrases from YouTube trolls, typically scans as either a loose-limbed, funky newspaper headlines about Beyoncé’s miming, affair or a ramshackle one, depending on your Lance Armstrong’s staged ‘confessional’ to tolerance for sprawl. Increasingly it’s become Oprah and more. In the evolving And You Were

Wonderful, On Stage (2013–4), such verbiage was framed and formalised further, as a portmanteau musical. There’s a sense of language using the speaker as a vessel, one that Spooner, nevertheless, partly comes to own in her use of the work of philosophers, from Hannah Arendt (especially The Human Condition, 1958) to Maurice MerleauPonty to Bernard Stiegler, who’s explored technology’s effects on our use of language. A film version of And You Were Wonderful is apparently forthcoming, while her recent Damning Evidence Illicit Behaviour Seemingly Insurmountable Great Sadness Terminated in Any Manner (2014) made a miniopera out of vituperative online comment threads; consistent amid all this is not just an unhitching of hive-mind speech but an emphasis on fluid production over dismal reification. Spooner’s show in Paris may offer more of the same, then, but differently so. Martin Herbert

10 ABC 2013, Berlin (installation view, with work by Eva Berendes). Photo: Stefan Korte

11 Cally Spooner, Damning Evidence Illicit Behaviour Seemingly Insurmountable Great Sadness Terminated in Any Manner, 2014 (installation view, Kunstverein Munich), opera singers and surtitles. Courtesy Mot International, London & Brussels

ArtReview

The SouTh AfricAn SAle Wednesday 1 October 2014 New Bond Street, London

AlexiS Preller (1911-1975) The Creation of Adam II, 1968 £250,000 - 350,000

irMA STern (1894-1966) Still life with African Woman, 1945 £800,000 - 1,200,000

enQuirieS sapictures@bonhams.com +44 (0) 20 7468 8216

bonhams.com/southafricanart

VieWinG Sunday 28 September 11.00 to 15.00 Monday 29 September 9.00 to 16.30 Tuesday 30 September 9.00 to 16.30 Wednesday 1 October 9.00 to 12 noon

EithEr SidE of NothiNg, 2014

darren almond work work work aug 22—oct 18 2014 w w w.bjergga ard.com

Thiago Rocha Pitta, Ocean Atlas, 2014

sep . 10 – 14 . 2014

oct . 24 – 27 . 2014

dec . 04 – 07 . 2014

A RTR I O

ART BO

Pier Mauá Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Gran Salón de Corferias Bogota, Colombia

ART BASEL M IAMI B EACH Miami Beach Convention Center Miami, USA

support: Latitude - Platform for Brazilian Art Galleries Abroad, ABACT, APEX-BRASIL

aug . 30 – sep . 27 . 2014

oct . 07 – nov . 08 . 2014

nov . 18 – dec . 20 . 2014

THIAG O ROCHA PITTA

ROD RIGO AND RAD E

BE R NA R E A L E

Galeria Millan

East and West Rooms Tunga 31/08 – 5/10 2014 Vila Romana Paulo Nazareth 31/08 – 5/10 2014

Biennials Neil Beloufa and Matheus Rocha Pitta Taipei Biennial Thiago Martins de Melo São Paulo Biennial Stewart Uoo Gwangju Biennial

Institutional solo exhibitions Neil Beloufa ICA, London Mariana Castillo Deball Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin Adriano Costa Peep-Hole, Milan Daniel Steegmann Mangrané CRAC Alsace

Mend e s Wood DM

Rua da Consolação 3358 Jardins São Paulo SP 01416 – 000 Brazil + 55 11 3081 1735 www.mendeswooddm.com facebook.com/mendeswood @mendeswooddm

R. Marco Aurélio, 311 Vila Romana São Paulo SP 05048 – 000 Brazil

08.30 > 10.11.2014 -- paulo bruscky

08.30 > 10.05.2014 -- carlito carvalhosa

09.09 > 10.12.2014 -- vik muniz

galeria nara roesler são paulo 08.30 > 10.11.2014

paulo bruscky // artist books and films, 1970 - 2013

08.30 > 10.05.2014

carlito carvalhosa galeria nara roesler rio de janeiro

09.09 > 10.12.2014

vik muniz // album

SONG DONG Regenerate

August 30 - November 10, 2014

Baró Galeria Barra Funda, 216 São Paulo Brasil 55 11 3666 6489 www.barogaleria.com

ANGELO VENOSA

september

Julian Schnabel, Cha Chas Finas, 1996

GEÓRGIA KYRIAKAKIS AUGUST 2 - 29 / CASSIO MICHALANY AUGUST 2 - SEMPTEMBER 20 /

JULIAN SCHNABEL SEPTEMBER 4 - 20 / ARTRIO SEPTEMBER 10 - 14 PAVILION 3 BOOTH H2

Kunstpreis Böttcherstraße

Prize Bremen 2014

Nina Beier, Dirk Bell, Natalie Czech, Loretta Fahrenholz, Max Frisinger, Sven Johne, Susanne Kriemann, Riccardo Paratore, Pamela Rosenkranz, Markus Schinwald

19.07. — 05.10.2014

Points of View Jonathan T.D. Neil Is art good or just valuable?

Maria Lind The triumph of the nerds

David Claerbout The video, performed

Mark Sladen Circulation wars

J.J. Charlesworth Come, hapless stooges!

Oliver Basciano How to cause a moral panic

Hettie Judah The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese Jonathan Grossmalerman Dear ArtReview reader Karen Archey Off-space No 21: The Suburban, Oak Park, Illinois

Jonathan T.D. Neil Is art good or just valuable? David Throsby and Anita Zednik have recently published a very considered attempt to quantify the difference and relationship between art’s economic value and its cultural value. Their paper, ‘The Economic and Cultural Value of Paintings: Some Empirical Evidence’ (in the Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, vol 2, 2014), is well worth reading, but the conclusion will not be surprising to most. Economic and cultural value, Throsby and Zednik show, are related but different. Important as a brake on the more fundamentalist economic perspec tive, their paper argues that the two values do not, or do not easily, ‘reduce’ to one another; they are not ‘perfectly correlated’, which, if they were, would mean that cultural value just is a work of art’s economic value – ie, its price – and vice versa. I have argued before in these pages that one of the problems that we face in our recent discussions of (or complaints about) the art market is that we have a tendency to modify the concept of value in order to argue for differing, conflicting and ultimately incommen surable ‘values’, such as market ones and, say, aesthetic ones (read economic and cultural ones). Much of the critical consensus quite comfortably divides the world of art (and indeed the world itself) into market values and other values. Market values are easy. For most people, they are simply equivalent to the price of something. When artists and curators or even curmudgeonly critics like Dave Hickey and dilettantish socio logists like Sarah Thornton hem and haw about artmarket reportage, they lament the freight trains of zeros that appear to be lining up with ever greater regularity behind the prices

of works of art, almost as much as they lament the people manning the switches. That artmarket values seem to follow no law and no rationale; that the best explanation for billions of dollars being spent at present on one of the least scarce, highly renewable and most inessential resources around is simply that there is more money out there than ever before to spend on it; that those who possess this money, the wealthy, on the whole, are morons; and that even the price of art, because of discounts, preferential treatment, auction guarantees, insider dealing, etc, isn’t really ever the price of art (just like, if you’ve been reading

Much of the critical consensus quite comfortably divides the world of art (and indeed the world itself) into market values and other values Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys, 2014, the price of a stock is never really the price of a stock) – the idea that any of these nonexplanations and nonrationales for artmarket behaviour ever drives someone to actually look intently or think deeply about the concept of art’s value is, in a word, pathetic. And the other side of the debate, where Hickey and Thornton and similar market icono clasts presumably situate themselves, doesn’t look any better. Over here there is art’s aesthetic value, its political or social value, its educational value, its symbolic or spiritual value. In other words, its cultural value, which isn’t really

September 2014

a value at all. It’s questionbegging of the highest degree. Art doesn’t have cultural value because it is cultural. Art holds value for a culture because it embodies, presumably, the values that the culture holds it to have. For example, if art has an educational value, it has it because it teaches us something, something worth being taught and, more to the point, learned. It’s not the teaching and learning alone that matters, it’s that ‘something’ – say, admiration for a partic ular kind of high achievement, or the chance to reflect on and empathise with another’s struggle – that, perhaps, we find valuable. That ‘perhaps’ matters too, because it’s a question: what do we find valuable in works of art? More simply, what is art itself good for? What is art’s good? Let me repeat that: what is art’s good? This is a vastly different question than ‘what art is good?’ Not least because whatever art’s good is, should not be art’s alone. Take one of the most persistent claims for art’s good, its autonomy, which is neither specific to nor does it even begin with art: it’s modelled on indi vidual liberty, a value, we should be reminded, that had to be, and continues to have to be, fought for. This is what the late Ronald Dworkin, no partisan of value separatism, means when he writes that value is an ‘interpretive concept’, if not the interpretive concept. It has to be interpreted and responsibly argued for, such that ‘the various concepts and departments of value are interconnected and mutually supportive’. I’m not for cultural value (or any other value) over and apart from market or eco nomic value, or vice versa. I’m for value, which is why I question, uncynically, art’s good.

David Claerbout The video, performed

As a beginner artist, I had a vague idea of the storm that had shortly before ripped the art market apart. It was the spring of 1993. In secondhand bookstores, stacks of remain dered monographs on artists about whom I was never to hear again gave me an idea of what had happened. ‘They got what they deserved.’ These were largeformat works that fed an increasingly volatile and speculative market, until it crashed, marking the end of what many now see as an era of greed. Growing up in that ‘end’ time was good, in the sense that at least I knew what I did not want. Since then, I – like many others – have been expecting the resurrected 1980s art investor, along with the obliging artist, to resurface like a fungus to cover the old fundament of collecting. Today’s return to a simplistic art market (and simplistic exhibition titles!) is not that resurrection… although other markets may be unprofitable compared to the art market. Gallery programmes that were organised around artists are now reformatted for collectors; artists illus trate the gallery programme instead of making it; and so on… The longer the uncertainty sur rounding investment in other markets remains, the more unashamedly the certitude of invest ment in art shows. The medium most associated with my work has no fixed physical appearance, it is mainly composed of light and shadow coming from hardware that has no sculptural value. It is not

an exaggeration to say that the people buying my works are exceptional, in the sense that they can let go of the physical object of art; a real hurdle in a simplistic art market, and almost impossible on the secondary market. Given that I grew up at the end of the 1980s boom years, and given the nature of my work, I never really had to worry about art investors until recently, when, for the first time in my career, a video piece titled The Algiers’ Sections of a Happy Moment (2008) came up for auction. The work in question had been acquired a

Gallery programmes that were organised around artists are now reformatted for collectors; artists illustrate the gallery programme instead of making it; and so on… few years earlier by an investor in art, wearing the collector’s cloak allowing direct access to art . Usually, the gallery is there to protect artists from this phenomenon, but it seems that information is sometimes conveniently overlooked. The piece sold well, it put up a modest record for my work and that’s the end of that. However, it made me think about video installation’s blurry status as something that is

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either an original work of art or a limited edition, but might eventually end up as a post on the Internet. The infantile discussions one overhears about the size and distribution of digital video point to a video culture too young to be pre occupied with anything other than the utilitarian digital ‘video’. Admittedly, it took me years to understand and feel the difference between a large Barnett Newman and the walls of my old apartment (before I moved into it)… Of course, painting has meant pigment applied to a surface since forever, but ultimately its political and utilitarian life died. But the genetic code of painting died rich. In the West at least, no artist is born without it. Until the moving image ceases to be deployed in the everyday battles of politics and ideology on all levels of life, there is no chance for a clear and decisive theory of how to understand, ‘own’ or trade it. Structurally, the code of digital video remains invisible and inaccessible to most of us, even when it appears as an image. Such invisible effect is also at work in software, for example, therefore no less real in what it does to us. When we cannot grasp the code or structure (like we think we do with painting), we tend to speak of ‘content’ (soul) instead of a ‘piece’ (body). Simply put: a news item online is ‘content’ to an equal extent as a film on YouTube. Content may be available online and in the cloud, which

are themselves metaphors for information that remains invisible and elusive. However, it is possible to discern one crucial difference with the so-called art ‘piece’. When it comes to content, the content of an artwork is only as widely distributed as the device on which it is shown. When it comes to digital video today, this last is often a tablet with an Internet connection, the ubiquity of which contributes to a sense of effortlessness and ease of access. In other words: content is not only soft or soul, but also something that can be widely distributed and is quasi gratis. The influence of ‘content culture’ on exhibitions has been dramatic: these exhibition spaces now have to ‘contain content’ under the form of linked topics that are in constant flux, similar to linked Internet pages. Within content culture, opinions are taboo – the curator restrains him or herself to establishing links. And if that is still too much of a totalitarian intervention, it can suffice to make an inventory of everything. (One star curator is famous for this.) Under such circumstances, government over an exhibition is reduced to the max, similar to – sorry for the nasty remark – the free-flowing liberal market economy that sees government as a hindrance. An exhibition then becomes an occasional full-scale illustration of… content! Precious enough to be temporarily expanded in a room

where it is granted monumental standstill. The digital video file, the YouTube video and the installed video are themselves the offspring of the late capitalist logic of free flow, of never standing still. Standing still was something for socialists (collectivity), but, it seems to me, also for exhibition-making. So there it is, the problem with the video installation: an elusive, liberal, uncontrollable free-flow entering into a space that wants to halt it.

The infantile discussions one overhears about the size and distribution of digital video point to a video culture too young to be preoccupied with anything other than the utilitarian digital ‘video’ The digital video file no longer listens to the set of rules introduced with the age of mechanical reproduction (Walter Benjamin), which recognised a perfect original among the copies. Benjamin said that the aura gets lost when the copy is as perfect as the original, a reversal effectively happening in the video installation; or to be more precise, in the digital file being performed. The performed video is therefore never a copy, it is always an original, interpreted in pretty much the same way the musical score is being

performed. There is on one hand the score (installation instructions/certificate), and on the other a conductor (the specialist curator) and the classic orchestra setup (standard hardware). Similarly, the right to perform is traded, albeit in a limited edition. Limiting an edition seems to be crucial: swimming against the stream of free flow and distribution, the artist composes her or his own specialised ‘orchestra’, acknowledging that conducting is not for the first-come. The performed data file refuses to be minimised as video ‘content’, nor is it expandable to the old idea of video sculpture. It is a temporary presence that needs to be re-performed each time it is exhibited. The performed video occupies the exhibition space as if it were a unique object with architectural proportions in front of which the spectator is clearly positioned, and who finds himself perhaps helpless before the ‘piece’s’ and his own use of time. The spectator wants to move, he wants to do so since he is still ‘inside the white cube’, only now it is dark with lit-up surfaces. He is visiting a museum, not a cinema. Inside the video installation he finds himself caught in a very strange performance indeed. I don’t remember if Marshall McLuhan defined an exhibition as cool media, but I would think so, because the spectator decides when he wants to move. So the media in an exhibition have to adapt to the spectator: they have to perform their presence.

above and facing page The Algiers’ Sections of a Happy Moment, 2008, single-channel video projection, b/w, stereo sound, 37 min. Courtesy the artist

September 2014

J.J. Charlesworth Not in whose name? It’s July in the office, and I get an email from an artist, an artist whose work I’ve always thought is great. In his email, however, this artist is inviting me to sign up to a pledge for a cultural boycott of Israel, in support of ‘the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality’. Signatories pledge ‘to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding from any institution linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights’. Some of the signatories are also among those who, a few days before, sign an open letter calling for an arms embargo against Israel. As Israel’s wretched military campaign against Hamas rocket attacks and tunnel incursions drags on into August, as images of dead and wounded Palestinians become a fixture of daily news bulletins, the demands for cultural boycotts of Israel – which have been simmering in one form or another for the last decade – have started to pick up momentum among artists and arts professionals in the UK. Israeli-funded theatre and dance companies presenting at the Edinburgh Festival are subject to calls that they be banned from performing. The issue reaches a sort of unquestionable us-or-them hysteria, in which questioning the good sense of boycotts, cultural or otherwise, puts you automatically on the side of the bad guys. It’s hard to decide what is worst about the idea of a cultural boycott, whether against Israel or not. Is it that there’s something inherently

repugnant about artists and intellectuals – a demographic you might think was more committed than most to openness, freedom of expression and internationalism – trying to close down the artistic freedom of their peers, in order to make a political gesture of disapproval towards a government and its policies that – if one listens to Israeli artists living in the UK and elsewhere – many Israelis disagree with already? Or is it that in campaigning for what is essentially a form of censorship, those calls for a cultural boycott contribute, unwittingly, to the now-familiar process of demonisation of those states that we ‘over here’ disapprove of? Is it that in their obsessive focus on a particular country and its actions, campaigners for boycotts effectively reinforce the sense of moral superiority that always seems to attach to ‘us’ here in the West over ‘them’ over there, wherever it is, in the East? So far, no artist or writer I know has called for cultural boycotts of the US or UK or EU. It would be funny, wouldn’t it? Boycott Jeff Koons for the policies of the Obama administration, for the still open Guantánamo Bay and never-ending drone strikes? Boycott Damien Hirst for the policies of David Cameron, or Gerhard Richter for the policies of Angela Merkel or the EU? And where should it end? Should Israelis living here be denied opportunities to work and exhibit? Or just anyone who happens to support Israel? (Making exception, of course, for those ‘good’ artists and intellectuals who agree with

us?) Or maybe ‘we’ should start ‘outing’ those artworld interests who have ties to the state of Israel? Perhaps the most dismal aspect of the call to boycotts is how complicit these campaigners have become (whether they realise it or not) with the mood-music of condemnation that flows from mainstream politicians. Left-wingers used to be against the military and political machinations of Western governments; now they seem only to contribute to encouraging Western governments to ‘do something’, to make things better, when all the evidence of the last decade – see Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and on, and on – shows what a disaster this has been. From once being opposed to the political powers of the West, those on what we now call the left have become nothing more than naive cheerleaders for Western meddling in conflicts around the globe. Back in 1972, the British leftwing art critic and writer John Berger won the Booker Prize for his novel G. He declared that he was giving half the prize money to the radical African-American movement the Black Panthers. Today Berger calls on Western governments to impose an arms embargo on Israel – or in other words, to chastise and manipulate a country now judged by the West a ‘rogue state’. From sticking two fingers up at the Man, Berger now holds his hand… Tie art to politics and it becomes a weapon. Then your only choice remains who you turn it against. It is a choice we should refuse to make.

Union Square, New York, 8 March 2014. Courtesy All-Nite Images. Licensed under Creative Commons

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Maria Lind The triumph of the nerds “We are all going to go to hell as a result of reading this!” says one of the members of the Joycean Society in a 2013 film by Dora García that takes the group’s name as its title. Since 1986 this band of enthusiasts has met every week in Zürich to read James Joyce’s last novel, Finnegan’s Wake (1939), together. It took the serious-looking participants 11 years to get through the book, and they are now on the third lap. The pioneers have aged with the collective reading, remembering when the stairs leading to the meeting room were not an obstacle. Newcomers have joined along the way, and when García and her crew come to spend time with the society, a couple of youngsters are present. The camera sits in the middle of the room, gently following a humorous prereading conversation about the effects of artists earning too much money and about how to make sure that people are dead before they are buried. The conversation then turns into a discussion based on a close reading of the notoriously opaque book, literally word by word. They debate the meaning of ‘onon, onon’ on page 201 and move on to ‘shabby genteel’, ‘joys of ills’ and ‘peduncle’. Maybe ‘great Scott’ is another way of saying ‘great God’? Meanwhile squeaking chairs and rustling snack-bags contribute to the soundscape, a snow-covered bronze statue of Joyce smoking a cigarette fills the frame and the person holding the suspended microphone suddenly becomes visible. The atmosphere in the film is intense. Each person has his or her own way of dealing with the text, but it is the extremely concentrated common endeavour of decoding it and, to some degree, understanding the limited number of rules that Joyce supposedly employed in writing

the novel that stands out. It is clear that the participants enjoy what they are doing and that they are unusually knowledgeable – the way nerds tend to be – without being professional historians of literature. Most of the readers are men. Witty and fascinating comments, suggestions and questions pertaining to specific terms fly fast across the room in a performance of collective intelligence at its most beautiful. Ever since I saw García’s film in Monaco’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale last year I have been thinking about it. About the fact that

García has captured something rare and yet urgent, even overwhelmingly so: individual passion and commitment being shared and debated with others under strikingly consistent conditions she has captured something rare and yet urgent, even overwhelmingly so: individual passion and commitment being shared and debated with others under strikingly consistent conditions. When Vdrome – an online initiative presenting a new videowork every week – recently featured the film, I was reminded that the scenario could be seen as irrelevant navel-gazing. But I think it is the opposite. It speaks of a contemporary need for depth, continuity and pleasure, without having to think about consequences – whether Dora García, The Joycean Society, 2013, HD video, colour, 53 min. Courtesy the artist & Auguste Orts, Brussels

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they be the time it consumes or the absence of palpable outcomes. It is about a way of acting in the world, a sort of approach that allows for things to mature slowly and precisely. By doing so, the people involved not only place art centre stage at a time when art often ends up in the margins of even the artworld itself – albeit in this case we’re dealing with a text that has been canonised and its author hailed as a ‘master’. Like true nerds, the members of the Joycean Society also perform a continuous engagement without necessarily reaching a conclusion. This kind of focused and loving attention is a scarce phenomenon today, when neoliberalism’s atomisation and disruption of life lived small and large is reaching new heights. One of the participants in the reading group calls their joint activities ‘addictive’. It is also described as a unique reading experience and even as therapy. Undeniably the participants take a lot of pleasure in this approach to reading Finnegan’s Wake : one person in the film argues that engaging with literature this way is an example of how culture is a substitute for pleasures denied to us. But art is more than that; it is that which makes it possible for us to articulate the experience of pleasure, but also of pain and all the rest of it, in order to share it with others. Stealth activities like the ones of the Joycean Society’s reading group and its stubbornly cooperative investment and inconclusive aim comprise nothing less than an act of resistance to current pressures, whether conscious or unconscious. At the same time, both García’s film and the reading group itself represent a triumph of the nerds and their commitment to pleasure. This kind of engagement is the future, even if it means going to hell.

Mark Sladen Circulation wars The work of American artist Aaron Flint Jamison explores the secret life of information. One recent exhibition, at Cubitt in London, included a Jacuzzi turned into a sculptural object and exhaling air. Another show, at Artists Space in New York, featured a 3D scanner mounted on a tripod, surveying the gallery and accumulating massive files. Meanwhile, Jamison’s work in the current Liverpool Biennial consists of an array of hugely powerful computer circuits in air-conditioned boxes, linked to a control room that only the most dedicated visitor will discover. In all of these cases, the projects – which also feature plinths and other structures made from purpleheart wood, as well as highly crafted artist books – were mounted without explanatory text, and have been surrounded by clouds of hearsay. These projects appear to follow the flow of information through disparate systems, most obviously those of computers, bodies and books. However, such gallery works are only one aspect of Jamison’s practice, and perhaps not even the best introduction to his work – as it is often in his longer-running and more ‘institutional’ projects that the artist’s distinctive treatment of information is at its most apparent. One such is a magazine, Veneer, which Jamison launched in 2007 and which is projected to run for 18 issues. Veneer has featured a variety of contributors – including artists as well as figures from science and technology – and has also reproduced content lifted directly from textbooks, trade journals and promotional literature. However, the identity of Veneer comes less from its editorial than from its particular, even bizarre qualities as object or as institutional project. Indeed, Jamison says that he gets to “ask questions each issue through the magazine’s production and administration”. Every edition of Veneer is accordingly

distinguished by lavish combinations of different paper stocks and production techniques, as well as by curious elements of performance. For instance, issue four features a section reproduced in an ‘unprintable’ blue, as well as a page rubbed with Brut deodorant, and was apparently launched with a yoga class on top of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Other strategies that Jamison has tried out include ‘reverse advertising’ (reproducing adverts without permission and then attempting to bill the companies concerned) and ‘reverse shoplifting’ (secreting copies of the magazine in bookshops as a form of distribution). The artist has said that it’s important to him that “bodies interface with production”, and this principle appears to extend from the printing of the magazine itself – the bulk of which is done by Jamison and his associates – through to its elaborate rituals of publication. Since issue six Veneer has been produced at Yale Union (YU), an arts centre in Portland, Oregon, that is one of the other long-running projects in which Jamison has been involved – he launched the organisation in 2008, in collaboration with music producer Curtis Knapp, shortly after moving to the city. YU is housed in a historic laundry building that occupies half a city block, and in the first couple of years, Jamison and Knapp installed a recording studio, as well as the print workshop in which Veneer is now produced. Since then other facilities and functions have been brought on line, including a huge floor of extraordinary gallery space; and other colleagues have been added, such as the designer Scott Ponik and the curator Robert Snowden. The philosophy of YU has always been to add or resolve things as they are needed, resulting in an organisation that evolves over time. The programme of YU is similarly responsive. For example, the organisation is currently

mounting a George Kuchar retrospective, one film at a time, a project that began in 2008 and which is projected to run for eight years. Meanwhile, for a recent Yuji Agematsu exhibition, YU helped the artist develop display systems for his work – which is based on archives of trash that he collects from city streets – with results that included a table top featuring an array of cigarette butts pinned like beetles. This interest in developing particular strategies of presentation for particular projects also extends to the organisation’s attitude to documentation, and exhibition records have included deconstructed publications as well as huge one-to-one image files. YU explores the paradox of a noninstitutional institution: an approach that is signalled most clearly in its ‘identity’, which employs an often highly eccentric first-person voice – presented in a graphic style whose bookish understatement is a parody of neutrality. While YU, particularly in its more recent years, is clearly a group project, it can also be seen as a manifestation of Jamison’s singular working strategies. The artist says that he does not believe in generalised answers, and it seems that this refusal to package information links all of the projects in which he is involved. Sometimes information is withheld (like the issue of Veneer sealed with expanded foam). Sometimes it is flooded (like those churning data engines in Jamison’s gallery work). Sometimes it comes through proxies (the artist often asks others to speak on his behalf). And sometimes it comes through hearsay (there is a river in the basement of Yale Union, apparently). In all of these projects, information is treated as the odd, adaptive, unThe Liverpool predictable property that it Biennial runs is, and is encouraged to find until 26 October its own level.

Courtesy Veneer

September 2014

Oliver Basciano How to cause a moral panic It was a story that the Norwegian people forgot. In 1914, on the centenary of the Nordic country’s constitution, the king of Norway officiated over the opening of Kongolandsbyen, a temporary zoo in Oslo’s Vigelandsparken. Kongolandsbyen – or the ‘Congo Village’ – didn’t house animals, though; it was an exhibition of supposedly traditional Congolese houses, in which 80 Africans (most likely Senegalese) were ‘exhibited’ for five months for the amusement of the public. This was no minor distasteful sideshow to the rest of the centenary celebrations; more than half of the Norwegian population at the time are believed to have paid for a gawp at these ‘exotic’ specimens. In 2013, 12 months before the bicentennial celebration of Norway’s constitution, two Oslo-based artists, Lars Cuzner and Mohamed Ali Fadlabi, staged a press conference to announce their plans to recreate the zoo under the title European Attraction Limited, faithfully rebuilding the huts, and requesting volunteers to occupy them. Other artists have trod similar ground previously. Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s The Year of the White Bear and Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992–4) saw Gómez-Peña and Fusco inhabit a cage dressed in an approximation of indigenous garb. Cuzner and Fadlabi, who are Swedish and NorwegianSudanese respectively and had not previously collaborated, claimed theirs was not a project of pointing a finger at Norway’s historic racism (after all, the 1914 incarnation of Kongolandsbyen followed in the footsteps of similar ventures in Europe and North America, staged from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries, the colonial guilt of which Gómez-Peña and Fusco were playing with) but was posited as an investigation of collective amnesia. The artists spoke of

discovering the Kongolandsbyen by chance, and that when they asked around, no one had heard of it and all expressed surprise and disbelief that it had ever existed. On the announcement of European Attraction Limited, all hell broke loose. So while this is a story of that particular project, it is also a portrait of artists losing control of their artwork, in spectacular fashion, once it goes into the public domain. The contemporary reaction to the project proved its most interesting element. The work’s centre shifted from the actual planned reconstruction – and questions of historic racism –

A spokesperson for Norway’s Centre Against Racism went on record as saying, for example, ‘I think the only ones who will enjoy this are those with racist attitudes.’ Ironically, shortly after that statement, neo-Nazis claimed they would burn the project down to the media and public furore surrounding the work and contemporary attitudes. The artists became public figures overnight. Cuzner tells me he removed his telephone number and address from his website in light of the vitriol thrown his way. Wild rumours about the number of inhabitants and who they might be (which Cuzner and Fadlabi declined to confirm or deny) flew around; the Belgian ambassador protested the use of his country’s flag in the project; as a piece of satire, a choreographer called Sigurd Johan Heide travelled to Uganda, where he filmed himself dressed

Lars Cuzner and Mohamed Ali Fadlabi, European Attraction Limited, 2014. Photo: Margit Selsjord

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in Santa hat and sweater dancing to Norwegian traditional music; the artists were caricatured, mocked, eviscerated. Most of the antagonism towards the project came from those who would identify themselves as politically leftwing, the artists tell me. A spokesperson for Norway’s Centre Against Racism went on record as saying, for example, ‘I think the only ones who will enjoy this are those with racist attitudes.’ Ironically, shortly after that statement, neo-Nazis claimed they would burn the project down. Cuzner tells me of being on a television chatshow with a representative of a charity that provides aid to African countries who painted the artists as racist. In their exchange, Cuzner suggested to this white Norwegian woman that perhaps Fadlabi, who is black and was not present in the studio, might be better placed to make that judgement. Her riposte was that Cuzner must have tricked Fadlabi into the project. As Cuzner is telling me this anecdote, Fadlabi interrupts, “As if the black man is too stupid to realise!” On the day in mid-May this year when the village was at last opened, it slowly dawned on the assembled throng of media that they may have been tricked. There were indeed the huts, but there were no formal exhibits. No black people to be stared at (though several journalists approached anyone who happened to be black to ask whether they were an exhibit). People were free to come and inhabit the rough wood and straw structures during the day. When I visited the project a few weeks into its existence, small children were playing in the huts, teenagers were hanging out, a couple was kissing. It was all quite sweet. The zoo wasn’t some ‘other’, but ourselves – the West and our moral panic, our liberal guilt, our underlying fear of prejudice – that were on show.

Hettie Judah The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese

Harry West has studied cheesemakers from the northeast of Turkey to the Basque mountains, from cowshit-spattered shacks in the Auvergne to boutique lactic fermentation outfits in the Home Counties of England. A professor of anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London, West has, over the last six years, come to specialise in artisan Anthropology – cheesemaking. cheesy He’s photographed earnest men – their forearms puce from scalding milk – kneading heavy udders in near darkness, marinating slices of dried tripe, whacking curds and repurposing whey. Through categorising the different processes and practices, and mapping them between communities around Europe, he has built up a map of influences flowing, via cheese, around the Continent. The routes of this knowledge transference often coincide with the routes of ancient monastic orders. The monasteries were sites of skill and knowledge, their educated inhabitants able to turn perishable raw materials – milk, wheat, fruit – into comparatively durable and transportable products – cheese, bread, wine. As the monks travelled and the Monasteries – networks of monasteries cheesy expanded, the knowledge they carried with them provided a means to sustain themselves in a new community – hence West finding Alpine-style cheesemaking on a Greek island, and tracking a debt of influence from Italian mozzarella to Turkish kasar. I thought of Harry West and his cheese map while listening to writer and network analyst (and sometime curator of digital at London’s

Serpentine Galleries) Ben Vickers talking about the unMonastery project at Design Miami/Basel in June. Arising from the Edgeryders initiative – a pan-European community of young people who, whether by circumstance (economic or societal insecurity) or choice, identify as ‘exploring the edge of current society’ – the unMonastery was in part an attempt to answer the question, ‘What would the monastery look like in a networked age?’ (a question that rather ignores the fact that monasteries existed in a networked age – they were, if you like, a network provider). However flawed the question, the unMonastery project is an interesting answer, and one that looks back to the monastery as a repository of knowledge, as one of many hubs in a network and as an organism that can be self-sustaining and generative. The ur-unMonastery opened as a four-month project in March of this year in the southern Italian city of Matera. Famous for the sassi di Matera – ancient cave dwellings thought to be the site of one of the earliest human settlements in Italy – and currently bidding to be European Capital of Culture 2019, the unMonastery was invited as part of the city’s programme of focused technological regeneration, and attempts to attract talents and creative industries. During a preparatory visit to Matera, Vickers and a small team of Edgeryders asked locals what might be useful to them, before 14 ‘unMonks’ with relevant technical skills were chosen first from within the Edgeryders community and then from an open call. Living as a collective, The unDocumentary video drone flying over the unMonastery in Matera. Photo: © Alberto Costanzo / Vulture Video

September 2014

the unMonks share one of the disused sassi and forge links with their Materani neighbours through the transfer of skills that are, broadly speaking, techno-survivalist. Vickers and his fellow novices are initiating community-level projects in water management, open-source solar-tracking software, tech classes, zero-waste management and a variety of Matera-specific issues, including alternative tourism and public-transport mapping. Besides its laudable aims of repurposing large, disused buildings, creating employment for marginalised young people and providing community resources, perhaps the most exciting aspect of the unMonastery project is that it seems to symbolise the hackerspace movement coming of age. The unMonsteries are, at heart, formalised hackerspaces nesting in and creating a role for themselves in a new community. If they are preaching anything, it is the hackerspace ethos: of being a collaborator with rather than consumer of technology, of skill sharing and resourcefulness, of off-grid independence. As the prototype unMonastery winds down, Vickers is currently developing an ‘unMonastery in a box’ set, including a software package, protocols based on the Benedictine rules and a ‘book of mistakes’. It’s hoped the Matera site will reopen on more permanent footing in spring of next year, and the project Hackerspaces – has been offered locations cheesy? in Greece, Poland and Italy. The unMonks are also contemplating setting up the first rural unMonasteries specifically focused on work with food – that ancient cheese network, it seems, may yet flow through Europe again.

Jonathan Grossmalerman Dear ArtReview reader I was wondering if you could help me out with a small problem. You see… well, before I really begin, I should explain that I’ve chosen print media to reach out for assistance, as opposed to… say… the Internet or emergency phone assistance, under the impression (please tell me I’m not mistaken!) that the nature of the print media suggests a gravitas that cannot be translated into the language of the super information highway. And gravitas is of the essence! Although speed would be good, too (which is why I’m banking on ArtReview putting this up super quick on their website as well, like they told me they ‘always’ do). At this point But one thing in life the artist explains why seriousness I’ve learned is you can’t is the only thing have both. So I choose he takes seriously gravitas. Sue me. Firstly, though, before I reveal my godawful situation, I’d like to stress again how quickly I’m going to need your help and hope that once my problem is made clear, you will waste no time in responding. So let’s get to it, shall we? You see, I’ve been working sans assistants of late (it seems my poorly fastened bathrobe was more than a few of my employees’ prudishness could, um, bare). In any case, left on my own, I was simply constructing a really awfully large canvas (oh, my knees!) and, in so doing, seem to have made some sort of rookie mistake. I know

this because the canvas is now… and don’t ask me how this happened… on fire. Yes, on fire! Has anyone out there had this happen to them? If so, how did you remedy it? Maybe some of you less serious people At this point can look it up on a blog. I the artist would really appreciate any abandons suggestions you might seriousness have, because contrary to to make a my earlier expectation, the desperate fire has actually grown appeal to the quite a bit larger since I first distinctly became concerned. And unserious incredibly it appears still to world of Internet bloggers. be growing. I mean, even since I started writing this!!! I’m sure you can imagine my dismay. Now, again, if anyone, I mean, really… anyone out there has any pointers as to how I can best handle this situation, or at the very least a suggestion regarding how to avoid this happening in the future, I could really use it now. Like, right now! I’ve already exhausted most of the options that would seem obvious, eg, pouring my drink on it and covering it in turpentine-soaked rags to deprive it of oxygen, but that just seems to have made it angry. I’ve even opened all the doors so as to give the fire the freedom to leave but it seems entirely content to stay put and has even spread to the other rooms as well.

Courtesy the artist

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I’ve absolutely racked my brain trying to figure out what might have happened. At first I thought it was from mixing Liquitex acrylic extender with Golden acrylic extender, but that, frankly, seems unlikely. Though the two companies are competing, it probably wouldn’t suit their interests to go setting studios on fire. And after all, my lunch drink is a Stoli & Georgi on the rocks, and that doesn’t simply explode when you mix it, provided you keep it away from cranberry juice. I learned that the hard way. So here I will wait, crouched in the corner, wrapped in plastic sheeting to protect myself from the heat and checking the comment section on artreview.com for your advice. I’ve even made a couple of drawings of the situation to give you a physical sense of what I’m up against. Also, I drew a picture of what I must look like wrapped in plastic sheeting simply because it occurred to me that it’s probably pretty cool… you know… visually speaking. I’m always creating. That’s just me. Love me, love my constant creativity. So, to recap: 1. My entire studio is a blazing inferno. 2. I could really use your help… At this point really anything… a suggestion the artist or a concrete way out of this continues to situation. Although I suppose brag about the latter, at this point, would how his art is be preferred. on fire right Please help… now.

Karen Archey Off-space No 21: The Suburban, Oak Park, Illinois After attending college in Chicago for five years, I packed my bags, hopped on the Naive Idiot Dream Train and moved to New York. It was 2008 and the global financial crisis was in full bloom. To a green, lifelong Midwesterner, the blue-chip galleries of Chelsea, Uptown and SoHo were striking not for their surplus of incredible art, but for the intimidating amount of capital flowing through them. ‘Where are all the project spaces at?’ I wondered. Back in Chicago, besides the Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society, the two institutions dedicated to showing solely contemporary art, project spaces and apartment galleries are how new work gets shown. And most Chicagoans are pretty happy about it. One such outfit is the Suburban, a 15-yearold exhibition space run by artist and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Michelle Grabner and her partner, artist Brad Killam. The Suburban isn’t even technically in Chicago; it’s on the border, residing in Oak Park, an idyllic middle-class American suburb about a halfhour’s drive west from downtown. The Suburban compound – a duo of cinderblock huts outside the Grabner-Killam residence – could be understood as an anti-Chelsea, a space by and for artists that attempts to circumvent commercial and institutional means of distributing art. Since 1999 they’ve mounted about seven exhibitions a year, working with artists ranging from megastars including Luc Tuymans and Mary Heilmann, to longtime friends, such

as fellow SAIC faculty Scott and Tyson Reeder (who are also well known in their own right), as well as Grabner’s former students. From 2003 through 2013, Chicago dealer Shane Campbell occupied a third space in the Suburban compound that complemented his main gallery in Chicago proper. That space has since been taken over by Wisconsinites John Riepenhoff and Jake Palmert, who also run the commercial Green Gallery in Milwaukee. The Suburban proper, a 2.5sqm cell abutting Grabner’s driveway, is a site as iconic as it is dinky. Programmed mostly by Grabner, the gallery has become something of a Chicago institution, despite solely relying on the economy of their household. What can art do when it’s not made to perform for rich people in a cavernous white cube? For one, the gallery has fostered indelible experiences for Grabner and Killam’s three children, who have shared hot dogs with artists and curators from around the world. (See the Suburban’s website for an incredible essay by Grabner and Killam’s eldest son, Peter, on growing up next to a gallery in Midwest suburbia.) Despite being a curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Grabner maintains she’s an artist organising an exhibition and shudders at the term ‘professional curator’, avowing that artists know how to install and contextualise their own and other artists’ work with more finesse than any administrator ever could. As of the publishing of this article, the Suburban is showing works by New York artists Russell Maltz and Victoria Munro in their large

Artist Seth Hunter repairing damage to the Suburban’s 2.5sqm exhibition space. Courtesy the Suburban, Oak Park, Illinois

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space, while artist Seth Hunter, there on a long-term residency, has been lending a hand repairing damage the small, original Suburban sustained during a previous exhibition. The story behind the damage to the gallery is a grisly one. True to form as both a laissezfaire programmer and art educator, Grabner gave the gallery keys to artist Dana DeGiulio, who rammed the diminutive building with a junked Buick LeSabre. DeGiulio, one of Grabner’s former students at SAIC, sold a painting that Grabner had given her to James Cohan, the elder artist’s representing gallery in New York, and used those funds to purchase the automobile. DeGiulio then backed into the space full-force, knocking the building off its foundation and cracking its walls to the roof. As Grabner and the Suburban are Chicago icons, it seems to be DeGiulio’s desire, however credulous, to upend them in order to provide room for a less-established generation of artists. During a recent phone interview with me, Grabner spoke fairly and plainly about DeGiulio’s piece, even insisting that the traumatic experience gave her pause to reconsider the Suburban’s programme amid an exceedingly hectic period managing both Whitney Biennial responsibilities and a retrospective at MOCA Cleveland. Imagine a world in which a car hurtling into a gallery isn’t a frat spectacle akin to Dirk Skreber or Dan Colen’s commercial gallery gimmicks, but the honest processing of a clash of generations within a heuristic environment. Believe it or not, that world exists in Oak Park, Illinois.

Maliheh Afnan Tonight The Door Towards Words Will Be Opened 6 September – 8 November 2014

Contained Thoughts, mixed media on paper in perspex jars, 2011, various dimensions

Fasanenstraße 26 | D-10719 Berlin Tue – Sat, 11am – 6pm | www.galeriekornfeld.com

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6 September – 8 November 2014

William Bradley Alexander Kroll Jennifer Packer

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William Bradley: Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink, 2013, oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm

Great Critics and Their Ideas No 31

P.D. Ouspensky on Spiritualism and Whatnot Interview by Matthew Collings

The Theosophist and esotericist P.D. Ouspensky, born in Moscow in 1878, wrote two books – The Fourth Dimension (1909) and Tertium Organum (1912) – both of which had an immense influence on Modernism. In Russia, the nonobjective paintings of Kazimir Malevich arguably owed their general theme of a new model of the universe (which was actually the title of Tertium Organum’s introduction in its second edition) to Ouspensky. He died in Lyne Place, Surrey, in 1947.

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Artreview What do you think about Suprematism? P.D. OusPensky It is the name given to an art of pure geometric shapes. It suggests that it communicates a ‘supreme’, or nonobjective, reality. This claim is sometimes examined today in relation to Kantian notions of noumena and phenomena: that which can only be known by deduction and that which is experienced directly. But in fact rather than Kant it is Theosophy that Suprematism would be impossible without. Ar Gosh that sounds great, you should do a TV documentary – they love that kind of thing. PDO It’s one thing to simplify a narrative in a way that vivifies significant features. But what you get with tv at this moment, when infantilism is the only permitted level for communicating cultural ideas, is a simplification merely to enhance the pulling power of the headline subject – regardless of any genuinely intelligent narrative that might be intrinsic to the subject. It is a matter of the ever-giving tree of dumbeddown sensationalism: yet another fruit is plucked. With these art docs nowadays, what is called for is a monstrous combination of complacency and stimulation. They are mostly consumed, as the tv high-ups know, by ukiP voters in a stupor along with the bedtime cocoa. Ar Oh, OK. That’s a bit deflating. PDO In any case the question arises of artists and Theosophy. Ar I don’t know the answer to it. I wish I did, because apparently it’s something to do with Hilma af Klint. She’s great, I interviewed her last year. PDO Yes, it’s an interesting dilemma. Where does greatness lie in objects that she believed not even to be art, but visual records of transmissions to earth from another world? Ar Wow, exactly, I mean, this really gets attention. PDO Indeed. But her attractiveness for today’s art audience is because the form of her work is so tentative. It is enjoyed by a sensibility geared to abstract paintings of nowadays: typically these too emphasise conception not process. They would be untrendy if they pushed an initial, tentative, visual proposal to a genuinely clinching solution. Ar You were going to say something about the other early abstract artists? PDO In the case of each of the pioneer abstractionists well known to art history, Kandinsky, Kupka, Malevich, Mondrian – as well as af Klint, who is a late arrival to the canon, and in some ways an uncertain one – you have to ask, well, what is Theosophy? And how does it relate to abstract form? How does any explanation of

Theosophy fit into the history of the Russian avant-garde? Ar Oh, God. PDO I understand your sudden onset of a catatonic weariness: we cannot comprehend that which does not figure vividly in our own everyday experience without the greatest effort. Nevertheless, the next question ought to be – since an interview with a spiritualist philosopher in a glossy art magazine must be because of the mesmeric, somewhat Rasputinlike figure (at least as far as spectacular crowdpulling events put on by institutions such as Tate Modern are concerned) of Malevich… Ar I’ve forgotten what you said the next question ought to be. PDO I was going to say that the term ‘nonobjective’ refers to a form that eschews depiction, turning away from the objects of this world, and in the 1910s it was associated above all

With Futurism, dynamism is regarded as marvellous, speed is elevated; fascination existed as well for other things recently discovered by science that now transformed existence. If such invisible forces as X-rays, or prismatic colour hitherto unseeable but now made knowable by ultraviolet rays – and not to mention electricity – are all crackling away behind observable reality, then why not also admit the soul? in Russia with Malevich, who coined the term ‘Suprematism’. He, in turn, elaborated his abstractions from a basis in cubist collage, and Cézanne’s construction of an image from a visual language reduced to planar elements. You can see how wallpaper or newspaper in works from 1912 by Picasso, laid out as broad shapes, supplies the visual prototype for planes of colour in Malevich’s Suprematism, which evolved from 1915 onwards. Ar Hey, what about Futurism? PDO Yes, Malevich absorbs it. Abstract poetry results. There’s a lot of absurdity. It’s only a short step to him drawing a square on a piece of paper facing page P.D. Ouspensky. Courtesy Dorine Tolley/Ouspensky Foundation, Amsterdam

September 2014

and writing the Russian word that means something like ‘countryside’ or ‘village’ in the square – why couldn’t this be a landscape more vivid than one depicted with brushstrokes – and why couldn’t it even be the world? With Futurism, dynamism is regarded as marvellous, speed is elevated; fascination existed as well for other things recently discovered by science that now transformed existence. If such invisible forces as X-rays, or prismatic colour hitherto invisible but now made knowable by ultraviolet rays – and not to mention electricity – are all crackling away behind observable reality, then why not also admit the soul? Theosophy advocates it as an object of scientific enquiry. Why shouldn’t it be possible to propose that there are such entities as thought-forms? They can actually be visualised by art. Why shouldn’t the clairvoyant also be a scientist? Ar Phew, I don’t know. PDO With the Bolshevik governmental takeover in 1917, the concept of nonobjective form, and its crystallisation as Malevich’s Suprematism, becomes significant in the reordering of the art establishment simply because this establishment is now being run largely by former bohemian outsiders whose mental formation owes a great deal to him. But what are the attributes and qualities, the properties and the power that the artists believe nonobjectivity has? What is at stake when they declare what kind of role abstract form will now play in the world? Ar Er… PDO From late 1921 onwards they start saying the spirit is out and Productionism is in. One of them, Liubov Popova, says nonobjectivity isn’t the endpoint of form but ‘the revolutionary condition of form’. In other words, abstraction is a conduit towards a socialistically revolutionised world. But these artists are made up in their innermost being from profoundly absorbed notions of the priority of the spirit in artistic creation. So when they reject it, because of its inadequacy for the project of world-creation, they are not so much getting rid of it as repurposing it. So now you’ve got to ask, what was it anyway? Ar And…? PDO Spiritualism emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century as an offshoot of Catholicism; people in remote rural areas in Europe claimed the Virgin Mary sent them visions. Theosophy develops as an intellectual discipline. It considers the conclusions of historic world religions and unites them in a system whose purpose is spiritual evolution. Spiritualism in the form of Theosophy became very big in middle-class society, and it’s natural

that art, a middle-class preoccupation, should have embraced it. It guides the route to abstraction of Mondrian, Kandinsky and Malevich just as much as their interest in Cubism and Cézanne. Malevich read my books and attended my lectures. He absorbed ideas from me about the fourth dimension. This is commonly assumed to be ‘time’, of course, as in the Theory of Relativity. But in fact such scientific theories didn’t become commonly known until much later. In Theosophy the fourth dimension is always intertwined with ideas about successive stages of the soul’s evolution. AR What about Rodchenko – he’s great, isn’t he? PDO He’s a Constructivist who becomes a Productionist. He lived for a while in Kandinsky’s flat in Moscow, and was influenced by him. Then Kandinsky was frozen out of the artistic debates for being too subjective and went off to teach at the Bauhaus in Germany. AR I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what was Productionism about? PDO It lasted a few years in newly established art schools and institutes in Russia. It was largely considered by its makers and explainers to be antiart. Art would no longer be required when a utopian future was actually a reality. The objects were the manifestations of collaborative research in workshops. They had a peculiar sort of ideal relationship to objects in the world: they were their utopian futuristic realisation. So a Rodchenko construction hanging on a wire is always on the way to somewhere, some different state, maybe architecture, but notionally there would be a public use at some point. Maybe when resources were available, which they never were. The Constructivists started calling themselves Productionists, because, inspired by what was happening, they started thinking about factory production. There was tension between them and the new state controllers who allowed them to have power for a while. It was the state that bought, on a small scale, of course, constructivist/productionist art. But the artists were mistrusted as arrogant and nihilistic. Eventually they were just swept away, as we know.

AR Malevich is super-spiritual. It’s humorous, because it’s so naive. Art has really progressed since then. Ryan Gander is much better. You can’t take all those bandwagoning artists doing the same shapes seriously. And the political naivety is a joke. PDO There were individual figures, of course, with the usual rivalry and competitiveness. But there was also a group ethos – just because of the circumstances – that was completely new, and which hasn’t been known since to such a degree, either. AR I can’t believe you’re going into this material as if modernist squares hadn’t been discredited for ages now. I mean sometimes there’s a trend for liking them, but, really… PDO Such trends shouldn’t rule your life, though. It’s better to try and educate yourself about what there is in any artistic moment, so you can have more to go on in your likes and dislikes about the present. AR Well, the spiritual and political ideas of those times are naive. PDO The Constructivists agree Suprematism is the highest stage of art as it has evolved, and they don’t see any reason that it should regress to some lesser state just so it can be understood. They want it to carry out, on an art level, Bolshevik rebuilding. But then they worry about the spiritualism. It won’t carry over in this repurposing. What is the repurposing, anyway? Aesthetic delectation is out; individualism is out; and

Next mONth Hegel on abstract sploshing in British art schools during the 1970s

Kazimir Malevich, Supremus No. 55, 1916. Courtesy Krasnodar Territorial Art Museum. Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art is at Tate Modern, London, to 26 October

picturing things is out, because it has all sorts of problems of artistic servitude. ‘Genius’ isn’t out, so long as the purpose of societal rebuilding is what it’s aimed at. Materials and spatial organisation become the two sides of the agreed correct way forward. The geniuses must pool resources to get the best results from experiments into spatial proposals using nonart materials (materials from industry). But space in Suprematism is spiritualised, because ‘feeling’ has replaced objectivity, Malevich had said. So now you have to split from him if you’re a rebuilder. It was easier to split from Kandinsky with his wobbly lines and swirling psychological improvisations. That there has to be a split with Malevich is problematic. In fact ‘Constructivists’ is his word for Rodchenko and Tatlin, et al. He intends it as an insult, and as usual with art labels it is taken on as a badge of honour. Art now has to be at one with technology, and its natural home must be in the factories. How on earth can they get it in there? Should the artists actually hurry up and do technology courses at technology institutes? Should the new art schools be art and technology schools? Should we be careful in our considerations not to fetishise ‘technicians’ and ‘engineers’ – after all, they’re a bit blinkered, whereas artists have a more all-round education and experience – surely artists can quickly master enough of engineering and technology, in order to be in the running for realistic factory intervention? This narrative suggests alien naivety to us, maybe, but also an amazing sense of dignified purpose, which is just as alien. Plus the spiritual and the communistic are never really separated. Regrettably, the surviving relics of a less-than-ten-years moment seem to merge into the same dead archaeological pile, partly because the actual stuff really did just rot mostly, and today we see only fragments of a whole. The picture of Tatlin dying in a lonely flat with his dusty constructions in boxes under his bed, which the landlord threw out for rubbish, is true of the whole movement.

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Other People and Their Ideas No 15

Graham Harman Interview by J.J. Charlesworth

Graham Harman is a philosopher and professor at the American University in Cairo who describes his thinking as an ‘object-oriented ontology’. He is part of a grouping of philosophers (along with Iain Hamilton Grant, Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier) associated with speculative realism, a movement in philosophy that attempts to overturn the dominant strands of post-Kantian thought (in particular the correlation between thinking and being) in favour of a metaphysical realism (in which thinking and the human beings who do it are not at the centre of the universe). More importantly than that, speculative realism has become one of the most referenced philosophical movements in contemporary art of the last few years.

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Artreview Looking back at being an art student in the mid-1990s, I recall the shifting influence of theorists and philosophers. Once you’d got to grips with the postmodernist canon – Roland Barthes or Jacques Derrida – newer names turned up: Slavoj Žižek was the first big new thinker to be ‘taken up’; then Deleuze began to make waves in more radical circles; for most of the noughties, it seemed that Rancière could do no wrong, but now he’s faded away, along with Žižek. What do you think has driven the growing interest in speculative realism, and your own work, over the last few years? GrAhAm hArmAn Let’s start by talking about intellectual fashion, an oft-maligned phenomenon that might be viewed positively instead. Artists, much like their cousins in architecture, are under a great deal of pressure to innovate. I am not one of those who scoff at the results of this pressure. There is a tendency to misread philosophical fashion among artists as if it were the symptom of a superficial trendiness. Even artists themselves make this criticism, in sometimes masochistic fashion. But I see nothing wrong with cycling through Heidegger, Barthes, Žižek, Deleuze, Rancière… in search of fresh influences, in an effort to keep the pot stirred. So what if most artists don’t read these figures in depth? It is not the duty of artists to make accurate longterm judgements about the ultimate historic value of specific philosophers. And I would go so far as to say that most professional philosophers do this more poorly than artists anyway. You asked about speculative realism and why we are now having some influence in the arts. Anglo-American analytic philosophy has always made room for realism, in large part due to its excessive deference to the natural sciences. By contrast, Continental philosophy has always had an unfortunate disrespect for realism, thanks to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger’s misguided view that the question of reality existing outside the mind is a pseudoproblem. Artists, with their sensitive antennae for the new, have correctly detected something new here and embraced speculative realism. By contrast, mainstream Continental philosophy scholars have thrown up confusing makeshift obstacles, clinging to the fashions of their own youthful years while hypocritically mocking those of the present. As for my own work, object-oriented philosophy, the reason for its influence in the arts and architecture is probably the fact that it gives aesthetics a central place. For me, aesthetics pertains to the breakdown of the bonds between objects and their qualities, which extends well beyond the arts to cover such phenomena as physical causation itself. In this way, aesthetics ceases to be a minor annexe of philosophy and

sets up camp in the centre of philosophy. My worry is that other types of speculative realism too often remain handmaidens of mathematics and the natural sciences, in a manner typical of Western philosophy since Descartes. Ar ‘Realism’ is a very specific philosophical concept here – some might argue that contemporary art has been full of ‘reality’ since at least the beginning of the 1990s – like the in-your-face materiality of a Damien Hirst sculpture, or the obsession with social and political context in much relational art. But I suspect the ‘disrespect for realism’ you note in Continental philosophy has to do with how such approaches are always about the subject’s side of the equation, and their denigration of the possibility of an accessible, objective reality. Do you see your own work in opposition to that, and what does that mean for specifically artistic questions of subjectivity?

There is a tendency to misread philosophical fashion among artists as if it were the symptom of a superficial trendiness. But I see nothing wrong with cycling through Heidegger, Barthes, Žižek, Deleuze, Rancière… in search of fresh influences, in an effort to keep the pot stirred. So what if most artists don’t read these figures in depth? It is not the duty of artists to make accurate long-term judgements about the ultimate historic value of specific philosophers Gh ‘Realism’ has different meanings in different fields: philosophy, mathematics, politics, visual art and literature. As for philosophy, the simplest definition of realism here is the view that a world exists outside the mind. I actually think this doesn’t go far enough, and I will explain why in a moment. But it’s a good starting point. In philosophy as in most fields, general intellectual tendencies sometimes have centuries’ worth of momentum before they reverse into their opposites. The general tendency in Continental philosophy since just after Kant facing page Graham Harman Photo: Ismail Baydas

September 2014

has been idealist in flavour. Kant held that there were things-in-themselves outside the mind that could be thought but never known. With post-Kantian thinkers, there was an antirealist way of dealing with Kant’s legacy: ‘If we try to think a thing-in-itself outside thought, we are thinking it, and therefore thought encompasses everything.’ This is not just a problem for historians of philosophy, because roughly the same argument grounds the contemporary work of figures such as Žižek and Quentin Meillassoux, who hold (in different ways) that thinking a thing outside thought is a naive and impossible manoeuvre. In Kantian terms, the unknowable noumena become a special case of the phenomena, since after all we are thinking them. But I digress. Simple ideas can have longterm consequences, and the reversal of Kant in the late 1700s is a textbook example of this. A decision was made early on that Kant was a great genius but it’s too bad he still believed in these silly things-in-themselves. But a different reversal of Kant was possible, and that’s the one I’m asking people to consider making belatedly in our own time. What if Kant’s readers in the 1790s had said this: ‘Kant was a great genius to realise that there is the thing-in-itself beyond our access to anything. His sole mistake was to limit this problem to human beings. Instead, all relations are finite, even those not involving humans. When fire burns cotton, it only makes contact with a minimal number of features of the cotton. The same when any two things touch one another. No relation exhausts its relata, and when things touch each other, they are only touching caricatures of each other.” If this had happened – and it was quite possible, given the widespread familiarity with G.W. Leibniz in Kant’s Germany – there would have been no German Idealism, no Hegel, no Marx, no Lacan, no Žižek. There would have been instead a form of German Realism in which the real was not just something that exists ‘outside the mind’ (since this implies that the human mind is the sole relevant yardstick) but outside of any relation between any two things whatsoever. On that note, let’s turn back to artistic questions of subjectivity, as you put it. Žižek has made the interesting remark that the traditional roles of science and art have now reversed, in the sense that only scientists now speak of the ‘beauty’ or ‘elegance’ of the universe, while artists sound pathetically naive if they refer to their works as motivated by beauty. Art is now much more likely to give us the brute material reality that used to be the province of science: Hirst is a good example of this, obviously. Along with Hirst, you mentioned the call to place art in its sociopolitical context, and I think

you’re right to mention these trends in the same breath, precisely because I think neither deserves the name ‘realism’. I’ve just defined realism as a philosophy dealing not just with what’s outside the human mind, but with what’s outside of relation. To some artists this will sound like the old-fashioned side of an ongoing debate, since art critics like Clement Greenberg and even Michael Fried lost the theoretical upper hand at some point in the 1960s. The same thing happened in literary criticism: the notion of an artwork (in any genre) as a decontextualised, self-contained unity seemed to become the house philosophy of elitist bourgeois white guys. The supposed remedy to this ‘elitist’ deadlock in which artworks were said to have inherent qualities was to contextualise everything. The artwork was said to be no different in kind from normal physical wares, and the literary work no different from laundry lists and prison registries. Thus the work was radically relationised, and this is still the default ‘progressive’ attitude in all of these fields even now. In order to be authentic, art and literature must be site-specific, or come from the heart of a challenging personal identity oppressed by someone or other, inserted into a network of calls for justice and revolution, or (the case of Hirst) address itself to the viewer like a slap in the face rather than like a deeper mystery to be deciphered. For me, then, art is radically nonrelational, the creation of things that are inherently sundered from their qualities. The philosopher David Hume said that there are really no objects, just bundles of qualities: when I say ‘apple’, I really just mean a bundle of red, sweet, hard, juicy and so forth. The great achievement of Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty was to show us that Hume had it backwards: we experience the apple as a unit, and then we experience the qualities of the apple, which constantly shift though the apple remains the same. Let me just add in passing that if I speak of ‘nonrelational aesthetics’, this is not a veiled dig at Nicolas Bourriaud. What I’m attacking is the attempt to give a contextual definition of art (as Duchamp is read as doing) as well as the attempt to define every object and action ultimately in sociopolitical terms. Before a thing can be political or situational or contextual, it has a manifold reality that no human and indeed no relation at all can ever exhaust. In this sense, I think Greenberg was still too relational. Ar I like the idea that an artwork has a ‘manifold reality that no relation can ever exhaust’, and that it might have a ‘deeper mystery to be deciphered’. These are good ripostes to any reductive, overinstrumentalised view of what art might be for. But between the reality and the deciphering, you seem still to imply the

process of inquiring, finding out, exploring, that for me is a characteristic of an active, specifically human encounter with reality, which applies to art too. And yet much of the reception of speculative realism tends to celebrate its apparent demotion of human subjectivity and its ‘anthropocentricity’, while critics conversely throw about accusations of ‘misanthropism’. Neither quite rings true, and I wonder where you stand when your work is given these cultural and political interpretations. Gh I’ve always found it strange that when the new realisms say that humans are just one entity among others, many critics gloss this as saying that ‘new realisms think humans are worthless’. When Copernicus removed the earth from the centre of the universe, he was not saying that

Some people have made a mistake by literally assuming that a speculative realist theory of arts should lead to an ‘art without humans’. What on earth would this mean? That’s like demanding ‘basketball without humans’. Human observers or participants are necessary ingredients of art, just as they are necessary ingredients of human society. But one can still say that the artwork resists human comprehension just as human society resists human comprehension the earth was ‘worthless’, though he did lead us to reassess our place in the cosmos. When antiimperialists in America protest the Iraq War and appeal to international law, they are not necessarily saying that the United States is ‘worthless’ (though some of them may think so). When Darwin set forth his famous theory, it did not entail that humans are ‘worthless’. In fact, this line of critique says a lot more about our critics than about us. When they demand that humans remain the transcendental condition of access to the rest of reality, some of them may have professorial reasons for this in some abstruse theory of knowledge. But I’ve come to see that many of them want humans to stand in the centre of reality because they want human politics to stand there. And it

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simply doesn’t. It’s a huge, cold universe out there, and the drama of human politics plays as small a part in the universe as every other human thing. Politics is not ‘first philosophy’ (Aristotle’s term for the most basic kind of philosophical inquiry), even though the newly radicalised atmosphere today makes many want to hope so. Nor is ethics first philosophy, despite the claims of Emmanuel Levinas. Whatever first philosophy might be, it needs to cover a lot more terrain than ethics and politics, which pertain primarily to human beings. Modern philosophy (roughly since Descartes) has so accustomed us to a constant interplay of human and world, nature and spirit, subject and object, Dasein (human being) and Sein (being), that we unconsciously take it for granted that humans should make up 50 percent of the ingredients of philosophy. Human beings take up one half of Descartes’s schema, while all chemicals, particles, plants, animals, fungi, planets, black holes, oceans, moons and supernovae are jammed into the other half. The unfairness of this should be obvious. Thus a far broader starting point is needed. That’s why I start with objects in general, and humans are just one kind of object, though an extremely interesting one for us. This doesn’t mean that humans have no more dignity than garbage or wood chips, it simply means that whatever gives humans their dignity is not the starting point of philosophical inquiry. We must begin by talking about everything, including the most contemptible things. As for the first part of your question, we need to distinguish between humans as observer and as ingredient. The realist philosopher Manuel DeLanda gives a helpful example on the first page of his book A New Philosophy of Society (2006). Obviously, humans are ingredients of human society. In this first sense, you cannot speak intelligibly of ‘human society without humans’. But in a second sense, you can. As DeLanda notes, the fact that humans compose society does not mean that human society is reducible to human conceptions of it. Sociologists can be wrong or simply stupid in their theories of society, and I doubt even the leading sociologists would claim to understand all aspects of society thoroughly. In this respect, human society is a surplus beyond any human conception of it, even though society needs humans to exist. This is our basic disagreement with the classic Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, who held that humans can understand society and culture since we are the ones who made it. Hardly. I doubt we understand Shakespeare or the European Union better than we understand protons. The same point holds in the arts. Some people have made a mistake by literally assuming that a speculative realist theory of arts

should lead to an ‘art without humans’. What on earth would this mean? As I’ve said elsewhere, that’s like demanding ‘basketball without humans’. Human observers or participants are necessary ingredients of art, just as they are necessary ingredients of human society. But one can still say that the artwork resists human comprehension just as human society resists human comprehension. Michael Fried might call it ‘theatrical’ to say that an observer must be there for the artwork to be what it is. But that’s because he seems to conflate theatre with presence, and for this reason he can easily be countered with a variant of DeLanda’s argument about society. The fact that the human spectator is a necessary ingredient of art does not mean that the artwork is thereby transparent to the spectator. Quite the contrary. But I do agree with Fried on one other point. He famously says: ‘We are all literalists most or

all of our lives. Presentness is grace.’ I don’t care that much for the second sentence – ‘grace’ makes for too easy a target, while ‘presentness’ is a confusing opposite for ‘presence’. But Fried’s basic point here seems right to me. Some of his contemporaries (T.J. Clark for one, and Derrida is another) have been suspicious of any claim to a great ontological rift between the literal and the nonliteral. But a rift is precisely what there is. The literal occurs, in language or the visual arts, when an object is reducible to a bundle of qualities or a bundle of clear propositional statements about it. Natural science in its normal mode is a juggernaut of literalism, and that’s fine. But when an object is severed from its qualities and no longer made fully intelligible by listing them, in that case the object is withheld from us, and we have crossed a line into the aesthetic. One last point about this. When the object succeeds in withdrawing behind its qualities in

this way, it compels interest. There is a certain allure to it, a certain seductive force. And that’s why sincerity is coming back into style after centuries of increasing criticality, cynicism, snideness and the like. These models only make sense in the modern atmosphere when philosophers thought their job was to separate humans from ‘world’ more and more cleanly, and that humans were less naive than the other animals. But in fact, we are considerably more naive than any other animals. Science has given us a world of greater naivety than ever before: new stars, lichens and comets to believe in, in far greater numbers than all the gods and witches’ spells it exterminated. Though Oscar Wilde told us that ‘all bad poetry is sincere’, this was one of his least convincing statements. Everything good is sincere. Which is not to say that all sincerity succeeds: it can take a lifetime to formulate what you really believe; our early efforts are bound to end up false or wooden or imitative.

top row, from left René Descartes (Frans Hals, Portrait of René Descartes, 1649–1700, SmK, Copenhagen), Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger bottom row, from left Clement Greenberg, Roland Barthes, Michael Fried, Slavoj Žižek

September 2014

Great Curators and Their Ideas No 2

Charles Esche on the São Paulo Bienal Interview by Oliver Basciano

As part of a ‘horizontal collective’ of five curators, including Galit Eilat, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Pablo Lafuente and Oren Sagiv, Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, has taken up the curatorial reins of the 31st São Paulo Bienal. Esche is no stranger to the pitfalls and possibilities of sprawling exhibitions. In 2005 he was cocurator of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial with Vasıf Kortun, and in 2002 the cocurator with Hou Hanru and Sung Wan Kyung of the Gwangju Biennale. Walking around the vast empty halls of the biennial’s Oscar Niemeyer-designed Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, Esche spoke with ArtReview about how he and his team planned to fill the space.

ArtReview

Artreview You are only the second curatorial team from outside Latin America to curate the São Paulo Bienal (after German Alfons Hug, who curated the 26th edition in 2004 and who had already lived in Brazil for a long time) and only the third non-Brazilian (after Venezuelan Luis Pérez-Oramas, in 2012). How much did you know about Brazilian art beforehand? ChArles esChe I had a superficial knowledge. I knew the history of Concretism and Neoconcretism. I think, though, that the Bienal Foundation’s idea was to question what someone from the outside could bring to the conversation. So we haven’t been travelling around the world looking at artists. Instead we brought our preexisting international knowledge to the exhibition, and then focused our research on what is going on here in Brazil. And that’s not just what’s going on in an artistic sense, but also in cultural, sociopolitical, economic senses too. Ar How much responsibility do you think a biennial should have to its local setting? Ce I don’t even know if it’s a responsibility but more an inevitability that the local setting will affect one’s direction. I don’t think there should be a responsibility to represent anything. Certainly not to represent the locals or to feel like you’re on a diplomatic mission to show how strong the Brazilian culture is. I don’t think that at all, but I think a show becomes clearly shaped

by the context. The context is architectural, is historical – São Paulo is the second oldest biennial, going back to 1951. It has a particular history, which we can talk about, that shapes everything that we’re doing. It’s institutional, so there are existing schemes, great schemes in education and production, which allow us to work a certain way. There’s a sociopolitical context too, which is this moment in Brazil, with the World Cup, with the elections, with everything that’s going to happen in the next few months. All of that matters, I mean it’s determining. In a sense, you have a given condition, and you’re reshaping, prodding that a little bit. There’s no blank canvas, or white space, or whatever we call it. It’s written all over or printed all over. Then you come and you add your little bit. Ar You navigate through the gaps. Ce Exactly, yes, and try and push things in certain directions or see where the resistances are. You’re working within a given landscape, and that’s a given architectural landscape, it’s a given Brazilian landscape, it’s a given South American landscape, it’s a given global landscape. above Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo. Photo: Andres Otero facing page Charles Esche. Photo: Sofia Colucci

September 2014

Ar What were your initial thoughts on the biennial’s direction? Ce We wanted to make it contemporary. If you look at some of the recent São Paulo Bienals, they’re a little more museological, looking at a certain history or trying to develop a trajectory. They have concentrated on art historical narratives. Instead we wanted to take the temperature of the moment. We didn’t feel we had to revisit Brazil’s modernist history or revisit the moves of Hélio Oiticica or Lygia Clark and people like that. That was a very early, important decision. Ar Why the avoidance of Modernism? Ce I’m not sure it’s so relevant to São Paulo any more. This is very much a contemporary city. The growth of it, the way that the informal communities developed is not really according to modernist structural thinking. Of course, there’s a modernist legacy, but there’s also a colonial legacy, and many other historical layers, of which Modernism is just one. Maybe it’s the one that’s blocked us from seeing the others or having a more nuanced understanding of history. Modernism doesn’t want to deal with religion, for instance. More generally I think we can say that the modern world is in the past. It’s fulfilled. Our direction has also been made possible of course only by what people have done in the past with the Bienal. The fact that

the Bienal dates back to 1951 allows us to do things that would be unimaginable if you were curating the Curitiba Biennial, or the Biennale sul Lago Maggiore, that have less of a history. You don’t have to start at the beginning; you can assume some kind of legacy. Previous curators have done the groundwork for us, in a way, and we’re really grateful for that. The last Bienal focused very much on the position of the artists, which means we don’t have to. If that hadn’t happened, then maybe we would have had to deal with the question of who is an artist and what is their position in society. You are standing on the shoulders of giants, in some sense. We’re adding a little bit to a process that has predated my birth and will hopefully succeed my death. Ar You staged a series of open meetings around the country – in areas that have artists who are not perhaps represented within the commercial gallery system that drives São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. What were you looking for from these artists? Ce We had certain questions. For instance, one of the questions we started off with was, ‘What is the Brazilian national narrative?’ That’s what I was interested in, to think about what it means to be Brazilian at the moment. It’s a question shaped by 20 years of apparently social-democratic rule, apparently leftwing governments. It asks about the change to the country since the military dictatorship and the oppression that was going on up until the 1980s. That question, however, would become less and less urgent as others would emerge, questions about the rights to a city, how the people negotiate themselves within the city. ‘What is the relationship between transport and rights? What is the relationship between identity and the city? How do artists negotiate those social and political

questions? Which artists are thinking about this? What artists are thinking about some of the peripheral communities? What artists are thinking about the history of immigration?’ Whether it’s the Arab immigration here and how that’s been represented. Whether it’s the Portuguese colonial history. Whether it’s the African immigration through the ports, immigration through slavery. Our questions have changed and they’ve often been led by artists’ projects, or people who are working on the borderlands of art, performance or art becoming activism. Ar Though important, these seem quite specifically Brazilian concerns, though – how do the non-Brazilian artists fit into them? Ce The people we invited came from a particular history of work. Yochai Avrahami, who’s from Israel, has an interest in national narratives, so that fitted with our original question, so it made sense to bring him over for an extended period, to spend a couple of months in Brazil, to travel, to look at some of the museums and representations of the police, of the mining industry. We also tried to organise alliances between Brazilian artists and artists from elsewhere. Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal from Decolonising Architecture, for example, have been

The last Bienal focused very much on the position of the artists, which means we don’t have to. If that hadn’t happened, then maybe we would have had to deal with the question of who is an artist and what is their position in society. You are standing on the shoulders of giants, in some sense. We’re adding a little bit to a process that has predated my birth and will hopefully succeed my death

ArtReview

working with a group called Grupo Contrafilé. Together they’re developing a project at a quilombo in the state of Pernambuco, in the northeast. Originally quilombos were where the freed or escaped slaves set up their own communities. These historic settlements obviously have a relationship with some of the work that Decolonising Architecture has done with the Palestinian camps. They’re all going up there over the summer, and the results of that visit will be presented at the Bienal. Ar This perhaps more engaged participation within the country – these ‘alliances’, as you refer to them, the open meetings – seem a reaction against the biennial as a format. The biennial as a site of spectacle: the size of these types of exhibitions, their internationalism and the temporariness of their curatorial structures. In the context of Brazil, dealing with the political and social fallout of other types of capitalist spectacle – the World Cup of course and the Olympics around the corner in 2016 – this seems particularly pertinent. Ce Exactly, and I think that’s a really interesting thing. But we don’t want to remake the biennial format. I have no interest in doing that. The Bienal is an event, it’s a big event, and, although there are plenty of things going on behind the scenes, we have nonetheless really tried to make an exhibition here. I don’t think you should do anything else; you should fulfil people’s expectations that they can just walk around and they can see some amazing things. Then you try and perhaps give it some nuance, add to it. The biennial is a fixed structure that we just shift a tiny little bit. The curator’s agency is very small, but the job is to try and make use of that small space of agency as much as you can. The São Paulo Bienal runs from 2 September through 7 December

In a spot of bother: Damien Hirst’s removed wall-painting

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The Law and Its Ideas No 8 by Daniel McClean

Background It has recently been reported that Damien Hirst has repudiated the authenticity of an early wall painting. The spot painting, Bombay Mix (either from 1988 or 1989), painted by Hirst directly onto wallpaper, had been removed from its location and mounted without Hirst’s permission. At one stage it appeared that Hirst, through his company Science Ltd, had also demanded the return of the excavated fragment to Hirst, its ‘legal owner’, in order that it might be destroyed, though this claim appears to have now been retracted. The early Hirst work was installed by the artist himself (rather than by assistants, which is the artist’s normal practice) in a house in Fulham, London, formerly belonging to Jamie Ritblat, the son of the wealthy art patrons Sir John and Lady Ritblat. The Ritblats bought Bombay Mix from Hirst as a gift for their son. When Jamie Ritblat sold the house, Hirst’s wallpaper remained on the wall. In 2005 the current owners (Jess and Roger Simpson) acquired possession of the house, and the wall-executed spot painting remained in situ. In 2007 the couple employed specialists to remove Bombay Mix from the wall and arranged for it to be mounted on an aluminium board. The couple are now attempting to sell Hirst’s wallpaper as a painting, but have met a major obstacle. To the Simpsons’ dismay, Science Ltd, which owns the certificate of authenticity accompanying this particular spot painting, is refusing to authenticate the work as an original work of authorship by Hirst: as a consequence, the Simpsons’ mounted fragmented wallpaper has little value in the art market. The company points out that Science Ltd ‘acquired the certificate from the original owner a number of years ago and is now the legal owner of the “Wall Spot”’. Science Ltd had exchanged another Hirst artwork with Jamie Ritblat in return for the certificate of authenticity for Bombay Mix. Furthermore, Science Ltd states that Hirst’s painting should ‘have been painted over when the previous owner traded the wall spot for a work on canvas’. Commentary Authentication is often a slippery game with its own specific rules in the contemporary art world. Many conceptual artworks exist in the form of instructions, which the owner of the work may execute. Classic examples of conceptual instruction-based artworks are the wall drawings of Sol LeWitt and the ‘statements’ of Lawrence Weiner. Hirst’s wall spot paintings belong to this conceptual genre of instructionbased wall work. Yet the right of the collector to execute the ‘work’ is also a conditional right that is dependent upon ownership of the certificate of authenticity that accompanies the ‘instructions’. Without ownership of the certificate from the artist authorising

execution, the ‘work’ has no intrinsic economic value. The reason is perhaps obvious: if conceptual artists did not trade in certificates, they would often not have any ‘object’ to sell. Conversely, artists (including LeWitt) often insist in their certificates that when ownership of the certificate of authenticity is transferred, the executed artwork (eg, on a wall) must be removed. It is these mental leaps – the artwork as concept-based instructions, and ownership of the work through ownership of its certificate – that understandably seem to baffle members of the public and the national press, who inevitably fixate on the medium of the artwork (in this case, Bombay Mix was executed by Hirst, which gives the story a further twist) rather than on the artist’s concept or intentions. The ‘common sense’ view would suggest that a painting on a wall or canvas executed by an artist must be a work of ‘authorship’ by him or her; however, the paradoxical ‘learned’ artworld understanding is that it is the concept of the artwork as underwritten by its certificate of authenticity that is paramount, so that a painting executed by an artist can lack or even lose its authenticity if the conceptual rules of the artwork are not adhered to. To be fair, the rules of authenticity and ownership of Hirst’s spot paintings are and have always been clearly drawn, much like those of the artist Banksy, who has scrupulously distinguished, through the assistance of the ironically named authentication body Pest Control, between artworks executed on urban walls (which are denied authenticity as Banksy works) and those executed in traditional media, such as on canvas, which can be traded as Banksy’s work. Note that Pest Control’s efforts do not always deter relic hunters from removing his urban wall pieces and seeking to flog them as original Banksy works. If there was a legal dispute in this country regarding Hirst’s or Science Ltd’s right to deny the authenticity of the Simpsons’ iteration of Bombay Mix, it is hard to see how an English court would not side with Hirst against the Simpsons. A more challenging question is whether Hirst or Science Ltd would have a right to demand the delivery and destruction of the Simpsons’ iteration should this be pursued. Clearly, the Simpsons own the piece of wallpaper on which Hirst originally executed Bombay Mix. However, Hirst might have a claim that the unauthorised removal of the work from its original wall and its mounting on an aluminium board constitutes an infringement of his moral right as an artist to object to ‘the derogatory treatment’ of his work – the so-called integrity right – and that the Simpsons’ attempt to offer it for sale as an ‘original’ Hirst artwork amounts to a ‘false attribution’ of authorship. If Hirst were to bring such a claim, it would pose novel questions for the court: the court would have to consider what is Hirst’s ‘work’ in order to evaluate his claim. Who knows where this might lead?

September 2014

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The water that birds do not drink 91

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané The Brazil-based artist’s diverse body of work brings together radical anthropology, warped reweavings of the modernist grid and a fascination with the stick-insect family in an elegant assault on the nature/culture divide by Chris Sharp

Writing about the work of the Rio de Janeiro-based Catalan artist importantly nature/culture à la Bruno Latour – that have governed Daniel Steegmann Mangrané feels like it has as much to do with society since the onset of modernity no longer apply. Steegmann confronting a series of philosophical propositions as it does with Mangrané wilfully mingles this particular decolonisation of thought grappling with his production as an artist. This is not to say that his with a short but radical essay by the French intellectual Roger very considered and delicate output – which comprises drawings, Caillois, ‘Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia’ (1935). In this text, paintings, sculptures, films, installations and interventions – even or the former partner-in-crime of Georges Bataille and cofounder of especially on a formal level, is by any means negligible. It just means the Collège de Sociologie basically contends that the mimetic functhat in order to begin properly to apprehend it, one is obliged to tion of certain insects and animals is not, as is popularly believed, engage with the densely structured armature upon which it is theo- an evolutionary passive-defence mechanism, but rather evidence of retically and finely plaited. Such a way of working is not without a a will to dissolve into the environment. Not so far from one another number of more-or-less recent historical precedents, ranging from as one might initially think, these two modes of thought speak to an the likes of, say, Robert Smithson to (most significantly) the lesser- impulse to imbricate, to intertwine, to become part of, as opposed known but increasingly celebrated to separate, isolate, divide and subdiFor this artist, Amerindian cosmology Chilean-born, longtime New Yorkvide, categorise, so on and so forth. based artist Juan Downey (1940–93). offers a way out of the cul-de-sac of post- (This is a will that, incidentally, finds Indeed, for all their many differEnlightenment dualities and cloistering a historical and theoretical counterences, a few crucial similarities exist part, if not precedent, in Downey’s cybernetic preoccupation with feedback that registered in a number between Downey and Steegmann Mangrané. To wit: where Downey was programmatically influenced by of aesthetic modes, including kinetic sculpture, video and architeccybernetics and its corresponding preoccupation with feedback, ture, as a means of entering into a symbiotic relationship of mutual Steegmann Mangrané is influenced by the philosophy of the increas- transformation with the world. In the case of both artists, Amerindian ingly influential Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de cosmology – by way of the Yanomami tribe for Downey, and Viveiros Castro. Herewith my attempt to summarise at least one of the essen- de Castro for Steegmann Mangrané – offers a way out of the cul-detial features of this radical thinker’s thought: in addition to the idea sac of post-Enlightenment dualities and cloistering.) This could be why nets, weaves, meshes and grids figure so promand catchphrase ‘decolonising thought’, Viveiros de Castro is known for his notion of multinaturalist perspectivism, which is predicated inently in Steegmann Mangrané’s formal vocabulary. I am thinking on the Amerindian belief that everything is human or animistic or, of everything from his penchant for cutting and reweaving images in his own words, characterised by a ‘spiritual unity and a corporeal of fruit and baskets to his solo presentation Morfogenesis – Cripsis diversity’, and that consequently many of the dualities and separa- at Mendes Wood’s stand at Frieze Focus in London during 2013. tions – such as subject/object, immanence/transcendence and most This last, an eminently discreet installation, consisted of three

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Masks (detail), 2012, plant leaves, gold leaf, dimensions variable

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multicoloured wall drawings with so-called organic elements mixed However, the naturalistic environment is gradually replaced by into them, such that they became sculptural. (As if in keeping with an ostensibly human-made, geometric landscape fashioned from his vested interest in porosity, a common impulse amid Steegmann cuts and folds on white boarding. Initially contrasted with such an Mangrané’s work is to confound traditional ontologies of the two and ‘unnatural’ setting, the now conspicuous phasmid seems to forfeit its three dimensional.) One drawing, for instance, consisted of a pattern mimetic quality, but as the film proceeds, a different mimetic quality or mesh whose primary constitutive element was also its point of begins to emerge: the geometry of the insect’s anatomy blends in with departure: a small twig. Replicated in ink and graphite like a motif the hard, dark angles of the cuts on the white ground. Significantly, on the wall in a gridlike pattern, the twig itself was also placed on the the last segment of the film, which is the only time the camera moves, wall, as if seeking to blend in. Meanwhile, another drawing consisted consists of a pan away from the small, table-size set we have just been of open mesh fashioned out of blue and yellow ink, upon which could watching to the window of the artist’s studio and then down below be found a green phasmid (a mimetic insect whose anatomy is evoca- the table to the so-called natural materials (bark, dirt, etc) of the first tive of a twig or branch), as if also (presumably) seeking to blend in. part of the film. Bordering on allegory (artist’s studio as crucible), the In both cases, distinctions between film enacts a subtle sleight of hand An ongoing engagement and morphowherein the nature/culture divide is ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ feel patently ridiculous – especially in the case of shuffled out of coherence, as if from a logical perversion of the modernist grid the twig, which, despite the rigour deck of well-ordered cards. meanders in and out of the artist’s work and processual logic of the drawing, Among the many motifs that gracefully freefalls into something that resembles a paradox, but this film foregrounds and which meander in and out of Steegmann tends more towards aporia by virtue of the dichotomous collapse it Mangrané’s work is an ongoing engagement and morphological perversion of the modernist grid (present also in those meshes, nets, carries out. Perhaps the most pointed critique, or rather challenge to the dual- etc) – as if the grid, or some distant ancestor or descendant of the istic post-Enlightenment categories mentioned above, comes in the grid, were somehow embedded in the film the way faces or figures 16mm film Phasmides (2012). This 22-minute work revolves largely might be embedded in passing clouds. This perversion of the straight around Steegmann Mangrané’s preferred entomological figure, the modernist grid can be seen in the central floor piece of his recent exhiphasmid. Consisting all but exclusively of fixed shots, it begins with bition at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City, which comes from his a series of images of what looks like a loamy forest floor, in which Systemic Grids series (2013–). The diptych consists of two groupings of nothing happens. The footage soon shifts to an enclosed landscape laser-cut steel plates upon which one can walk. If the operative referoverlaid with a sparse bramble of twigs in which the phasmid vari- ence here is Carl Andre, this is not for superficial reasons. For unlike Andre’s floor sculptures, which are fashioned ously appears and disappears (transforming this Phasmides, 2012, 16mm film transferred from the strictly impersonal logic of the grid, part of the film into a spot-the-phasmid exercise). to HD video, colour, mute, 22 min 41 sec

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Morfogenesis – Cripsis (detail), 2013, watercolour wall drawings, wood stick, stick insect

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U and Quebreira, both 2013 (installation view, Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre), steel modular structure, primer and watercolour, fibreglass sticks, magnets; and single-channel sound installation, monitor, 23 min 8 sec

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Steegmann Mangrané’s are drawn, cut and organised according to a logic that not only defies the grid, but even immediate human understanding (although this particular perversion of the grid evolved from a drawing featured in the Morfogenesis – Cripsis presentation mentioned above), transforming it into something if not more natural, then less inclined to impose order at the expense of the natural, while casting doubt upon what we traditionally assume to be natural. It is for these reasons that Steegmann Mangrané could be considered a kind of unorthodox formalist who explodes the idea of formalism from the inside out, exploring to what extent the notion of autonomy that has been known to historically attend it is a myth. I am thinking, for example, of the sculptural element of his contribution to last year’s Mercosul Biennial, U and Quebreira (both 2013). At first glance, this skeletal, modular sculpture might seem like some charming riff on Modernism, but its elaborate structure is linked to the paths designated for labourers near an oil-drilling platform in southern Brazil. The primary structure, which consists of six partial U-forms connected end-over-end with the logic of, say, a Sol LeWitt, and which corresponds to the paths, are variously connected by three wires with magnets at the end, which correspond to the shortcuts between paths created by workers. Here again, ideas of the, say, ‘unnatural’, of the fabricated, collide and interweave with the ‘natural’– which in our arguably poor, dualistic understanding of the world, translate to ‘inorganic’ and ‘organic’, as if one were somehow more human than the other, while both methods, Steegmann Mangrané deftly demonstrates, are perfectly human, and what is more, reciprocally illuminate the respective humanity of each other. Interestingly, another red thread that runs throughout Steegmann Mangrané’s practice is its essentially graphic character. When they aren’t literally made of graphite, his works replicate or depart from some graphic principle in one way or another, by which I mean, his practice is intimately linked to drawing. What is more, that graphic principle is often procedural. Indeed, a handful of works bring to

mind one of the quintessentially proto-procedural statements, La Monte Young’s compositional injunction: ‘Draw a straight line and follow it’. Consider for example Equal (Cut) from 2008. Featured at São Paulo artist-run space Ateliê 397, this simple intervention consisted of making a straight, unwavering cut in the gallery’s concrete floor, two cm wide and eight cm deep, that ran the length of the space from the door. The incision was then filled with dirt and weedlike plants, which were allowed to grow throughout the course of the show. This procedure is all but inverted in the 16mm film entitled 16 mm (2009–11). Here a straight line, so to speak, is imposed upon nature. For this work, which was shot in the southwestern Brazilian rainforest in the Mata Atlântica, a modified 16mm camera slowly travels along a zip line through the jungle filming 60.96m – the exact length of a standard roll of 16mm film. Reminiscent of structural filmmaking, this work is produced by a perfect synthesis between form, content and procedure, in which a straight line is arbitrarily imposed upon a landscape, which is at once structured by and totally indifferent to it. Indeed, akin to Equal (Cut), it carries out a (symbolic) incision upon the forest, yet this time without modifying it. Curiously, after considering all this work (and there is much more to consider), Steegmann Mangrané’s almost pathological, albeit elegant preoccupation with the formal history of Modernism becomes pretty clear. Yet I think it is obvious at this point that that preoccupation is anything but fetishistic. If these forms and procedures play such a dominant role in his formal vocabulary, it is because they could be said to represent the apex of a form of thinking, and a thinking through form, which is predicated on, as far as he is concerned, the arbitrary and ultimately illusory division and opposition between nature and culture. ar Daniel Steegmann Mangrané has solo exhibitions at CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, from 19 October through 18 January, and at Esther Schipper, Berlin, from 30 April through 5 June 2015, and his work is included in the exhibition for the annual Prêmio PIPA prize at Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, from 6 September through 16 November

Equal (Cut), 2008 (installation view, Ateliê 397, São Paulo), cut in the ground, soil, time, wild plants all images Courtesy Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo

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Art, Urbanism, Modernism, Power… How the successes and failures, myths and realities of Brazilian urbanism have come to shape the discourse of so much of its contemporary art by Claire Rigby

Police officers, firefighters and doctors working to rescue victims, Gameleira, Belo Horizonte, 4 February 1971. Photo: © Archive Jornal Estado de Minas/O Cruzeiro

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Brick, stone, asphalt, gravel; wood, steel, copper, glass; 446,818,460 of disused buildings in the city. It’s in the work of Marcelo Cidade and tons of concrete, 74,110 tons of plastic; 11,822,000 fragile bodies, André Komatsu, in their 2011 collaborative show, The Natural Order 11,822,000 souls. Some of the ingredients that make up the city of São of Things, in which breezeblocks mass on tiny wheels, haphazardly, Paulo, according – with the exception of the human beings – to statis- around a wordless street sign and the debris of a strange building tics listed in an installation by the Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui site, including neat heaps of sand and sugar, coffee and soil. at the 2006 São Paulo Bienal (Construction Materials, City of São Paulo, And it’s there, large as life, in the work of the Mexican artist 2006). How those elements come together to create the urban land- Héctor Zamora, who lives in São Paulo. In Inconstância Material scape, where they belong and what happens when they clash are (Material Inconstancy, 2012), Zamora brought a crew of construction some of the problems addressed in the recent work of a number of workers into São Paulo’s Luciana Brito Galeria to perform a kind artists living and working in Brazil. They look past the monumental of bricklayers’ ballet, in which they tossed hundreds of clay bricks and the utopic to reveal the joins, the hard labour, the human error from hand to hand along a human chain, as is done every day on and the human cost beneath the polished facade of modern architec- building sites. Calling out a random selection of words and phrases ture and of the cities we live in – and of Brazilian Modernism, with from ‘Gigante’ (‘Giant’, 2012), a poem created for the artwork by the artist Nuno Ramos, the men worked its promise of ‘a singular and utopian future’, in the words of the Brazilian In art, the drama of clashing urban forces in a spectacle of speed, dexterity, curator Moacir dos Anjos, ‘which we human error and dust, missed bricks reverberates in works that now know will never come’. smashing to the ground as others address architecture’s monumentalism In Brazil, the urban struggle is piled up to form hurried, improvised structures. played out in the public–private axis: in local planning policy and in the dubious influence wielded by “I wanted the piece to leave my hands, and to let them take control powerful construction companies, whose bottom-line requirements of the work,” says Zamora. Having the words to call out to one another are the basis of the kind of blunt, blocky, hard-to-live-inside urbanism as they heaved the bricks between them helped the builders relax in that shapes many a city in the Latin American country. It takes place the unusual environment of the gallery, he says, adding a playfulness on the peripheries of every major city and in some cases inside them, that gave rise to organically emerging songs, chants and words, until in the form of favelas and mass land occupations. It’s at the heart of Ramos’s words began to melt into the improvised babel. “The brickthe dozens of major building occupations that have sprung up in layers became the protagonists, the stars of the show,” says Zamora. downtown São Paulo in the past year, in a current emerging from the “The work was a way to create a circuit in which they were visible, Landless Workers’ Movement and socialist political groups of the recognised, laughing as the bricks flew between them – it was a way 1980s and 90s, and in some cases spurred by artist collectives. The to break the myth of architecture as untouchable.” latter include Casa Amarela, a beautiful abandoned mansion on Rua It’s difficult to even think about architecture in Brazil without da Consolação that was occupied in February and is run as a shared the figure of Oscar Niemeyer, and the modernist moment he epitworkshop, art and performance space; and Ouvidor 63, a 13-storey omises, instantly looming large. The architect, who died in 2012, building downtown that was broken into and squatted by a collec- was one of the prime movers in the creation of Brazil’s urban landscape, most famously in the form of Brasília, a futuristic delirium tive of musicians and artists in May. The struggle is discernible more viscerally, in flesh, blood and and the country’s capital city, designed in conjunction with Lúcio broken bones, and in the lives lost in the eternal imperative to construct. Costa and constructed from scratch on the vast savannah in just five It’s there in the hastily erected flyover, part of the new infrastructure years (1955–60). An exhibition held from June to July at Itaú Cultural, accompanying the renovated World a major institution on São Paulo’s Cup stadium in Belo Horizonte, that Avenida Paulista, paid homage to It’s difficult to think about architecture suddenly collapsed midway through Niemeyer’s unique, lyrical genius. In in Brazil without the figure of the tournament, killing two drivers Oscar Niemeyer: Clássicos e Inéditos, a 16Oscar Niemeyer instantly looming large metre-long roll of paper bears sketch and injuring 22 people. And it’s there in the eight workers killed in onsite after elegant sketch of the astonishing accidents during the construction of the World Cup stadiums. buildings that form his legacy, which he drew as he spoke during In art, the drama of clashing urban forces reverberates in works the filming of Oscar Niemeyer: O Filho das Estrelas (Son of the Stars), a 2001 that address architecture’s monumentalism and apparent neutrality, documentary about his life and work. The film was also on display at peeling it back to ask questions about how cities are made and how the exhibition, along with more drawings, a handful of scale models they are sustained; about who does the work, who reaps the profit and 51 sets of plans for projects that never left the drawing board. and who pays the price. It resonates in the work of the contempoIn a simultaneous exhibition at Pivô, a not-for-profit gallery down rary art collective Bijari, in its urban interventions and happenings the hill in São Paulo’s Centro, the artist Lais Myrrha has spent the past – in its viral Gentrificado poster (2007), for example, which pasted the year working on another project in which Niemeyer’s work looms word ‘Gentrified’ onto the walls of dozens of occupied buildings in large, to very different effect. Opening two days after the Itaú show, downtown São Paulo, or projected it onto their facades. It’s in Clara Myrrha’s Projeto Gameleira 1971 (2014) takes as its point of departure the Ianni’s Black Flag (2010), also in São Paulo, in which she draped a black story of Brazil’s worst civil-engineering disaster, in which a monuflag, a symbol of death and mourning, over the entrance to a beau- mental building designed by Niemeyer, destined to become part of tiful antique building in the city centre that had remained empty a cultural complex in Gameleira, a district in Myrrha’s home city except for sporadic use for many years, questioning the vast number of Belo Horizonte, collapsed while still under construction, killing

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more than 100 construction workers with the implacable force of and about the devastating, unmarked absence of the people who 10,000 tons of concrete. According to press reports and contemporary lost their lives at Gameleira; and the chronic invisibility – the poweraccounts, the governor of the state of Minas Gerais, Israel Pinheiro, lessness – of all the people who build our cities from the ground up, was keen that the complex be inaugurated during his soon-to-end with their hands. term in office, and the work was proceeding at an accelerated pace. Projeto Gameleira 1971 ‘seeks to undo social amnesia… regarding Myrrha’s installation takes the form of an immense, reimag- occurrences of undeniable importance,’ writes Moacir dos Anjos in ined architectural model of the crumpled construction site, based the notes for the exhibition, ‘which in most cases involve the impoon one of the few photographs available of the scene of the disaster. sition of damages on individuals or groups who do not possess the Visitors are confronted with the horrible geometry of the fallen material and symbolic means to make their losses a public fact’. concrete beams, realistically rendered in painted plasterboard on The third and final element in Myrrha’s installation is a tall stack wooden frames, and invited to walk across the model via a stretch of posters bearing the photograph of the Gameleira collapse, set of scaffolding placed over the top of alongside the offset plate used to print it, staring into a clatter of fallen slabs, them, fading slowly, inexorably as The accident, which took place the exhibition wears on – the image absorbing the scale of the catastrophe during the military dictatorship, was on the delicate plate, according to the with an almost physical pang. rapidly forgotten and is almost printer, lasts only a matter of months. Leaving the model, visitors are faced with a wall lettered with the But the stack of posters invites visitors completely unknown in Brazil today names of the 117 workers known to to take one away with them when they have perished, a component of Projeto Gameleira 1971 titled In Memory go. “Taking a poster confers a certain responsibility to keep it,” says of the Silence of the Architect. The title refers to the fact that Niemeyer Myrrha, “maybe to display it and perhaps even” – the poster bears never publicly spoke of the disaster, not even to defend the project’s nothing but a photograph of the little-known historic scene – “to engineer, Joaquim Cardozo, who took the brunt of the blame. It have to explain it to others. We, ourselves, are an archive.” relates too, obliquely, to the scandalous, not unrelated fact that the Myrrha is not alone in having engaged with elements of accident, which took place in 1971, during the military dictator- Niemeyer’s own history, and with that of the hundreds of thousands ship, was rapidly forgotten by the population at large, and is almost of workers who make his and other architects’ legacies manifest. Clara completely unknown in Brazil today, except in architectural facul- Ianni has frequently addressed questions of urbanism and of labour in her work. In the 2013 video Forma Livre (Brasília) (Free Form (Brasília), ties, and in the homes and hearts of those directly affected. “The accident stayed in the media for a month or so,” Myrrha says. 2013), vintage images of Brasília phase in and out as Niemeyer is heard “Particularly in Minas Gerais; but then it more or less disappeared. speaking in an interview made for the documentary Conterrâneos Velhos It doesn’t appear in Niemeyer’s biography, not even as a footnote.” de Guerra (1991), about the so-called candangos, who came from all over Indeed, despite the best efforts of more than one doctoral research Brazil to build the new city. Questioned during the interview about student, the blueprints for the project are also apparently nowhere a massacre of striking workers that took place in Brasília in 1959, at to be found. Disappeared like the rubble of the disaster, gathered up the Pacheco Fernandes Dantas workers’ encampment, Niemeyer and disposed of, the project quietly aborted. The Expominas conven- denies all knowledge of it, irritably and repeatedly. “I’ve never heard tion centre, scene of Belo Horizonte’s World Cup FIFA Fan Fest, now of it,” he says. “You can’t ask me about things I know nothing about.” But the massacre has been discussed extensively by the left, says the stands on the site of the disaster. The accident’s eradication from Brazilian history makes the interviewer. “Ask me a generic question,” says the lifelong communist. tragedy, newly revealed by Myrrha’s artwork, feel like fresh, urgent “Ask if I’m in favour of strikes. I’m in favour of each and every strike.” news, materialising to break through The plight of the workers who the silence more than 40 years on. executed Modernism’s utopian visions “Imperfection and human error are Myrrha has received emails from at is also addressed in a site-specific work important aspects of creation. least one member of the families of from 2010 by Clarissa Tossin. The They’re in everything… They symbolise Brazilian artist, who is based in Los those who died at Gameleira, expressing gratitude to her for making Angeles, staged Monument to Sacolândia, the natural, the organic and the true” the accident public again. But not materialising the memory of a favela everyone, apparently, feels the same way. In a statement published inhabited by workers on the immense project to build Brasília. In on the Institute of Brazilian Architects website, the Itaú Cultural contrast with the elegant palaces of government their labour was crysexhibition curator, Lauro Cavalcanti, and its designer, Pedro Mendes tallising in concrete, the workers’ homes at the Sacolândia (‘Bagland’) da Rocha, launched a coldly fierce attack on Myrrha, accusing her of shantytown were made of leftover cement bags, ripped open and hung opportunism and of exploiting the dead to create her artwork. to form paper-thin, almost notional walls. The site was flooded in In a response published on Pivô’s site, Myrrha writes that she 1959 to form Brasília’s Lake Paranoá; and it was on the lake that Tossin has made no suggestion nor believes that blame for the accident lay launched her Monument: a large-scale raft made from cement bags over either with Niemeyer, who was living in France at the time, or with wood and Styrofoam, with the brightly coloured bags tracing out the Cardozo. “I find the architect’s lifelong silence about the disaster un- shape of the Palácio da Alvorada, the first government structure in the pardonable,” she says. “Nevertheless, the work is not about Niemeyer new city, inaugurated in 1958, and the official residence of every presiper se. It’s about the way what ends up being inscribed on our collec- dent since then. In Monument to Sacolândia, the palace gardens become tive memory comes down again and again to power.” It’s about silence, the verdant backdrop to the cement-bag palace.

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ArtReview

top Héctor Zamora, Inconstância Material, 2012, performance with 20 bricklayers and 1,600 bricks at Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo. Photo: Caio Caruso. Courtesy the artist and Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo

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centre and above Lais Myrrha, Projeto Gameleira 1971, 2014. Courtesy Pivô, São Paulo

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“Favelas are constructed by exactly the same people who have built the cities their communities surround,” says Héctor Zamora. “There’s nothing inherently inadequate about the informal architecture they use.” In a homage to the technology and skills existing on the periphery of cities in Latin America and beyond, Zamora grafted Paracaidista [Squatter] Av. Revolución 1608 bis (2004), an immense shantytown structure, onto the side of Mexico City’s sleek Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, swelling up from the street to cling to the museum like an immense rusty organic parasite. “Construction workers are the people who build the walls we live inside, who solve the problem of urbanism on a day-to-day basis,” says Zamora. “Yet they are always hidden, excluded from the circuit of urbanism and of architecture.” Melting away invisibly once their work is done, the builders’ presence is erased by the spurious perfection of the buildings they create, their innards and origins concealed under slick, polished finishes. But the frayed edges, improvisation and brutal honesty of informal architecture, says Zamora, are just as worthy of our

admiration. “Imperfection and human error are important aspects of creation. They’re in everything,” he says. “They symbolise the natural, the organic and the true, generating a poetics, an aesthetic. The progressivist, capitalist system likes to talk about progress as if everything must only go forward, infinitely climbing and rising, but it takes no account of the way things grow, curve, fall and follow natural cycles.” Modernism, heavily involved in the circuit of progressivism, has been guilty of the same ideological omission, he says. “Everything about it responded to the linear narrative of progress, and of providing solutions to capital’s demands. Its ideals weren’t the absolute, unique truths they seemed to be at the time, and that’s why Modernism has been so compelling as a subject for reflection in Brazil. Human error has no place in the politics of progress,” he says, “but the truth is, that’s a lie.” ar Héctor Zamora and Lais Myrrha are featured in the group exhibition Taipa-Tapume, at Galeria Leme, São Paulo, 28 August – 4 October

Clara Ianni, Forma Livre (Brasília), 2013, video installation. Courtesy Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo

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Héctor Zamora, Paracaidista Av. Revolución 1608 bis, 2004. Courtesy the artist; Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo; and Labor, Mexico City

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Arto Lindsay The American musician and artist discusses how he was drawn into the world of blocos afros, carnavalescos and Bahian carnival in general, and into a collaboration with Matthew Barney along the way Interview by Tobi Maier

September 2014

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In 1978, American-born guitarist Arto Lindsay cofounded the band DNA, which remains very influential within the noise-music scene; he went on to play as part of the Lounge Lizards and the Golden Palominos, formed Ambitious Lovers, produced tracks for Caetano Veloso, Marisa Monte, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne, and collaborated with many other musicians. As it is in a band, collaboration seems key to his work in the context of art – ‘parade projects’, such as De Lama Lâmina (2004, with Matthew Barney) during the carnival in Bahia, I Am a Man (Portikus, Frankfurt, 2008), Multinatural (Blackout) (Venice Biennale, 2009), The Penny Parade (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2009), Somewhere I Read (Performa, New York, 2009) and Paper Rain (Art Basel Hong Kong, 2013), as well as his performance contribution to last year’s 33rd Panorama da Arte Brasileira in São Paulo. The main character of De Lama Lâmina is the Greenman. In the parade, roots extended from his mouth and anus (in the filmed version, they eventually bloom). The Greenman is a ‘largemachinery fetishist’ and rode in a tinted-glass compartment mounted under the logging truck. As the truck drove, he masturbated continuously against the drive shaft, climaxing multiple times. In the film he interacts with an animatronic golden lion tamarin (an endangered monkey native to the area whose faeces is used in the production of some antibiotics), using its excrement to lubricate the drive shaft. Artreview There has been a long tradition of parades by artists – one thinks of Dadaists, Futurists and Constructivists, for example – but how did you become interested in using this medium? Arto LiNDsAy When I started to make parades as a kind of performance, I figured that artists had already made parades – like the way that I started playing guitar assuming that other people had already done something similar, assuming there were free jazz guitarists out there somewhere without knowing anything about them. But the direct inspiration for my parades came from carnival in Brazil. While living in New York and working regularly in Brazil as a record producer, I started to go to carnival in Bahia every year, and I became really involved with several different carnival groups and ended up working on parades and producing records for several of the blocos afros [Afro-rooted carnival groups]. I also became interested in the history of carnival in Bahia. Eventually I conceived a parade there with Matthew Barney, in 2004. We had no trouble inserting our avant-garde noisy style of performances into the entertainment and traditional context of carnival. I worked as a director with a group called Cortejo Afro run by Alberto Pitta. A small group of us were doing all the work,

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making it happen. That was my real hands-on training. His group is an interesting combination of a traditional afoxé, a carnival group that is connected to a terreiro, or Candomblé temple [Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion that originated during the nineteenth century and incorporates a mixture of various traditional African beliefs with some aspects of Catholicism], and has an open, innovative approach. Pitta himself is an artist. The roots of the Black Bahian carnival are the afoxés. These are profane manifestations of the Candomblé temples. The afoxés were a local neighbourhood tradition, and these blocos afros grew from them. They were formed as a direct result of segregation. Black people were not allowed to join existing carnival groups, so they started their own. The liberation movements in Africa, the civil rights movements in America and the black power and negritude

Novelty is part of the charm of carnival, carnival is about memory and nostalgia as well as about innovation. My music is noisy, spiky, abrasive, but it’s also very rhythmic, so it was not difficult for me to communicate with the musicians at all. I was accepted. The Bahian audiences are sort of like CBGB audiences: they talk back movements from the 1960s inspired them. Pitta’s group was founded as a bloco afro, very self-consciously African influenced. Ar How did you develop your connection with Brazil and when did you start travelling to Bahia? AL I spent carnival in Salvador from the early 1990s till 2005 or 2006. I lived in Salvador between 2004 and 2008, having moved there after the De Lama Lâmina parade. As I began to grasp some ideas of the history of the carnival in Bahia and in Rio, I realised that it’s the carnavalescos, the people who are hired by the samba schools in Rio, who design the parade. The school chooses a theme, a song is selected and then it’s the carnavalesco’s job to visualise that. He works with costume designers, he divides the parades into the different allegorical groups that symbolise the various aspects of the theme, he works with the designers who build the floats and the

ArtReview

comissão de frente that open the parade. That’s in Rio. In Bahia it’s not quite so formalised, but there are key figures, like Pitta, Vovô, who is the head of Ilê Aiyê, and João Jorge, who runs Olodum. Even though they don’t act as carnavalescos, they conduct the carnival. And all of them are connected to a terreiro. I began to see these guys as real artists, in the same way as opera or movie directors, because they control so many aspects of this incredible experience – music, dancing, narrative – and it’s all so visual. When you parade for four or five hours, it’s a transformative experience, it’s ritualistic in the broadest sense of the term. You come out differently on the other side. I wanted to bring this into the artworld, to bring it into the critical sphere of the artworld. At a certain point during the 1990s – roughly when I started going to the carnival in Bahia – I also stepped out of the music world, at least socially, because I was tired of the conversations around music and I was drawn to art. Art criticism was mixed with philosophy; people took discussions more seriously. And I wanted to bring this loose but information-packed experience of a carnival parade into an art context, and have art people look at it and therefore transform it within another context. Ar How was your own musical history perceived during these carnival collaborations? AL My music was perceived as a novelty, but novelty is part of the charm of carnival, carnival is about memory and nostalgia as well as about innovation. My music is noisy, spiky, abrasive, but it’s also very rhythmic, so it was not difficult for me to communicate with the musicians at all. I was accepted. The Bahian audiences are sort of like the CBGB audiences: they talk back. They were ready for me. Matthew and I were both insiders and outsiders. We had a big samba group playing with my own band, we had songs that people could sing along with as well as throwing in a lot of stranger musical elements. It was not a completely foreign body – just a new wrinkle on a tradition in constant change. And people trying to outdo each other. Remember that the samba reggae rhythm itself that Olodum formalised was adopted by Paul Simon, who then played it all over the world; Michael Jackson did a video there. So there is a history of outsiders getting involved. Ar Documentary footage of De Lama Lâmina was later turned into a 35mm film that depicts your trio elétrico, a parade car designed by Barney and integrating the Cortejo Afro percussion group and dancers, as well as other guest percussionists and carnival singers. Next to the trio a lone figure was balancing on top of a tree – the American ecological

this page, both images Bloco Cortejo Afro, Salvador, Bahia, 28 February 2014. Photo: Rosilda Cruz/SecultBA opening pages Matthew Barney with Arto Lindsay, De Lama Lâmina (2004), performance documentation. Photo: Chris Winget. © Matthew Barney. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York & Brussels

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activist Julia Butterfly Hill. A Greenman, who performed near the mechanical shaft of the cart, accompanied her and the trio. Can you tell me how you came to the collaboration with Barney and how the work was conceived and unfolded? What was the reason for its ecological theme? AL Matthew and I had been talking about collaborating for a while. We had considered and discarded some ideas. He had already done a parade at the Boijmans Van Beuningen [Rotterdam], in 1995, which was based on the first instalment [number four in the numerical sequence] of The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002). And I was involved in Bahia. At some point it struck us that a parade was a perfect way to work together. He came to Bahia and we started to plan a parade. I introduced Matthew into the Candomblé cosmology. He was interested in men and machines, and, being in Brazil, in ecology. He became attracted to Ogum, a Candomblé deity who is the blacksmith, the god of machinery, the god of weapons. Like much in Candomblé, iron is an ambiguous element; you can construct with it but you can also make destructive weapons out of it. Another reference was Osain, the god of plants and the forest. We talked about all this with Alberto Pitta. Matthew designed the car and the costumes, and brought in the idea of inviting Julia Butterfly. First he wanted to get one of those monster cars with the huge wheels. Then he came across a mining machine with huge claws to dig its way through the earth and ended up using that. Matthew had the idea to combine the machines with vegetation and with people – we had a guy underneath the truck, trying to have sex with the drive shaft. I wanted to have four separate sound cars surrounding the participants in order to have the sound coming from several sources. Loud but less distorted. The street however was too narrow for the vehicles, and so in the end we stretched the sound out and had the sound cars in a long row so music could hop back and forth between the front and rear of the parade. So: a sound car in front, then the big mining vehicle,

then a truck carrying a shipping container covered with mud that the musicians were on, then the 30 percussionists and another sound car in the back. The dancers moved around, between and behind the vehicles. I wrote songs for the band to play in the parade, and we repeated them so the audience could learn them and sing along. One of the things I am proudest of is that the musicians on the truck and the musicians on the street played in time together. We rehearsed with the drummers and found that they would play a particular rhythm at a particular tempo, and we adjust to them. Those of us on top of the truck blasted the drum machine and the voice directly at the percussion. A conductor standing at the back of the truck conveyed cues… it worked. This was a first in Bahian carnival, and no one has managed it since. On the street, bloco afro play slow so people get sexy. If you play fast, people will get rowdy and eventually violent. Bloco afro tempo is about dignity, adult sexuality and display. Ar I am interested in this kind of hypostasis, or the shared existence of spiritual or corporeal entities, and how theatre expands into public space. References that come to mind when we are talking about parades and processions include Bertolt Brecht’s plays. What role

Arto Lindsay, Parada Pedra, 2013. Photo: Ricardo Amado. Courtesy Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo

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has theatre played in your education, and how does it serve as a template for the parades? AL A parade is a public event, the parade form precedes all this theory and discourse about public space. You know what to do when you see a parade, every child knows what to do, you clap, you dance to the music, you watch all the weird or beautiful or impressive go by. And in Brazil, of course, we are well schooled in carnival and people are ready to cut loose. Carnival is an extreme experience, or at least it represents extreme experience, and people are willing to accept strange new things. So you see carnival is not exactly collective euphoria. It’s a collective experience that allows for euphoria, and wonder and even boredom. Doing something – be it doing a dance move or singing a song or just walking – with a large crowd of people is both an intense pleasure and a chance for reflection. When I started making music I was reading a bit of Brecht and I was enamoured of the avantgarde theatre in New York. I had studied theatre in college, and performed Caliban in a play where director Ward Shelley, now a New York artist, combined Shakespeare’s The Tempest with J.G. Ballard’s novel The Drought. That was in 1972 or ’73 in Florida. When DNA started I had these ideas about alienation, about not wanting to play a particular role in order to act as a rock musician. I wanted to be able to step in and out of the role. Getting overly expressionistic in one song and then being flat, being direct with the audience and then ignoring them, switching between a male and a female voice: ideas that came from theatre. And I was excited by Chris Burden and Vito Acconci’s confrontational performances, and by Yvonne Rainer’s ideas. I had seen Grand Union [the dance group originated by Rainer] while in college and that was super-impressive, all these great choreographers improvising, just amazing. I saw a lot of Richard Foreman’s work. Obviously when you make a parade you can see it like theatre or like a movie, a succession of scenes. Or you can also loosen up your metaphor and see it like a book, each group in a parade being a different chapter. Or like a song. ar

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Culture and Vultures They do things differently in the northeast of Brazil by Oliver Basciano

above Armando Queiroz, Urubu-Rei, 2009, video, 9 min 32 sec. Courtesy the artist facing page Berna Reale, Palomo, 2012, performance. Photo: Victor Reale. Courtesy the artist; Galeria Millan, São Paulo; and Gallery Nosco / Frameless, London

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The thing with vultures is that they only prey on the wounded or the objectified body, Queiroz explains that he sees the masked vulturedead. It’s no accident that the collective noun for them is ‘wake’. In feeding figure in his work as emblematic of the kingpins of the viruBelém, a city that sits at the entrance of the Amazon in the northeast lent local drug trade. In general, however, both artists’ works feed off of Brazil, I saw such groups of bald, hunched birds picking at fish the proximity of death and violence to everyday life – and the business carcasses in the port. They descend in waves as the fishing boats arrive, that feeds the brutality – in this part of Brazil. the latter fresh from trips up the Amazonian waters, the former ready While the casual visitor isn’t likely to experience anything untoto receive whatever the trawlermen chuck from their haul. ward in the busy, noisy streets of the city centre, statistics tell another You can also see vultures in a work by artist Armando Queiroz. tale. Belém, population 2.1 million, is one of the poorest cities in And they make an appearance in one of Berna Reale’s performances. the country. It is also marred by one of the highest murder rates in Queiroz, who also acts as director of Belém’s main contemporary the world, with a reported 48 homicides per 100,000 people last art centre, the Museu Casa das Onze year. Other cities in the northeast have Wearing an entirely black padded Janelas, captures the birds in his 2009 even worse statistics than this, and video Urubu-Rei. It’s shot in a busy conversely, Reale’s work Palomo (2012) protective outfit, leather shoes draws attention to the state aggression public space by the river. The lush green and gloves, with her hair in a severe that has a symbiotic relationship with of a thick forest of palms is visible on crewcut, the artist adopts the the shore opposite. Queiroz enters the the narco-violence. frame and sits on a chair. He is dressed This performance, staged, like all masculine, aggressive appearance in a black suit and wears a vulture the artist’s work, in the public realm, of one of the many highly militarised saw her ride a painted blood-red horse mask, similar to that of the birdfaced local cops who, clad in body through the streets and out into the commedia dell’arte character, the Plague countryside. Wearing an entirely black Doctor. From a traditional bowl used armour, seem almost cyborgian padded protective outfit, leather shoes by indigenous inhabitants of the Amazonian region for sharing food, Queiroz throws out fish flesh and gloves, with her hair in a severe crewcut, the artist adopts the and guts, to the delight of the birds that flock around him. Reale used masculine, aggressive appearance of one of the many highly militaa similar setting for her performance Quando Todos Calam (2009). The rised local cops who, clad in body armour, seem almost cyborgian. artist lies naked on a white lace-covered table in an area by Belém’s Both Queiroz and Reale’s works are symbol-heavy, theatrical Ver-o-Peso fish market. She is covered in fish flesh, and a series of affairs. Neither is particularly subtle in his or her references to death carefully composed photographs, which document the performance, and ceremony, but then the north of Brazil is not a place where capture the birds mid-swoop against stormy skies, pecking with subtlety comes naturally. The heat is humid, an effect of the physically and culturally ever-present rainforest. The architecture is precision at her horizontal body. Queiroz’s work perhaps relates more exclusively to concerns of laden with ornamentation and a bright, vivid use of colour. The allthe Amazonian region than does Reale’s. So while the viewer can see conquering pop music of tecnobrega – music distributed via cheaply Quando Todos Calam as a straightforward polemic on feminism and the copied CDs by street vendors all over northern cities, but particularly

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Belém – is brash and camp. Even the food is typified by its heaviness – the artist does take photographs or make sculptures to document and strong flavours. Historical narratives wend their way through his trips, but they are usually exhibited (and sometimes made) in the these phenomena. The Brazilian art market and the collections of remote locale itself, with a wider audience often only seeing them the national museums are dominated by work from the modernist through documentation – but can be found in the relationships and period and those working through its legacy, all of which has roots in bonds he forms with and between his lay collaborators. In this case European art history. In the northeast of Brazil, however, there seems the artist’s friendship developed on the back of Rafael’s folkloric tales to be a culture of some resistance to these prevailing trends, mani- of a ‘burning woman’ and the spaceships that he claimed plagued his fested as a rejection of formalism and abstraction. village. In presenting his project – a performance of sorts that shows Instead, far from the hubris of the gallery system, the artists the artist and his new friend on a stakeout for the fiery figure of myth tend to take cues from both African and indigenous cultural histo- and their building of various ad hoc devices to capture the UFOs – ries. Working with this heritage means that the drug trade is not the through slides and lectures, Sequeira describes these supposed fantasonly source of violence and oppression that haunts artmaking here. A tical visitations as symbolic of the increasing westernisation of the litany of trauma, from slavery to the destruction of the rainforest, over- village. Which in many ways amounts to the fear of contamination by shadows the history of the African and Amerindian people in Brazil. the social problems of the outside world. It’s a beautiful project on the nature of belief and communication, on You get the sense that to be subtle would The north of Brazil is not a place isolation and exposure. be to fiddle while Belém burns. This is an updated version perhaps of what Alienation – social and artistic – in which subtlety comes naturally the twentieth-century poet Oswald de together with a political anger are conAndrade identified in his 1924 Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil as a culture cerns of painters Thiago Martins de Melo and Éder Oliveira. As it is emerging from the ‘wild wilderness’ of Brazil to offer a ‘counter- with Queiroz and Reale, to study Martins de Melo’s work is a workout weight of native originality to neutralize academic conformity’. It’s in semiotics. The São Luís-based artist paints highly detailed, hellish a move that’s also relevant in the current global artworld (and Brazil visions, full of fire and brimstone, and starring a cast of figures from is now a preeminent member of this, even if this particular part of both folk and contemporary culture. For example, in the six-pane oil the country is more often overlooked), in which the production of art on canvas work Kwaku Ananse Revive o Karma do suplício do Bastardo da seems to be increasingly homogenised in terms of outlook and refer- Brancura sob as Botas de Mercadores de Ferro Sujo (2013), the viewer can see ence. To build a local ecosystem, with its own distinct history and Kwaku Ananse, a mythical god originally of Ghanaian fable, represented here in the form of a spider terrorising a group of indigenous frames of reference, seems radically pertinent. Alexandre Sequeira’s interest in exploring local culture extends Amazonians. It’s a disturbing, brilliantly violent image. Yet the artist far into Brazil’s boondocks. Between 2009 and 2010, for example, he would not see these scenes as dystopic in the sense of something that’s came into contact with a young boy called Rafael, whom he met while too bad to actually happen. For him they present the contemporary on one of his frequent solo expeditions into the rainforest. This sort political state of his country, particularly the north. ‘Brazil is a genoof chance meeting, which develops into an artistic collaboration, is cide culture,’ he has said in an interview with curator Gunnar Kvaran, typical in the artist’s practice. Sequeira’s work is located not in objects referring to the construction of the European colonial project of

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above Thiago Martins de Melo, Tupinambás, Léguas e Nagôs guiam a libertação de Pindorama das garras da quimera de Mammón, 2013, oil on canvas, 520 × 360 cm. Courtesy Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo facing page Alexandre Sequeira, Armadilha para discos voadores, from the series Entre Lapinha da Serra e o Mata Capim, 2010. Courtesy the artist

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above Éder Oliveira, Untitled 2 (Blue T-shirt Series), 2013, oil on canvas, 148 × 97 cm. Courtesy the artist facing page Éder Oliveira, Untitled, mural, Belém, 2013. Courtesy the artist

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‘Brazil’. In A Rébis Mestiça Coroa a Escadaria dos Mártires Indigentes (2013), Amerindian blood) stands, arms folded. Oliveira’s work runs in another oil on canvas work, this time almost four metres in height Portinari’s lineage of social realism. There’s a flatness to Oliveira’s and width, we see the violent history reach some sort of denouement, portraits, a broad and uniform paint handling that ensures his figures as the artist constructs a grisly tableau in his lurid palette. In ghastly become almost caricatures. Portinari drew attention to the poor and detail, Martins de Melo depicts the indigenous people of the region their oppression – in O Mestiço the youth is stripped to the waist, with slain by gangs of aggressors ranging from gun-wielding police to rough, farmed fields in the background – reminding his peers in the intellectual elite not to render the rural poor invisible within their workers with chainsaws. If Oliveira’s blocky portraits, painted both on canvas and as brand of utopian Modernism. Likewise Oliveira’s work is a project of murals, seem less sensationalist on the surface – and he is alone remembering a sector of society that continues to be oppressed, be among this group of artists in his rejection of symbolism in favour it in the casual objectification of the young black man as a criminal of realism – then the work exhibits the same level of fury bubbling by the newspaper reports, or in what Oliveira sees as the attitude to people of colour at large in contempounderneath. In his studio, in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bélem, rary Brazilian society. A litany of trauma, from slavery to Oliveira has a table laid out with pages Here we can perhaps turn back to the destruction of the rainforest, from the weekly crime supplement de Andrade and the most famous of overshadows the history of the African his polemics, the Manifesto Antropófago published by the local newspaper. This is his regular source material. (1928). De Andrade asserted that to and Amerindian people in Brazil. The format for the articles is identical: evolve the national identity, artists must You get the sense that to be subtle a large photograph of the suspect, his not ape the Old World, nor avoid it, but would be to fiddle while Belém burns arms cuffed behind his back (and the ‘devour’ it. Queiroz makes direct referexamples I see are mostly male, often ence to this in his video performance topless). A short text, offering no contextualisation or biography of Bebendo Mondrian (2007). In it, the artist can be seen drinking from the person depicted, runs alongside the image, with a few scant, but four glasses, filled respectively with thick black, red, yellow and blue often gruesome, details of their alleged crime. The people photo- liquids, a palette derived from the Dutch painter of the work’s title. graphed in this set format are also invariably black. The artist tells me Yet we can see it in Oliveira too, devouring the media and reclaiming it is pretty much the only time – in a country where over 50 percent of the classical portrait for political use, and in Martins de Melo’s use of the population is not white – that he sees people with a similar skin iconography and tableaux, in the ritualism of Reale’s works and in the colour to him represented in the media. fables evoked by Sequeira. The art of the north is one that is characterHis works – the way the figure fills the frame and their faces stare ised by opposition to the established norms of the dominant cultural blankly out at the viewer – remind me of Cândido Portinari’s portrait narrative – of oppression, of European influence, of the legacy of O Mestiço (1934). In that oil painting, a young labourer of mixed race Modernism, of the Brazilian artistic powerhouses of São Paulo and (the title is an outdated colonial term for someone of European and Rio de Janeiro. It doesn’t ignore those lineages, but spits them out. ar

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Fi Fa Fo Fum This summer, ArtReview asked São Paulo-based Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg to keep a World Cup diary. The works over the following eight pages, titled Fi Fa Fo Fum, are the result Interview by Oliver Basciano

Artreview When we first discussed the project we made reference to your Concomitancia series from the early 1970s. You were one of the early adopters of mail art and these works were sent back to artist colleagues in Latin America and elsewhere from the Devon farmhouse you and half a dozen or so other artists and thinkers had colonised at the time. In a way the missives that we’re publishing here are a reversal of that journey. What sparked your interest in using the postal system? Felipe ehrenberg Well, we had to use the tools we had at hand and the Post Office – the model of all postal systems is England’s of course – was there and allowed us to establish long-distance contact between artists all round the world. Mail art was one of the very interesting effects of art’s rebelling against the status quo of the time – the established art market, whatever it is – but even the people that were targeted to receive some of these things didn’t think about them as art. They were just very pleasantly surprised. So this series, Fi Fa Fo Fum, these letters from Brazil, have the same look and spirit. They are similarly old-fashioned collages. What I tried to do was something that you could not emulate even though we’re now living in the Age of the Image (which I think is now more important than the Age of Writing). You can replicate almost anything

with Photoshop, but these things I don’t think you could.

settle down in Clyst Hydon, a hamlet just north of Exeter. That’s when everything started popping.

Ar How did you come to be in England?

Ar And that was where the Beau Geste Press was initiated?

Fe It was as a consequence of Mexico’s 1968 student rebellion. As it was on the eve of the 1968 Summer Olympics, the government and the army repressed a demonstration in downtown Mexico City. They say only 40 or so people died, others have put the number at two to three hundred. Certainly many people were ‘disappeared’, perhaps even a thousand in the five years after the massacre. I had been involved in the movement, operating an information cell. We would gather information on the rebellion, on the uprising, translate it into five languages and send it abroad clandestinely, through the mail system. When we realised that many of our close friends and associates were being picked up and arrested, my wife and I decided we had to leave the country. Seeking asylum, we arrived in England with our two little children (who are now fifty-two and fifty-one years old) and barely $200 between us. We had to report to the police every week for about a year. My kids are pretty swarthy and they suffered in London for it. We were living in a very down-and-out Islington. Now it’s a very posh area, but at that time it was really down and out. My boy got the shit kicked out of him. So we decided to leave London and

September 2014

Fe Right. I had bought this duplicator in London. I suddenly felt I needed it, because a very close friend of ours had been arrested and sentenced to 14 years in jail for having used a mimeograph in Mexico, allegedly ‘for subversive reasons’, so for me, it was a very dangerous tool. That’s how I got into printing. In London I somehow met the poet Mike Gibbs, who lived in Devon and printed poetry. Through him I met David Mayor, who was taking an MA at Exeter University. At the time, he was studying under Mike Weaver at the American Arts Documentation Centre and that’s how I managed to gather this little group of artists, in the backwaters of Devon, and became part of the Fluxus network. We worked with people all over the globe, Ulises Carrión from Mexico, Claudio Bertoni and Cecilia Vicuña from Chile, Riyoo and Hiroko Koike and Yukio Tsuchiya from Japan, Kristjan Gudmundsson from Iceland… Brits like filmmaker Michael Leggett, writers Allen Fisher and Opal L. Nations, composer Michael Nyman (who now lives in Mexico) and many others. Art is about linking people up… no two ways around it.

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All images courtesy the artist and Baró Galeria, São Paolo

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For Other Forms of Fighting Daniel Lima, a São Paulo-based artist and member of the collectives Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Política do Impossível and CoLaboratório, creates work that combines activism, investigations into urban space and the history of the Afro-Brazilian struggle. ArtReview asked him to mediate on the question of race in Brazilian art by Daniel Lima

above Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Trilogia Zumbi Somos Nós, 2007 facing page Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Monumento Horizontal, 2004 both works Courtesy the artists

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There are three participants. Three fictional characters born out of different perspectives. They are based on voices that exist in the collectives I have been part of, and that still resonate in me. Heteronyms who dialogue and establish elements of the existential kaleidoscope. This is the debate between art, politics and cultural institutions. Frente-3-de-Fevereiro Frente 3 de Fevereiro has had, since its beginning, a central research theme: the race issue. After ten years of work, we have noticed an immense transformation in the questions thrown up by our work. But we continue with the race issue at our core. This has opened a path for movements between several different artistic languages. If this theme is approached in an identitarian form, blocks, imprisonments and dead ends are always present, so we propose forms of questioning that are open to transversal shifts and movements. We sustain, through poetic paths, the question mark about this theme. Política-do-imPossível Political motivation revolves around many causes. Struggles invest themselves in the transformation of the world we live in. A transformation of social, economic and cultural structures that imprison and cut us off from our life potential. It is a constant struggle against forms of self-surveillance, against the Secretaria do Estado de Confinamento [Secretariat for the State of Confinement]. daniel lima But this is also a fight for other forms of fighting. We have created forms of poetic fighting. Political art only exists from the moment in which a work of art has the ability to transform reality. Pdi But the works acting in the sense of conserving ‘things as they are’ are also a form of politics. A conservative form of politics. F3dF

All art is political. All art positions itself

in relation to its context, be it in terms of continuity or disruption. In this sense, the term ‘political art’ is not exactly useful. It is as if there were those who work with politics and those who do not. And that does not exist. Pdi A few models involving political art have political statements as their foundation. And the will to defend such political statements finally kills the poetic potential. For political projects, ambiguity is not interesting, neither are the double meanings or spaces for interpretation. On the contrary, for political programmes, everything works towards reiterating positions. dl Our challenge is to keep a macropolitical position and, at the same time, not to be stuck in the historical moment. This timelessness arises when we institute a questioning that, in the end, is more than a question; it is an opening for interpretations of a fact, an idea or an action.

F3dF Engaged in other systems of the production of knowledge. Pdi Engaged to other systems of the production of meanings. F3dF A production of knowledge that is active and alive. It is the place of the cultural institutions to face the challenge of keeping this force vibrating inside the bell jar. The artists’ given challenge is to understand that what our production agitates is located outside institutional fields. Pdi This is really risky: how to penetrate the institutional web without losing the potency to shift social diagrams? How not to wither inside the crystallised space of the institution? F3dF We negotiate. Negotiation presupposes that we have interests in common. What are they and how can they serve the structuring of resistance?

F3dF In this sense, artistic intervention is always a politics of transformation because it disrupts the given. For example, the intervention in a football stadium. It is an environment that embraces many certainties, where I am blue, or green, and I will defend this colour with all the strength I have. In this environment our actions work as a process of disruption. ‘Where are the black people?’ is a question submerged in the delirium of the affirmation. It is as if we were fleeing from a marked territory. It is an exodus.

dl Many works of artistic intervention explore these limits. They explore the trajectory from negotiation to struggle. They transform institutional conflict in content. They make the institution put their cards on the table and reveal their political position.

Pdi We are smugglers. We bring ‘symbolic material’ from one field to another. This cultural capital is very valuable because institutions cannot produce it due to the limitations of their practice. For this reason, the smugglers are invited. The smugglers are the politically engaged artists.

Engaged in what?

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F3dF We also make the public put their cards on the table. Pdi And we also put ours. We show what we are there for. Who wins?

F3dF There is no loser or winner. There is no ‘we are done, we have made it’. What we have are specific matches that are played. But we know there will never be a ‘the end’ for our work. There is no happy ending. ar Translated from Portuguese by Milena Durante

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casa daros rio de janeiro/rj www.casadaros.net

Pioneering Accessibility

MAM São Paulo is the most accessible museum in Brazil. Facilities, exhibitions and cultural programs are available for all. Since 2002, MAM has been holding a training program for educators to host the deaf community, which numbers almost reach 10 million people in Brazil. Educators trained at MAM are now acting with the deaf public in the main Brazilian museums. Contact us. When it comes to art, we teach you how to communicate with those who cannot hear. MAM São Paulo is located at Ibirapuera Park, gate 3. São Paulo/SP – Brazil +55 11 5085-1300 Tue – Sun, 10 am – 6 pm

And also online. :: mam.org.br :: social network/mamoﬁcial #sejamam :: google art project

ARTE CONSTRUTIVA Until April 16th 2015

GUILLERMO KUITCA

MIRA SCHENDEL Until October 19th

Until November 2nd

LEONILSON Until November 9th

1 Willys de Castro | Active Object, 1962 | Oil on canvas glued on wood, 25,3 x 25,1 x 25,1 cm |

pinacoteca.org.br

Collection of Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. | Donated by Hércules Rubens Barsotti, 2001 | Photo: Isabella Matheus.

2 Mira Schendel | Untitled, 1974 | Gold leaf and dyed paper pasted on paper, 37,5 x 31 cm |

ADDRESS

Praça da Luz, 2 São Paulo/SP/Brasil

ADDRESS

Collection of Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. | Donated by Espólio de Alfredo Mesquita, 1994 | Photo: Isabella Matheus. 2

Lgo. General Osório, 66 São Paulo/SP/Brasil

3 Guillermo Kuitca | The Rite, 1992 | Acrylic on mattress and bronze and wooden feet, 40 x 60 x 120 cm (each bed) | Collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA. Museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund | Photo: Cortesy Sperone Westwater, NY.

4 Leonilson | No no yes please, 1991 | Acrylic on canvas, 145 x 70 cm | Private collection | Photo: Rômulo Fialdini.

latitudebrasil.org

LONDON

BOGOTA

51° 32’N

15 - 18 October, 2014

23 - 27 October, 2014

Frieze London

Frieze Masters

A Gentil Carioca Galeria Fortes Vilaça Galeria Jaqueline Martins Mendes Wood DM Galeria Luisa Strina Vermelho

A Gentil Carioca

Regent’s Park, London, UK

4° 32’N

Regent’s Park, London, UK

ArtBO

Corferias Carrera 37 No. 24-67 Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Baró Galeria Casa Triângulo Galeria Eduardo Fernandes Galeria Jaqueline Martins Luciana Brito Galeria Galeria Luisa Strina Galeria Millan Vermelho

Art Featured

Breath of the tiger 137

Yevgenia Belorusets

by Raimar Stange

Untitled, 2007, 40 × 54 cm, from the series Gogol Street, 32, 2006–

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The Ukrainian artist demonstrates that it is possible to document a complex and volatile situation with precision and sensitivity while avoiding the pitfalls of voyeurism and ‘misery tourism’

Untitled, 2007, 40 × 54 cm, from the series Gogol Street, 32, 2006–

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Tatjana and Olga, 2012, 50 × 70 cm, from the series A Room of My Own, 2012

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Roma and Denis, Donetsk. After a service in the only Protestant church in Ukraine which is open to lgbt worshippers, 2012, 50 × 70 cm, from the series A Room of My Own, 2012

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A concise example of the Ukrainian photographer and author In his 1934 essay ‘The Author as Producer’, Walter Benjamin writes Yevgenia Belorusets’s art can be found in her long-term project Gogol about the new objective photography of Albert Renger-Patzsch: ‘It Street, 32 (2006–), in which the residents of a rotten apartment building succeeded in making misery itself an object of pleasure, by treating in the historic heart of Kiev take centre stage. Using black-and-white it stylishly and with technical perfection.’ Leaving aside the problem photography, Belorusets captures the impoverished living condi- of voyeurism, the danger of aesthetically exploiting the depiction of tions offered by this building – long ago officially declared uninhab- misery is still the delicate point of such realistic photography. And itable by the local authorities – and the way in which, for decades, Belorusets is absolutely aware of this; it is precisely for this reason its inhabitants have been dealing with these asocial conditions in that in her photo series she always works imperfectly, unfashionvery social ways. A woman showers in a tight space that is obviously ably and, not least, deliberately uneconomically. In other words: the used simultaneously as the kitchen, bathroom and living room; a time economy of the artist, who usually works on her projects for young woman stands in a room that is virtually unfurnished. The months, even years, is the complete opposite to the ‘time is money’ photographs, almost like snapshots and never obviously composed, premise of ‘professional’ photographers. Moreover, she is never an perfectly capture the destitution in the dilapidated building, in outsider, never just a ‘documenting’ counterpart; rather she is, as just which one resident was struck dead by a described, always integrated in the She is never just a ‘documenting’ collapsing ceiling, and where the power events she photographs; she is a ‘sympathiser’, so to speak. and water supplies continually drop counterpart, but is always integrated out. However, they show this precarious Another of Berolusets’s series, in the events she photographs exhibited as Euromaidan – Occupied situation in such a way that the people Spaces (2013–4), deals with the situation in Maidan at the end of 2013 concerned never lose their dignity, their humanity. Although a photograph of a young girl, for example, in a trashy – the beginning of the revolution – before the brutal escalation of kitchen may seem like it was taken in passing, the subject neverthe- the government’s reaction to the opposition, the subsequent resignaless looks confidently into the camera. Another child is captured tion of the government and the occupation of Crimea by the Russian embracing her distraught-looking mother, in a scene also defined army. For this reason, the artist, who is also founder of the Ukrainian by the human warmth of the image. It’s exactly this ‘empathetic literary magazine Prostory (which describes itself as ‘a biannual emotionality’ that distinguishes these genre pictures from documen- Ukrainian magazine for literature, art and social critique’), flew to Kiev tary photography. It’s what makes them, despite their occasionally and stayed for several weeks photographing the peaceful demonstraconventional subject selection, noteworthy. And more than this, it tors in the now-world-famous square and its adjacent streets. In the allows them to offer one possible explanation for the current political exhibition, the photographs are provided with accompanying texts situation in Ukraine: they suggest that we should look to issues of that take on a poetic as well as critically questioning stance in response poverty and social injustice, mismanagement and related corrup- to what they depict. The artist again follows Benjamin, who insisted in tion as some of the decisive triggers for the uprising that began in the aforementioned essay that ‘what we have to demand from a photog2013 in Kiev’s Maidan, or Independence Square, rapher is the skill to give a photograph that one The Night in the Occupied City Hall in Kiev, label that wrests it from the wear of fashion and and for the continued unstable situation in the 19 December, 2013, 30 × 40 cm, country, especially its eastern regions. bestows it with a revolutionary worth’. from the series Occupied Spaces, 2013–4

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Here, Benjamin in turn follows Bertolt Brecht, who had already hung by her between the photographs. And she continues: ‘Has determined that photographs alone do not possess any critical anyone out there heard of Ukraine? It’s out there on the edge, content. Brecht noted in The Threepenny Lawsuit (1931): ‘A photo- our downtrodden lives are just like the land we live in.’ Thus graph of the Krupp works or the AEG tells us next to nothing about patriotism also reveals itself as a motor for the desire for change. On the other hand, the infiltration of rightwing symbolism was these institutions.’ In the photographs and texts from Euromaidan – Occupied Spaces, purposefully used by former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych’s we witness the demonstrators in peaceful dialogue with policemen government in order to divide opposition in the country. Indeed, or in front of their tents, defiantly holding out images that we are fa- Russian propaganda operates similarly right now in the embattled miliar with from similar photographs of the Occupy movement. But eastern part of Ukraine. more important once again are the sensitive, compassionate photoFinally, in her exhibition project A Room of My Own (2012), graphs that, for example, show people in occupied spaces sleeping, Belorusets shows photographs of gays, lesbians and transgender sitting together on the street in sleeping bags or waiting in sparse couples, and thereby chimes in with the current discussion about apartments. Belorusets recognised the waiting as a characteristic human-rights violations against homosexuals. The photographed couples are neither ‘glorified’ nor feature of these protests. Stoic perBack in 2012 homophobic vandals imbued with a ‘glamorous’ lifestyle, severance in up-to-minus-30-degree as might be the case in works by weather was one of the heroic achieveimmediately destroyed an Wolfgang Tillmans or Nan Goldin, ments of Maidan. “The strength of entire exhibition of her work in Kiev the Maidans lay in their patience,” the for example. Ordinariness and natuartist says. But the waiting was also a problem for the opposition; ralness set the tone here. Explicit sexual acts are not on display in the portraits. A problem, but also a special quality of these photothe moment of action was constantly postponed. Another problem from the beginning, which was mostly graphs, lies in the fact that the subjects’ faces are visible. Someignored in the West, was the nationalist symbolism that was thing that normally seems self-evident is a quite difficult matter continually deployed by the demonstrators; and this despite the in this context, in that showing the face signifies the official outing fact that the protest was partly a demand for an opening-up to the for the people concerned – in 2012 homophobic vandals immediWest. One photograph shows, for example, a young demonstrator ately destroyed the entire exhibition in Kiev. Obviously the artist, playing a folk song on a lute; beside him is a vase with the logo of with her images and her staged alternative society, struck a nerve the extreme-rightwing Svoboda party. In another image one can in her native Ukraine. Even though homosexuals are not, as in see the injured hand of a nationalist who is scribbling on a right- Russia for example, legally persecuted, they are still attacked, wing leaflet. In quiet tones Belorusets addresses a problem that above all by rightwing populist parties and religious circles. exists on various levels. On the one hand, nationalism often appears As in Gogol Street, 32 and the Maidan photos, the artist’s interest lies as a mythical patriotism and does not display any racist traits. in the life of involuntary ‘special’ people, whose precarious situa‘Glory to Ukraine – no, that is not a nationtion is so significant to the political processes Two Berkut Soldjers in Kiev, alistic slogan,’ writes the artist on one of in Ukraine. ar December, 2013, 30 × 40 cm, from the series three aforementioned captions, which were Translated from the German by Emily Terényi Occupied Spaces, 2013–4

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Art Without Relations by Graham Harman

above M.C. Escher, Stars, 1948.© 2014 M.C. Escher Company, the Netherlands. All right reserved facing page Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled 2012 (Freedom Can Not Be Simulated), 2012 (installation view, Neugerriemschneider, Berlin). Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy the artist and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin

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Let’s begin by introducing the term ‘nonrelational aesthetics’. This is to their effects. We know that human and inanimate bodies cannot not meant as a retort to Nicolas Bourriaud, whose influential book exist without tiny physical subcomponents. Yet we also know that Relational Aesthetics (1998) is not my target. What Bourriaud means by objects have a certain degree of robust reality that can withstand ‘relations’ are staged encounters between humans who would other- changes in those components. An object is emergent beyond its subcomwise pass each other anonymously but are now encouraged to interact ponents, and cannot be explained exhaustively by its pieces alone. through jointly cooking packets of soup or other forms of conviviality But for the arts, as for the social sciences, the greater danger is the (as in the artworks of Rirkrit Tiravanija). What I oppose is relationality upward reduction that paraphrases objects in terms of their effects in a wider sense, one so sufficiently familiar to recent art history that rather than their parts. For it is dubious to claim that objects are I might seem to be wandering into a long-settled debate. At issue is utterly defined by their context, without any unexpressed private the independence of artworks not only from their social and political surplus. To defend this view is to commit oneself to a world in which surroundings, their physical settings or their commercial exchange everything is already all that it can be. Change would be impossible if value, but from any other object whatsoever. this melon, that city or I myself were nothing more than our current Relationality has long had a good press well beyond the arts. relations with everything else. Widespread sympathy for dynamic relations over dreary substances The two reductions differ only in the direction in which they marks the general intellectual mood of propose to destroy objects: pulverising our time. In recent Continental philosthem into sawdust, or elevating them into Change would be impossible ophy, figures from Jacques Derrida and an all-devouring context. Admittedly, if this melon, that city or I myself Gilles Deleuze to Isabelle Stengers, these are the two basic kinds of knowlwere nothing more than our current edge about what something is: either we Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett are all cited as admirable champions of process explain what something is made of, or we relations with everything else and relation over static autonomous describe its effects. But philosophy was things. Yet the claim of object-oriented philosophy, which I advocate, never meant to be a form of knowledge. The Greek word philosophia, is that the primacy of relations over things is no longer a liberating which means love of wisdom rather than wisdom itself, incorporates idea (since it reduces things to their pragmatic impact on humans and a basic ignorance into its etymology. on each other). But if philosophy is not a form of knowledge, the same holds even Let’s begin with philosophy, whose vocation is to deal with the more obviously for art. An artwork littered with scientific falsehoods most universal subject matter. I propose to call this subject matter might still be better as art than a pedagogical work that inspired ‘objects’, in a broad sense that includes human beings along with young viewers to win a dozen Nobel Prizes. Just as little does art everything else: copper wire, weather systems, fictional characters, provide the sort of knowledge claimed by social or political explanareptiles, artworks, protons, transient events and numbers. Unlike the tions. Even a politically provocative work – Picasso’s Guernica (1937), various special disciplines, philosophy cannot deal with some of these for example – might succeed as art even among those it denounces. The specifically aesthetic handling of the theme might have greater while ignoring the others. By ‘objects’ I mean unified realities – physical or otherwise – that or lesser power than the surface political message of the work, which cannot fully be reduced either downwards to their pieces or upwards in turn might be readable in ways that would baffle Picasso himself.

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Nor can we replace an artwork with its biographical or historical back- and their minimalist confederates are famously described as ‘literalstory. The art object, taken in a broad sense not restricted to mobile ists’, since their various oblongs, cubes and rods are supposedly expeand durable entities, is just as resistant to knowledge as objects in the rienced as literal objects rather than in some special aesthetic sense. philosophical sense. For Fried, the literal is the same as the theatrical: ‘Literalist sensibility A quiet breakthrough in the theory of objects was made by the is theatrical because, to begin with, it is concerned with the actual phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. One key circumstances in which the beholder encounters literalist work.’ strategy of the empiricist philosophers was to deny the very exist- In other words, literalist artwork is made with the viewer and the ence of objects, replacing them with ‘bundles of qualities’. Strictly context of viewing in mind. Aesthetics is replaced by spectacle, since speaking there is no such thing as ‘moon’ but only qualities such as the viewer is now anticipated in the structure of the artwork itself. ‘white’, ‘round’ and ‘luminous’, which appear together so frequently In a later essay, ‘An Introduction to My Art Criticism’ (1998), Fried that we come to use ‘moon’ as a sloppy nickname for this rough set provocatively traces the roots of both theatricality and literalism to his of qualities. The greatness of phenomenology lay in its reversal of estranged and deceased mentor Greenberg. By insisting that modern this prejudice. For Husserl, ‘moon’ as a unified phenomenal object painting take account of its medium, Greenberg supposedly paves the precedes any particular qualities it might display. The object of expe- way to a triumphant final step of presenting blank canvases or naked rience comes first, and it endures despite considerable ongoing shifts cubes unadorned with depicted content, despite his preemptive in its evident features. Heidegger raises the stakes by critiquing his warnings against the emptiness of such a result. Here Fried misreads teacher Husserl as a philosopher of ‘presence’: although Husserl Greenberg. While the flat canvas background can certainly be treated discovered a unified object of experience, irreducible to its sum of as a literal physical object, this is not what Greenberg does. Instead, he qualities, his objects are exhausted by their presence to the mind. treats the background as that which never becomes present in its own Against this, Heidegger insisted that objects are usually withdrawn right and is thus never literal. Greenberg’s flat canvas is not a piece of into a silent background. literal physical material, as it might be for Judd: it is a dematerialised Yet there is something overly holistic about Heidegger’s with- two-dimensional space that all content must take into account in any drawn realm of ‘being’, which he opposes not only to beings insofar as truly modern, postillusionist painting. To point to the literal physthey are visible, but also to beings insofar ical canvas is not the same as to point to as they are many. This excessive unity of the aesthetic background that the canvas But as ingredients of the world, Heidegger’s hidden kingdom of being enables. we are not literalists or paraphrasers haunts his famous essay ‘The Origin Yet I am less concerned by the at all, since here we are parts that of the Work of Art’ (1950). Heidegger’s misreading of Greenberg than by Fried’s notion of artworks as ‘strife’ between produce societies, armies, dramas and unfortunate conflation of the literal with hidden earth and accessible world has not the theatrical. On philosophical grounds, artworks, just as diamonds or bricks been improved by later philosophers. Yet I am prepared to agree that the literal produce other objects should be avoided. Unlike the natural Heidegger’s ‘earth’ is every bit as unified and social sciences – which attempt a as his ‘being’, so that every artwork ends up pointing to the same hidden earth in all cases. Whereas normal literal paraphrase of what objects are by detecting and summarising experience is adrift in a realm of presence, the Heideggerian artwork their qualities – art and philosophy are joined in a love of objects seems to punch a hole in presence and gesture vaguely towards an insofar as they cannot be paraphrased. But Fried’s understandable irreducible reality-in-itself. Yet the Heideggerian artist is left with a rejection of art as a literal presence of everyday objects is mixed with fountain of sensual images in the mind (jugs, temples, peasant shoes) an admittedly personal revulsion for the theatrical. that all hint monotonously at the same earthy background. The distinction Fried fails to make is that between humans as Heidegger’s deadlock is roughly the same as that faced by Clement literalist observers of art and humans as theatrical ingredients of art. As Greenberg in his own theory of modern art. Greenberg’s career-long observers and agents, we are literalists who paraphrase the things we enemy is academic art, whose chief weakness lies in trying to dupe us encounter in terms of their explicitly detectable qualities, thereby with explicit content while paying no heed to the background struc- failing to get at the objects beneath these qualities. But as ingredients ture of the medium itself. Famously, modern painting for Greenberg of the world, we are not literalists or paraphrasers at all, since here we is the kind that comes to terms with its flat canvas background and are parts that produce societies, armies, dramas and artworks, just as makes no concession to the three-dimensional illusionism domi- diamonds or bricks produce other objects. nant from Giotto until Manet. For Greenberg as for Heidegger, the Another name for the literal is the relational, since both refer to the flat background is the same no matter what content is deployed to outward effects of a thing rather than the cryptic inner reality that hint in its direction. In this respect both authors make the surface makes such effects possible. Likewise, another name for the theatrical too shallow and the background too deep, with the artwork’s form is the nonrelational, since the theatre is less a site for observation than conceived too holistically and its content too dismissively. for pity, fear and impersonation – a place where we do not observe what In defending an art concerned with objects deeper than their is portrayed but become it, through mimesis in the actor’s rather than relation to humans, it might seem as if we are returning to a high the illustrator’s sense of the term. modernist conception of the autonomy of the artwork. And by referThis essay has made two basic claims. First, Heidegger and ring to objects at all, we might seem to be straying in the opposite Greenberg were right to call for a depth behind the surface content direction of an observer-centred literalism. In Michael Fried’s canon- of art, but wrong to identify this depth with a unified holistic ical 1967 article, ‘Art and Objecthood’, Donald Judd, Robert Morris background. The problem with modernist theory was not that it

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decontextualised art and made it too autonomous, but that it rooted autonomy in the features of the medium rather than the internal fascinations of content itself. Here Surrealism was an undeserving loser, along with Kandinsky, as in Greenberg’s blatant dismissals of both. Second, Fried was right to call for an art without literalism, but wrong to see the human as solely a literalising agent. While the artwork must have a depth beyond how it is encountered by the spectator, the human is less a spectator than a co-constituent of the artwork itself, since nonfascinating art simply fails in a way that nonfascinating science does not. The undeserving loser here is not just performance art in the strict sense, but any form of passionate attachment, or ‘sentimentality’ as Fried terms it. Since Karl Popper recommends that a theory should make risky predictions, let me venture two such predictions here. Among living

artists, I will claim that the Russian-born artist Grisha Bruskin, already well known, may be considerably more important than believed. His figures of Soviet and Jewish mythology, arranged somewhat in the fashion of hieroglyphics, display both the inscrutable depth and the theatricality that I have just defended. As for the dead, I will take an even bigger risk, and suggest that we give a second look to none other than the Dutchman M.C. Escher – the favourite artist of countless children and few respectable adults – for reasons similar to those given in Bruskin’s case. If nothing else, a counterfactual art history in which Escher looms large is a delightful thought experiment. ar For further reading, see Tristan Garcia, Form and Object: A Treatise on Things, translated by M.A. Ohm & J. Cogburn and published by Edinburgh University Press, 2014

Grisha Bruskin, Note D, 1991, from a suite of four colour silkscreens, 86 × 69 cm, edition of 75. © the artist. Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York

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Things to do with ArtReview! (the first in an occasional series) by Louise Darblay

Meatpacking District / Vesterbro

Downtown

Bo Bjerggaard Darren Almond 22 August – 18 October, Flæsketorvet 85 A

Galerie Mikael Andersen Günther Förg: Ubuntu through 18 September, Bredgade 63

The gallery opens the autumn season with a solo show by British artist Darren Almond, known for his interest in and exploration of geographical extremes, documenting journeys to the Arctic or Siberia. As his first solo show in Nordic countries, the gallery presents a large range of both existing and new works, spanning video, painting, objects and photography.

Günther Förg addresses the question of ‘humanness’ through his new exhibition, whose title, Ubuntu, refers to a South African humanist philosophy. The exhibition takes the form of an accumulation of paintings, sculptures, drawings, ceramics and photographs, inspired by the artist’s studio in Switzerland. David Risley Keith Tyson: A Mystery to Myself 29 August – 11 October, Bredgade 65

V1 Gallery Sara-Vide Ericson through 20 September, Flæsketorvet 69–71

Turner Prize-winner Keith Tyson comes back for his second solo show at David Risley, introducing an unsettling new series of Unnatural Portraits, a new installation and a series of paintings and sculptures. Prints selected from his studio wall drawings, which the artist has been producing over the past 15 years, will also be on show, attesting to Tyson’s fascination for the systems by which we represent and classify our understanding of reality.

Young Swedish artist Sara-Vide Ericson is on show at V1 Gallery, with a series of new paintings and drawings depicting lonely figures within natural habitats at the frontier between the uncanny and the familiar. Christian Andersen Tom Humphreys through 20 September, Høkerboderne 17–19

Galleri Martin Asbæk Summer in the City through 20 September, Bredgade 23

For his second solo show at Christian Andersen, British artist Tom Humphreys is presenting five new works, consisting of large canvases on which groups of works on papers are assembled, that play with the archetypal and modernist framework of the canvas.

Summer in the City is the 9th edition of Martin Asbæk’s annual summer group show, featuring gallery artists and, this year, three invited Danish artists, Peter Bonde, Jesper Skov Madsen and Jan S. Hansen. In this show covering an impressively large range of media, techniques and approaches, it’s up to the viewer to establish connections between the new works.

Nicolai Wallner Chris Johanson: Continuity Escapes Me (My Selfishness in Los Angeles) 27 August – 11 October, Ny Carlsberg Vej 68 In his new exhibition at Nicolai Wallner, Chris Johanson explores the urban landscape of Los Angeles as well as the mythology and iconography that stems from it. Working across a wide range of media, Johanson creates a physically immersive portrayal of the city that attempts to materialise its flowing energy. Nils Stærk Tove Storch Opens 27 August, Ny Carlsberg vej 68

Kunstforeningen GL Strand PaInt new York through 7 September, Gammel Strand 48 This summer group show pays tribute to the longstanding tradition of painting in New York, which has been a centre of avant-garde and innovation for many decades. Looking at contemporary positions in painting today, the exhibition gathers works by 11 international artists, including Ellen Altfest, Cecily Brown and Steven Parrino.

Nils Stærk is opening a new show featuring seven new sculptures by Danish artist Tove Storch. Reminiscent of familiar shapes such as books or furniture, these sculptures attempt to challenge the gallery space through their location, composition and materiality.

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From 29 to 31 August, ArtReview will be in Copenhagen, where it’s hosting a talks programme to run alongside CHART, a boutique art fair. Here are some other things you can do if you join us in the city of mermaids and armwrestling Østerbro

Beyond Copenhagen

Faurschou Foundation I Look at Things… Works from the Collection through 12 September, Klubiensvej 11, 2150 Nordhavn

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Philip Guston: Painting Smoking Eating, through 7 September Emil Nolde: A Retrospective, through 19 October Olafur Eliasson: Riverbed, through 4 January Gl. Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk

Faurschou Foundation presents a new exhibition of works from the collection, conceived around Shilpa Gupta’s installation I Look at Things with Eyes Different from Yours (2010). Displaying works by artists from different background and practices, including Shirin Neshat, Danh Vō, Mona Hatoum and Zhang Huan, this new show raises questions about cultural difference, otherness and dialogue.

Amager

In addition to the two ongoing exhibitions dedicated to major figures of twentieth-century painting, Emil Nolde (1867–1956) and Philip Guston (1913–80), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is opening a solo show by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson on 20 August. At the centre of the exhibition will be a site-specific work, which will take the form of a giant landscape unfolding within the South Wing of the museum and transfiguring its architectural experience.

Andersen’s Katja Strunz: Present Pasts through 20 September, Amager Strandvej 50B

arken Museum of Modern Art Hundertwasser: Artist and Eco-activist through 7 September, Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

With this new show, Katja Strunz exhibits her latest body of work in the form of sculpture and paper collages, pieces that are informed by themes of space, time and history. Formally reminiscent of Constructivism, her practice relies on the appropriation and rearticulation of a selection of materials that confront the old with the new, the raw with the industrialised.

On the coast southwest of Copenhagen, the ARKEN Museum has a long-running exhibition of the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000). Looking back at his work as a painter, eco-activist and architect, this exhibition brings to the fore an artist whose ideas on sustainable architecture and ecology are more topical than ever.

Christianshavn

Malmö

Overgaden Coming From, 23 August – 14 September Christian Vind: Dr. Topic, 23 August – 26 October Overgaden Neden Vandet 17

Malmö Konsthall Gunilla Klingberg: A Sign in Space through 19 October, St Johannesgatan 7, SE-205 80 Malmö

Located in a nineteenth-century building, Overgaden is hosting two simultaneous shows: on the first floor, 35 Danish artists have attempted to respond to the question ‘Where does inspiration come from?’ through the presentation of one work apiece; while the second floor is dedicated to the curious archives of Danish artist Christian Vind, including collages, calendar leaves and various objects that take on new meanings through juxtapositions and techniques of associative cataloguing systems.

Swedish artist Gunilla Klingberg takes over the gallery space of the Malmö Konsthall with an exhibition of already existing works, and a new commission designed for the gallery’s long row of windows. Within the exhibition space, Klingberg has also reproduced A Sign in Space, a Lsand art project originally executed on a beach in Spain, and which translates her interest in merging cosmic and mystical representations with consumer culture.

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art berlin contemporary 18 – 21 September 2014 Station Berlin Luckenwalder Strasse 4 – 6 10963 Berlin www.artberlincontemporary.com

Frank Ammerlaan, Harold Ancart, Christian Andersen, Awst & Walther, Enrico Bach, Wojciech Bakowski, James Beckett, Eric Bell/Kristoffer Frick, Diego Bianchi, Marc Bijl, Alain Biltereyst, Madeleine Boschan, Mike Bouchet, Fernando Bryce, Peggy Buth, José León Cerrillo, Douglas Coupland, Jigger Cruz, Walter Dahn, Eugenio Dittborn, Heinrich Dunst, Martin Eder, FAMED, Friederike Feldmann, Karsten Födinger, Brendan Fowler, Luc Fuller, G.R.A.M., Melanie Gilligan, Pascal Hachem, Spiros Hadjidjanos, Michael Hakimi, Zvi Hecker, Camille Henrot, Lynn Hershmann, Kathi Hofer, Adam Holý, Ada van Hoorebeke, Judith Hopf, Vlatka Horvat, Vladimír Houdek, Donna Huanca, Alex Hubbard, Des Hughes, Volker Hüller, Yung Jake, Zuzanna Janin, Christian Jankowski, Raimer Jochims, Johanna Karlsson, Tamas Kaszàs, Stefan Kern, Krištof Kintera, Tanja Koljonen, Jürgen Krause, Hendrik Krawen, Friedrich Kunath, Andrea Kvas, Jone Kvie, India Lawrence, Gonzalo Lebrija, Bernhard Leitner, Joep van Liefland, Little Warsaw, Natalia LL, Stefan Löffelhardt, Ernie Luley, David Maljkovic, Angelika Markul, Bernhard Martin, Jerry B. Martin, Marek Meduna, Jonathan Meese, Mathieu Mercier, Miguel Mitlag, Ingo Mittelstaedt, João Modé, Richard Mosse, Robert Muntean, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Paul Nudd, Miklos Onucsan, Florentina Pakosta, Grear Patterson, Guillaume Pilet, Nina Pohl, Cezary Poniatowski, Charlotte Posenenske, Tobias Rehberger, Sophie Reinhold, Davis Rhodes, Luciana Rondolini, Daniel Roth, Analia Saban, Benja Sachau, Yorgos Sapountzis, Yves Scherer, Kerim Seiler, Wiebke Siem, Kasper Sonne, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Fiete Stolte, Sebastian Stumpf, Jiří Thýn, John Patrick Walsh III (JPW3), Sinta Werner, Stephan Willats, Mette Winckelmann, Martin Wöhrl, Sisley Xhafa, Guan Xiao, Haegue Yang

Part I

A Work of Fiction He was too restless to sleep, so he went out for a walk. He wandered aimlessly through the narrow streets. There was a chill in the air. He turned up his collar against the wind. He dug his hands into his pockets. He spent the whole day walking. Toward evening, dark clouds gathered. The first drops of rain splashed on the ground. It was beginning to rain. A feeling of despair enveloped him. He was starting to feel sick. He began the long trudge back. He climbed up the steps slowly. A wrought-iron spiral staircase. The stairs were carpeted in a lovely shade of red. Soon the ascent grew steeper and he began to tire. He arrived on the top floor out of breath. Cold as it was, the climb had sweated him. He unlocked the door to his room. He stripped off his clothes. He stood in the shower for twenty minutes. Exhausted, he collapsed on the bed. The ashtray by the bed was crammed with cigarette butts. Rain slithered down the windows, encouraging a creeping melancholia. It evoked a memory but he couldn’t pin it down. He felt an undefined longing. He remembered with sudden guilt the letter from his mother that he had not yet read. He was so tired that he found it hard to think, never mind talk. He sat staring deep into the void, reminding himself

by Meriç Algün Ringborg

of his place in the cosmos. The doctors said she had only six months to live. “I’d better give her a ring tomorrow.”

The shades of evening drew on. Clouds hid the moon. It was obvious a storm was coming in. The rain had not stopped for days. Outside, the wind was as wild as ever. The house was strangely quiet. Everywhere was in darkness. A shadow crossed Maria’s face. An uncanny feeling that she was being watched. Her room was lit by a single naked bulb. The shadows were more intangible than usual as they shifted with each quavering bough and passing cloud. She drew the curtains and lit the fire. Flames danced in the fireplace. The lights flickered and changed color. She drew her chair closer to the fire. The light struck her ring, reflecting off the diamond. The play of light on the diamond’s multifaceted surface… A presentiment of disaster. She had a letter from Mark. Her name was lettered in gold. She tore open the envelope. The words had been printed in blue type. With a sense of foreboding she read the note: “I ask you to find it in your heart to forgive me.” The letter was a manifestation of his guilt. A tear traced a lonely path down her cheek. She drew back the curtains and looked out. She stood at the window looking at the town spread out below. A host of memories rushed into her mind. The heroine was a lady with a past. Beneath the gloss of success was a tragic private life. Shrouded in an eerie veil of mist.

The two of them lived for a time as man and wife. A perfect couple with the world at their feet. She cared for him with a devotion bordering on obsession. He was her one true love. She was the love of his life. She would always remember the moment they met. There was a spark between them at their first meeting. Their eyes lit up at a mention of Sartre. He was immediately attracted by her friendly smile. She had a thing about men who wore glasses. There was a bond of understanding between them. It all happened in an instant. There’ll never be an instant quite like this again. They had established a strong and trusting relationship. She trusted him absolutely. She felt every emotion in the book of love. They did everything together. He was a very private man. He was very reserved and only opened out to her slowly. A renowned author, he had never confided in anyone before. A stunningly attractive, charismatic man. A remarkably intellectual man. A dark, melancholy young man with deep-set eyes. An aloof and somewhat austere figure. His misanthropic gloom… His magnetic personality… He was warm and tender toward her. She was beautiful and full of life. Her voice had a hypnotic quality. An intense young woman, passionate about her art. He was captivated by her youthful charm. Other people found her difficult. She was regarded as a bit of an oddity. Not but what the picture has its darker side. Sooner or later, she found out the truth about him. A man living under an assumed name, carrying emotional luggage from the past. His

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anger and frustration had been bottled up for years. He had to endure a great deal of suffering. He was not a well man. He was in and out of jail for most of his twenties. A complex personality. He was not of sound mind. He was mentally unstable. He had long periods of depression. His moods blew up suddenly out of a clear blue sky. I think, if truth be told, we were all a little afraid of him. His family had a history of insanity. They had had traumatic experiences in the war. He was tutored at home by his father. Fifteen years of literal hell. Everything in the house spoke of hard times and neglect. He was severely admonished by his father. An uncaring father. He had an authoritarian and at times belligerent manner. He witnessed the atrocities of war at close quarters. The war left its mark on him. An authoritarian regime. A strict upbringing. A time of harsh military discipline. He’d suffered intense pain, periods of intense misery. He committed suicide at the age of forty. He stood swaying, his arms hanging limply by his sides. He knew he’d always have this ghastly image imprinted on his mind. The image would be forever engraved in his memory. He gives a vivid description of his childhood in his autobiography. To be honest, I find his story incredible. It happened late in 1984, the week after, we went to Madrid. He vanished without a trace. He took his stuff and went. Unbelievable or not, it happened. He’s just disappeared off the face of the earth… like father, like son. He can’t just leave like that. His love for her had never wavered. He decided to go, regardless. Two days later a letter arrived:

“In all honesty, there comes a point where you give up. I’m not sure how much longer I can bear the pain. All I want is to be left alone.” She imagined him at his desk, his head in his hands. She’d known all along. He planned his departure with great care. He left behind him a manuscript which was subsequently published. Academics waited with great interest for the book. He went to Sweden without her. A European country. He could pass for a native of Sweden. A country that is isolated from the rest of the world. He found contentment in living a simple life in the country. For months he lived there purifying himself. Cozy waterfront cottage in a peaceful country setting. He lived a very isolated existence. He buried himself in his work. He wrote endlessly about his frustrations and miseries. Writing became the main outlet for his energies. He had an ability to convey a sense of deep melancholy and yearning through much of his work. He wrote under a pseudonym. The man was a demon and he had hurt her to the depths of her being. Getting her life back on to an even keel after their breakup had been difficult. The experiences had colored her whole existence. It seemed impossible that anyone could endure such pain. The faint possibility of his returning… The pain of not knowing. For years she had struggled to forget about him. She learned to discipline her emotions. Despite the passage of time she still loved him. She loved him, in spite of all the hurt he had caused her. Why did he do it?

At one o’clock in the morning, he had just drifted off to sleep when the phone rang. “It’s me.” “I was kind of hoping you’d call.” His voice was low and shaky with emotion. “I got your letter.” “I owe you an apology. I’ve made a mistake. It all got too much for me and I couldn’t cope. I have changed in every way.” She hesitated, suspicion kindling within her, conflicting emotions warred within her. She didn’t mean to fall in love with him again. “My feelings are so conflicted that I hardly know how to answer. I am not able to place any trust in you. I waited an eternity for you. The torture I’ve gone through because of loving you so. I will never ever forget it. I felt so wretched because I thought I might never see you again.” She was deeply hurt. “I understand how you feel.” He sounded regretful but pointed out that he had committed himself. “I had fallen through a trapdoor of depression,” said Mark who was fond of theatrical metaphors. “The agony was both mental and physical. I did psychotherapy for years – I wanted to find myself. Seeing an analyst was a very educational experience.” She was silent for a moment before replying “Is the pain still there?” “Yes, yes, damn you, the pain is always there.”

She immediately regretted her words. He broke down and sobbed like a child. “I was under too much pressure,” he declared. He despised himself for being selfish. “I want to do what I can to make a difference.” She hung on his every word. She paused, at a loss for words. “After all the pain I’ve caused, is it possible to make amends?” He’s obviously trying to make amends for what he’s done. She tried to compose herself. He took a deep breath. “I hope to talk to you in person” She fell silent for a moment. “Let’s have a drink.” He insisted that she came. She accepted the invitation. She knew what she was doing. “Thank you,” he said. “Where do you stay?” “The hotel is a short walk from the sea.” “I’ll be there at one.” “I’m really glad you’re coming.”

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She reread the letter. “I ask you to find it in your heart to forgive me.” Her face grew serious. The brief note read like a cry for help. A warning of things to come. She tore his letters to pieces.

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She would not forgive him. She swore she would never go back. All the old bitterness began to well up inside her again. It was difficult not to be overwhelmed with feelings of hate and revenge. Tears filled her eyes anew.

She awoke the following morning. Sleep dulled her mind. She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She opened a window to freshen the room. She contemplated her image in the mirror. Her eyes were swollen with crying. Her neck was red – a sure sign of agitation. Her life felt empty and meaningless. Maria called his name faintly. She twisted her ring around and around on her finger. She was in the depths of despair. The wind howled about the building. The mirror fell to the floor, where it broke into pieces. Perhaps it was an omen of things to come. She tried to think herself into the part of Peter’s fiancée. The wedding is only weeks away. All the arrangements for the wedding were made. A noon wedding at St. Mark’s. They have been dating for more than a year. They met by coincidence. An extraordinary coincidence. He intrigued her on their first meeting. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Fraser. He was dressed

in an expensive grey suit. She stared at him in stunned disbelief. She had seen her husband’s double. They seemed to resemble each other closely. A fortuitous resemblance. His face, with its clearly drawn features, was printed on her memory. The two men had little in common. They came from totally different backgrounds. Peter was a rather stuffy individual. He was a man of action rather than of intellect. Peter has done thirteen years in the RAF. He was an extraordinarily uncomplicated man. His love for her found an echo in her own feelings. He’s a nicer man than Mark. His work takes him to France, Spain, and Germany. He is due back soon. A knock on the door broke her reverie. “I apologize for coming over unannounced like this. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Is everything OK? Have you and Peter had a row?” Maria’s eyes darkened in shade. She looked pale and upset. Maria complained of a severe headache. “I can’t bear to see you so unhappy.” She was in an impossible situation. “I got a letter from him the other day.” “Have you talked to him?” “Yes, I have. The time off did him a power of good.” “I’m not altogether sure that I’d trust him.” “I understand you completely. He’s an independent soul,” she commented. “He accepts that he made a mistake. I had to bite my tongue and accept his explanation.” “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll be behind you.”

“You’re too kind.” “Sit yourself down and I’ll bring you some coffee.” She sneaked a glance at her watch. She could almost hear the tick of its works. It was time to go. She said she must be going. “I’ve got to go to the hotel,” she began. “I’ll try and get hold of Mark.” “You don’t want to go.” “Yes, I do.” With that, she flounced out of the room.

Clouds concealed the sun. It was raining heavily. Hundreds of birds hovered in the air. A multitude of birds, the bracing sea air. The hotel is surrounded by its own gardens. A man was working in the garden. The lobby of the hotel was virtually deserted. There was no one around. Not a soul in sight. The lobby was tiled in blue. Various shades of blue. An ornate fountain, and at its center, backdropped with golden spray, a statue of a young girl. They found a private place in which to talk. They sat opposite one another. He had piercing blue eyes. Guilt was written all over his face. The way he looked at her sent shivers down her spine. She was mesmerized by the blue eyes that stared so intently into her own. He was transfixed by the pain in her face. He twitched a cigarette out of a packet. “Do you mind if I have a cigarette?” “May I have one?”

“Certainly.” He lit a cigarette to calm his nerves. He took a long pull on the cigarette. He blew a smoke ring. The smoke made her sneeze. There was a look about her that said everything. They sat looking at each other without speaking. Their expressions reflected their feelings. He yearned for a second chance. “Would you like a drink?” “Yes, please.” He leaned forward to take her hand. “I am here now.” He looked very solemn. In the distance she could see the blue sea. An intense blue. She withdrew her hand from his. She gave Mark a smack across the face. He seized the Scotch set before him and drained it. She twisted her handkerchief into a tight knot. It was very late when she came back. The whole household was asleep. He walked her home to her door. They huddled under the umbrella. It rained heavily. “Goodbye,” she said as they reached the door. “Goodbye,” he said in a hollow voice. For a moment their fingers touched. She snuggled her head into his shoulder. He gently touched his lips to her cheek. She lowered her head to touch his fingers with her lips. He kissed her on the lips. She had felt the thrill of a sexual attraction. She had believed she could control these feelings, but in reality that was not so easy. She returned his kiss. She was transported with pleasure. His touch was warm and sensual.

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In truth, she was more than a little unhappy. She was on the point of leaving. Passion was an element that had been missing from her life for too long. Running away was not in keeping with her character. There was no point in denying the truth. This point in her life the last thing she needed was a husband. Relations have to be built on trust. Fidelity is something most of us hold dear. It had happened three times now. She thought that nothing would be the same again. There’s only one thing to do after an experience like that. She wanted to end the relationship. She tried to put her shattered thoughts into some semblance of order. Past and present blurred together, confusing her still further. Should people pursue their own happiness at the expense of others? She forced herself to think of how he must be feeling. It was no use trying to put herself in his place. She sipped a double brandy. She took a long, hot bath. She relaxed, floating gently in the water.

A deep feeling of sadness washed over her. She was possessed by a need to talk to him. She wanted him with every fiber of her being. She needed him so much that it seemed as if her entire heart and soul were crying out to him. She had been aroused by the telephone. “Hello,” said a voice at the other end. A cheerful voice. “Hello, my sweet,” she answered with a faint air of boredom. “When can I see you, my bride-to-be?” He asked if he could take her out. They arranged to meet up that afternoon. He arrived looking relaxed and cheerful. They decided to go and check out a local restaurant. They stopped at a small trattoria. An intimate little Italian restaurant. A restaurant cater-cornered from the movie theater. The table had been covered with a checked tablecloth. He crooked his finger and called over the waiter. The waiter handed her a menu. Peter perched a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose. “What do you say to a glass of wine?” The waiter poured some wine for him to taste. The wine had a fruity taste. A wine with a zingy, peachy palate. The full flavor of a Bordeaux. “Are you ready to order, sir?” Pasta was served as a main dish. “A plate of spaghetti.” “I’ll have the salad plate.” Their meal arrived.

“Would you pour the wine, please?” She took a little wine. “Here’s to us!” He was slurring his words like a drunk. Maria was put out by the slur. He was eating as if every mouthful were his last. “Must you gobble your food so?” He laced his fingers together and sat back. She twirled her fork in the pasta. He cut his food up into teeny pieces. She picked at her food, her heart too full to eat. She lingered over her meal. “I’m full.” “My treat,” he insisted, reaching for the bill. After dinner, she kissed him goodbye, as usual. Her self-control finally broke. She called the hotel from a phone booth. She asked him round for a drink. They arranged to meet at eleven o’clock.

The afternoon light began to fade. By this time it was past 3:30. The door opened and a man came out. There’s only room for a single bed in there. He glanced up once but looked right through me. “Hello there!” He looked much older than when I’d last seen him. The line of his lips was prolonged in a short red scar. I first saw him in Paris, where I lived in the early sixties. We were fresh out of art school. He is but a shadow of his former self. He had put on weight and grayed somewhat. A poignant reminder of the passing of time. The most selfish, egotistical individual I have ever met. All I can say for him is that he’s a better writer than some. He knows his stuff and can really write. He was highly regarded. “What possessed you to come here? You’ve lost your chance!” “You and I see things differently.” “Beneath that assured exterior, she’s vulnerable.” “I got the impression that she wasn’t happy.” “You two were just made for each other.” “This is none of your business.” “Steady on, Mark! You’re talking about my best friend. You’re the one who ruined her life. You should be ashamed of yourself.” “How dare you talk to me like that! You’ve got more mouth on you than anyone I’ve ever known.” “He wants to marry her.” He slammed out of the room.

His touch was warm and sensual. “If you had stayed, this would never have happened.” He did not know how he ought to behave. “Did you miss me?” “And how!” They spoke in soft whispers. If only they could hold on a little longer. They must control the impulses that lead them to transgress. “If you should change your mind, I’ll be at the hotel.” She stared after him.

“How are you this morning?” “Me? Oh, I’m fine.” “I don’t feel very well. The alcohol had a really bad effect on me.” “You should go back to bed. If you still feel bad, stay in bed.” She thought it wise to let him sleep off his hangover. She drew him a hot bath. “I really must go, I don’t want to cause you any trouble.” She held her hands together as if she was praying. “Our troubles are just beginning.” 14

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“You are free to leave.” She walked away without looking back. “I’ll be perfectly OK on my own.” “Famous last words,” she thought to herself.

Part I I I

The wedding finally arrived. She looked down, terrified that he would read fear on her face. The ceremony was about to begin. She tried to compose herself. “I haven’t been totally honest with you.” She was close to tears. “We have nothing in common,” she told him. She wasn’t telling the whole truth. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Tears were running down her face. He didn’t believe her or didn’t want to know. She bit her lip to stop the rush of bitter words. “Tell them the wedding’s off.” He felt a vague disappointment which he couldn’t put into words. It came as a great shock. He found it a shattering experience. He paused to collect himself. He searched his memory frantically for an answer. Her words finally penetrated. I was stupid enough to think she was perfect. I should never have trusted her. It was represented to him that she would be an unsuitable wife. The atmosphere of neglect and abandonment was almost tangible. What more could you expect from a relationship built upon sand?

She stood in the hall and shook her umbrella. She was holding a brown leather suitcase. The old brown suitcase had survived two ocean voyages and more train and bus trips than she could ever calculate. Her red hair flowed over her shoulders. Her Scottish origin. She was dressed in blue. A blue suit that echoed the color of her eyes. Her mouth was a bright cherry-red. She had the fresh complexion of a true Celt. She gave him a radiant smile. He had a towel around his middle. He was captivated by her beauty. “You are beautiful with your face washed with rain.” Her perfume filled the room. A unique scent, impossible to duplicate or forget. Mark pulled her into his arms and held her close. She twined her arms around him. His breath fanned her skin as he leaned toward her. “You’ve come back to me at last!” He touched her head and felt her hair. Her hair felt very soft. A spray of jasmine was twined in her hair. “The bad old days are gone. You and me, we belong together.” He held back, remembering the mistake he had made before. She tried to think about the future without feeling afraid. “I don’t know what the future holds.”

Her voice shook with passion. “I’ll try to make it up to you in the future.” “Do that once more, and I’ll skin you alive.” She made him promise that he wouldn’t do it again. “I hope we’re doing the right thing.” She pushed the anxious uncertainties out of her mind. “Those days are gone for good.” His lips parted in a smile. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life.” This time they’re confident of a happy ending. She began to unpack her bags. She unbuttoned her dress from the back. She was tired out now that the strain was over. What with one thing and another, she hadn’t had much sleep recently. She undressed and climbed into bed. She pulled the covers over her head. She curled up and went to sleep. He could only gaze at her in astonishment. “Good night, my darling. Tomorrow we set sail for France.” He drifted into sleep on a tide of euphoria. Dawn was just breaking. She woke from a nightmare, palpitating with terror. Her face burned. She dreamed about her own funeral. A wave of panic. Dreams can foretell the future. In times of stress, her dreams seemed to her especially significant. “Are you all right? You were screaming.” “I dreamed that I was going to be executed.” “Oh my!” He reached out a hand and touched her hair.

“My poor baby, you must be tired.” She shut her eyes in anguish. She turned over and went back to sleep. The sun had just risen. Light squeezed through a small split in the curtain. The rain had stopped and the clouds had cleared. The sun dried the ground. Everything was so quiet and peaceful in the early morning. Sparrows twittered under the eaves. The sun shone through the window. The sunlight was dazzling. The shower had invigorated her. “How are you this morning?” “Me? Oh, I’m fine.” “Would you care for some tea?” “I’d give anything for a cup of tea.” “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.” She had not realized how hungry she was. “I take it that you are hungry.” He brought a tray. A tray decorated in black and green. The kettle boiled and he filled the teapot. The fresh note of bergamot. “Breakfast in bed – you’re spoiling me!” “I feel like celebrating.” “We have reason to celebrate.” He passed her a cup. She poured out a cup of tea. He was being so kind and tender. “It’s a nice day.” She breakfasted on French toast and bacon. Bacon and eggs washed down with a cup of tea. Freshly squeezed orange juice.

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He seemed really pleased that she was there. He spread the toast with butter. He was chewing a mouthful of toast. He chewed for a moment, then swallowed. She moved the tray to a side table. She turned her head and looked full into his face. They kissed. “Tomorrow is going to be a special day.” “The day of departure.” “We’ll be checking out in the morning.” “I need to practice my French.” “Did you check the expiration date on your passport?” “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ve got it all worked out. For six months I have been hammering away at a plot. Everything will be taken care of – you have my word.” She said something he’d never thought to have heard said again. “I love you.” A few seconds later the phone rang. He had a premonition of imminent disaster. It is impossible to foresee how life will work out.

that he was ignorant and stupid. His mother cut him out of her will. The coffin was lowered into the grave. They sorrowed over her grave. He saw the coffin sink below the surface of the waves. “May she rest in peace.”

Mark felt a rush of anger. He didn’t feel the loss of his mother so keenly. He felt sorrow at her death. They’ve arranged the funeral for Saturday. At the funeral he stood feeling drained and empty. The cemetery nestled beneath the cliffs, within sound of the sea. A funeral with only the immediate family in attendance. Dressed all in black. He had broken with his family long before. His mother was of French stock. He was the seventh of eight children. He has detached himself from his family. He was told constantly

Peter swore under his breath. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Maria made me swear I would never tell anyone.” “You don’t understand – she has left me. She made a fool of me.” She had destroyed his dreams. He felt a tide of resentment rising in him. The damage to his reputation was considerable. He got the impression that she was hiding something. She could have had some boyfriend she’d kept quiet about. He was sickened by the thought of others having been intimate with her, touching her in the most intimate places. It was a crisis for which he was totally unprepared. The thought drove him to despair. The scene was as sharp and clear in his mind as a film. Humans do not reason entirely from facts. He searched the house thoroughly. He looked through her belongings in the hope of coming across some information. He worked the blade into the padlock. An envelope marked “private and confidential”. An addressed envelope. He read a passage of the letter. Rage coloured his pale complexion. He produced a sheet of paper from his pocket. He noted down her address on a piece of paper. He fingered the photograph gently, careful not to mark it. Peter read the letter twice before

its meaning sank in. It would have taken a paragon of virtue not to feel viciously jealous. The reality dawned on him. He was beginning to despair of ever knowing. He just felt used. The camera cannot lie. It was not his way to wait passively for things to happen. He found out the truth. The defeat was a bruise to his ego. He was not a man who found it easy to forgive and forget. The savagery of his thoughts frightened him. He freaked out and started smashing the place up.

“You haven’t been unfaithful to him, have you?” “Oh, shut up. I can do without your complaints first thing in the morning.” She drank her coffee. “Just shut up and listen, you can’t keep it quiet for long!” “It’s my decision – it has nothing to do with you. Don’t go poking your nose where you shouldn’t.” “Remember what happened last time. He is emotional and unpredictable.” “Don’t lecture me! I know what I’m doing.”

The following Tuesday, I clued her in about Peter. “He’s gone crazy. I tried to calm him down. You really wounded his pride when you turned him down.” It was no use trying to persuade her. She shakes her head while you talk, as if to say you don’t know from nothing. “I am telling you, he has gone absolutely mad.” “Still, he’s harmless. He’s never harmed anybody in his life.” “He was arrested yesterday – I read it in the paper. He’d got into a fight outside a club.” She gave a cynical laugh. “The effects of too much drinking.” “The man ended by attacking a police officer.” “It’s his male jealousy, which is nearly always unfounded. He had no reason to suspect my honesty.” “To be perfectly frank, I don’t know.” “I don’t know what you mean.”

He had been up for hours. He had slept little these past weeks. His throat was dry and sore. By four o’clock he still hadn’t had a single bite. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten. He got in his car and drove off. He was in no shape to drive. The inside of the car was like an oven. He has been determined to destroy her. Little did he know what wheels he was putting into motion. He saw her running across the road. His eyes scanned her slender form. He was following behind in his car. His eyes followed her every move. He was drenched with sweat. He stared at her in amazement. He made an effort to control himself. His state of near despair; despair verging on the suicidal. He had the strong impression that someone was watching him. His attention had wandered. He glimpsed a figure standing in the shade.

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He tried to persuade her to come with him. “You’ve no intention of coming back?” “I’m quite sorry, but no, I have not.” She followed his gaze, peering into the gloom. His eyes were red. He turned, following her gaze. His impassive, fierce stare reminded her of an owl. “Tell me the truth.” She suspected that he might be bluffing.

“Look, this is ridiculous.” “Please answer my question!” “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” She began to walk away from him. He caught hold of her arm. Maria saw his lip curl sardonically. The smile revealed the evil beneath. “And the picture?” he prompted. Her face grew serious. He wouldn’t show the picture. She jerked her arm free. “Stop it, you’re scaring me!” He got all worked up and started shouting and swearing. He uttered a stream of oaths. He caught hold of her arm as she tried to push past him. His hands caught at her arms as she tried to turn away. “What do you think you’re doing? Keep your hands off me. You and I are through.” His mouth was spitting vile oaths and curses. “Ow! You’re hurting me!” Before she could struggle, he lifted her up. She shrieked with fear. He was boiling with rage. Tears were streaming down her face. She shouted at the top of her voice. He slapped her hard. The blow left a red mark down one side of her face. I for one am getting a little sick of writing about it. It makes me cringe when I think of it. The blow caught her on the side of her face. She fell down. She collapsed on the ground. She was unconscious of the pain. The blood gushed out in scarlet streams.

The light began to fail. Mark felt sick with fear. His watch marked five past eight. There was still no sign of her. Where can she have gone? She had packed and checked out of the hotel. She was nowhere to be seen. It was thoughtless of her to have rushed out and not said where she would be going. There must be something wrong. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. A sure sign that he is worried. He surmised that something must be wrong. Through the open windows came the strains of a hurdy-gurdy playing in the street. The song had a curious ring of nostalgia to it. His eyes filled. He felt lonely and depressed. He had a strong presage that he had only a very short time to live. He knew that his end might come at any time. It’s gone half past eleven. Hopes of her safe return faded. The porter was the last person to see her. At 4:30 am Mark woke up. He forgot where he was. The reality dawned on him. Mark felt his stomach clench in alarm. He felt a surge of anxiety. He heaved himself out of bed. Mark stapled a batch of papers together. He emptied out the contents of his briefcase. He stuffed a thick wad of notes into his jacket pocket. If the place were on fire, Mark would still take his time. He jabbed a cigarette end into the ashtray. He picked up the phone and hit several buttons. He sought help from the police. He found his way to the front door. He received a hit from behind. He struggled to his feet and made toward the car. His case burst open and its contents flew all over the place. He was unconscious but still alive when they found him. He has lost a

great deal of blood. They found him senseless on the floor. His skin was sallow and his pulse impalpable. He was left to die. Photographers crowded around him. The newspaper obtained a copy of the letter.

The light was already fading, but she pushed on. She stood alone in the middle of the street. The night was silent. She had no idea where she was going. She felt as if she were disconnected from the real world. That street at that time was no place for a lady. She was so tired that she couldn’t think. Her energy was on the verge of giving out. She was in deep trouble. Behind her she could hear men’s voices. It was too dark to distinguish anything more than their vague shapes. A minivan was parked at the side of the road. The license plate had been blacked out with masking tape. A car flashed by on the other side of the road. She had the eerie sensation that she was being watched. For an instant the moon disappeared. The van jerked forward. A stranger slowly approached from the shadows. She hadn’t heard him approach. She felt someone touch her shoulder. A tremor of fear ran through her. A tall dark man with a scar on one cheek. She took a deep breath. If she had tried to utter a word, she would have broken down.

September 2014

Maria felt her distress ebbing away. She had trouble keeping her balance. “I only got away by the skin of my teeth.” She was alive, which was something to be glad about. She sighed with relief. The place had been totally trashed. Her footsteps were muted by the thick carpet. She fastened her locket around her neck. She raked her hair back with her fingers. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dull with dark shadows beneath them. Her clothing was stained with blood. Her dress was split. Her arms and legs throbbed with tiredness. Her face was badly bruised. She applied some ointment. “I can take care of myself.” The air hung with an antiseptic aroma peculiar to hospitals. She touched her locket for luck, a superstition she had had since childhood. She watched the waves undulating from her stateroom window. She pulled down the blinds. She glanced over her shoulder to check that the door was shut. Closing her eyes, she tried to relax. She had lost all track of time and had fallen asleep. The sky was turning red outside.

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A week later I met him in the street. The leaves were motionless in the still night air. The first drops of rain splashed on the ground. He had an uneasy feeling. “You look as though you need a rest. Let’s go and have a beer.” The bar was crowded and noisy. “Let’s go somewhere where we won’t be disturbed.” “We can be private here.” He took a mouthful of beer. He was accused of murdering his wife’s lover. The remains of a headless body had been found. The press was notified. Identification was made through dental records. Such crimes are, by their very nature, difficult to hide. The police said the man was described as white, 6 ft. tall, with mousy, cropped hair. Police are searching for clues. “I found the letter in her bag.” “And did you steam it open?” He downed his beer. “I am not worried – they’ve got nothing on me,” he whispered in a broken voice. “It’s too late now anyway. The police will prefer charges.”

He told me my telephones were tapped and I was being watched. “Your movements and telephone conversations are recorded.” “I don’t believe you.” He twisted and pointed his mustache. “Everyone will soon know the truth.” He went silent and withdrew into himself. “I couldn’t help feeling that she was using me. She had me under her power.” I didn’t answer him. “I think she’s playing a trick on us. She is seeking revenge.” “Listen, I’ve got an idea. I cut his photograph out of the paper. You two are very similar. You could pass yourself off as his double.” A ludicrous suggestion that he might escape unnoticed. “What are you hinting at? In theory, your idea sounds great, but can it be practically applied? You’ve got to be realistic, I’m just not sold on the idea. This is just plain stupid.” “I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow night.” “Give me just one clue!” “I never plan the end of the novel I’m writing.”

Maria was restless throughout the meeting. She was put in a cubicle with the curtains left open. “There are many gaps in our understanding of what happened. May I ask a few questions? I’d appreciate any information you could give me. Are you hurt?” he repeated.

She made out that he was violent. “I guess I’d better tell you everything.” “Please give your name, address and date of birth. Write your name in the appropriate space. What is your name?” She produced an ID card. She wasn’t used to dealing with authority. “Does he have any distinguishing features, such as a scar or a birthmark?” “No,” she responded. “Are you quite certain about this? Your story just doesn’t hold water. That story does not agree with the facts.” “I got slightly balled up in my facts.” The rapid questions were designed to scare her into blurting out the truth. She repeated her story. She appeared not to know what was happening. She jumped backward and forward in her narrative. There wasn’t a scrap of evidence. The police have issued an artist’s impression of the attacker. The police took her home.

Detectives are trying to unravel the mystery. A murder investigation that has never been solved. Nobody could predict how it might end. ar

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Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau Plan (detail), 2013. Acrylic, emulsion, oil, shellac, metal, fragments of paint, plaster, gold leaf, and sediment of electrolysis on photograph mounted on canvas, 330 x 560 x 45 cm © Anselm Kiefer. Photography: Charles Duprat

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Consciousness (b&w) 2014 Limited Edition Print Giclee print on to Hahnemuhle Matt Fine Art Photo Rag 188gsm 100% cotton with the teeth painted in enamel by hand.

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Federico Peralta Ramos, Nosotros afuera, 1965. Installation view of the work at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Agentina. Courtesy Peralta Ramos family.

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Art Reviewed

Whistle of the snake 167

The Shape of a Right Statement Cubitt Gallery, London 10 April – 25 May To spend time in the company of Cynthia Maughan’s videos from the 1970s is to enter a strange private world, equal parts B-movie melodrama, schoolyard reverie and intimate confessional. But as confessionals, they remain curiously occluded. As central as their author is to these short black-and-white works, only rarely do we see her face – and in Scar/Scarf (1973–4), one of the few in which we do, she spends most of her time covering it, or at least the bruised lower part of it. These works reveal and conceal in equal measure, teasing at expectations. Watching them on a loop, each two- or three-minute clip punctuated by the clunk and splutter of early video technology, one’s immediate reaction to films like Two Sticks Mourning at Another Stick’s Funeral (1973–4) or Coffin from Toothpicks (1975) is to laugh. They have that immediate, childlike humour of a David Shrigley sketch. But as should be apparent from even such a cursory survey of the titles, if these are to be received as skits, they are skits of a peculiarly morbid sort. Death hangs over these films like a veil, and between the gags emerges a tragic persona caught somewhere between Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Julia Davis’s Lucy Tiseman character in Chris Morris’s Jam (2000).

Deadpan, lo-fi and imbued with a deeply surreal animism, Maughan’s films pick up where the early work of William Wegman left off. But in place of Wegman’s cosiness, the younger artist offers something quietly unsettling, her videos posing far more questions than they answer. In Frozen & Buried Alive (1974–5), for instance, Maughan tells the story of an impossible performance she claims to have taken part in, in which she was locked in a coffin that was then filled with water, frozen and buried underground overnight. Unfortunately, she says, all the documentation was lost apart from a particular white dress. It’s this play of truth and fiction, of absence and presence in Maughan’s work that the Cubitt show hopes to emphasise by placing it alongside more recent works by Ben Kinmont and Wu Tsang. Kinmont’s Carl Andre Killed His Wife (1988) made its accusation only after the Massachusetts-born minimalist was acquitted of all charges relating to the death of artist Ana Mendieta, who died in a fall from their shared apartment. Additional materials added to Carl Andre… in 1995 consist of a clutch of A4 sheets, dictating the precise terms of the work’s exhibition (so many inches from the ground, etc) in such a way as to make it seem more like a performance of a George Brecht event score than

The Shape of a Right Statement, 2014 (installation view). Photo: Plastiques Photography. Courtesy Cubitt Gallery, London

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an installation. These notes also explain that the Swiss artist Olivier Mosset originally purchased the work in 1988 for $1,000, only to trade it in later upon becoming friends with Andre himself. But the spurious accusation levelled by the work itself casts doubt over the narrative subsequently appended to it. Wu Tsang’s video The Shape of a Right Statement (2008) finds the Los Angeles artist delivering a ‘full body quotation’ of autismrights activist Amanda Baggs’s popular YouTube manifesto In My Language (2007). In respeaking the sounds generated by Baggs’s speech generation device, Tsang matches the rhythm and disjointed timbres but can’t help but inject his own anger into lines like “the thinking of people like me is only taken seriously if we learn your language”, adding a further layer of translation. Tsang’s reembodiment of Baggs’s speech is an act of solidarity, imbuing her words with his own experiences of LGBT activism. Kinmont’s installation testifies to physical acts that may or may not have taken place. But Maughan’s films – perhaps most explicitly the almost self-explanatory The Way Underpants Really Are (1975) – hint towards truths to be found in the gaps between enacted fictions, as if through the holes in a pair of raggedy old pants. Robert Barry

Pablo Bronstein Recent History Herald St, London 24 May – 20 July Ripples of political and social disquiet disturb the usually decorous calm of Pablo Bronstein’s elegantly camp world, in his latest show, Recent History. It’s an interesting turn for an artist best known for his witty revisiting of the architectural styles, decorative fancies and generally dandyish posturing of eighteenth-century Europe – an anachronistic confusion of pompadours and neoclassicism, postmodern architecture and perfumed kerchiefs, baroque and breeches, in which history wanders off its usual rails. Here, however, shades of violence are everywhere, though Bronstein keeps them hovering just in the wings, not centre stage. In a space painted a sumptuous deep green, in his favoured ornate gilded frames, Bronstein’s delicate penand-watercolour drawings lead us through scenes of oddly incongruous stillness. Reign of Terror (all works 2014) depicts what might (or might not) be the Place de la Révolution during the French Revolution: a crowd fills the square, dwarfed by the tall, slightly awkward shapes of seven guillotines rising above the throng. Yet everyone is just milling about, unsure of what might happen next, and for all their surplus (the French Revolution managed with just one), the guillotines look almost embarrassed to be there, idling.

It’s that sense of paralysis and historical bathos (we know how it all turns out in the end) that lends these works their sinister, if polite, humour – revolutions fail, order is restored. Theatre Section with Stage Design for an Oliver Cromwell Ballet allows Bronstein to indulge his obsession with architectural elevation, depicting an ornate Restoration-era theatre, where the gentry are idly watching a ridiculous scene in which a Cromwell figure dances daintily, carrying the severed head of Charles I. Fornication and debauchery help relieve the tedium here: Scene from the Commedia: Pierrot bores Columbine with a detailed description of an elaborate doorframe. Meanwhile, Harlequin has sex with a servant upstairs is self-explanatory, though Mother Clap’s Molly House, Holborn 1720 is less so: against a skyline of Hawskmoor church-spires, sited in a nondescript eighteenth-century London street, a more elaborate building, with a theatrically ornate but jerry-built wooden upper structure, seems to challenge the probity of its surroundings. The ‘molly house’ referred to was real – one of the better-known illicit gay venues that figured in Georgian London, run by the eponymous Margaret Clap and raided and closed in 1726.

Clap’s clientele might have ended up in Prison Block, a huge, ugly windowless neoclassical fortress, which, on closer inspection, towers above streets along which drive early twentiethcentury motorcars. It’s these temporal slips that make Bronstein’s world uncanny – four centuries of history seem here to run adrift, all sense of urgency or direction gone, but now replaced, not by ironic repose but by this oppressive, Groundhog Day sense of a neverending present. Aside from the wacky fairytale chinoiserie of House of a Washerwoman, there’s little respite. Two circular anterooms to the middle gallery space present over-wide architectural elevations of buildings (State Building and Sepulchre) that, mounted on the curving wall, end up encircling you with their blank facades and excruciating lack of visual incident. No escaping from normative morality or society, then – except perhaps into nature, which the artist nods to in the untypical, uninhabited and romantically bleak vista of Landscape. Bronstein’s darkening tone could be no more than a fashionable costume change in his whimsical contredanse with time and history; but sometimes frivolity is the best satire in times when power seems most unassailable. J.J. Charlesworth

Prison Block, 2014, ink and watercolour on paper in artist’s frame, 123 × 117 × 4 cm. Courtesy Herald St, London

September 2014

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Play What’s Not There Raven Row, London 17 April – 22 June A conception of art as a purely aesthetic enterprise, of l’art pour l’art in the strictest sense of the phrase (after all, as Philip Larkin once said, ‘for what other sake [but art] can art possibly be undertaken?’), was one rarefied terminus of late-nineteenth-century Romanticism. If it was a casualty of twentieth-century Modernism – which raised truth over beauty – it was transformed into formalism, one of modernist art’s crucial tropes. Room Divider, an exhibition Michael Bracewell curated in 2011, focused on where design and history intersect. His current curatorial venture proposes an equivalent binary between aesthetics and ethics; but the aesthetic end of this binary is usually represented by formalist idioms as though l’art pour l’art and formalism were the same thing and not on opposite sides of the revolution of twentiethcentury Modernism. Tendentiously, Bracewell asks formalism to bear the weight of his use of the term ‘aesthetic’ with its broader historical associations. Play What’s Not There keeps returning to the moment at which the two definitions of ‘form’ shade into each other: form as a material embodiment, and form as an abstracted essence, suggesting that disembodiment is somehow synonymous with artifice. The ground floor resounds to the prog-rock soundtrack of a Linder performance (The Working Class Goes to Paradise, 2000). A monitor shows a motley collection of performers trance-dancing on stage, as though parodying 1960s druginduced transcendentalism: art as a means to

get beyond ourselves and it. Robert Whitman’s cone of sand has a line being drawn around it in projected light. Line in the Sand (Negative) (2004) makes its geometrical formalism an absurdly physical manifestation of a clichéd phrase with Romantic connotations. From an expansive starting point we end up stuck in the trammels of language, ‘trapped in the medium’s artifice’, as W.H. Auden puts it in New Year Letter (1940), from which Bracewell quotes in the show’s pamphlet. Bracewell gravitates towards works in which a formalistic conceit is atomised, or attends to the ways in which the entropy of rationalism or representation can be perceived as a merely decorative or aesthetic order. Edward Krasinski’s Spear (1964), like Whitman’s mound, takes its title as an empirical starting point. Chopped into sections and hung as a mobile, the ‘spear’ is an abstract pattern that belies its function, only to end up as an image of that function: a motion diagram. Cerith Wyn Evans’s white space-scribble (A Community Predicated on the Basic Fact Nothing Really Matters, 2013) might be an in-joke on white neon’s reputation as a staple of Conceptualism’s rational messaging. Reason succumbs to a Dionysian frenzy, or a decorative arabesque, the visual equivalent of the feedback issuing from Linder’s monitor. Stephen Campbell’s dour, early-1980s Scottish figuration dissolves lumpen representation in the light his cross-hatching generates. The Hiker Said, ‘Death You Shall Not Take The

Child’ (1983) shows a tweedy backpacker encountering the Angel of Death. He extends his fist, valiantly warding off a shady, metaphysical symbol in the name of the empirical truth his broad-backed form represents. Krasinski’s empty black box, Untitled (1967), might be a voodoo reliquary. Wire levitates off its roof like ectoplasm. A gutted Minimalism intimates an occultish function it may have superseded. The flicker of Robert Whitman’s Wavy Red Line, also from 1967, reduces its taking of the room’s measure to a wobbly, mystical aura. The string of red light might be a cross between Fred Sandback and James Turrell; between Minimalism as self-deprecating absurdity and grandly metaphysical opticality. Curatorially, it seems Bracewell has submitted to an analogous renunciation of scope. His claim to address what Robert Motherwell called ‘the despair of the aesthetic’ resolves itself into another look at how formalist and minimalist agendas admit the chaos of the stuff they were designed to preclude. This mostly involves capturing the moment at which a formal configuration becomes talismanic. Cerith Wyn Evans’s two neon staffs (Leaning Horizon (Neon 1.7m) and Leaning Horizon (Neon 2.1m), both 2014) are minimalistic rulers as well as lightsabers waiting to be picked up by a couple of sci-fi fencers. They might be tokens for the show’s reflexive transformation: enlightenment (reason) becoming light (aura). Mark Prince

Robert Whitman, Wavy Red Line, 1967/2003. Photo: Marcus J. Leith. Courtesy Pace, New York

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Adriana Varejão Carnivorous Victoria Miro Mayfair, London 6 June – 2 August Cracked erupting landscapes, some in pairs, some in triptychs, one alone. Bloody, pinky and orangey-red hues stain the whitish or light-greenish paint that covers these terrains, with naive images echoing the bodily or biological systems. This display of six paintings (all works 2012, aside from one, Vermelho Carnívoro, 2014) by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão is titled Carnivorous in recognition of the range of carnivorous plants that inspired them. Each work is titled after a singular plant found by the artist in a botany dictionary. Five of these works (titled Drosera (Triptych); Drosera Aliciae, Filiformis e Sarracenia Purpurea; Nepenthes (Triptych); Darlingtonia ‘Misteriosa’; and Utricularia Reniformis) were originally created for Varejão’s 2012 retrospective exhibition Histories at the Margins at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. These fractured contours were formed from layers of plaster applied to the already painted canvas in different tones of red. When dry, the flatness of the wet plaster is transformed into a sculptural plane – a map of exploding, craggy outcrops, onto which the artist then paints –

beginning with a slick layer of oil paint in one tone (most light sickly green, one in deep magenta) covering the plaster on the canvas. This shiny, almost glazelike effect could relate back to Varejão’s interest in, and previous work about the azulejos – Portuguese tiles covered in elaborate paintings found all over Brazil – yet in these works it seems as if the tile beneath has burst, or been broken by some interior force. This urge to create a broken, cracked or erupting, surface – shifting two-dimensional painting into three-dimensional sculpture – was explored brilliantly in the exhibition Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962 at MOCA, Los Angeles, in 2012, whose curator, Paul Schimmel, described the process as a ‘literal assault’ on the picture plane motivated by political desires. Early work by Shozo Shimamoto, who first began experimenting with painting, performance, surface and sculpture with the Gutai group in 1950s Japan, particularly resonates with Varejão’s work in this exhibition – Shimamoto created a body of violent yet fragile works with oil paint on newspaper, which cracked, broke and erupted in places. The Victoria Miro press release also

suggests that these works ‘resonate’ with Chinese Song Dynasty ceramics – some of which, yes, are made with purposefully cracked surfaces – but this reference to these ‘polite’ vessels is not true of the bodily, abject encounter I had with Varejão’s paintings. Images of these works fail to convey how fragile and weird they are. The dried-out yet shiny plaster surfaces look as if they might burst, or fall off the canvas – unlike more traditional painting where the canvas is the surface, not the support. I was desperate to push one of the more precarious pieces of plaster, to see if it would come free, as it appeared to be defying gravity. Each light green surface had a plantlike form painted across the cracks; on some, pubic tendrils sprout from vaginaesque mounds and lips, alongside womblike, ovarian or foetuslike shapes in varying shades of red. They are deeply psychological, and mordantly visceral, as if some interior force is trying to escape through the plaster, from a flat plane of canvas. And they are also paradoxically intense; repulsive or grotesque in the forms they display, yet seductively fascinating. Kathy Noble

Vermelho Carn voro, 2014, oil and plaster on canvas, 99 × 99 cm. Courtesy Victoria Miro, London

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Enantiodromia Fold Gallery, London 15 March – 10 May First, that title. Its literal meaning notwithstanding (from the Greek, for something like ‘going against the tide’), it’s a word that crawls through the mouth in slow motion. Words dunked in honey: apposite for a show about slowness, and one so resistant to a snap description. The tide that the works on display – by Onya McCausland, who has been exhibiting since the early 2000s, by Simon Callery and Angela de la Cruz, who both emerged during the 1990s, and by Australian-born, Los Angelesbased Lawrence Carroll – go against is that of the image leached of embodiment. Each artist posits a counterstrategy. Even the visitor’s mode of engagement – peering, crouching, stooping – seems wilfully staged as a way of drawing a line between a passive receiving of the digitised image and the active mode of experiencing nature, say, or architecture. These are works for bodies, not eyes. That’s why language slows to a slouch. Encountering a painting by Callery or de la Cruz – ‘looking at’ isn’t quite right – activates the viewing body by releasing information incrementally, in shadowed folds and hidden edges.

Callery’s Foot-Neck Wallspine (2012–3) is a structure made of folded canvas projecting from hidden supports in the wall, apparently hovering a few inches from the floor. Entirely stained in dark green distemper, the work elides the distance between colour and effect, between surface and support. Its physical scale, keyed to the artist’s own, is complemented by de la Cruz’s Bloated III (Blue) (2012), a work similarly scaled to the artist’s standing height. A wall-mounted rectangular aluminium form, hammered into bulges from the inside and coated in glossy oil paint, the work aligns two historical acts of modern painting: the bashed and the brushed. By positioning the act of painting as something intrinsically constructive – Callery exposes the wooden guts of the painted stretcher in Burnt Umber Painting Oolite (2012); de la Cruz folds a black-painted canvas over a wooden bench in Debris (2012) – these artists restore to painting its historical immediacy. This is painting as constructed surface, a collusion of thing and thought. The resonance is premodern: altarpieces, frescoes, cave walls. In McCausland’s paintings, minerals dug up out of evocatively named locations (Oxted

Enantiodromia, 2014 (installation view). Courtesy Fold Gallery, London

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Quarry, Surrey; Todmorden Moor, Lancashire) are applied as raw pigment to off-kilter geometric surfaces in contrasting media (ply and aluminium). In Separation (2014), two wonky parallelograms reflect each other from the wall and the floor. Painted with identical iron oxide pigment in differing densities, the components of the work rethink colour as weight, both visual and physical. Likewise, in Carroll’s work, the quiddity of the painted object is staged in a series of architectural proposals. Untitled Table Painting (Yellow) (2008) is a circular slice of parquet floor, surmounted by a sheet of cardboard held aloft by a scrabble of wooden struts. Slathered on its surface are washes of pale ochre and blanched yellows, colours that approximate unprimed canvas. For Carroll, this edging backwards is a restatement of the basic values of painting’s presence. In his Hinge paintings (all 2013), the painted surface cantilevers out of the wall like a cocked thumb, claiming physical and intellectual space at once. Words fail. Dancing about architecture suddenly seems like a good idea. Ben Street

A.R. Hopwood False Memory Archive Freud Museum, London 11 June – 3 August Carroll / Fletcher Project Space, London 6 June – 12 July Going to China, seeing a dog humping a coconut, flying over the Sahara, being bitten by a venomous snake – these are some of the memories recounted anecdotally to camera by two people using FaceTime. Their recollections, both of which look to have been filmed at the Freud Museum, are shown on adjacent screens in its video room. It’s one of several site-specific works created by A.R. Hopwood for this fourth and final exhibition in his project False Memory Archive (2012–14). Just as the people telling their tales are one stage removed from the actual people whose experiences they’re retelling (we are told in the accompanying information that they are actors), so the stories themselves are one stage removed from real events. As the performers reveal, they’re all examples of False Memory Syndrome, memories of events that an individual believes he or she has experienced, but becomes aware are either a distorted version of the truth or didn’t happen at all. At each venue Hopwood (who also founded fantastical life-solution organisation WITH Collective, withyou.co.uk) has included works that begin as collaborative and site-specific proposals, enlisting the help of art professionals, experts in the field of human memory and the

public. At the Freud Museum these also include a series of large-scale closeup colour photographs of damage caused to the walls by previous exhibitions – hung over what we’re told is the location of the now repaired damage, and accompanied by a framed fax from Hopwood to the museum’s curator, outlining his proposal for the work. There are also plaster casts of crash helmets with video cameras attached and a series of framed photographs of found images of UFOs, with the evidence of the UFOs removed, inviting the viewer to play ‘spot the ball’ in the blank skyscapes. The museum was of course Sigmund Freud’s last home (1938–9), and where he recreated his famous study, complete with psychoanalyst’s couch shipped from Vienna. It’s an obvious location for the culmination of this project, as, filled with Freud’s objects and documentation relating to his and his daughter Anna’s own investigations into the workings of the human mind, it heightens the awareness of how reality is, in many ways, a construct that the mind not only creates but can easily manipulate. These elements become more apparent at the show’s second venue, Carroll / Fletcher Project Space. Here the works, in the form of images, objects and video, are the result

of a variety of projects that relate to specific psychological research into memory, each accompanied by their own framed fax from Hopwood detailing the proposal. There are lightbox images of children in Westfield shopping mall (with the other shoppers digitally erased), after a 1994 experiment in which memory expert Professor Elizabeth Loftus was able to persuade 25 percent of her subjects to believe that they’d once got lost in a shopping mall as a child. There’s also an entire wall of the erased-UFO photographs and a replica of the Chanel suit worn by Jackie Kennedy when President Kennedy was assassinated, installed in a cupboard and peeked at through a spyhole. The suit was commissioned by Hopwood from a tailor in Vietnam and, with the original out of public view in the US National Archives, presumably reconstructed from a collage of archive images and film. It’s this thought that the exhibition, through the accumulation of works, cleverly reinforces: that a memory, much the same as this review, is a creative process, constructed from an amalgamation of impressions that have been experienced, noted down, recalled, read about, suggested, made up and received in discussion with others. Helen Sumpter

False Memory Archive: Erased UFOs (A collection of found UFO images with all evidence of the UFOs removed, presented in 242 used frames), 2012–13, framed photographs. Courtesy the artist and Carroll / Fletcher, London

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Melanie Smith MK Gallery, Milton Keynes 11 April – 15 June In 1929 there appeared a special issue of the Belgian magazine Variétés containing a map of the world drawn by some uncredited Surrealists. Mexico had ballooned in accordance with their psychotic magic act, oozing out to join a patch of Alaska and connect, via a knotted corridor of anonymous terrain at the other end, to Peru. Watching Melanie Smith’s Spiral City (2002) – one of the films gathered in this sprawling, enigmatic and frequently gorgeous 20-year retrospective – Mexico’s topography seems again unsettled by longitudinal perversion, the capital swelling woozily as the camera tracks over a sequence of ghostly houses. But space is always prone to transformations here. Spiral City meticulously unravels the whorl of Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970), twisting further and further from its centre in vertiginous circulations, leading the helicopter recording the cityscape to ever-higher altitude while what’s below tilts nightmarishly towards a void. Smith is as smartly attuned to the spectres of Surrealism as she is to Smithson’s experimental cartographies and environmental

irruptions. Her film Xilitla (2010) is a midnight prowl among the ruins in the garden of English Surrealist Edward James; Fordlandia (2014) explores the derelict interiors of a factory commissioned by Henry Ford in the depths of the Brazilian jungle. Dreamtime landscapes surround these twin architectural follies. Smith films purple mist drifting through murky trees, and the effect is breathlessly strange, ethnography shapeshifting into science fiction. Since departing Britain for Mexico in 1989, Smith has made these meandrous expeditions into hidden territories, returning them to us through a carefully woven haze of fragments, alive to feverish atmospheres and luscious phases of disintegration. The journeys ahead are slyly contained within the retrospective’s first room, which is occupied by 263 Thoughts on Insubstantial Objects and Matter (1995–2014), an elegant compendium that includes, among other things, furs, plastic eyeballs, Aztec detritus and several more of Smith’s films in tall vitrines. A conceptual feint is occurring – the arrangement is too disciplined for a private wunderkammer, too clinical to fit with the

Fordlandia, 2014 (still), HD video. Courtesy the artist

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hallucinogenic wilderness. Its contents are a precise constellation of kitsch tchotchkes alluding to the films – Fordlandia’s jaguar, for instance, appears as a gleaming figurine – making a peculiarly serpentine assemblage that is at once a trashy double and an alien reflection of the surrounding pieces. Such unease is oblique preparation for Fordlandia itself and its delirious cataract of disjointed images. Jungle life and industrial decay madly commingle: windows are shakily reflected in a dark pool, snakes writhe in the carcass of a machine, insects make the air seethe with dense electrical hum. Xilitla seems to occur underwater, the remnants of James’s unfinished house scattered in the phosphorescent night like the dismembered limbs of a monster. In these obscure regions of the map, nature has its own sinister programme against acts of Fitzcarraldo-like hubris. Watching its progress induces a delicate, intoxicating confusion. When the fireworks blast at the end of Xilitla, you might mistake them for a strange kind of weather. Charlie Fox

Corin Sworn Inverleith House, Edinburgh 12 April – 29 June Given that Sworn’s practice emphasises the process of reinterpretation, it seems appropriate that this exhibition requires more than one pass. On first entering the ground and first floors of Inverleith House, situated within Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden, you encounter discrete canvases, dyed with natural pigments such as cabbage, madder or fustic, that form graphic clusters around the space. They are like restrained modernist monochromes. Interspersed with specimens from the garden’s collection and c-type prints of wild flora, this makes for an obvious play upon an immediate context. But before you look again, you visit the basement, where Sworn’s film The Rag Papers (2013) is being screened. Sworn’s video and installation work over the last number of years has found ways to represent the material world through shifting and fragmented accounts, where objects become mutative things: things revised, things recycled and things reencountered. The Rag Papers shows a middle-aged female protagonist who, entering an airy, high-ceilinged flat, tries to find

something among the handwritten notes of someone else. And judging by the still-revolving platter of a record player on a shelf in the room, that other person recently left. As the narrative backtracks, we see this previous inhabitant, an older male character with thick, yellow-stained fingernails: smoking, contemplating, writing and listening to music. The room, with its cornicing, elegant porcelain cups and potted plants, adds to the sense that these characters, who are never in the room together, are western, intellectual, cultural types. So the apparent mystery – intensified somewhat by sudden cuts to flea markets and cloth exchanges and accompanied by ominous base notes – is something esoteric or philosophical, rather than registering on the crime-genre spectrum. At a point the inconclusive narrative onscreen stops and hands over to syncopated lights and a recorded monologue by the artist. The monologue is a veiled artist’s statement, with Sworn referencing a ‘he’ and ‘she’ but still conveying interest in phrases that replace full stories... one flowing into the other... with the liquidity of glass.

Returning upstairs to the canvases, you then find yourself importing concepts about exchange and transformation. Each natural pigment makes dramatically or subtly different colours depending on the acidity or impurity of the elements with which it was mixed, a transmutation of dyes; the specimens reflect global exchanges, the reappropriation of meaning (some are from the University of Tehran or, more telling of the period, Mesopotamia, now Iraq); the c-type prints, like the dyed canvases, say something about the mutability of perception, the subtle striations of colour suggesting different synergies during exposure or processing. Sworn avoids using her work to generate critique, and that fact rubs shoulders uncomfortably with the ambiguous narrative, which makes you feel something is lacking. But this elegant and elusive work still deftly channels a phenomenological sense of a world that is always coming into being. James Clegg

He set to work producing drawings, plans and recipes (two erratic productions), 2014, silk, logwood, lac, 38 × 58 cm (each).Photo: Michael Wolchover. Courtesy the artist; Kendall Koppe, Glasgow; and Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

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Larry Clark they thought i were but i aren’t anymore… Luhring Augustine, New York 7 June – 1 August I remember the first time I opened Larry Clark’s Tulsa (1971), a photography book that charts the path of amphetamine junkies – Clark and his friends – from the suburbs to the grave. It moved me. Clark and his subjects abdicate responsibility, and succumb to the abandon of drugs and sex – a delicious nightmare I’m tempted by, but will never allow myself. In his exhibition at Luhring Augustine, Clark returns to some of the subjects from Tulsa. Beginning with Johnny Bridges (1961), the first portrait he took with a Rolleiflex camera borrowed from his mother, and moving to the present, the show charts the output of an artist once living the fantasy of youth, but now, as an old man, relegated to the role of voyeur. The heartbreak of Clark’s ageing remove seeps through the work, which includes photographs, mixed-media collages and oil paintings on canvas. The collages read like cabinets of curiosity, or the detritus cleaned out of the apartment of

a dead man. In Untitled (2013), Clark combines vintage stamps bearing the likenesses of Sonny Liston, Babe Ruth and W.C. Fields with a photograph of a baby being born and pornographic images of anal sex. I want a baby before u die (2010) includes a 1996 New Yorker cover, newspaper clippings about child-actor-gone-bad Brad Renfro, an image of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987) and a Polaroid of a woman under whose pubic hair is tattooed ‘Larry’. Self portrait with tan (2) (2014) contains dozens of colour photographs of a caramel-coloured body, likely belonging to one of the Latino boys Clark has featured in recent films such as Wassup Rockers (2005) – in the centre, Clark superimposes a black-and-white self-portrait from his Tulsa days. Over the years, Clark has taken on many male muses – most recently Jonathan Velasquez, a young man who came to live with Clark when he was sixteen, and Adam Mediano, the pimply faced, mop-headed young man who starred in Clark’s film Marfa Girl (2013). The latter is

represented by a series of three topless colour portraits taken in 2011. The images betray that Clark has a type – Adam could be Johnny Bridges teleported from 50 years ago. Velasquez, who is now in his twenties, is the subject of three oil canvases made in 2014. In them, he is nude – Clark pays special attention to painting his cock. The artist has frequently been accused of lechery, perhaps fairly – but Velasquez is not aroused. What’s more striking about the paintings is how amateurish they are: the colours are off, the gestures unskilled. This is also the case in Self Portrait (2014), a painting in which the artist comes off looking like Jesus wearing his crown of thorns. It looks nothing like Clark in his photographs, and because of that, it reads like a mask. What Clark wants us to see is not the person he is today, but rather the beauty that once surrounded him and a youth that, in this work, he appears desperate to recapture. Brienne Walsh

Knoxville (Homage to Brad Renfro), 2011, colour photographs on board, 107 × 218 cm. Photo: Farzad Owrang. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

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Chatbots, Tongues, Denial, and Various Other Abstractions Bortolami, New York 12 June – 22 August The title of this exhibition may read like a disparate laundry list, but it’s a pretty accurate checklist. The ‘denial’ belongs to Anicka Yi, who carved four niches into a wall at the front of the Chelsea gallery to present lightboxes filled with objects ranging from dog food to mirrors that together form sculptures highly evocative of something, even if you’re not quite sure what. Their titles are so narrative – The Easy Way to Quit New York (2013); The Question Is Would You Recognize My Face Tomorrow (2013) – that they sound like stories in a box à la Joseph Cornell. And then there’s the text, titled ‘Denial’ (written by Yi and artist Jordan Lord) and left on the front desk, which is more a suggestion than a description: it links Japanese terms, cryonics, forensics and the future, which dissociates the objects from anything familiar and sends them towards a terrain in which privileging one reading is impossible and all explanations collapse into further explorations. Carissa Rodriguez’s ‘tongues’, or It’s Symptomatic / What Would Edith Say (2014), are five photographic closeups of men’s and women’s tongues. Printed and mounted on aluminium, the images have been covered with writing that

analyses the surface of each tongue and the physical state of its owner. ‘Vertical crack’, ‘thick cut’, ‘black stain’ – there are loads of associations with speech, language and taste in the background of this fleshy work. On to ‘various other abstractions’: Rodriguez’s pieces are interspersed among four lenticular prints, each exhibiting the meeting point of two objects that reappear, pixelate and bleed into one another on the screens that comprise Melanie Gilligan’s 4 × Exchange / Abstractions (2013). These four high-definition, highly fragmented videos are stylistically reminiscent of Gilligan’s Popular Unrest series from 2010. Even though they are not as directly political as the earlier work, they take on the unstable state of the image in today’s media. Elements such as a hotel lobby, an animated hand, a drive on a highway and a closeup of a woman’s face are repeated across the screens. Everything is tied together in the last monitor, where we see two women sink the objects that appear in the videos and on the walls in a bathtub. Like Yi, Gilligan provides the visitor with a text about the work, but this one is so explanatory that it reads like a set of platitudes.

The text-heavy tendency ends with Ian Cheng. His Baby Feat. Ikaria (2013) shows a monochromatic digital simulation that, with assorted objects hovering against a plain background, looks like the result of an explosion. The simulation, a live feed of chatbots nattering away in virtual reality, is projected on a panel resting vertically against the corner of the gallery. Whatever it is they are mumbling isn’t clear, and Cheng doesn’t provide a text deciphering it, which leaves the piece to exist in some remote digital space in which no meaning is intelligible. While Yi’s and Gilligan’s texts may feel a little overstretched, Cheng’s skilful writing often lends strength to his work, something that is missed here. Still, the infinite variability of Cheng’s live simulations echoes Gilligan’s hi-res aesthetics and Yi’s materiality. While object-oriented theory may seem overdone, these four artists are looking at objects in a way that surpasses current intellectual fads. Their works organise and catalogue information (Rodriguez), make it infinite (Cheng), process it (Gilligan) and mask it (Yi). They’re all enticing, intriguing suggestions as to the end of the visual, of speech, of making sense of it all. Orit Gat

Carissa Rodriguez, It’s Symptomatic / What Would Edith Say (detail), 2014, permanent ink marker on inkjet print mounted on aluminium, wood brace, 152 × 102 cm. Photo: Thomas Müller. Courtesy the artist and Bortolami, New York

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Jeff Koons A Retrospective Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 27 June – 19 October The Whitney Museum’s Jeff Koons: A Retrospective does a pretty good job of humanising a figure equated almost entirely with exaggerated male machismo and art market inflation. Yet it’s hard to dissociate Koons the man from Koons the smarmy art-star millionaire, fabricating slick, populist works for quick consumption and handy profits. One can’t help imagining Jeff Koons living it up in some magical Jeff Koons castle, probably somewhere near Palm Beach, where he holds court over a fantastic balloonland of inflatable dogs and blow-up flowers, balls-deep in some porn star’s inhumanly smooth pussy. But such is history. Curator Scott Rothkopf’s wall text does point out that, regarding Ilona’s Asshole (1991), the adjoining property is in fact covered in pimples. It is an apt image for the retrospective as a whole, which pokes holes in Koons’s own off-putting, hyperhetero self-mythologising – however subtly. While his penis is symbolically everywhere – most of the works, even the most childish, are blatantly sexual – Koons’s projections of straight masculinity are not as clear-cut as one might think. The Made in Heaven series (1989–91), arguably the most famous work on display, is a case in point. The works were made when he hired pornstar and Italian parliamentarian Ilona Staller to make a film with him. After deciding against the film, he fell in love with her, got married and made a series of sexually explicit photographs and sculptures. With Made in Heaven, Koons’s masturbatory self-affection is writ large everywhere, sometimes literally, as in Exaltation (1991), a closeup of Ilona holding Koons’s boner to her lips, which are slickened with his cum. Or in the aforementioned Ilona’s Asshole, a no-holds-barred view of the artist penetrating the adult film star, hands placed firmly on her ass cheeks, his dick like some sort of raunchy exclamation point. This stuff reads like porn because it is, in many ways, porn, despite Koons’s objections in the wall text that it’s about ‘the shame of masturbation’ and a ‘metaphor for cultural guilt’. He’s fucking a pornstar, after all.

What does partly elude the charge of pornography is the series’ over-the-top campiness. Most pornography is cheaply made, shot in humdrum if not depressing settings. Made in Heaven is anything but. The couple is posed in front of colourful fairytale backdrops of swooping waves, as in Jeff in the Position of Adam (1990), or surrounded by animated butterflies, as depicted in Ilona on Top (Rosa Background) (1990). Koons is particularly caked with makeup, a fact seized on by Rothkopf, who claims it’s an interesting gender play, as if Koons was adopting a queer persona. While it certainly feminises the artist, who looks, well, kinda gay, makeup doesn’t go far enough to offset the clearly misogynistic porno tropes that Koons depicts. He’s the straight man in charge here, and she the damsel in distress. Witness their unmade movie billboard Made in Heaven (1989). It looks like the cover of some pulpy romance novel. Muster the fortitude to look past Staller’s crotch in Silver Shoes (1990) and you might notice a ladder to the left and a crappy tiled floor, both nods to the image’s setup and to the artifice of pornography itself, which Koons readily plies. Key is whether Koons is doing this with knowing irony or not. Maybe it’s both. The ambiguity is one of the reasons the series works so well. Look around the gallery and you’ll also notice big, fluffy dog statues, like blown-up porcelain figurines, and Violet – Ice (Kama Sutra) (1991), in which Koons has immortalised his sexual play with Staller – her legs sprawled high into the air – in a miniature glass landscape, like a tchotchke on sale at a roadside gas station. Here Made in Heaven is connected to Koons’s longstanding interest in lowbrow Duchampian readymades. The retrospective begins with Koons’s iconic vacuum cleaners, ensconced in acrylic cases and lit by fluorescent lights. If you needed convincing that the works weren’t nodding to Dan Flavin, go back a few years to 1979 and you’ll see Koons affixing a cheap toaster to a row of vertical, wall-mounted fluorescent tubes (Toaster, 1979). The teapot of Teapot (1979) even has its barcode sticker attached.

facing page, bottom New Hoover Convertibles Green, Blue, New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue Doubledecker, 1981–7, four vacuum cleaners, acrylic, fluorescent lights, 295 × 104 × 71 cm. Collection Whitney Museum of American Art. © the artist

facing page, top Made in Heaven, 1989, lithograph on paper on canvas, 318 × 691 cm. Collection Artist Rooms, Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland. © the artist

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On the evidence, for someone so identified with his mature works, in which tricks of complicated fabrication play a pivotal role, Koons once played the nitty-gritty unassisted readymade game vis-à-vis Minimalism. As hard as it is to imagine, Koons was once a young, nearly impoverished Canal Street urchin trolling downtown novelty shops. His wall-mounted fluorescent works were initially displayed at the New Museum, suggesting that Koons did earn his stripes as an avant-garde East Village savant who had real money problems like the rest of us – regular folks with feelings and insecurities! The point is brought home with the Celebration series, begun in 1994, in which Koons comes off as a touching, sensitive father figure – a far cry from the machismo dominating his earlier works. This is where, for better or worse, personal biography plays an important role in the reception. The museum hides nothing in detailing Koons’s bitter breakup with Staller, and the subsequent kidnapping of his son is played to great heart-tugging effect, lending the otherwise technically impressive sculptures a large degree of pathos. Perhaps the most crowd-pleasing, selfieready work is the big hanging-heart pendant Hanging Heart (Violet/Gold) (1994–2006). Or perhaps it’s Play-Doh (1994–2014), which contrary to many press reports really doesn’t look like a pile of shit but rather quite like the real children’s plaything, albeit at a jaw-dropping scale. Most affecting, though, at least to this cat-lady critic, was Cat on a Clothesline (Aqua) (1994–2001), a sad, wide-eyed kitten hanging in a sock, surrounded by flowers. It was fabricated, like the other works, in part as a reminder to his abducted son that he was never far from Koons’s thoughts. The work brought me to tears. There I was, like a sad sap, crying at the Whitney on a crowded Friday night. Who knew Koons’s work contained such melodrama? As commercial as his work may be, there’s more to Koons than dollar signs and straight swagger. David Everitt Howe

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Tara Donovan Pace, New York 10 May – 15 August Tara Donovan’s recent work does not hold up to the promise of what she was making a decade ago. The two large sculptures (both untitled, both 2014) occupying one of Pace’s 25th Street galleries are impressive feats of labour, and like much of Donovan’s sculpture, they are remarkably mimetic evocations of organic forms, in these cases a monumental profusion of quartz or salt crystals and a series of towering stalagmites. And that’s the problem: these sculptures have been made largely to look like the outcomes of certain kinds of physical processes or conditions, while the process or condition that is actually on display – and which the sculptures in some sense must be about because they broadcast it through their accumulation of identical (in the case of the stalagmites) or similar (in the case of the crystals) units of construction (styrene index cards in the case of the stalagmites; acrylic rods in the case of the crystals) – is the repetitive labour expended in producing them. Anyone familiar with Donovan’s work of the last 15 years will recognise the signature

decision-making: find a mass-produced unit, one with little, if any, cultural specificity – no plastic water bottles or Coke cans here – and then find a way to combine that unit with itself to achieve an unexpected yet familiar form. In the best cases, what was unexpected were the capacities of the units to combine of their own accord, as with Donovan’s Untitled (Toothpicks) and Untitled (Pins) (both 2004), where static friction between the units themselves when massed into a cubic form was enough to hold them in place. And then there were effects that the combined units sometimes produced, as with Haze (2003), an ineffable surface built from translucent plastic drinking straws stacked perpendicular to the wall. What these works demonstrated was that, with a deep sensitivity to material potentials, quantitative changes can produce qualitative transformations, that differences in degree can become differences in kind, that, in short, more is different. Not so with the new work, where the equation is nothing more than quantity

is quality. The more labour on display (and the bigger the thing gets) the more valuable the thing becomes. The striking mimesis of natural forms is presumably what then qualifies it as ‘art’, but it also interrupts our recognition of the material potential that is actually at work in the work: all of that repetitive, unskilled labour. That stacks of index cards can be made to look like stalagmites is a testament to Donovan’s feeling for novelty. That this is the only feeling issuing from her new work, though, is unfortunate, especially at a time when questions of work and labour are more pressing than ever. One doesn’t want to say that labour is what Donovan more self-consciously needs to make her work about; in its present state, and on the evidence of these two new works, it cannot but be about it, and how Donovan chooses to address this labour and the ends that it serves must be accounted for. Making it look natural, and so somehow neutral, is no accounting at all. Jonathan T.D. Neil

Untitled, 2014, styrene index cards, metal, wood, paint and glue, 380 × 681 × 700 cm. © the artist and Pace, New York. Courtesy Pace, New York

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Made in L.A. 2014 Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 15 June – 7 September Look long enough and you’ll find your own face. In a hall of mirrors with walls painted a digital, ethereal swimming-pool cyan, rows of dolls give way to rows of anaglyphically printed faces that go 3D when seen through the freely available pairs of scrappy red-and-blue-lensed specs. We (and the faces in effigy) infinitely regress in the mirrored room and through a mounted video camera capturing the looks of us looking, and screening that as well. This work, by Samara Golden, accumulates over time; the faces of everyone whom the artist talks with about the work are added to it. In the graciously titled Thank You (2014), Golden captures some elusive truth about Los Angeles: the construction of art and place happens through a multitude, the singular expressions it produces are composed within a community of individual voices. ‘No single characteristic defines a “Los Angeles” artist…’, announces the sans serif wall-text as I plod into the second edition of our locals-only biennial, Made in L.A. 2014. But communities and factions form, artists organise around galleries, studios and alternative spaces, and these nexuses of artists support and

influence one another and accumulate, over time, into meaningful congregations. For example, while in the courtyard Piero Golia carves a 1:1 replica in foam of George Washington’s nose from Mt. Rushmore, which he calls The Comedy of Craft (Act 1: Carving George Washington’s Nose) (2014), he is also the founder of the artist-run Mountain School of Arts (where I’ve lectured) and the founder of a social club/ social sculpture currently operating across town in Hollywood called the Chalet. Mountain School grad Sarah Rara’s breathtaking stillness and colour in her video of pollinators (meaning bees) on pornographically vivid flowers, tucked into a corner of the exhibition, plays to the music of her husband and longtime collaborator in experimental band Lucky Dragons, Luke Fischbeck. Both are involved in one form or another in many of the other alternative spaces represented within the exhibition and without in the city. Radio collective KCHUNG, the work of Fischbeck, Harsh Patel, Solomon Bothwell (three more Mountain School grads) et al allows for a self-selecting volunteer army of artists, writers, musicians and

unclassifiable others – many in the exhibition have been on KCHUNG’s shows or had their own. Bucking trends in the biennial genre, Made in L.A., besides its implicit localism, avoids in all its written material any kind of explicit theme. But the inclusion of collectives within its precincts creates a porosity and marks the interconnectivity of a thriving and changing community. Though a certain politeness gives each room its space, and the feeling overall is inclusionary over qualitative, it is mercifully less the clusterfuck of the last Hammer biennial, and its selections overall give necessary and serious space to those who haven’t had much of it, laudably so with some weird and wonderful work by Jennifer Moon, Max Maslansky and Emily Mast, and an excellent essay by Jarrett Kobek in a mostly undistinguished catalogue. Los Angeles is a lonesome place. This solitude makes working easier, but we combat the loneliness in small ways: places of gathering and eclectic collectives, creating confluences whose influence are more subtle than any -ism and more satisfying than any school. Andrew Berardini

Emily Mast, B!RDBRA!N (Epilogue), 2012, performance. Photo: Anitra Haendel. Courtesty the artist and Public Fiction, Los Angeles

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Jon Rafman Hope Springs Eternal Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran / Projects Libralato, Toronto 4–28 June Judging from his most recent work, Montrealbased Jon Rafman is well versed in Freud’s theories of the human psyche. Rafman, shortlisted for this year’s Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Art Prize as well as the Sobey Art Award in his home country, is best known for the ongoing series 9 Eyes of Google Street View (2008–), in which he reprints images captured by Google’s globetrotting, camera-equipped vans. If Google’s handy navigational tools represent the web’s rational and responsible ego, then the websites Rafman mined for these five new works express its libidinal and reckless id. For Hope Springs Eternal, Rafman ventured into the Internet’s remote corners the so-called dark web. Rig 1 (all works 2014), a creepy recreation of a ‘battle station’ consisting of a grungy home-care bed outfitted DIY-style with a flat screen and keyboard, is based on a photo the artist found online. Four other screens, their surfaces dusted with volcanic ash and rows of glyphs from ancient languages that have eluded translation – metaphors for the artist as archaeologist, perhaps – play short loops

of found footage: a man with waist-length tresses twirls his head for the delectation of hair fetishists; a snake forms a circle as it bloodily devours its own tail. The circular motif in each video implies that both we and these images are engaged in a perverse feedback loop. Spinning motions also punctuate the disturbing yet compelling video Mainsqueeze, where viewers are subjected to more images geared towards fetishists: a muscleman crushes a watermelon between his mountainous thighs; a person in a furry Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume writhes hog-tied on the floor; a woman blithely crushes a live crayfish under her foot while the voiceover, written by the artist and describing a daughter’s fraught relationship with her mother, adds to the irony and horror of the visuals. A montage of scenes from medieval and Renaissance paintings, including gory images of the Crucifixion and Caravaggio’s version of Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598–9), seems to underscore humanity’s innate tendency towards barbarism.

Like ethnographers down through history, Rafman risks romanticising the online hikikomori, or hermit, subculture he is examining (the incongruous title of this exhibition comes from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man from 1734, after all). The work has seemed to irk some of those who engage in this lifestyle, especially those who are still self-aware enough to recognise that their behaviour isn’t healthy. While producing this exhibition, Rafman infiltrated chatrooms and found comments about his work. Anonymous posters wondered whether he wasn’t ‘shit talking’ their ‘shitty lifestyle’, or if Rafman himself wasn’t an insecure ‘closet furry’. It’s not easy to embrace these new works, because doing so requires acknowledging our darker impulses. As one hikikomori with ‘some fucked up fetishes’ commented about Rafman’s work, ‘People should be infinitely glad if they can’t relate to it.’ However, by not at least attempting to do so, we deny the existence of an entire realm of human experience. Bill Clarke

Mainsqueeze, 2014, HD video, 10 min 36 sec. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran and Libralato, Montreal

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Tony Greene Room of Advances MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles 18 June – 7 September When Tony Greene made the 20-odd works in this exhibition, all dated between 1987 and 1990, he knew he was dying of AIDS. This very fact makes even his least political paintings almost unbearably poignant. Greene’s art is devastating and immediate because it is his answer to a question that everyone should consider from time to time: What would you make if you knew you only had a few years to live? I will spare you my histrionics because this is really not my story to tell; Greene was well loved in the Los Angeles gay community, and many of those who knew him keep his memory alive today. Among them is the artist Richard Hawkins, who is chiefly responsible for the current resurgence of Greene’s art, and Catherine Opie, who, with Hawkins, curated a selection of his paintings at this year’s Whitney Biennial. Two of Opie’s solemn photographs of Greene’s studio wall, taken in 1990, the year he succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses, are included in Room of Advances. Judie Bamber, who curated the exhibition with Monica Majoli, knew Greene; Majoli only

came to know his work after his death, but the two had friends in common. Bamber and Majoli were planning an exhibition of Greene’s work prior to the interest of the Whitney curators and to that of Connie Butler and Michael Ned Holte, who included a microexhibition featuring Greene’s work within Made in L.A. 2014 at the Hammer Museum. (Bamber and Majoli both have work in that installation, too.) Unlike other art that responds to the AIDS crisis – the poetic Conceptualism of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, or the activist art of the collective Gran Fury, for example – Greene’s paintings do not demand the public platform of a museum or a city billboard. The intimate, domestically scaled rooms of the 1922 Schindler House, now the headquarters of the MAK Center, provide a much more sympathetic setting for his art than do the cold, high galleries of most museums. (It is notable that at both the Whitney and the Hammer the curators elected to paint the walls something other than white.) Here, the roughness of bare concrete sets off the unctuous tones of the paintings.

Greene mined several sources for pictorial content: photographs of beautiful young men, which he photocopied, enlarged and glued onto panels; photographs of taxidermied deer and wintry landscapes, which underwent the same process; and luxuriant floral designs – likely copied from William Morris or Aesthetic Movement illustration – which he overlaid in thick veins of impastoed paint. These panels were then mounted with a recessed and ornamented ‘moat’ (the term he apparently used) and placed within a heavy box frame. The entire object was embalmed in layers of varnish that gave it a sickly yellow sheen. Arcane lettering on three panels spells out men’s names over pictures of pouting lips: Wes, Matt, Ed. Confronted by beauty that was destined to wither and fade, Greene made objects that were designed – both physically and conceptually – to endure. He gave most to his friends. AIDS renders bitterly ironic Philip Larkin’s well-known line: ‘What will survive of us is love.’ Jonathan Griffin

…understand…, 1989, mixed media, 36 × 36 cm. Courtesy collection of Judie Bamber

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David Hendren Echo’s Drift 5 Car Garage, Los Angeles 31 May – 30 July Anna Meliksetian / MJBriggs, Los Angeles 7 June – 19 July To see a work by David Hendren is to encounter a contraption, a ramshackle tool jerry-rigged by a tinkerer. By turns, a Hendren can recall the kooky side of Larry Bell, the varnished steampunk of Marcel Duchamp or, more to the point, the backwoods pursuits of a talented craftsman working in wood, glass, wire and sometimes paint, who perhaps dreams of machines but doesn’t quite know how they work. His objects and panel paintings are charming, well crafted and nostalgic, though Hendren’s nostalgia is less a longing for the past than a study of its relevance for the present. Modernist abstraction, in particular, is a concern of his work, as though the artist is trying to come to grips with out-of-date beliefs by using his bare hands. For example, the floating shapes of Joan Miró populate Drift Painting (In Seven Parts) (all works 2014) at 5 Car Garage, which, along with Anna Meliksetian/MJBriggs, is hosting Hendren’s current two-venue exhibition.

In Miró one finds the recognisable world giving way to the world of the imagination, the landscape of dreams flooding into reality and turning it into something strange, but in Hendren this abstract world becomes tethered to and anchored by the world of materials, of day-today repetition, of fading pleasure. Echoes of Miró morph and dance across Hendren’s seven panels, but to these the artist adds an evolving drawing of two lovers, who come together and then break apart. Usually in Hendren’s work the diversity of his materials provides a platform for more traditional portraiture. A face, often abstracted, will appear among his built environments and devices. Anna Meliksetian/MJBriggs features small, intimate panels of such faces twisting into landscapes or fields of string and nails, like handmade craft objects that one might make at summer camp or find at garage sales. In Cabinet Painting 2, a face in profile wears its strings like a prison mask. In Echo Painting 1, another face

is reduced to swirls of black paint while a slash of cut copper accents it like a question mark. The lesson is an old one: the organic reality of life is never quite contained by the systems we use to describe it. More references abound: Arshile Gorky, Wifredo Lam, Yves Tanguy and the fetish boxes of Joseph Cornell – they all make appearances in constructions that look like antique inventions. In this rustic Surrealism, one is reminded of the drawings of Billy Malone or perhaps the Arkansas poet Frank Stanford. It is no surprise that Hendren, too, is from Arkansas, a place where ordinary life can only be described in terms of Surrealism, a place where the sophistication of Southern Gothic gives way to its rougher, more physical edges. In the same way that Stanford once found Jean Cocteau in the levee camps of the Mississippi River, so Hendren finds Paul Klee in the wood shop, in the poetry of back-alley refuse and the white noise of radio stations. Ed Schad

Untitled, 2014 (installation view, 5 Car Garage, Los Angeles), wood, glass, wire, ink and fabric, 274 × 147 × 229 cm. Photo: Wild Don Lewis. Courtesy the artist, Anna Meliksetian/MJBriggs and 5 Car Garage, Los Angeles

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Kerry James Marshall Painting and Other Stuff Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona 11 June – 26 October Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 13 June – 26 October Billed as the most important exhibition in Europe of work by one of the preeminent American artists of his generation, this showing of recent work by Kerry James Marshall is the most ambitious offering from Barcelona’s Tàpies Foundation since la crisis began back in 2008. In fact it’s so ambitious that Marshall’s earlier work overflows to the Reina Sofía in Madrid. Marshall turns out to be a cool smoothtalker, born in Birmingham, Alabama, and long resident in Chicago following a childhood in LA that took in the Black Panthers and the Watts Riots: a background that continues to inform his work. In conversation prior to the opening, he risks stating the obvious: that art’s history is both long and multicultural, while the art market is predominantly white and male (to which he could have added ‘American’). At the outset of his career, already feeling marginalised, Marshall began interrogating the Western canon from within. Rejecting AfricanAmerican abstraction that kowtowed to the mainstream, he began representing ‘real’ issues reflected in the media (he isn’t specific, but the Kennedys and Martin Luther King are recurring themes) or on the streets, leading to a solitary stand for figuration that kicks sociopolitical ass. It’s a persuasive argument, except Marshall is seemingly in denial of the elephant in the room. Marshall (born 1955) came of age in an era when even postpainterly abstraction was long

passé; an era when the mainstream gravitated towards a neoexpressionist, postmodern figuration that was soon to be called the Transavantgarde or New Spirit. As a figurative painter in his mid-twenties, Marshall could hardly have been unaware of fellow travellers like David Salle and Julian Schnabel, or the overtly political figuration of Leon Golub and Nancy Spero. To deny them is not only disingenuous, it is to risk appearing both compromised and slyly derivative. Much as depicting African Americans partying-just-likewhite-folks (Garden Party, 2003) is hardly radical when every second cop film since Shaft (1971) presents the same scenario. A parody of Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue (1966–70) (Who’s Afraid of Red, Black and Green, 2011–12) imposes figurative elements while adopting the colours of the black nationalist flag, though the stylistic shifts in these three disparate canvases clash with the vision of Bill Cosby’s homely middle-class America portrayed elsewhere. Black Star (2011), a topless woman bursting through a minimalist ‘Frank Stella’, further subverts the modernist canon while – read the fine print – referencing the return-to-Africa ideology of the 1920s Black Star Line shipping company, served with a sideswipe at racial and gender stereotyping. Other paintings portray more succinctly the everyday lives of African Americans: Boy Scouts;

main street; the barber’s shop; house hunting; dancing; loving. The figures are impossibly black – simultaneously present and redacted – in a point well made if overplayed. More than art history, Marshall’s multiple styles derive from the directness of naive painting and cartoons, agitprop murals and American billboards, or political and religious marching banners: boldly realised and confrontational – all rictus smiles and whites of the eyes. Among his precedents, Marshall cites the rough-hewn performances of the great blues players, but rarely matches the economy imposed by the limitations of three chords and the pentatonic scale. By comparison, Marshall’s augmentations are overworked cover versions, where everything gets thrown in, including the eponymous ‘other stuff’. Videos, photos and magazine cuttings are the sort of de rigueur archival material expected these days: fast food for the MTV generation. Foremost a painter, Marshall has, I sense, sold out to the white male American dealer at the crossroads in return for a chance to tread the boards and strut his stuff. Marshall has his moments. Nude (Spotlight) (2009) is an especially successful work, with a restrained suggestion of the Pop of Patrick Caulfield or Valerio Adami, but his painting is often too upfront, the political subtext too leaden to counterbalance what little finesse there is in the art. Keith Patrick

Mementos, 1998. Courtesy Rennie Collection, Vancouver

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Venice Architecture Biennale Various venues, Venice 7 June – 23 November At every Venice Architecture Biennale one wonders what it might be like if it were actually coherent. This year we found out. Its director, Rem Koolhaas, took an extra year of preparation to make it so, and even the normally disparate national pavilions have been whipped into line. The overarching theme of the biennale is Fundamentals. As Koolhaas put it, it’s ‘about architecture, not architects’. So not a theory or a cornucopia of egos, but the very stuff itself. The centrepiece of this almost military operation is the Elements of Architecture exhibition in the central pavilion. Its opening gambit is a bravura statement. One walks in under a dome painted by Galileo Chini in 1907 and subsequently covered up until last year. Beneath it, though, Koolhaas has installed a suspended ceiling piled with ductwork. Modernity, he suggests, has done away with craftsmanship and the decorative arts. And what has it replaced them with? Air conditioning. What ensues is a catalogue of the welltempered environment – a panoply of walls, windows, door handles, toilets and stairs, and their potted histories. It was unclear to me whether architects would revel in such nerdiness or suffer flashbacks to first-year technical classes. Either way, the message is a bleak one. Architecture, the so-called mother of all arts, has been reduced to a specification sheet. Perhaps.

But as to how architects should deploy these elements, Koolhaas has nothing to offer. No sooner does he imply a sweeping critique than he retreats into his comfort zone as the postcritical researcher. Only the room about Nest’s ‘smart’ thermostat offers a genuine debate about the kind of future we are heading for – almost certainly one in which our domestic appliances feed our most intimate data to Google. In the Giardini, the national pavilions were set the theme Absorbing Modernity: 1914–2014 – a big topic, so hefty in fact that most pavilions focused on Modernism, the style. Koolhaas’s thesis is that modernity (and with it Modernism) has been a great leveller of cultures, propagating a global sameness. And while there is something in that, the effect – on me at least – was less one of critical reassessment than of nostalgia. Seeing pavilion after pavilion treading this ground was not just repetitive; it had the odd effect of making Modernism seem like an ancient civilisation. Instead of Inca ruins, brutalist ones. Modernism has never felt so distant, politically or ideologically. Still just about capable of monumentalising corporate power, there is precious little social democracy left for it to service. And that we can only lament. We are left displaying kitsch merchandise of Trellick Tower, as in the smartly curated British pavilion, or making ironic statements about the

Elements of Architecture, 2014 (installation view). Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti. Courtesy Venice Architecture Biennale

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commercialisation of once radical ideas, as in the mock trade fair at the excellent Russian pavilion. The price of coherence in this instance is a backward-looking and pessimistic biennale. It was a bold and valid move to make the biennale historical, but Koolhaas’s postmortem brooks no conversation about the way forward. Excluding contemporary architects to avoid their egotism smacks of egotism, while making them be researchers resulted in too many falling into the bear-trap of pasting up reams of text. In future, may they follow the Bahrain Pavilion’s example in simply making a book and giving it away, without the pretence of calling it an exhibition. The liveliest part of the biennale is to be found in the Arsenale, which is devoted to Italy – Monditalia. Combining architecture, film and dance, this is dense and chaotic but paints an honest and often touching portrait of Italy. Again, there is a palpable tension between nostalgia and crisis, between Italy’s past glories – displayed here in extraordinary films and sublime architecture – and its current political and economic malaise. One can take it all in or one can simply take away the news bite that on the eve of the vernissage the mayor of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni, was arrested on corruption charges. Basta così. The carabinieri should be awarded the Golden Lion for best collateral event. Justin McGuirk

Enchanted: The Poetics of Wonder Furini Arte Contemporanea, Arezzo 24 May – 19 July Enchanted: The Poetics of Wonder, Furini Arte Contemporanea’s second show in its new space – the deconsecrated church Madonna Del Duomo Vecchio in Arezzo – explores the notion of narrative and the human tendency to tell stories through the works of Jean-Baptiste Bernadet, Thomas Braida, Ulla von Brandenburg, Daniel Gustav Cramer and Anna Franceschini. Being situated in an ex-church, the show positions art as an inheritor of iconography, with the role of the curator akin to a choreographer of signs and symbols. (Indeed, the priest is often referred to in English as the ‘curate’, or ‘curer of souls’.) With so many issues and artists to deal with, in a darkened space no bigger than 100sqm, overseen by the impressive altarpiece Madonna della Rosa (1440) – attributed by Vasari to Spinello Aretino – the works on display, comprising film, painting and text handouts, are deftly placed so as to allow for the sense of wonder that ‘enchantment’ implies. Thomas Braida’s oil painting Il Cavaliere Stùpito (The Astonished Knight, 2013) presents a phantasmagoria of mythical and real creatures in a kind of bewitched forest setting, almost as if the artist had transcribed one of Poussin’s representations of a bacchanalian feast while

on LSD. The painting serves as a powerful reminder that storytelling does not only aim at civilising: often what is expressed through the narrative is a profound desire to escape the restrictive confines of civilised society. Daniel Gustav Cramer’s three texts (Niedermatten, Zermatt, Switzerland, October 21, 2012, 2014) – which are placed on the floor in separate piles of A4 printouts, ready to be taken by the public – describe the experience of one man walking in the countryside of Switzerland, in which he regularly strays from and returns to a winding path. The feeling of grass and sun on the skin are just two of many universally recognisable sensations outlined in a narrative in which little happens and yet experience is described at its fullest. The narrative path per se – like the winding path returned to in the three texts – is something we stray from, yet it does not leave us until death completes its arc. At that point every minute detail takes on a fundamental importance in retrospect. In this sense a narrative is played out in the fullness of successive moments, not in the fulfilment of a longed-for future. This point could prove fundamental to a rethinking of the notion

of modernist or messianic time, whereby the present is sacrificed to the future. Anna Franceschini’s 16mm film It’s About Light and Death (To Joseph Plateau) (2011), looped on a monitor placed on a centrally positioned plinth, is one of a set of three works by the artist that pay homage to the physicist Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801–83), inventor of the phenakistoscope, an early precursor to cinema, which gave the impression of movement through strobed light. Franceschini filmed stuffed animals in a taxidermist’s studio under a strobe, creating a sense of movement and animation, bringing dead matter to life, thereby echoing the narrative properties of film as a medium. Her interest in Plateau derives in part from the physicist’s life story, and in particular from the moment at which he made himself permanently blind by staring directly at the sun for 25 seconds while researching retinal perception: a reminder that the heroism which often characterises a narrative comes at a price. In the twenty-first century we seek narratives – and heroes – equal to the highly fragmented form of time we live with day to day. Enchanted: the Poetics of Wonder places visual art at the centre of this search. Mike Watson

Enchanted: The Poetics of Wonder, 2014 (installation view). Courtesy Furini Arte Contemporanea, Arezzo

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Susan Philipsz The Distant Sound Various venues, Norway, Sweden and Denmark 25 May – 21 September The Grimeton radio station in Varberg on the southwest coast of Sweden was built in 1924. For its time it was a huge investment in the most advanced radio technology of the day, supported by Swedish-American emigrants from the area, to secure wireless communication with the outer world. This impressive symbol of early-twentiethcentury broadcasting technology became a world cultural heritage site in 2004. Erected in the middle of vast rural meadows, the high iron towers and the Swedish Grace architecture of the station strike you as a monument to utopian Scandinavian modernity. The radio station is the starting point and the broadcasting core for Susan Philipsz’s magnificent sound installation The Distant Sound (2014). From there, the Berlin-based Scottish artist airs a selection of sound signals to nine receivers situated in cultural heritage sites in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The sound is made out of vintage radio intervals, the short musical scores played during breaks in the radio programmes from local stations so that the listener could identify the station. Here, these scores are played on horn instruments (for associations with the shipping and boat traffic of the costal area) and amplified by loudspeakers so that they reach out across the surrounding landscape.

Philipsz has refined an unusual sensitivity to the history and spirit of her installation sites. Her almost archaeological working method unearths hidden histories, making the past come back to us and become a part of our collective memory. Here the history of the old radio station becomes the point of departure for her new work, and her choice of technology is as crucial as the content it transmits. With the help of the Grimeton radio station’s association of radio amateurs she has built a system for analogue radio transmission that brings the listener back to another era of radio. The old-fashioned technique makes the transmission quality more or less strong depending on the atmospheric changes in the weather. Through this choice of an outmoded technology, Philipsz reminds us of the more insecure quality of communication from a time other than our present digital era. The Distant Sound is a part of In Site, a large cultural heritage project that aims to connect the different Nordic partners and the visitor in a reflection on the diverse historical heritage of the landscape. This agenda does feel a bit limiting relative to the many dimensions of Philipsz’s work. The precise juxtaposition of the sounds and the sites generates a strong sensory presence that speaks beautifully to and about

the landscape, but the unexpected meeting of the old radio tunes out in the open air also evokes more personal memories and emotions. One of the sites where I had the good fortune to listen to the work undeniably added to this. Standing on the windy beach outside the legendary Tjolöholm castle, its Tudor pastiche architecture known from Lars von Trier’s 2011 film Melancholia, is a breathtaking enough experience to begin with. Then, from the small remote island in front of the castle, the nostalgically tinted crackling sound of a radio transmission starts up, connects and forms into a tune that, intensified by the loudspeaker, travels over the water. Philipsz’s work often draws attention to the ways in which the meaning of music and sound are transformed over time. Here she uses our memories of old radio intervals to construct a soundscape where the scores, taken together with their broadcast in the sites, transcend their original significance. The space she creates is multidimensional: it is both a geographical space between the distant radio receivers in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and a vast historical space where traces of our early communication history travel through time from the past to the present. Sara Arrhenius

The Distant Sound, 2014 (installation view, Alby Beach, Moss), sound installation. Courtesy Punkt Ø Galleri F 15, Moss

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Andreas Angelidakis Every End Is a Beginning EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens 14 May – 13 July If the grubby Kevin Costner from Waterworld (1995) could visit Andreas Angelidakis’s exhibition at EMST, he might be drawn to one particular work. Monument to an Oncoming Disaster (2011/14) is an unrealised project for the gate of the Athens Marina, designed to feature an overhead garden that, in case of deluge or of rising sea levels, would continue to function perfectly as a delightful little island. A maquette-cum-video illustrates the operating principle while introducing the visitors to the leitmotif of the show: the visual and emotional impact of the aesthetics of ruins. This is indeed an old issue, enriched with a new chapter by the Greek artist and architect. Evident here, additionally, is a firm stance on Modernism, because in front of ruins we tend to realise that time is not an agent of progress but rather of decay. Facing a contemporary reality made of ascending rebar constructions, cybernetic wastelands and zombie architecture, Angelidakis embraces notions of failure, decomposition and disrepair, rereading the practice of construction as a process of spontaneous and rarefied growth.

A series of small maquettes fantasise about modes of construction based on accumulation, reuse and appropriation of natural forms; be it the reprising of Neolithic menhirs, the colonisation of a shell or a building with gigantic bone-shaped columns. The video Building an Electronic Ruin (2011) portrays Angelidakis’s Second Life avatar as he tries indeed to build an electronic ruin there, in a place with no atmospheric agents or gravity, and where nothing grows old. Here what becomes a ruin instead is Second Life itself, a once-thriving online dwelling now heading, perhaps, towards an evolutionary dead-end. Another video tells the story of Alexander Iolas’s villa and of his art collection: the famous gallerist meant to build a residence that could become an art foundation after his death. But the Greek state refused this gift, and the villa turned into a ruin as artworks and furniture started to disappear overnight from the building. In the adjacent room, a big installation looks into the destiny of some cement booths designed for The System of Objects, the exhibition that Angelidakis curated at the Deste Foundation in 2013.

Formerly used to display works by Maurizio Cattelan, Francis Picabia and Ettore Sottsass, the booths are now empty. The exhibition reflects with extreme lucidity on actual conditions of decline visible in cities that, like Athens, were built anew with cheap concrete on the ashes of previous edifices. In fact, standing at the bottom of the Acropolis today, it is not clear which is the actual ruin: the thousand-year-old temple or the half-emptied modernist Athens at its feet. With very simple technical means, Angelidakis elaborates a unique language, describable as a sort of ‘digital Arte Povera’, to present a fascinating take on the city as palimpsest. Carefully dismissing the Darwinist drives of the modernist aesthetic, he rather invokes atmospheres reminiscent of the eighteenth-century etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi or of the words of John Ruskin (in The Lamps of Architecture, 1849): ‘You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse.’ For eventually ruins allude to an antimodern ideal of a world that is extinct or, in other words, to the timeless suspension of mythology or science fiction. Michelangelo Corsaro

Leopard House Ruin, 2014, three-dimensional print, 25 × 20 × 17 cm. Courtesty the artist and the Breeder, Athens

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Festival International d’Art de Toulouse Various Venues Toulouse 23 May – 22 June While the gargoyles installed all around the dazzling cloister of Musée des Augustins (a convent until the French Revolution) were gulping down pouring rain on the opening day of the Festival International d’Art de Toulouse, aka FIAT, my jaw literally dropped upon entering the 600sqm room of Romanesque sculptures that is the site of Jorge Pardo’s latest intervention. In an effort towards better exposure and mediation of the museum’s unique collection of twelfth-century architectural capitals and bas-reliefs, the Cuban-born artist was commissioned by the Augustins and FIAT – the annual festival directed by French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante – to train new light onto the medieval relics, as he did for instance with the pre-Columbian galleries of LACMA back in 2008. That light consists of, if my count is correct, 64 twisted, vividly red and purple and green designer lamps hanging from a 15m-high ceiling and dispersed all over the vast exhibition space, each right above one carved capital (Untitled, 2014). Asked to preserve the original display of the precious Romanesque sculptures to avoid heavy lifting and ensuing disaster – the capitals are all mounted atop concrete circular columns arranged across the length and width of the room, the bas-reliefs on pedestals against the walls – Pardo didn’t restrict his radiant expression to lights. He also designed an entirely new tiled floor with a clear grey and pink arabesque motif, and painted waves of blue, orange and burgundy, spreading from the

columns to the side pedestals, to adorn and unite the space and its collection in an illusion of vertiginous depth. Bad taste? Be assured, not only did my eyes not bleed, but also those antiquities didn’t appeal as much in their previously austere scenography: “I wanted to create an eccentric frame to make them more present,” the artist said during the opening. (The conservators were delighted.) That said, if Pardo’s intervention is a success (the installation will remain in place until the 2016 edition of FIAT), an ingenious eye seems to be lacking in committing the seven other solo shows of the festival to the architectural wonders of the city they inhabit. Indeed, in a noble attempt to ‘put the artists first’, Bustamante thought out the festival as an ‘archipelago, the islands being the artists’, and sketched out no curatorial thread. Yet, if the dedication is pure and the words poetic, it caused me to wonder if many exhibitions occurring at the same time and in the same area are sufficient to comprise a festival. And since Bustamante orchestrated FIAT as a sightseeing promenade across historical Toulouse, it should be at least partly about illuminating the sites, no? Anyway, this year Manon de Boer installed three films exploring performing bodies in relation to music at Les Jacobins (also a convent); Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci had gestural performances serially executed at Château d’Eau (a water tower); Franz Gertsch inaugurated a retrospective of his stunning

hyperrealist paintings and woodcut prints at Les Abattoirs (a slaughterhouse that became a contemporary art centre in 2000), next to Susan Hiller, who presented video installations questioning the gaps between image and speech; Thomas Huber hung a series of paintings depicting geometric mise en abymes of exhibition spaces at Espace EDF Bazacle (a hydroelectric plant); and last but not least, French artist Elsa Sahal was invited to show work alongside small earthen figures of sleepers and urns by Georges Jeanclos, who died in 1997, at Hôtel-Dieu, a UNESCO world heritage site and former hospital. Not to detract from the interest of the other exhibitions, let me conclude with Sahal’s series of clay sculptures, Nus Couchés (2014), also commissioned by FIAT and verging on bad taste, like Pardo’s colour palette, to my greatest joy. Laid on large and low pedestals that force viewers, bending their necks, into voyeurism, these are four ensembles of magnified and dislocated body parts, realistic enough to be easily identified – a curvaceous behind, a rising phallus, humongous feet, thighs and breasts, the whole described in skin tones (black, pink, ochre, white) – yet grotesque enough to draw your imagination past sexuality and eroticism. The use of real hair extensions emerging from unlikely parts adds up to the organic sensation of whimsical abnormality the series conveys. For this, a gigantic thumbs-up. Violaine Boutet de Monvel

Jorge Pardo at the Musée des Augustins, 2014 (installation view). Photo: Nicolas Brasseur. © Studio Jorge Pardo. Courtesy Toulouse International Art Festival

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Liam Gillick From 199C to 199D Le Magasin, Grenoble 6 June – 7 September Can relational aesthetics be relational when the only visitors on Saturday afternoon for Liam Gillick’s From 199C to 199D were the critic and her friend? Maybe it was just a quiet day. And it might not have concerned Gillick too much in any case, since, as he stated in a 2012 ArtReview interview, he’s less interested in ‘broad publics’ than in a ‘fractured and layered public’, albeit one also absent that day. For Gillick, public reception isn’t the primary issue; for him, ‘we actually have to think much harder about production than consumption’. This position is consistent throughout the exhibition, a reactivation of a 2012 collaboration with Bard College’s curatorial students whose loose format and concept is repeated with Le Magasin’s own curatorial students. The emphasis is demonstratively on the processes involved in developing the exhibition, rather than on the exhibition itself. Under the many layers of theory and jargon presented in the press packet and additional written material, this show is effectively a retrospective curated by six curatorial students, with Gillick as maître de cérémonie. Charged with selecting and presenting his most important 1990s works, and in the tradition of ‘new institutionalism’, the six engaged in nine months’ worth of discussions, debates and conversations that became material for further consumables: brochures, video interviews and other documentation, parallel to the show but also its impetus. Presenting these dematerialised, processoriented works would indeed constitute

a challenge, most of them existing solely in Gillick’s vague instructions. The three versions of the Prototype Erasmus Table (1994–5) are described as tables ‘intended to occupy as much space as possible in order to provide a “terrain” for the display of information and the production of new research work’. On Prototype Ibuka! Coffee Table/Stage (Act 3) (1995) sit other instruction-based works, such as Just Out of Time (1995), which describes how to make a bound 152cm pile of newspapers. Even more perplexing is the Information Room (GRSSPR, Tattoo Magazine, Women’s Basketball) (1992–2014) made of ‘stretched Hessian stapled directly to the walls [that] function like giant pinboards for the display of various information’, described as ‘a large space to display information of secondary importance alongside any other material that the user of the work deems interesting or important’. This latter bulletin-board-like presentation introduces elements from The Trial of Pol Pot, undertaken, also at Le Magasin, by Gillick and Philippe Parreno in 1998, This project did push the boundaries of exhibition-making and the creative process, the artists submitting to supervisors’ suggestions and exhibiting only documentation of discussions. This modus operandi so typical of 1990s practices, which is the subject and material of both exhibitions, questioned the roles of curator and artist, the exhibition itself, the hosting institution, the relationship between artist, institution and viewer, and ultimately art itself.

This philosophical discourse finds a successful self-contained form, surprisingly enough, in two films, both titled Vicinato (Neighbour), made collaboratively by Gillick, Parreno, Carsten Höller, Rirkrit Tiravanija and other artists (the second version, from 2000, includes Douglas Gordon, etc). The first Vicinato (1995), beautifully shot in Italian neorealist style on 16mm film, treats themes of proximity, politics and aesthetics by presenting a conversation among friends – one that derives from an actual conversation among the artists, recorded and recreated. Despite the philosophical implications of this exhibition and its production processes, as well as the important questions raised about the nature of art and the renegotiation of the power structures involved in creating and exhibiting, the artist’s and curators’ minimal interest in the reception of the public (the one not profoundly aware of these discourses) made the exhibition difficult to engage with despite much ado about participatory practices. The key to its riddle resided in the brochures, texts and additional parallel material, where the issues were debated and pronounced, and explanations offered. This mostly did not translate in the exhibition’s actual forms and presentation. Maybe due to its collaborative nature, maybe due to the artist’s rejection of ‘transparency as a middle-ground conspiracy’, From 199C to 199D remains ‘as a zone of potential’, as per the artist’s intent but to the detriment of the viewer’s experience. Olga Stefan

Documentary Realisation Zone #1 to #3 (Dijon), 1997 (detail). Photo: Blaise Adilon. Courtesy the artist and Le Consortium, Dijon

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Manifesta 10 State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 28 June – 31 October It stinks. Visitors to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg hold their sleeves and tissues in front of their noses, even though the rickety windows are already letting in the summer air. Conservation requirements for Old Masters aside, what this metal shelf with rusty cans of tomato paste, yellowed flour bags and canning jars from the GDR is doing here – in front of it a plaster block lubricated with pork grease – is not clear, neither to the visitors nor the attendants. Even the chief curator of this section doesn’t know what to do with Joseph Beuys’s installation, Wirtschaftswerte (Economic Values, 1980), especially considering that it is placed in the middle of Biedermeier motifs from the nineteenth century. Passing by the work, he asserts that it is not in fact art, and asks whether the lenders from S.M.A.K. in Ghent read the Bible. Now he wants to know whether the grease vapour damages the paintings – and hopes for a yes so that this foreign object quickly disappears again. However, in 1980 Beuys made it a prerequisite for his work to be shown surrounded by paintings that were created during the lifetime of Karl Marx (1813–83). The seventy-year-old German curator Kasper König came up with a similar concept for this Manifesta. This year the nomadic biennale celebrates its 20th anniversary – parallel to the Hermitage’s 250th – which is why König placed works by Susan Philipsz, Karla Black and Gerhard Richter between Flemish still-lifes, Greek statues and the tsar’s throne. However, not only are the tourists confused, but Manifesta’s audience also wanders around aimlessly as the museum refuses to put up direction signs or explanations. Manifesta wasn’t even allowed to specify the room numbers in its catalogue. And this despite the director of the Hermitage having approved König as curator and pushed the city to pay more than €3 million for a show that aims to focus on ‘Europe’s changing cultural DNA’ since the Cold War. St Petersburg had been chosen before Russia established new cultural guidelines in April 2014, in which there is talk

of ‘global competition’: ‘Russia… should be viewed as a unique and independent civilization that leans neither toward the “West” (“Europe”) nor the “East”.’ Yet it has been clear ever since the imprisonment of members of Pussy Riot in summer 2012 that artistic freedom is defined somewhat differently here. The ink on his contract had just dried, says König, when last summer the antigay law was enacted – which was joined by the anticurse word law shortly thereafter. Artists and curators worldwide pleaded for withdrawal, however König remained firm: now more than ever, he suggested, artists should not walk away from oppression. In this respect it is astounding that this Manifesta is even inaugurating new exhibition spaces in the Hermitage – in the General Staff Building across from the Winter Palace, where contemporary art will probably be shown in the future, whereupon one asks how this will look when those critical of the Kremlin end up in jail. However, here, of all places, queer art by Henrik Olesen, Klara Lidén and Wolfgang Tillmans is now displayed, and a transvestite film by Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe couldn’t be more explicit. The Ukrainian Boris Mikhailov was allowed to arrange his moving photographs from the Maidan demonstrations on the walls and in the display cases. For Erik van Lieshout, however, enough was enough; he had to remove the ‘fucks’ from the subtitles of his film installation (The Basement, 2014): for six months, as the work documents, he provided the famous cats in the catacombs of the Hermitage with sleeping places and medicine. Unquestionably a lot of what is here not only cleverly reacts to the sociopolitical situation but is also of excellent quality, yet it does not result in the ‘Research Biennale’ that the Manifesta wants it to be. König mainly relies on established ‘NATO artists’, as the Russian-born Elena Kovylina states it. With her film documentation of a performance, Egalite (Equality, 2014), she addresses the longstanding desire for equality that drives revolutions: a line of people stands on

facing page, top Work by Lara Favaretto, 2014 (installation view, Winter Palace, State Hermitage Museum), concrete, iron. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Franco Noero, Turin

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stools of different heights so that they all appear to be the same height. One can become engrossed in such images, as in Rineke Dijkstra’s film (Study with Marianna at Children’s Ballet School of Ilya Kuznetsov, 2014) about a small, increasingly weary ballet dancer. However, strung together in two statesupportive institutions – one of which resembles a sterile conference building wrapped in luxurious historical clothing, the other an ornate casket from the era of Catherine the Great – the course remains oddly soulless. Although König stresses that he is just a guest in this country, there is no dialogue between him and his environment, but rather a monologue. Only the Lada car that Francis Alÿs drove into a tree in the courtyard of the Winter Palace evokes interaction: cheering teenagers squeeze themselves inside, as if into a time capsule. It seems as if Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky gave his colleague König the runaround with this – using him to show the public that contemporary art is not so dangerous, that it can even look merely strange or funny if not explained or pointed out – at the very least to avoid any trouble after the departure of the Manifesta team. After all, he had already stood up to the Kremlin many times, as when Putin wanted to bring Rembrandts from the Hermitage to Moscow. The show includes some very fine, subtly political works; others – like Marlene Dumas’s watercolours of gay cultural figures, including Tchaikovsky – are just didactic. On the whole, though, one might get the impression – reinforced by the audience seeming to move blithely through, untouched – that Western contemporary art, in this context, is just harmless or annoying. And this thought might give one goose bumps: Manifesta began when the ‘wind of change’ was blowing through Europe and curators started looking at previously hidden young artists from Eastern Europe. Today, Russia itself takes the wind out of Joseph Beuys’s sails. Gesine Borcherdt

facing page, bottom Francis Alÿs, Lada Kopeika Project, 2014, in collaboration with Frédéric Alÿs, Constantin Felker and Julien Devaux. Courtesy Manifesta 10, St Petersburg

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Michael Krebber Systemic Relevance Galerie Buchholz, Berlin 12 June – 16 August Of the artistic media, painting’s structural emphasis on physical trace most involves an artist in an act of self-exposure, even if it is that of exposing his wish not to expose himself. Michael Krebber’s paintings look like experiments in making the moves associated with expression but divested of a link back to the self. They go through certain motions in order to satirise or discredit the usual motives behind them. They are words divorced from voice, acts of coyly selfless self-exposure exposing a vacuum behind the rhetoric of expression. Coy because if the exercise comes off credibly, the selflessness is ultimately self-aggrandising. This may make Krebber’s paintings sound like Robert Ryman’s dispassionate late-1950s analysis of the brushstroke; but whereas Ryman’s self-retraction was exercised without irony, interpreting painting through a minimalist lens – as a purely materialistic process – Krebber gets embroiled in the gestural rhetoric that is the very language of painterly expression. He does this, however, in order to show us, with a sardonic flourish, what the act of painting cannot help expressing when it does everything it can to express nothing. The exhibition’s 15 paintings look perfunctory, as though reeled off in minutes, or even seconds. Most are 160 by 120 cm, most hung as a vertical format, and all consist of a handful of gestures applied to an evenly primed white

canvas that starkly reveals every nuance of application. Titles are serial numbers. Even the marks Krebber (if it is he) makes can be divided into an easily paraphrasable set of variables. There is rollered acrylic, black spray paint and quizzical scribbles, which look like dysfunctional fragments of a cartoon language. It appears four of the paintings have been made by dangling masking tape in front of the canvas, allowing it to partially adhere, then removing it while spraying paint along its length: the briefest snapshot of an inconsequential activity’s trace. The black spray on white recalls Christopher Wool; but with nothing of his graphic urbanity, it is an ironical travesty of modernistic elan (the negative lengths of tape nonchalantly invoke Barnett Newman’s vertical ‘zips’): a postmodern joke on how easily a transcendental effect can be produced by the most banal of means. The irony extends to the function of the sprayed works as ‘untouched’ foils, ethereal backdrops for the other more explicitly handmade paintings. What could be less in keeping with the modernist artwork’s characteristic aura of complacent significance than a painting as prop? Krebber uses his immaculate grounds as pitiless screens to expose the absurd theatre of his brushwork. These are marks that are unmistakably Krebber’s in their avoidance of personal signature. They produce paintings

MK/M 2014/20, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 160 × 120 cm. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin & Cologne

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that, like the spray works, function as keys to the process, and the sequence of the process, that produced them. Typically, a few doodled brushstrokes are erased by a roller: something stated, then retracted. But the rollered paint is semitransparent, so erasure partially accommodates what it erases. The negation of communication is signified, making it a form of communication. Krebber is addressing the futility of painting and the inability of the painter to avoid making a statement. A sequence of six paintings, all in viridian green, might be a cartoon strip of painterly abstraction. We can infer how the painter may have moved from canvas to canvas, each delaying him only momentarily before he moves, exasperated, onto the next: a fiction of the inconsequential narrative of artmaking. But the look these paintings cultivate of being merely functional, even arbitrary, signs of their own process, shirking all aesthetic criteria, is a guise, a ruse. No amount of irony derails Krebber’s Romantic allegiance to the Keatsian axiom that truth is beauty. The bluntness and awkwardness of his markmaking aspires to beautiful form to the extent that the crisis it adumbrates should appear credible: to paraphrase John Cage, it is that of there being nothing to say, and no one to say it, the saying of that nothing being paradoxically everything. Mark Prince

Vito Acconci Now and Then Grieder Contemporary, Zürich 15 June – 26 July As its title implies, Now and Then is an exhibition split into two parts: the first a selection of photographs, drawings and type- and handwritten instructions mounted on panels relating to five performance artworks (Following Piece, Lay of the Land, Service Area, Trademarks and Untitled, Project for Pier 17) executed by Vito Acconci between 1969 and 1971 (prior to the artist’s infamous Seedbed performance of 1972); the second, a selection of models relating to three of the more landscape design and architecturefocused projects (Face of the Earth, Convertible Clam Shelter and Adjustable Wall Bra, dating from 1986 to 1990) that Acconci and his studio have concentrated on since Acconci’s move away from a strictly ‘artistic’ practice (his architecture studio was founded during the late 1980s). As well as documenting two key moments in Acconci’s career (the artist often states that Seedbed ‘ruined’ his career as an artist), the show offers up one further level of insight into the mind of the artist in the form of a series of annotations from 2011, handwritten in red pen (often in block capitals rather than Acconci’s at times indecipherable scrawl), that add background information to the performance works in an attempt to explain why some things happened as they did. For example, one panel,

containing six photographs from Lay of the Land (from 1969, featuring photographs of New York’s Central Park taken from various positions on Acconci’s body as he lies on the ground; as one document makes clear, this was originally called Reclining Piece), includes the following addition: ‘6 negs for this piece – but every description, early or late, notes 5 photos. (Probably I snapped 2nd photo, suspected I had made some mistake, tried to correct it by snapping 3rd photo, which became new #2…).’ Besides the obvious interest of such information to art historians, what’s fascinating about these annotations is the way in which they foreground an element of contingency in artworks that seem definitive and fixed when viewed through the filter of either the documentary photographs or the clipped and perfunctory original instructions (especially when those art historians attempt to mount and fix such artworks as if they were part of a display of lepidoptera in a natural history museum.) It’s a sensation only enhanced by the artist’s ‘probably’ when retrospectively attempting to explain his own thinking in relation to that sixth negative. Indeed, linking both parts of the exhibition, there is an obvious point being made about

the role of imagination in the consumption, as well as the production, of this type of artwork: the first part of the show documents performances most people will not have witnessed, while the second part imagines buildings that have not been built. Both parts, then, are about something that is not there. And if such thinking about the status of the ‘object’ part of the art object is very much in vogue right now, then perhaps – and maybe strangely for an artist who has abandoned that discipline for another – this exhibition pushes to the fore a few other themes that are in vogue in art right now. What show is complete without some incorporation of an archive (with the attendant state of flux about its status as an artwork) these days? And what contemporary curator doesn’t love a performance (and the ambiguous status as an artwork of the documentation that follows it)? Of course, the fact that he encountered such issues so early on is one of the reasons why Acconci continues to fascinate generations who will never experience his active art career. But the foregrounding of all this might also have something to do with the fact that this show is curated by dealer and art-trend spotter Kenny Schachter. Mark Rappolt

Following Piece, 1969, b/w photographs, typewritten and handwritten sheets; mounted on cardboard, in five frames, total 96 × 242 cm. Signed, dated and inscribed in chalk ‘Following Piece – (Putatively) Complete Archives Vito Acconci 1969 /2011’. Photo: Gion Pfander. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Grieder Contemporary, Zürich

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Bayrol Jiménez El Peso Muerto de los Días Perdidos Luis Adelantado, Mexico City 22 May – 29 August Bayrol Jiménez’s El Peso Muerto de los Días Perdidos (The Dead Weight of Lost Days) confirms not only that this young artist is hypertalented, but also that he can produce a staggering amount of great work. His drawings are everywhere in a space that is normally difficult to fill because of its large size and yet the artist plays successfully with different scales, from the discreet to the mural-massive. As one enters the gallery, there is a huge collagelike work in black and white: drawing exceeds itself, goes out of the page, bleeds onto the wall or onto a different sheet of paper. Is it a giant popup version of an experimental comic book page? Is it a mural? Is it a large drawing? Do we even care? The amount of visual information and drawing styles – from the relief-map contouring of hachures to hyperrealism, from popular or street graphic style to layered painting – is proof of his technical prowess, and the fact that he combines them in ways that work so well, and plays with rolled-up sheets of paper, or superimposed sheets, or the wall itself, is additional proof that he is also questioning and pushing the boundaries of the medium. The second gallery space contains a series of identically sized square drawings surrounding a large multicoloured tentlike structure made from flags of sorts, echoing the ubiquitous

tents of strikers in Oaxaca, Jiménez’s native city, or in Mexico City’s main square. Suspended by a counterweight, a pole with a cement base, not unlike the ones used by people around Mexico City to ‘save’ a spot to park on the street – except here the cement is playfully shaped into an Olmec face – this structure at first seems like an entirely different body of work, but upon closer inspection one begins to see the connections. The ‘tent’ is a collaboration between Jiménez and Rolando Martínez, with whom he has worked on many projects related to public space, public art and interaction with the public, and here the pair question the meaning of ‘public’ as it becomes an intimate or almost private space through appropriative gestures like the tent or the saving of spaces. But back to the drawings: most of them feature monuments – the Olmec face could be a leitmotif – and all of them feature a juxtaposition of cultures and ideas, where the monument turns into something else, or where something mundane turns into a monument. The drawings are dialectical (a dialectic that is echoed in the tentlike sculpture); they are a humorous collage of ideas, like projects or maps to make public art, or unmake it, as might be the case. If the title of the show seems almost nihilistic, the amount of work produced and

Untitled, 2014, mixed techniques on paper, 28 × 28 cm. Courtesy Galería Luis Adelantado, Mexico City

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the many stories the drawings tell, speak of the opposite: euphoric, hormonal, hybrid overabundance. Jiménez has managed to pack a lot of punch into one show, and still one wishes he might have edited the few moments where his work loses power: from a lesser artist no one would care, but here the final ‘underground’ or ‘dark’ room – with painted plywood and a neon lady – seems like a diluted version of his other work. Still one welcomes an artist willing to try everything and anything out, like the love child of Robert Crumb and an Aztec maiden, his line passes through José-Guadalupe Posadas and also his more immediate local predecessor, Daniel Guzmán. Jiménez works in many media and calls up references as far-fetched as defunct action figures as well as more serious historicpolitical ones. Drooling Minotaurs, totem-poleheaded messiahs in high heels, gods of death gone wild, tranny Caesars, modernist structures coming out of souped-up, banged-up vehicles – the sublime touches on the mass-produced and vice versa. The disconnects between everything that’s going on in Jiménez’s drawings make us question how we usually see things and absorb them, to the point of unease. His days are certainly not lost. Gabriela Jauregui

A Room Not of One’s Own Space Station, Beijing 21 June – 13 July The Chinese art scene continues to be commercially led, with very little institutional support or a culture of artists’ residencies, for example. At the same time, the pressure on artists to produce (often new) work for exhibitions and in response to successive curatorial demands contends with the status of the studio as a place for self-contained process and contact with one’s self and ideas – and not necessarily with an end product in mind. Some artists have expressed concern that studio practice in its own right is becoming compromised due to such outside pressures. A Room Not of One’s Own, however, does not present studio practice relative to the structure of the artworld (whether as a critique, or otherwise), but in the wider frame of urban space as conditioned and constructed by the political climate – in short, as a form of private space shaped unavoidably by its surrounding context. Being broadly concerned with space and the individual, the exhibition press release asserts the studio as a powerful site of daily life and expression; what happens there is a process that itself amounts to a political stance by virtue of being carried out by individuals in their chosen environment. The title is a pessimistic adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s famous essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929), thus setting up an opponent and project of resistance for each artist featured here.

As one might expect, the works on show make relatively modest claims. They are born, for example, of scrutiny, conversations, stuff collected or left over, curiosity, solitude, sharing (with another artist), voyeurism, triviality and cognisance. The exhibition scene is dim and cluttered with video screens, installations, suspended cameras and imagery affixed to the walls, which have been painted black. The most obviously political work here is arguably Liang Ban’s Supper video (2014), for which the artist asked a friend who had recently left prison to recreate a prison meal for them in the studio. In a mockery of freedom and, perhaps, the luxury of being an artist in a selfchosen cell, they are seen eating this humble repast together. Not far off, photographs of Zhao Zhao – an artist who has actually been imprisoned for short periods of time by the authorities (principally for his connection with Ai Weiwei) – show him sardonically painting the studio walls black with the lights turned out. On a lighter note, young performance artist Li Binyuan’s videos offer compelling entertainment. His Studio Diary video series (2014) records various witty vignettes conjured from daily existence and improvisation. Another studio video, One Afternoon (2011), watches him light a fuse beneath his own feet and wait for the explosion. Similarly futile but slower-burning, Fan Xi resolves to plant grass in the floor of her studio – a process that becomes ever more

absurd as the concrete floor resists tools and effort, and the sound of destruction deepens. Hoarding and reuse are addressed by Liang Shuo and Shi Jinsong, respectively. Liang’s Collection of Dregs (2014) shows all the things he has picked up over the years, while Shi attempts to make use of display cabinets left over from a previous exhibition – The Physical Way (2014) suggests that, if fitted with air conditioning, they might be used as temporary accommodation by visiting friends. A telephone number is provided for those who might be interested. Elsewhere around the show, one finds a benign robotic installation by Xin Yunpeng that entails a moving badminton net propelled by vacuums (20140626, 2014), videos of minute insectaction in corners of the studio by Yang Guangnan (2014.6.5, 2014) and a zany performance video by Ye Funa in which the artist’s friends parade before a green screen adorned with wigs and artificial flowers (A Room of My Thought, 2014). Overall, A Room Not of One’s Own in practice is less grave than its title suggests. The majority of the pieces here are charged less with forms of resistance one might call overtly ‘political’ than with more personal and quirky, or even lighthearted sentiments. Whether or not this gives an accurate picture of the artists’ real practice and preoccupations, the artists at least appear content to deliver such an image of themselves and their work in this exhibition. Iona Whittaker

Li Binyuan, One Afternoon, 2011 (composite of four stills), video, 51 min. Courtesy the artist

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Books

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The Mind’s Eye: The Art of Omni Edited by Jeremy Frommer and Rick Schwartz In 1978 Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse, founded a science magazine. Omni combined straight science reporting, fringe science and science fiction, dedicating itself to the exploration of the future. Only a few copies ever made their way into the hands of this reviewer, also born in 1978, and they seemed stupendously exotic. They came to Britain, of course, from an inaccessible and glamorous place – America – but they might as well have come from the future itself. It’s a cliché of one kind of science-fiction story that the time-traveller visiting the past from the future ends up shaping the world he knows. Rather than merely observing the future’s origins, the visitor becomes its origins: Marty McFly sets up his own parents, and so on. So it is with futurology: projecting the future is the first step to creating the present. A book such as The Mind’s Eye, collecting the work of the artists and illustrators who gave life to the speculations featured in a seminal magazine like Omni, can potentially offer far more than mere nostalgia. However, this volume is tragically mutilated. At the start there’s an apologetic ‘editor’s note’ drawing the reader’s attention to the fact that a decade of images are missing, ‘either lost or destroyed’. Given that Omni lived barely 20 years, a nine-year gap is far from trivial.

PowerHouse Books, £42.50 / $60 (hardcover)

And the lost years are 1982 to 1990, the great bulk of the 1980s, the magazine’s heyday, when it was a substantial enough presence in American culture to have a cameo in Ghostbusters (1984). So the promised feast is, sadly, just a starter, followed by cheese and biscuits. It is impossible not to feel disappointed; partly because what remains offers a tantalising and melancholy taste, but also because an epochal shift was taking place during the lost period. Much of the work here is routine sci-fi, space and fantasy art of the ‘airbrush era’, some of it very routine indeed, some pleasingly trippy in a Roger Dean way and some excellent, such as John Schoenherr’s 1978 art based on Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965). But Omni ’s artists faced their most interesting challenge closer to home. Theirs was far from the first popular science magazine, and far from the first to blend fact and fiction. But it was the first native to the computer age, and the first to address the shadow looming behind all those blinking, unlinked terminals: the network age. It was where cyberspace and cyber culture were first imagined in the mainstream, and where a roster of cyberpunk authors including William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Pat Cadigan were published. This was a move from hardware to software, from the exterior – the final frontier – to the

interior, the workings of closed boxes, the unseen web that was connecting them and our personal inner space. And its artists had to portray that abstract, protean world. The Mind’s Eye powerfully demonstrates the great debt magazine illustration owes the surrealists, in particular Dalí and Magritte. There are at least two redrafts of the latter’s Son of Man (1964) here, by Trish Burgio and James Marsh. Dalí, meanwhile, seems to have set the compositional rules for a lot of science magazine illustration in works such as Christ of St John of the Cross (1951) and Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954): agonised figures suspended over stretched landscapes. Ute Osterwald provides a deeply Dalíesque number in which a satellite cracks like an egg, revealing an eye, above a gridded plane. One sometimes longs for the context of these pictures – what, exactly, they were intended to illustrate – but descriptive information is very sparse. On their own they are seductive and melancholy: in particular the extraordinary, opulent, threatening paintings of Rallé and Rudolf Hausner. For me the most Omni of all the work here are Stanislaw Fernandes’s statuesque, blank, idealised heads, mostly female, mostly intersected or opened somehow, spawning coloured orbs or Superstudio grids, which often graced the magazine’s cover. Will Wiles

Mapping it Out: An Alternative History of Contemporary Cartographies Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist Mapping It Out is the product of the ‘Map Marathon’, held at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2010 as part of the institution’s annual series of 24-hour-attempts at exhausting a subject. It features around 130 different maps, created by artists, architects, scientists and other interested parties, and aims at ‘rethinking what maps can do’. ‘The cartographer’s problem’, declares novelist Tom McCarthy, in his introduction, ‘is the draughtsman’s problem, the problem of perspective.’ And this, he suggests, is why artists are so attracted to making them. And so we embark on a series of chapters that demonstrate how maps might be redrawn for different psychological, political and

Thames & Hudson, £24.95 / $50 (hardcover)

symbolic motivations. At the clunky end is Louise Bourgeois’s France turned into a face; more diaristic is Jonas Mekas’s portrait of New York as it is important to him; while Richard Hamilton traces the political transformation of postwar Palestine; and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee offers an intriguing map of his creation and its influences. You get the picture. And perhaps that’s because this conceit is far from new. Of the more famous examples, one might recall anything from the mid-seventeenthcentury ‘Carte du Pays de Tendre’, a map of love, to the blank page of ‘The Bellman’s Ocean Chart’, from Lewis Carroll’s Hunting

September 2014

of the Snark (1876) (cited by McCarthy) at the end of the nineteenth. But as a collection, Mapping It Out feels more reminiscent of Jules Romains’s ‘cinematographic tale’ Donogoo Tonka (1920), about a famous geographer who is about to be exposed as a fraud for inventing a Brazilian city that doesn’t exist, but ends up convincing people to visit it, whereupon, on discovery of its nonexistence, the visitors decide to build the city in order to cover up their embarrassment, thus saving the geographer’s reputation. Maps ‘don’t work, and never have’, McCarthy states, and this 240-page cacophony of cartographic endeavour proves him right. Mark Rappolt

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#ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader Edited by Robin Mackay & Arman Avanessian It’s a preoccupation of current political debates that while we find ourselves in an era when the forces of capitalism appear all-powerful and unstoppable, the left seems incapable of anything other than a backward-looking nostalgia. This absence of an inspiring vision of the future has begun to throw up some interesting responses, not least the publication last year of Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek’s ‘Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics’ (MAP), the text at the core of #Accelerate’s engaging, eccentric anthology of feral philosophy, which assembles a sort of historical backstory to what its editors, Alex Williams and Arman Avanessian, term the ‘political heresy’ of ‘accelerationism’. Rather than ‘protest, disrupt or critique capitalism’, they argue, the only radical response is to ‘accelerate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies’, while adopting a ‘politically and theoretically progressive attitude towards its constituent elements’. In #Accelerate, this tends to mean a fierce, often giddy assertion that the disruptive, expansionist drive of capitalism points us to a future convergence of technological and economic systems that will eventually encompass the whole world. Rather than retreat into a ‘folk politics of localism, direct action and relentless horizontalism’, MAP wants to push beyond capitalism’s limits, to ‘unleash latent productive forces’ in which the material platform of neoliberalism is not destroyed but ‘repurposed towards common ends’.

Urbanomic, £14.99 / $24.99 (softcover)

It’s refreshing to encounter a ‘left’ project for the future that wants to reclaim the idea of technology, industry and planet-scale thinking, when most of the left nowadays subscribes to eco-pessimist anxieties about too-much and too-fast. Still, while accelerationism is upbeat about advanced technological society, it’s also a philosophical vision that tends to challenge what it means to be human; hence the intense focus of many of the writers on the primacy of machines and of ‘machinic intelligence’. For Mackay and Avanessian, the roots of accelerationism can be found in Marx’s prophetic speculations about the displacement of human labour by machines, and the increasing integration of humans into the big machine of capitalism, a line they trace forward to the shrill, borderline-hysterical theorising of French poststructuralists in the wake of the failed revolutionary moment of May 1968. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s 1972 Anti-Oedipus is extracted here, but it’s Jean-Francois Lyotard’s 1974 Libidinal Economy that is the dark star of the middle section of essays: reading Lyotard’s infamous line ‘that one can enjoy swallowing the shit of capital, its materials, its metal bars, its polystyrene, its books, its sausage pâtés, swallowing tonnes of it till you burst’, you can see how it sets the tone for a generation of political theorists who largely gave up on the working class as the force that might overthrow capitalism – we’re too busy enjoying consumerism to do any revolting.

Lyotard’s disillusion was prophetic, in a bad way – if one thing marks out leftists and greens today, it’s their antipathy towards material prosperity (too much of everything), and towards the dumb, brainwashed consumers (us) who keep the big machine going. #Accelerate can’t quite rid itself of this too-common ‘radical’ prejudice. Following the mostly French texts of the 1970s, it devotes an entire section to the oracular rantings of philosopher Nick Land and his partner Sadie Plant, who in the 1990s fused Continental theory with cyberculture to conclude that capital had become a kind of self-willed techno-cosmic process set to supersede its increasingly obsolete human components. While #Accelerate tries to distance itself from Land’s imperiously batty posthumanism, many of the texts struggle with the problem of whether human agency can still operate politically – whether the will, desires and wishes of human beings can ever really decisively shape society. Even the best of the contemporary texts, Reza Negarestani’s ‘Labour of the Inhuman’ and Ray Brassier’s excellent essay in defence of ‘Prometheanism’, can’t quite explain who the future is going to be for. It’s all third-person and passive tense. Sure, we know that to have an idea of the future, ‘what there is’ needs to turn into ‘what could be’, or even ‘what ought to be’. What’s missing from accelerationism is the confidence that humans might be capable of deciding what we want the future to be. J.J. Charlesworth

You Are Here: Art After the Internet Edited by Omar Kholeif Divided into three sections, this collection of short texts by artists, writers, curators and academics aims to provide a current snapshot of how the rise of networked culture in the last decade is affecting the way art is made. In doing so it sets out intelligent and accessible responses to the main debates – from differing interpretations of what ‘post-Internet’ actually means to the contradictions inherent within the corporate ownership of the social media platforms we like to perceive of as ‘public’ space. For the more Luddite reader, there’s a handy glossary (from

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Cornerhouse and SPACE, £15.95 (softcover)

‘avatar’ to ‘World Wide Web’) at the back. Along the way it also introduces a general audience to some of the artists and writers engaging with these subjects, with the eight essays in section one including James Bridle on defining ‘the new aesthetic’ and Brian Droitcour unpicking the use of language and its relation to code in Ryan Trecartin’s complex film scripts. The second set of texts act more as a rallying cry, not only highlighting the extent to which the Internet is a contested territory of corporate and government versus public control, but how

ArtReview

it is up to artists and the public, via mechanisms including subversion and encryption, to claim ownership back. If the final section, ‘Projects’, adds least to the debate, it’s perhaps the one disadvantage, in this context, of placing artworks within the pages of a book. But it’s a slide into anachronism that editor Omar Kholeif himself is well aware of, acknowledging that in ten, five or even one year’s time, the arguments, issues and online platforms under discussion here will not only be old but probably irrelevant. Helen Sumpter

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Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, New York, July 2014. Photo: Marco Scozzaro

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For more on Matilda Tristram, see overleaf

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Contributors

Meriç Algün Ringborg

Graham Harman

Contributing Writers

is an artist. Her A Work of Fiction in this issue follows the characters Maria, Mark and Peter through a story that lifts generic tropes from crime, romance and detective fiction. As with all good stories, there is a twist – in this case the fact that every phrase is lifted verbatim from exemplifying sentences in the Oxford English Dictionary. Interested in issues of language, translation and identity, the Istanbul-born, Stockholm-based artist takes her lead in this project from the constrained writing techniques of the Oulipo group to explore the potential for creation in which material is only compiled, rather than written or made. A Work of Fiction was first presented as part of an eponymous exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, in 2013.

is distinguished university professor at the American University in Cairo. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism (2013). Currently he is trying to succeed at being perhaps the first person to commute to work in Cairo from a residence in Ankara. This month he writes on speculative realism. For further reading he recommends the collected writings of Clement Greenberg, now that the legendary critic’s period of dominant influence has past and his enemies form the new orthodoxy. In finshing his new book, Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political (forthcoming, October 2014), Harman was led in the process to take Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt a bit more seriously.

Karen Archey, Sara Arrhenius, Robert Barry, Andrew Berardini, Gesine Borcherdt, Violaine Boutet de Monvel, David Claerbout, Bill Clarke, James Clegg, Matthew Collings, Michelangelo Corsaro, Tom Eccles, Charlie Fox, Gallery Girl, Orit Gat, Paul Gravett, Jonathan Griffin, Jonathan Grossmalerman, Graham Harman, Gabriela Jauregui, Daniel Lima, Maria Lind, Tobi Maier, Daniel McClean, Justin McGuirk, Kathy Noble, Keith Patrick, Mark Prince, Claire Rigby, Ed Schad, Mark Sladen, Raimar Stange, Olga Stefan, Ben Street, Brienne Walsh, Mike Watson, Iona Whittaker, Will Wiles

Tobi Maier David Claerbout is an artist working in photography, video, sound and digital art, although he is best known for his large-scale video projections, which often combine moving and still images to unsettle the delineation between past and present. He has had solo exhibitions at Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Secession, Vienna; Wiels, Brussels; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among many others. This month he writes on the ramifications of finding his work at auction. For further reference on his practice he recommends a public talk recorded in the 1970s between Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky, available on YouTube, and reading Boris Groys and Vilém Flusser, who have informed much of the artist’s thinking on, respectively, video and photography.

is a curator and writer based in São Paulo. He was an associate curator for the 30th edition of São Paulo Bienal and previously curator at Frankfurter Kunstverein and at Ludlow 38, New York. He curated Remains: Memory and Register of Performance and Site Specific, which is currently on show at the Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo. Other recent exhibitions have included Batalhão de Telegrafistas at Galeria Jaqueline Martins and Os Trópicos at Centro Cultural Caixa, both also in São Paulo. This month he interviews Arto Lindsay. For further reading Maier recommends ‘Processions and Parades’, a talk he presented at SITAC XI, Mexico City, which was subsequently published by the 3rd Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Contributing Editors Tyler Coburn, Brian Dillon, David Everitt Howe, Hettie Judah, Joshua Mack, Laura McLean-Ferris, Christopher Mooney, Niru Ratnam, Chris Sharp Contributing Artists / Photographers Meriç Algün Ringborg, Felipe Ehrenberg, Daniel Lima, Luke Norman & Nik Adam, Marco Scozzaro, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Matilda Tristram

Matilda Tristram (preceding pages)

Coping with either pregnancy or cancer would be enough for most people, but in February 2013, when Matilda Tristram was 18 weeks pregnant with her first child, she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. That month, she began keeping a diary in comics form of her experiences and feelings, and made them public online to a growing global readership as Probably Nothing. Tristram was thirty-one at the time, a cartoonist, animator and cowriter for children’s television, notably on two series since 2011 of the gently fantastical The Adventures of Abney & Teal on the BBC’s CBeebies channel. Over the next nine months, she was constantly uncertain of how it might end. “While I was writing Probably Nothing [Viking, 2014], I didn’t know if my treatment would be successful or not. I kept wishing I could just skip to the end and find out what happens, like I do with other books (I love spoilers).” Tristram made a doll of herself and placed it inside her partner Tom’s family cradle, “so if I die, I’ll still be there”. Luckily, as her self-portrait with Tom and baby James on the cover of her debut graphic memoir

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reassures us, the chemo treatment and childbirth worked out for the best. Getting through it all to her mostly happy ending, however, required riding an emotional rollercoaster, from hopeful highs to fearful lows. All these, as well as her unpredictable reactions, opinions and mood swings, Tristram has recorded in simplified cartoons combined with funny and forthright commentaries and dialogues beneath. Her unusual page layouts of four rows of four same-sized panels may start with four pictures neatly in line at the top, but the varied lengths of text below them often push the lower rows of panels up or down, the effect almost symbolising cancer’s persistent disruption of order, which is temporarily restored as the words line up again across the foot of each page. Successfully finishing her treatment and her book allowed Tristram to quit writing these comics and “start trying to ‘move on’, as they say”. A year later, returning to her diary for ArtReview, Tristram admits, “I used to feel annoyed if people asked me ‘Is your comic therapy?’ It felt reductive of an art form that I love. Making it also didn’t change the situation

ArtReview

or make me feel any less afraid. But when I made this new strip, I realised that when I’m drawing, even if it’s about cancer, I’m completely absorbed in the practice of it, and for a short time I stop worrying about everything cancer implies. I’ve decided it is definitely therapeutic to do, even if I still wouldn’t call it therapy.” Definitely Something examines how her life and emotions are still affected by cancer in ways she couldn’t have predicted. “I’m often not upset by things I would expect to be, like being asked directly about cancer. But then I will feel upset by something I hadn’t anticipated, like being asked if we’ll have more children. That time, I realised I’m worried enough about dying young and leaving one child without a mother, let alone two! Also the good things are touched by it. When life should just seem purely excellent, for example, when I’m sitting in the garden with Tom, watching James playing, I think, ‘I hope I don’t die, I would hate to miss any of this’.” Tristram misses very little in her perceptions of others and, above all, of herself. Paul Gravett

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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 of February, July and August by ArtReview Ltd, 1 Honduras Street, London EC1Y oTH, England, United Kingdom. The US annual subscription price is $64. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named Worldnet Shipping Inc, 156–15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica NY 11431. US PoSTMASTEr: Send address changes to ArtReview, Worldnet Shipping Inc, 156–15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA

Art and photo credits on the covers and on page 201 Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, photographed by Marco Scozzaro (on the covers: collages by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané) on pages 198 and 206 Photography by Luke Norman & Nik Adam

September 2014

Text credits Phrases on the spines and on pages 31, 91, 137 and 167 are popular expressions, translated from Portuguese, for Brazil’s favourite distilled alcoholic beverage, cachaça

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Off the Record September 2014 Early June. ArtReview is having its annual away-day at a clay pigeon shoot in Hampshire. “We’ve got a no-agenda agenda today,” barks the editor, unloading his semiautomatic Beretta tx4 Storm into a series of clays that have been launched to mimic the arc of a pheasant. “I don’t think that’s a clay-pigeon-shooting gun,” interjects the handsome yet visibly upset managing editor. But I don’t care about the danger. The Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds are kicking in. I had stockpiled them for the summer’s festivals but couldn’t resist trying a few on the way down to Hampshire in the ArtReview Renault Trafic sl29 2.0 dci minibus. The editor has kicked off his Browning shooting vest and dives to the floor, firing madly at startled interns. “We’ve got our Basel team in place! I’ll take Hydra! Now who wants to cover Brazil?” I perk up. I love football. “Me!” I shout before samba-ing in and out of the line of the editor’s increasingly random fire. “Fix her up with a curator!” is the final yell I hear from the editor before he discharges his weapon at a Land Rover and pistol-whips the magazine’s publisher. Why he thinks I need a curator to come with me to the football is baffling. A week later and I’m at the Arena Corinthians watching Brazil. Their cumbersome striker with the ludicrous nickname ‘Fred’ throws himself to the floor and wins a penalty. “That’s no way a penalty!” I yell at the curator next to me. “… as I was saying, what a lot of the artists I’m interested in are doing is playing with perceptions of space and flow and social interaction, so that whether it’s the beach in Rio or São Paulo, there are these common social spaces that are fundamentally democratic…,” replies the curator. Neymar slots it past Pletikosa and the crowd goes mental.

“Bollocks!” I shout. “These Brazilians are well overrated, come on, Croatia!” The curator fixes me with a stern gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything Brazilian is brilliant. They stage artworks in daily life, don’t you know?” I push past him, taking advantage of the surge of excitement in the crowd to filch his wallet and mobile phone in true Brazilian street style. A week later at Arena Castelão I’m yet again joined by the curator, who this time has an artist in tow. “This is her,” the curator gestures at me. “She thinks Brazil is overrated, dependent on half-baked myths concocted by Western curators in love with an outdated idea of samba, the Seleção and the fact that investing intellectually in it means they don’t have to go to China.” “This lot – Oscar, Ramires, Hulk, Fred – this is hardly inspiring. Come on, Ochoa!” I shout in the direction of the Mexican goalkeeper. “Like many of my fellow Brazilian artists, I have an interest in interventions in urban life, creating works that blend performance with sculpture, architecture and the interruption of public space,” says the artist. “This Mexican goalkeeper is interrupting your public space! You’ll never make it to the Maracanã!” I shout at him. The curator and artist look pained. “But we have six galleries in the world-renowned Frieze art fairs!” the curator snaps back. “Matthew Slotover says we are the most interesting of the bric countries!” “Who cares about the brics any more? See you in a couple of weeks, you losers!” A couple of weeks spent bar-crawling in Mineiros and I’ve lost some of my fervour for giving the Brazilians grief. Perhaps the curator and artist are right and there’s a rich legacy of creolised and joyful play bringing a unique flavour to Brazilian material practice that us Northern Europeans can only marvel at. I settle down in my seat for Brazil vs Germany in a more affable mood. “Look, guys, I’m sorry if I was a bit harsh on you. Perhaps there is a unique syncretic, deliberately screwed-up Modernism that you do best. Think of Dirceu’s arcing left-footed effort against Peru in 1978, Hélio Oiticica’s insanely huge lines of chop in those kooky photos, Zico’s unstoppable curler against Scotland in 1982. Let’s put aside our earlier argument and watch a great game of football.” Seventy-nine minutes later, as André Schürrle knocks in Germany’s seventh goal, I turn to my right and see the curator and the artist setting fire to their replica Brazil football tops. “Sambaaargh!” yells the curator, holding his burning football top. “The Germans humiliated us! We must rethink this creolised, playful, environmental-interventionist jogo bonito stuff !” Addressing the crowd around him, he continues, “We must learn midfield interaction from Schweinsteiger!” The crowd nod vigorously. “Return to the painterly experiments of Baselitz! Richter!” The crowd looks at their feet. “Look for hours at Kiefer!” he shouts. The crowd – as one – weep, realising the terrible journey of introspection that lies before their nation. Gallery Girl