tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91578934397881810042012-01-23T12:49:43.093-08:00SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-76394650847769818882011-10-01T09:19:00.000-07:002011-10-30T07:54:43.097-07:00

The curators of this year's Istanbul Biennial, Jens Hoffman and Adriano Pedrosa, deflate the overblown biennial format, tossed out locality as a topic of debate and funneled an entire biennial – comprising five group shows and 55 solo exhibitions – into two waterside warehouses. Sidelining ‘nostalgic or romantic’ views of the city as a crossroads between East and West, a tendency of earlier

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-22021156068460623732011-10-01T09:10:00.000-07:002011-10-30T07:51:52.687-07:00

The term ‘banana republic’ emerged at the turn of the century, inspired by the countries of Honduras and Guatemala, which fell in thrall to international corporations eager to export the newly popular fruit. CIA-supported corporate interests violently divested rural Mayan populations of both land and livelihood, feeding into decades of poverty and unrest across Central America. The American

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Doha, QatarSpeculation about the museum boom in the Middle East has been dominated by the projects’ staggering scale. This rapidly evolving tale of ambition is narrated with names and numbers: Frank Gehry has designed a fifth Guggenheim (the largest to date) and Jean Nouvel is tackling the Louvre (exclusive use of the French museum’s name in the region was won for a reported US$1.3 billion).

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-61079475340417812132011-01-24T07:43:00.001-08:002011-04-12T07:32:01.396-07:00

In August, 1993, a red line was drawn on a map of the West Bank, dividing it into three zones: one in Israeli hands, one under Palestinian control, and one under shared (Israeli military) and (Palestinian civilian) supervision, in an arrangement known as the Oslo Accords. In "Decolonizing Architecture," a recent exhibition project at REDCAT, this thread of a line is spatialized, transformed into

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-45328059764602292882009-09-19T11:17:00.000-07:002009-09-19T11:28:53.166-07:00

Platform Garanti Contemporary Art CenterVisit Art in America online for the full post.In 2001, curator Vasif Kortun, former director of Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies and curator of the 3rd and 9th Istanbul Biennials, founded Istanbul's Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center. Over the next few years, Platform offered an international residency program, visiting lecturers series,

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-44566067687692798602009-09-15T01:29:00.000-07:002011-01-24T07:45:23.629-08:00

Last fall, What, How, and for Whom?, the Zagreb-based curatorial collective behind the 11th Istanbul Biennial, conducted a sort of séance, summoning up a historical ghost whom, it turns out, an exhibition of this size can only engage with in his vaguest form. The biennial was titled after a line in Bertolt Brecht's 1928 musical The Threepenny Opera (“What Keeps Mankind Alive?”). But Brecht's

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-23905268416104334272009-08-10T14:33:00.000-07:002009-08-10T15:00:28.524-07:00

Visit Artslant for full postsRarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film - David Horvitz - 2nd Cannons - ChinatownArtist David Horvitz's "Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film," on show in Second Cannons Publications' micro-gallery/public vitrine, includes a film clip, a newsprint photograph of the sea from the location of Ader's projected landing spot, and its own small myth. Uploaded onto Youtube in 2007, the film

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-83614366386476059622009-08-10T14:22:00.000-07:002009-08-10T14:31:07.023-07:00

"What keeps mankind alive?"September 12 - November 8 2009Organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV), the 9th and 10th Istanbul Biennials, 2005's "Istanbul" and 2007's gigantic "Not only possible but also necessary: optimism in the age of global war,"—or NOPBAN:OITAOGW, as I like to call it for short—made a significant move from the city's "historic" venues (Hagia Sophia, the

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'Larry Johnson' is a sizeable survey covering some two decades of this Los Angeles artist's career (1985 - 2007, with a hiatus from 2001 to 2006). Evading the perennial hazard of pitting chronology and 'theme' against each other, curator Russell Ferguson doesn't 'trace' anything but rather takes a wander through, in, and around Johnson's oeuvre. The approach fits the nature of Johnson's body of

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-54242429618356995192009-06-17T06:33:00.000-07:002009-06-24T10:07:27.547-07:00

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck with Media FarzinAlessandro Balteo Yazbeck and Media Farzin’s exhibition at Christopher Grimes Gallery, ‘Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect’, casts Alexander Calder and his docile abstractions as the unlikely protagonists in a tale of international intrigue, a tangled narrative tracing the twinned histories of the US interest in Venezuelan and Iranian oil following

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-6524106707851934752009-04-09T06:21:00.000-07:002009-04-09T06:35:48.405-07:00

Contemporary Time-based works from AfricaA number of recent exhibitions have taken it upon themselves to complicate prevailing conceptions of Africa as a monolithic culture or ‘global problem’. Shows like the traveling ‘Africa Remix’ (2005) and last year’s ‘Flow’ at the Studio Museum in Harlem sought to combat misplaced generalizations with a barrage of specificities, bringing together large

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-27714680276648814902009-04-02T07:49:00.000-07:002009-04-02T08:51:29.485-07:00

In typical Walead Beshty form, 'Passages' imbues indexical traces with a conceptual heft and aesthetic appeal that is nearly impossible not to find seductive. X-ray lines relay an unexposed film's transit across borders; a mirrored floor's expanding web of cracks testifies to the passage of visitors through the gallery; a series of black and white slides bears witness to the demise of the

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-68787838930797525462008-12-31T03:35:00.000-08:002009-04-02T07:48:58.061-07:00

'Hard Targets: Masculinity and Sport' sets out to investigate constructions of masculinity as they appear in mainstream athletic culture, through the work of artists Mark Bradford, Harun Farocki, Brian Jungen, Shaun El C. Leonardo, Collier Schorr and Joe Sola. Curator Christopher Bedford is concerned with representation: he wants to reform an archetype, a symbolic figure – the ‘masculine’ subject

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-87816023283495178302008-10-04T18:36:00.000-07:002008-11-03T06:26:50.567-08:00

(Originally appeared Frieze magazine Nov-Dec 2008.)At the Boston ICA's 'Street Level', artists Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode scrape, scratch, layer, draw, and dance in an effort to get under the skin of the cities they call home. 19 works – video, sculpture, giant canvases – face off across three smallish rooms. Their sheer proximity pushes them into dialogue; conversation

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-79030951539149346032008-08-25T07:18:00.000-07:002008-08-25T07:37:51.946-07:00

(Originally appeared Art Monthly magazine).In the late 90s, the Paris-based artist Tatiana Trouvé began working on the series of drawings and installations that would later become her breakthrough project, the Bureau d'Activités Implicites (Office of Implicit Activities). The BAI immersed viewers in an isolated environment where objects and activities were organized with exaggerated specificity,

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-56318610953436917012008-06-28T03:26:00.000-07:002008-08-25T07:38:19.198-07:00

Jan Mot Gallery's current exhibit is called 'The title of this show is a list that includes the dates in which each of the exhibited works were first made, the dates in which some of them were remade by the artists and the dates in which they were last shown'. There's no hope now: if you have finished reading, you are already hurtling headlong into the conceptual loop established by

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-8341108099741908172008-06-16T13:23:00.000-07:002008-07-17T06:48:35.901-07:00

Tim Lee’s films splice together figures – often musicians and comedians – plucked from North American popular culture. By either supplanting them from their own work or by using iconic portraits, Lee picks single, representative ‘frames’ from performers’ lives, material that he weaves together and manipulates in a sophisticated editing exercise.Lee favours moments in which he perceives

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-11724953406207793272008-06-14T07:23:00.000-07:002008-07-17T06:48:57.505-07:00

Through July 2008A subtle sense of disjuncture between the Louvre's claims of fundamentally changing its exhibition approach, and its actual practices, pervades contemporary Belgian artist Jan Fabre's exhibition 'The Angel of Metamorphosis'. Hosted as part of the museum's 'Counterpoints' contemporary art program -- which has welcomed artists Candida Höfer, Mike Kelley, Sarkis, and Anish Kapoor

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-7948276354044725392008-06-14T05:06:00.000-07:002008-07-17T06:49:10.431-07:00

Through August 2008For 'Time Between Spaces', Jonathan Monk has distributed a group of nearly 40 objects throughout two rooms in the Palais de Tokyo and the mirroring Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Across his broader oeuvre, Monk consistently recasts or extends conceptual art's most emblematic strategies, and 'Time Between Spaces' is no exception. Its altered bicycles, off-time

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-82694196487977706972008-04-26T07:33:00.000-07:002008-06-16T13:13:30.341-07:00

(Originally appeared in Art Monthly June 2008) Having just celebrated its 20th year, the Istanbul Biennial is one of the oldest and most well-known of the many global art biennials. Yet while the Istanbul Biennial is the object of widespread international press attention, other local art institutions receive far less exposure – easily leading to the impression that the biennial exists in a void

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-67677558139298366202008-04-23T01:53:00.000-07:002008-07-17T06:49:35.226-07:00

Through June 2008Also at Frieze.com The Paris art world is gearing up for some heated religious talk. In May, the Centre Pompidou will host ‘Traces of the Sacred’, a much-anticipated blockbuster exhibition that will trace the relations between art and spirituality from the 19th century on. In tandem, France’s preeminent journal art press will release a special edition gathering 30 years’ worth of

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-1028443699557370112008-03-07T00:27:00.000-08:002008-08-25T07:13:20.201-07:00

(Originally written for Afterall.org)In 1985 a Lebanese communist called Jamal Satti made three attempts to record a final video testimony, to be broadcast on television, before blowing himself up at the Israeli Army headquarters in Hasbayya. Fifteen years later, the uncut videos were adapted by the Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué to make the video Three Posters (2000), and then a second documentary

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It takes 20 minutes on the metro to get from the heart of Paris to the southern suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine. Add ten minutes on a public bus and the trip to MAC/VAL (Contemporary Art Museum of Val-de-Marne) is the same length as many Parisians’ daily commute. The speed at which one is transported from the Latin Quarter, home to the Sorbonne and the Pantheon’s imposing façades, to a boxy cityscape

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-69045413522578267782008-02-25T04:25:00.000-08:002008-07-17T06:50:37.169-07:00

Odile Ouizeman Gallery, ParisThrough 8 MarchAlso at Frieze.comSand, flint, spar, flux – even the names of the raw materials used in the industrial glass-making process are spare and sharp-edged. Their transmutation into the viscous stuff of glass-blowing or the clear, hardened panes of a window has always carried a certain thrill for me. With his own sheets of glass – once car windshields, now

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-74830023071713731202008-01-26T03:10:00.000-08:002008-07-17T06:50:53.858-07:00

Institute for Contemporary Art, BostonView the full-length version of this article at Frieze.comAt the ambiguously titled ‘Momentum 9,’ social engagement is forestalled by the more immediate demands placed on the visitor: to stand in a sleek, clean room and imagine oneself in the midst of chaos; to read the index of one specific group of youths as the representation of another, vague body of

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-78523219451541965542008-01-22T03:54:00.000-08:002008-06-16T13:14:33.602-07:00

La Maison Rouge, 20 January 2008(sorry this is sideways for the moment) Living in a foreign city, weeks have the tendency to take on themes – a string of events will suddenly condense into one of those cultural lessons which is at the same time disastrous and banal. (Last week I discovered I have been trying to pay my bills for months with pieces of paper from my bank which, incidentally,

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-6621623768961681482007-12-01T02:06:00.000-08:002008-07-17T06:51:36.895-07:00

Something about the Fondation Cartier's transparent glass, smoke-and-mirrors architecture always calls to mind the eponymous jeweler's most famous product: diamonds. Is this a subtle demonstration of corporate "branding," or just my own personal fancy?I'm not sure. What is sure, though, is that Korean artist Lee Bul's delicate installations (the stuff of figurative smoke but literal mirrors, with

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-77822564438227818892007-10-02T02:58:00.000-07:002008-06-16T13:15:24.429-07:00

The Istanbul Modern Art Museum first opened its doors to the public in 2004 after more than a decade of effort on the part of its founders, the Eczacibasi family foundation and the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). Between 2004 and 2007, the museum has made a series of changes to its display of the permanent collection. Yet it has continuously sustained a noticeable paradox: its

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-15138651236420471852007-09-27T01:58:00.003-07:002008-07-17T06:53:04.791-07:00

Les BicoquesLa Maison Rouge, Fondation de Galbert, Paris, FranceJune – September 2007 Occasionally, young children will matter-of-factly populate their imaginary worlds with horrific figures or disturbing scenes. Not yet thoroughly versed in what is supposed to inspire fairy-tale fear, they take on the dreadful – skeletons, ghosts, death – with insouciance. Patrick van Caeckenbergh's exhibit "Les

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-30665491166140161332007-09-27T01:58:00.001-07:002008-06-16T13:15:59.891-07:00

Excerpts from an interview with the head curator of the 10th Istanbul Biennial.Hanru is most inspiring, and understandable, in person. The vocabulary peculiar to his exhibition texts can bog readers down (think "laboratory," "dynamism," "neo-liberalism," "globalism," "urban reality"), but when speaking he not only relates these terms to concrete situations; in his enthusiasm he goes so far as to

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-8343885914403741572007-09-27T01:57:00.001-07:002008-06-16T13:16:17.689-07:00

Istanbul Bilgi University's new arts and education center makes no secret of its grand ambitions: they are all summed up in its two-word title, Santralİstanbul. To an English speaker's ear santral resonates with “central.” In Turkish, it means “power plant.” Take your pick of a language – the message is still clear. Santralİstanbul plans to take on a central role in the local art world. It wants

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For visitors to Istanbul, and even many city residents, the local art scene is a foreign world. But there are no guidebooks to this world, no maps, and no tourism experts to lead you by the hand. Without these resources, the smallest problems can turn into insurmountable difficulties.“Artist Information” project PiST///, a non-profit artists' initiative which opened in Istanbul's Pangaltı

SNShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15164139440609546612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157893439788181004.post-70496924685669357452007-09-27T01:55:00.000-07:002008-06-16T13:08:54.977-07:00

In 2005, artist Burak Delier – unable to find a gallery outlet for one of his photographs – decided to exhibit it on his own, in the Istanbul streets. The poster he made showed a wide-eyed woman, veiled in the European Union flag. Seized upon by internet fans and the international media, Delier's veiled woman became one of 2005's most iconic and memorable images. In an ironic twist, the art

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