ArtReview December 2014 issue out now
In Art Previewed
Ten December exhibitions you won’t want to miss: Caragh Thuring at Chisenhale, London; R.H. Quaytman at Gladstone Gallery, New York; Xu Bing at LACMA, Los Angeles; Huang Yong Ping at MAXXI, Rome; Artes Mundi, various venues, Cardiff; Tunga at Pilar Corrias, London; Pietro Roccasalva at Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp; Brent Wadden at Peres Projects, Berlin; Art Experiment: 32 Questions from John Cage at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, various venues, Fort Kochi and Mattancheri. By Martin Herbert.
Points of View: Our writers on what’s happening in the art world and beyond: J.J. Charlesworth on butt plugs and burning churches; Maria Lind on a funhouse in Paris that brings to mind a classic fairytale; Mike Watson on what the Venice Biennale might bring; Jonathan T.D. Neil on Detroit’s “grand bargain”; Mark Sladen on whether “archivism” has replaced activism; Sam Jacob on novelty products and the future of design; Andrew Berardini on peaches & cream; Oliver Basciano on Tidens Krav, Oslo.
Great Critics and Their Ideas
Merlin the Wizard on Zombie Abstraction. Interview by Matthew Collings.
Other People and Their Ideas
Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects on a utilitarian, rational and rigorously subjective approach to architecture.
Great Collectors and Their Ideas
Dimitris Daskalopoulos, Athens-born entrepreneur, founder of nonprofit organisation NEON and recipient of the 2014 edition of the Leo Award. Interview by Mark Rappolt.
The Law and Its Ideas
In the tenth in our series of legal issues that shed light on the often-opaque relationships that underpin the art market, Daniel McClean discusses the alleged misattribution of a version of Caravaggio’s painting The Cardsharps.
In Art Featured
New Art Now, by Michael North
Professor of English at UCLA and winner of the Robert Motherwell Book Award for his Novelty: A History of the New (2013), Michael North writes about “the new” in art.
Olafur Eliasson
ArtReview visits the studio of the Danish-Icelandic artist, where Eliasson’s artmaking, technical research and the establishment and operation of a socially and environmentally responsible business continue to offer new ways by which to measure and explain the impact of contemporary art. By Martin Herbert.
Rebecca Horn
The 70-year-old German artist is one of the most influential of her generation. But where does she sit in an art scene that’s constantly chasing the next big thing? By Gesine Borcherdt.
Yang Fudong
The Chinese artist, known for haunting formal experiments in black-and-white filmmaking, imagines the darkness of a long Norwegian winter in a project unveiled late last summer on a beach north of the Artic Circle. ArtReview was there for the opening. By Aimee Lin.
Beautiful Evidence, Pretty Lies
As the collection of data about everything and everyone has become an increasingly “normal” part of life, when it comes to its visualisation, are we talking about something that is more in the realm of subjective than objective truth—more artform than science? By Hettie Judah.
Art in Context V
The French novelist Marie Darrieussecq visits Maputo, Mozambique, and encounters the work of two artists, Butcheca and Gonçalo Mabunda, who are successfully negotiating the dominant “national art” style. The fifth installment in our yearlong, monthly survey in which artists, curators and cultural commentators explore the question of what African art (of the contemporary flavour) does or can do within various local contexts across the continent.
In Art Reviewed
Reviews from the UK, USA, Europe and the rest of the world
UK
London: David Hammons at White Cube Mason’s Yard; Steve McQueen: Ashes, at Thomas Dane Gallery; Michele Abeles: Find Out What Happens When People Start Getting Real, at Sadie Coles HQ; Jon Thompson: The Lyotard Suite, at Anthony Reynolds Gallery; Gerhard Richter at Marian Goodman Gallery; Jonathan Baldock: Notes from the Orifice, at Vitrine; Pierre Huyghe: In. Border. Deep at Hauser & Wirth; The Mechanical Garden and Other Long Encores, at Dilston Grove. Glasgow: Josh Faught: I Know I Came into This Room for a Reason, at Kendall Koppe.
USA
New York: Cory Arcangel at Team Gallery; Strauss Bourque-LaFrance: No Aloha, at Rachel Uffner Gallery; Justine Kurland: Sincere Auto Care, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash; Harun Farocki: Parallel, at Greene Naftali. Berkeley: Geta Bratescu: Matrix 254, at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Los Angeles: Edgar Arceneaux: A Book and a Medal: Disentanglement Equals Homogeneous Abstractions, at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Cayetano Ferrer: Composite Arcade, at Château Shatto; Lisa Anne Auerbach: Spells, at Gavlack. Chicago: Glenn Kaino: Leviathan, at Kavi Gupta.
EU
This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time, at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA); Ryan Trecartin: Site Visit, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Iulia Nistor: (i)…(ii)…(iii)…(iv)…, at Aiurart, Bucharest; David Lamelas: V, at Kunsthalle Basel; There Is No Place Like Home at Via Aurelia Antica 425, Rome; Elmgreen & Dragset: Biography, at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Christian Falsnaes: Performance Works, at PSM, Berlin; Agnieszka Brzezanska: Ziemia rodzinna/Ma Terra, at Aleksander Bruno, Warsaw; Anna Gaskell and Douglas Gordon: Vampyr, at Yvon Lambert, Paris.
Rest of the world
Susie Wong: [after image] My Beautiful, at Space Cottonseed, Singapore; 31Bienal de São Paulo at Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo.
Books
Memory Theatre, by Simon Critchley; Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else, by David Balzer; The George Kuchar Reader; edited by Andrew Lampert; Loose Monk, by Fabian Peake.
The Strip: A new work from Max, introduced by Paul Gravett.
Off the Record: Gallery Girl gets motivational.
