The 59th Venice Biennale Review: Off-Site Projects →

Fiona Banner | Frieze

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, ‘Pranayama Organ’, 2021, installation view, Patronato Salesiano XIII, Venice, 2022.

BY SEAN BURNS IN CRITIC'S GUIDES | 22 APR 22

“Fiona Banner’s installation, ‘Pranayama Typhoon’, occupies a school gymnasium at Patronato Salesiano. As with all of the artist’s work, everything is cleverly interconnected for the viewer to decode. The ISBN number of the exhibition’s publication also appears on a small screen in the show, while the painting Capitalist, Capitalist, Capitalist (Ellipsis) (2022), containing rock-sized full-stops in a landscape, hangs on the gym’s basketball hoop. The central video, Pranayama Organ(2021), features two performers dressed as floppy fighter jets jostling on a beach: it’s a flaccid and futile distillation of failed, warmongering masculinity. Banner has been recycling this motif for over a decade: the Typhoon and Falcon jets are heavy signifiers of human ingenuity and destruction.”

SHARJAH BIENNIAL REVEALS ARTISTS TAKING PART IN 2023 EDITION →

Philippe Parreno | Artforum

Organizers of the Sharjah Biennial have released the names of more than 140 artists participating in the event’s hotly anticipated 2023 iteration, conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, which oversees the biennial. Artists from over seventy countries will be represented across sixteen venues scattered around the city, including a former kindergarten, a vegetable market, and a power station. The event is slated to take place February 7–June 11, 2023.

Rirkrit Tiravanija →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Sculpture Magazine

April 12, 2022 by John Gayer

Grimbergen, Belgium

Though pertaining to the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Tiravanija’s pervasive use of “free” also urges us to consider its many meanings and associations. Today, that four-letter word resonates clearly, something that failed to happen 30 years ago. Jörn Schafaff emphasizes this point in the exhibition text, noting that untitled 1992 (free) was misunderstood as signifying “’free food for all,’ leaving its poetic dimensions largely unnoticed.”

Rirkrit Tiravanija's Pad Thai Is Both a Meal and an Artwork →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | New York Times

The Artist cooking with his students.

Interview by Alice Newell-Hanson

April 21, 2022

“ I don’t really think of what I do as an artistic practice. There’re no boundaries or limits. All the ways I fill a day — even if I’m doing nothing at all — are one and the same. I don’t have a studio. I don’t wake up and go to a place where I sit down and make things. I just do what I need or want to do, and throughout that process, I think about various possible works. Everything informs everything else.”

Jorge Pardo at MOAD: An Exploration of The Immigrant Experience Through Art →

Article by Marcia Morgado

“In Mongrel, an exploration of the hyphenated idiosyncrasies of exiles, Pardo relives and shares memories from the time he left his native Cuba as a child and, along with thousands of his compatriots, was welcomed at the historic Freedom Tower, which now houses MOAD. Here we find a space of reflection accomplished by recreating an interior that conveys the sense of exile, loss, of fragmentation. Still, in the colors and textures, we also find light and the possibility of fulfillment.”

Ann Veronica Janssens collaborates with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at Neue Nationalgalerie →

Ann Veronica Janssens, yellowbluepink, 2015, Artificial fog, yellow, blue and pink filters, Dimensions variable

Over four days, the Belgian dance company Rosas will occupy the Exhibition Hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie with a performance that was specially created for the building. The piece provides museum-goers with a unique exploration of the interplay between architecture, sculpture, music and dance. The Rosas production Dark Red (a series of compositions made for different museum spaces) has most recently been performed at Kolumba in Cologne and at Fondation Beyeler in Basel.

Dark Red’s multi-day showing marks the first performance of a major choreographic work in Mies van der Rohe’s iconic museum building. The vast, transparent space of the exhibition hall serves as the stage for this dance piece by the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, which was produced in collaboration with dancers Cassiel Gaube and Soa Ratsifandrihana, flautist Chryssi Dimitriou, and visual artist Ann Veronica Janssens.

A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020 review – congealing palettes, fading light and magic →

Paul Winstanley, Seminar (Grey), 2014, Oil on Linen, 165X160cm.

By Laura Cumming

From Frida Kahlo’s sickbed to Cindy Sherman’s Manhattan loft and Picasso’s 60s chateau, this superb show exploring where artists work is nothing less than a portal into their minds.

A show with this theme opens at the Whitechapel Gallery next week. And it turns out be a riveting experience, achieved with great wisdom and drama by Iwona Blazwick and her team. A Century of the Artist’s Studio goes in and out of this magical place in such inventive ways. There are spectacular reconstructions of actual studios – Matisse’s bedroom in the south of France, hung with magnificent embroideries; Kurt Schwitters’s Dada studio, all wild wooden stalactites – but the show also moves through global space, crossing five continents from the secret studios of Iran to the tiny kiosk in Manila where the father of Filipino art, Roberto Chabet, made conceptual sculptures.

Kerry Tribe uses language as a medium in ‘Onomatopoeia’ →

Image still from “Afasia,” on view at the Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery.

By Cate McQuaid

“How can one be known by another?” Kerry Tribe asks in Spanish in her video “Afasia.” The subtitle, in English, appears over an image of a pre-Hispanic stone head at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The Boston-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s exhibition “Onomatopoeia,” at Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery, steps into gaps of understanding within ourselves and between people.

Amid Volcanic Crisis in Tonga, Arts Enterprise TBA21-Academy Calls for Support →

An overview of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga in December, a month before the recent eruption.

By Andy Battaglia

As part of the call for support, the organization—directed by Markus Reymann and chaired by the storied art collector and patron Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza—has offered an example of the kind of work made as a result: a 21-minute video titled Hunga Tonga by the Danish artist collective Superflex, which participated in a seafaring journey with TBA21-Academy in 2018. (“They’re almost like landscapes that you sail across,” Rasmus Nielsen of Superflex told ARTnews about sailing over the unfathomably deep Tonga Trench for a feature about TBA21-Academy shortly after. “You feel out of scale, and seasick. There’s so much water underneath you that it’s hard to grasp.”)

Painting in Limbo: An Interview with Petra Cortright →

Petra Cortright: ‘Baleaf Gys Akademiks Maamgic Brokig,’ 2021, installation view at Société Berlin // Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin

by Cristina Ramos | Dec. 7, 2021

“We sat down with American artist Petra Cortright on the occasion of her current exhibition ‘Baleaf Gys Akademiks Maamgic Brokig’ at Société Berlin. The exhibition presents a series of landscape paintings alongside a video piece, loosely inspired by heaven and hell, infused with the countryside of the American West and the laws of nature it contains. Provoking an ambiguous feeling in the viewer—perhaps pleasant, sometimes disturbing—Cortright builds infinite fantasy worlds within the digital paintings, employing found imagery from the net and image-editing software.”

The Conversation →

By D. Edward Martin

“Beyond the fun, however, there are layers of meaning to unpack and to contemplate. For example, the conversation between human and animal is one that is fraught with difficulty. We speak for animals, and we talk over them. A conversation implies two or more parties that are equal in some way, and this conversation is held back by those who believe that between human and animal there is (to borrow a phrase from Jane Goodall) a difference of kind, and not simply one of degree. Additionally, the idea that nature is somehow “out there” and not surrounding us at every moment—whether in a gallery, at home, or in the outdoors—erects barriers to sympathy as well.”

‘Light & Space’ at Copenhagen Contemporary: ‘moving art without moving elements’ →

Installation view Light & Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, 2021. Photography: David Stjernholm

By Jeni Porter

“Epic group show ‘Light & Space’ explores the past and present of the iconic light and installation art movement. It’s physical, emotional, bodily and disorientating.”

“In scale and scope, the ‘Light & Space’ exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary is epic. ‘It will be BIG in every way!’, the international art centre declared before opening the doors on 2 December 2021. Sprawling across 5,000 sq m, with artworks from 27 artists, it is the biggest exhibition ever for the six-year-old institution, as well as the most comprehensive presentation of artists from the influential light and installation art movement (Light and Space) that emerged in and around Los Angeles in the 1960s.”

FIRST PERMANENT PUBLIC WORKS IN LONDON FROM UGO RONDINONE, PAE WHITE & CATHERINE YASS COMING TO PADDINGTON SQUARE. →

Pae White | FAD Magazine

Pae White. COURTESY: © Pae White / PHOTOGRAPH: Enrico Fiorese

By Mark Westall

Paddington Square, London’s new quarter for work, retail and dining at the heart of Paddington’s regeneration, has announced a major programme of public art commissions, comprising first London permanent public works by internationally renowned artists Ugo Rondinone, Pae White and Catherine Yass. The artworks will be unveiled with the full opening of Paddington Square in 2022.

“The Paddington Square public art programme acts as a conversation starter: to demonstrate and inspire the power, beauty, potential and responsibility of curating art in the public realm. Our curatorial approach takes its cues from the vision of Sellar, together with Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s architectural ambition to bring one of London’s biggest transport gateways to life through public spaces and contemporary art. Lacuna conducted extensive research into the neighbourhood, working with local communities and engaging with a diverse set of stakeholders, greatly enriching our curatorial approach and the development of these landmark commissions with leading international artists. While lockdown presented us with new challenges, it also allowed us to develop novel methods for critical engagement with the evolving cultural conversation, which visitors will see borne out in the final works as they are unveiled in 2022.” - Stella Ioannou (Director) & Jade Niklai (Associate Curator), Lacuna.

Diana Thater: The Conversation at 1301PE →

Installation view, Diana Thater, The Conversation, 2021. 1301PE Los Angeles. Photography by Fredrik Nilsen.

Written by Shana Nys Dambrot

“Titled Talk to Us and Listen to Us (both works: 2021, 2-channel audio / video installation, endless loop), Thater packs a lot of poetry and dissonance into two installations. The color is warm and beckoning, while the literal cacophony is both mysterious and overwhelming. It’s loud and it’s hard to get a handle on. The human voices mimicking parrot voices which at times are themselves imitating human speech, intertwined with the lavishly expressive abstract natural language of these birds, blends and obscures and augments and eventually settles into a kind of rhythm. The soothing effect of the colored light flooding and unifying the space helps this process, anchoring the viewer to the room long enough for the poetics and onomatopeias to sort themselves out. “Up and down and in and out…To run, to walk, to dream. Bang, whistle, woo-hoo! Listen to us! Listen to us!””

ARTIST DIANA THATER WANTS TO SHOW US A WORLD WORTH SAVING →

Diana Thater | Change Lab Podcast

For Diana Thater making art is like oxygen. It sustains and nourishes her. And when her access to it is suddenly limited –as it was in the spring of 2020–she figures out a way to create her art. By any means necessary.Her latest exhibition, Yes…

For Diana Thater making art is like oxygen. It sustains and nourishes her. And when her access to it is suddenly limited –as it was in the spring of 2020–she figures out a way to create her art. By any means necessary.

Her latest exhibition, Yes, There Will Be Singing, is the captivating result of an extraordinary pandemic pivot. The ArtCenter alum and distinguished professor conceived the idea for the sound-based piece when her original in person show was canceled. But what’s most ingenious about this immersive work is not its format but rather its remarkable subject–Whale 52, who is deaf and yet sings into a world of complete darkness and silence.

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect metaphor for resilience in the face of the isolation we’ve all just experienced than Whale 52 and, more specifically, the sensitivity with which Thater represents his plight in her stunning sound, video and light piece (which can still be experienced here).

Dancers From the Deep Sea Shine on the U.N. for Climate Week →

SUPERFLEX | New York Times

“A Danish arts collective spotlights the bizarrely beautiful siphonophore, which performs a vital role in removing carbon from the atmosphere.”

By Arthur Lubow

Published Sept. 14, 2021Updated Sept. 16, 2021

A little-known but crucial agent of carbon removal from the atmosphere — the siphonophore, which lives in what’s known as the twilight zone of the sea — will be highlighted during U.N. Climate Week in a video projection from a Danish arts collective.

The siphonophore is a bizarrely beautiful creature. Like a coral reef, it is composed of individual parts, known as zooids, which perform specialized functions. “Some are digesters, some are swimmers, some are reproducers,” Heidi Sosik, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said. “But they all get together. It is an interesting metaphor for humanity to think about.”

Next week, Sept. 21-24, in a light projection more than 500 feet high on the entire northern facade of the U.N. Secretariat building, a siphonophore will perform a sinuous, pulsating dance nightly between 8 and 11 p.m. Coinciding with the meeting of international delegates, who will discuss how to counter human-caused climate change, the video, “Vertical Migration,” is intended to draw attention to the animal’s deep sea carbon removal system.

The artists reappropriating 'feminine crafts' through a queer lens →

Judy Ledgerwood | Creative Bloom

Judy Ledgerwood, Visigothic, 2021

Judy Ledgerwood, Visigothic, 2021

“Chicago-based abstract painter Judy Ledgerwood's work considers domestically created decorative work made by women across cultures, using circles, quatrefoils, and seed-like shapes organised within triangles and chevrons that "she perceives as a womanly cypher symbolic of feminine power," according to the gallery.”