The title of this fall issue, THE ALWAYS ALREADY, refers to a space that belongs to all of us—to the issue’s artists, authors, and readers. It is a space in which one can listen closely to an artwork, to the solitary and rarified thoughts that leak out. Eventually, those thoughts become a kind of literature. The entangled, gorgeously convoluted relationship between contemporary art and literature curls and spins throughout this entire issue.
Precious Okoyomon addresses the issue’s titular theme with a special production in which she has been photographed wearing Gucci in Brooklyn, New York, by Rob Kulisek. “I see myself as being in a world and lineage of ‘the always already.’ As in, what comes after is where I maintain my space and where I’ll always be situated.” In conversation with Jazmina Figueroa, the artist defines her practice as “a nonstop poem.” Since everything starts with a poem, everything is constantly leaking into everything else; her work is the syntax of love leaking.
The second cover story of this fall issue is dedicated to WangShui, who has been photographed by Inès Manai in their studio in New York, wearing Sánchez-Kane and Kuboraum. WangShui’s works are situated in a neutral zone far beyond capture—a space between the self and others or being and nothingness. As Alex M.F. Quicho states in her essay, WangShui is an artist that lives comfortably between worlds, to whom “living well means appearing as they wish—and disappearing at will.”
“Dillon’s artwork attains a beautiful aesthetic resonance as well as thoughtful reflection on deep and sometimes painful topics that are rarely explored in British and European visual art.” Walking us through Rhea Dillon’s exhibition An Alterable Terrain at Tate Britain, Zakiya McKenzie draws on word associations—glass/fragility, head/body, oracle/orator, uprooting/mahogany—and paths crossed with the artist. In a special production for the issue, Dillon has been photographed in New York wearing Bottega Veneta by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.
The fourth and final cover story is dedicated to London-based art Issy Wood, whose solo exhibition Study for No at Lafayette Anticipations opens on October 18, 2023. In her essay, Estelle Hoy situates the artist as a central character in her own paintings, which suggest a stream of consciousness hiding something foreboding. Hoy describes Wood as a sensitive artist exploring insensitive issues, “highlighting caustic beauty ideals and socioeconomic disparities that orbit our unconscious and are so ingrained in the social fabric that it’s hardly remembered.”
Also in this issue, Uzoamaka Maduka considers Nikita Gale’s artistic practice, through which the artist listens closely to the effects of time and shows a rare attentiveness to the psychology of ruins. Maduka wonders, “Who knows where the roads of the present time will lead? Is an archeologist, an artist, the one to ask?”
This issue’s installment of Critic Dispatch is a perspicacious take on the era of POSTPOSTPOST (that is, after modernism, postmodernism, and post-postmodernism) written by Sarah Chekfa. In Letter from the City, Rory Pilgrim and Carol R. Kallend—from Bristol and Sheffield respectively—share their thoughts and advice on transition and change. For the second episode of The Curist, a column looking at alternative practices in gallery culture, Charlie Robin Jones talks to Freddie Powell about Ginny on Frederick, founded in 2020 in London’s Smithfield Market. Unpack / Reveal / Unleash features a text by Alex Bennett diving into Brooklyn-based artist SoiL Thornton’s “post-linguistic” practice. TIME MACHINE is dedicated to the artist collective Art & Language, with an essay by Mary Anne Staniszewski originally published in Flash Art International no. 143 November–December 1988, accompanied by unpublished documents from the Flash Art archive.
Finally, we present the fifth and final episode of SEMIOFUCK, a column dedicated to hybrid spatial practices and off-road motorcycling by Armature Globale, to whom we’ve dedicated a special cover conceived by Ferdinando Verderi.
Reviews: Mire Lee Black Sun New Museum, New York by Colin Edgington / Rita McBride Particulates Hammer Museum, Los Angeles by Gracie Hadland / Yu Ji A Guest, A Host, A Ghost Orange County Museum of Art, Cosa Mesa by Oli Misraje / WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age Centre Pompidou-Metz by Sarah Moroz / Martin Wong Malicious Mischief Camden Art Centre, London by Phoebe Cripps / OUT OF THE BOX Schaulager, Basel by Franklin Melendez / Isa Genzken 75/75 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin by Louisa Elderton
The issue will be available at Viennacontemporary; The Armory Show, New York; Paris+ par Art Basel; Sprint, Milano; Artissima, Turin; Art Verona; and Brussels Gallery Weekend.
