art-agenda
news and reviews
On June 10, 2010, art-agenda published its first review. It was a two-part reflection on the 6th Berlin Biennale: a lengthy, detailed examination of the exhibition, which clearly expressed our intention of bringing to online publishing the quality, depth, analysis, and editing that were until then associated primarily with print publications.
People used to think that the attention span of internet readers was the same as that of a goldfish. But it is clear now that this was a misconception, as most of what we read today is published online, and by the time reviews are published in print magazines, an opinion has already been formed.
Four years later, we continue to devote ourselves to promoting both serious and experimental writing about art; and to this end, we have some news that we would like to share with you.
Jill Winder is stepping down from the position of Editor in Chief of art-agenda on the occasion of her maternity leave. We thank her for the outstanding quality of her work.
We are very pleased to announce Filipa Ramos as the new Editor in Chief of art-agenda reviews.
A curator and writer who has been contributing to art-agenda since its very beginning, Filipa began her tenure as Editor in Chief of art-agenda this summer and she will continue to lead the editorial team from London.
Having studied contemporary art theory at Goldsmiths College, London, Filipa is a founding member of the artist’s film programme Vdrome and a lecturer at Kingston University and at Central Saint Martins. She was previously Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal, curator of the Research Section of Documenta 13, and has curated exhibitions, screenings, and public programmes in institutions worldwide.
We are also appointing two Assistant Editors, one in Berlin and one in London, who will support Filipa in running the reviews program. Tess Edmonson—a writer and editor who was previously art-agenda’s Editorial Assistant—will assure the continuity of art-agenda in Berlin, while Basia Lewandowska Cummings, a writer, editor, and member of Open School East’s team, will be working from London.
This new team will expand the editorial coverage of art-agenda, while continuing to focus on art and ideas that matter.
Recently on art-agenda
This past month saw “apocalyptic tones of human desertion set in a landscape of wrecks and ruins, pointing to evidence of a civilization now past,” as in Laura McLean-Ferris‘s portrait of “The Great Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene,” the 9th Taipei Biennal. Between the beginning of the summer and the arrival of the fall, glimpses of similarly anxious, post-human scenarios kept appearing in art-agenda’s writing: in Kevin McGarry‘s analysis of “Burning Down the House,” the 10th edition of the Gwangju Biennale, which is “steeped in the somber histories of violence and suppression;” in the “latent feeling of distress (that) surfaces in the best works” of the 31st São Paulo Bienal, as seen by Silas Martí; or even in Natasha Ginwala‘s remarks on “New Dawn” at Silberkuppe, a show that “awakens our re-enchantment with a world whose sensuality is being systemically drained into unfeeling states of conformity.”
Amid these unsettling visions, some dry poetics bring modest consolation: “an animate being yearning for the petrified nature of inanimate things” appears in Ana Teixeira Pinto‘s encounter with Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s show “_/_____/_/__/________,” or the “melancholic searcher scanning the waves, back turned to the camera,” that makes an appearance in Andrew Berardini‘s review of David Horvitz’s exhibition at Blum and Poe.
Stephen Willats’s “Attracting the Attractor,” Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel
September 5–November 1, 2014
Making sense of systems, “an act that means abandoning our contemporary habit of relativism,” is the chief concern of this collection of Stephen Willats’s recent drawings and films. His working methods—”akin to an engineer’s”— create “open schemes onto which the viewer can project their own possibilities,” writes Aoife Rosenmeyer.
“Neither,” Seventeen, London
September 4–October 4, 2014
The work of John Cage “is so overexposed, his oeuvre and ideas so thoroughly surveyed, it’s almost impossible to imagine being surprised.” Impossible until now, Morgan Quaintance writes, as “Neither”—an “unashamedly intellectual” three-person exhibition—cites phenomenology to explore “emotional responses, reflection, and physiological impulses in the viewer to move closer to, or further away from, what is seen.”
abc art berlin contemporary, Berlin
September 18–21, 2014
Judith Vrancken visits the 7th edition of abc, which, as in previous years, “embodies the event of exhibition rather than the collective buying and selling of art.” In its emphasis on theater and real time—”the fair as a stage”—this year’s fair is “a production site for performance instead of—or at least in addition to—commerce.”
“I Like Girls,” Peter McLeavey Pop Up Gallery, Wellington
August 26–September 16, 2014
A “likeable three’s company show,” this exhibition of works by Barbara Kruger, Ava Seymour and Yvonne Todd—”loosely organized around a statement that irreverently alludes to feminism”—is a new direction for Peter McLeavey’s “iconic reputation,” writes Megan Dunn, and a “pleasingly ambiguous and innocuous statement pitched to the Facebook generation.”
“The Great Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene,” 9th Taipei Biennial
September 13–January 4, 2015
In its approach to human subjects as “increasingly ghostly, stressing limitations and finitudes,” as well as more aligned with “the organic, strange, and sensory,” Nicolas Bourriaud’s Taipei Biennial is a compelling exhibition, writes Laura McLean-Ferris, exploring “a reconfiguration of the spheres of being.”
São Paulo Round Up
September 9, 2014
As the past decade has seen “an expansion of the recognition of Latin American artists worldwide,” the number of galleries, museums, and project spaces has multiplied in São Paulo. Sophie Goltz takes in the city’s offerings during the opening weekend of the biennial, finding “a consolidation of a Brazilian identity through art and its spaces.”
“How to Talk About Things that Don’t Exist,” 31st Bienal de São Paulo
September 6–December 7, 2014
While the curatorial team of this year’s edition of the Bienal de São Paulo stressed that “is a show anchored on the now,” the now underwent “seismic shifts” amidst political tumult since the team arrived in the city. Silas Martí notes a “wet-paint impression” in many of the works, reiterating that “this is a show forged in the heat of the moment.”
“Burning Down the House,” 10th Gwangju Biennale, Seoul
September 5–November 9, 2014
At the Gwangju Biennale, Kevin McGarry finds an exhibition “steeped in the somber histories of violence and suppression,” that acts as “an apt backdrop for ruminating on present circumstances and their resonance with the past.”
Zofia Kulik’s “Instead of Sculpture – Sequences 1968–71″ at ŻAK | BRANICKA, Berlin
May 2–September 13, 2014
Showcasing a selection of Kulik’s “Sequences” series (1968–71), “a group of serialized photographic works that have never before been exhibited nor printed,” this exhibition of Kulik’s early works “evinces her radical thinking about the intersection of film and sculpture.” Karen Archey finds currency in the works’ “rigorously conceptualized and prescient hold on the increasingly complex relationship between art and documentation.”
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s “_/_____/_/__/________” at Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City
June 26–August 30, 2014
Ana Teixeira Pinto establishes an affinity with Surrealist themes in this exhibition from Spanish-born, Brazilian-based artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. Here, the employment of “deceit, assimilation, and trompe-l’oeil effects” speaks to “the belief that an effect resembles its cause, or that one can influence something based on its resemblance to another thing.”
“New Dawn” at Silberkuppe, Berlin
June 28–August 2, 2014
Curated by artist Leidy Churchman and counting 27 participating artists, this summer group show “offers a communal ground” in which “political life, the human-animal, and the cosmological meet.” “Despite its jump-cut style and gestural naiveté,” Natasha Ginwala finds “the exhibition to be “a sublime staging of the painterly form as a registration of affect and the exhibition format as a ‘medium’ of contagion.”
David Horvitz at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
July 12–August 23, 2014
Andrew Berardini writes that two recent works from David Horvitz—a photographic series and an installation—”try to locate some imaginary notion in a literal place.” With just enough remove from “sappy Romanticism” to allow “our cynical age” to access “notions of the sublime and the beautiful,” these pieces give “a little space and time to dreaming, a space beyond practical concerns, just goofy enough to keep it light.”
Hong Seung-Hye’s “Reminiscence” at Kukje Gallery, Seoul
July 10–August 17, 2014
This exhibition—”a retrospective, after a fashion,” writes Tyler Coburn—”impresses for its formal diversity.” Repurposing the titles and forms of her early works, the artist reaches “beyond her signature procedures,” allowing for “every future retrospection to gain in complexity and scope.”
A brighter future may be presented in our upcoming texts, namely Stefan Heidenreich’s review of “Let the Body be Electric, Let there be Whistleblowers” at Dan Gunn, Berlin; Jeremy Millar’s comment on “In Border Deep,” Pierre Huyghe’s show at Hauser and Wirth, London; and the coverage of the annual fair craze between Frieze in London and FIAC in Paris.
Art-agenda’s exhibition announcement service distributes press information on select international exhibitions of contemporary art.
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