New Parkett Vol. 99

The four artists featured in Parkett 99 examine our troubled present, remember history’s horrors, and imagine possible futures.

For an important letter to our readers, please scroll down.

The videos of Cao Fei take place in the hypercapitalist megacities of China, bleak landscapes where massive gray apartment blocks blend into the polluted skies. Hou Hanru, Tom McDonough, and Jiayun Zhuang describe the attempts of isolated inhabitants to forge tentative bonds, or else fashion alternate worlds into which they can briefly escape. For her Parkett edition, Rumba I: Incubator, Cao Fei combines robot and animal in a kinetic sculpture that playfully speaks to the clash between the traditinoal and the contemporary, riffing on recent video work. (View here)

“Few artists have plumbed what we could call China’s transnational imaginary more effectively than Cao Fei.” 
–Tom McDonough

Omer Fast’s lushly evocative, expertly acted films are riddles about Western morality and motives in an era of endless war waged in the Middle East. Sven Lütticken, Roy Scranton, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie consider the convenient and comforting narratives we tell ourselves, stories that Fast consistently undermines. In his edition for Parkett, Omer Fast explores and questions white male representation in the age of social media. (View his edition White Male Selfies here)

“We cast the traumatized soldier as our scapegoat, the one bearing the sins of war, and ignore numberless dead Iraqis in favor of attending to one American’s psychological suffering.” 
–Roy Scranton 

In his virtuosic, visceral paintings, Adrian Ghenie summons the monsters and golems of the twentieth century: dictators such as Hitler, Stalin, and Ceaușescu; the “deathless corpse” of Lenin; the plastic dummy survivor of atomic detonation. Brigid Doherty, Suzanne Hudson, and Mihnea Mircan study these specters that refuse to leave us. For his Parkett edition The Lidless Eye, Adrian Ghenie re-imagines different groups of images including the iconic self portrait seen here, in a series of unique collages. (View here)

“Like a sci-fi monster staring into the camera in the final scene to guarantee a sequel, they hold the potentiality to return as malevolent speech, as headlines, hats, or badges.” 
—Mihnea Mircan 

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings of black life depict dancing women and lounging men, dreaming loners and animated groups, bringing color to the walls of the white cube. Hilton Als, Rizvana Bradley, and Adrienne Edwards reflect on her vividly imagined portraits, which open onto a wider world even as they question the limits of representation. For her Parkett edition, Red Kite, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye etches a man in a feather collar, a recurring figure in her work. (View here)

“Yiadom-Boakye does not paint real people, but her imaginary sitters epitomize the rich vocabularies of movement and gesture that have saturated black avant-gardism’s artistic and literary traditions.” 
–Rizvana Bradley

Also in this issue:
Naomi Beckwith spotlights the musical art of Jason Moran. For the Insert, Rokni Haerizadeh overpaints recent news images, already seared into our memories, and allows us to see them anew: the debris left behind by war and those who flee it; memorials to civilians killed in attacks; and the gold-plated penthouse of a newly minted tyrant. 
 

Letter to our readers: 
With the present volume of Parkett 99 and the following special issue 100/101 appearing this summer, the publishers have decided to bring the publication of the printed art magazine to a close. One of the major factors behind this decision is the radical change in reading behavior brought about by our digital age.

Parkett volumes and editions will, of course, remain fully documented on our website and available via our offices in Zurich and New York. Furthermore, all volumes featuring some 1500 texts, are currently being digitized and will soon be accessible online. New, expanded Parkett exhibitions in various museums are in preparation as well, and will further explore the publication’s singular approach as a time capsule of the art of the last three decades. 

We would like to thank  our readers for their interest and loyalty, and we are looking forward to the special double issue this summer. 

To read the full letter, click here.

For more details on Parkett 99 as well as info on artists’ editions, subscriptions, and back issues, please visit www.parkettart.com.