Category: Exhibition Reviews

Alina Szapocznikow, Alina Szapocznikow, Broadway 1602, New York, November 18, 2007 – January 12, 2008

The recent resurgence of interest in women artists and feminist art, as demonstrated not least of all by the successes of “Wack!” in Los Angeles and “Global Feminisms” at the Brooklyn Museum, has encouraged critics and art historians to extend their investigations of women artists beyond the Western-oriented feminist canon of the 1970s. One of the most fascinating individuals to come to the attention of international viewers is, in fact, not a newcomer at all, at least not in her native Poland. Although Alina … Read more

Neo Rauch: Neue Rollen, Paintings 1993 to the Present Day
Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, October 5-May 8, 2007

Neo Rauch has exhibited widely in recent years and much of the discourse around his paintings hinges on his identity as a product of the DDR, or former communist East Germany. His bizarre pictorial constructions seem to invite a consideration of legacy: of failed socialism and of painting itself. What did/does it all mean? The Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg Germany has provided an opportunity to reflect on this question by organizing the largest survey of his work to date and sending it on tour … Read more

Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev’s A New Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope; The Art Institute of Chicago, February 1-May 6, 2007

The photographs and video installations of Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev draw on various documentary styles and techniques to capture the changing social landscape of their native Kyrgyzstan since it became an independent republic in 1991. Like many artists of post-Soviet Europe and Central Asia, their practice is a discursive one that casts a critical yet empathetic eye on their indigenous subjects (human and otherwise) and the political spaces they occupy.

Their collaborative projects engage in what … Read more

2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, March 1-April 1, 2007

The 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art was themed FOOTNOTES on Geopolitics, Market and Amnesia and added its own measure of discontent to the excess of world biennales. Now that this short-lived event is over, its outcome appears clear: the Biennale has only served to highlight the level of political uncertainty, profligate corruption, and social disparity that defines its context. In a social landscape rife with political intrigue, tightening censorship, and some 40 percent of the population living in poverty, the government’s spending of over US $2 million … Read more

Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, December 04-12, 2006

    We need to place ourselves in an area where politics and art are intertwined, where the resistant force of politics and the creative forces of art mutually affect each other, blurring the frontiers between them.
    –Suely Rolnik, “The Twilight of the Victim: Creating Quits Its Pimp, to Rejoin Resistance.”(S. Rolnik, “The Twilight of the Victim: Creation Quits Its Pimp, to Rejoin Resistance,” Zehar, no.51, (2003):36. www.arteleku.net.)

“Young and energetic” was the description that Alexander Esin gave to a group of Russian artists in his preface to the 2006 … Read more

Lost Highway Expedition was initiated by Azra Akšamija, Katherine Carl, Ana Dzokiæ, Ivan Kucina, Marc Neelen, Kyong Park, Marjetica Potrè and Srdjan Jovanoviæ Weiss, together with partners in participating cities. The expedition started on July 30, 2006 and went from Ljubljana to Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Pristina, Tirana, and Podgorica. It ended on August 24, 2006 in Sarajevo.

In contrast to the idea and logic that changing places leads from point A to point B, an odyssey within and/or across cultural boundaries started from Ljubljana and ended in Sarajevo with Lost Highway Expedition (LHE).LHE is a project … Read more

Andrei Molodkin, December 8-January 21 2006, Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, New York

Andrei Molodkin’s most recent exhibition reveals some highly charged works which poignantly unmask the political intrigue that is often not far from the surface of the global oil business. By throwing together so directly the forces of culture and politics, Molodkin’s sculptures draw the viewer to reflect not only on their effect upon humanity and the environment in which we live, but also on their potential for the diminution of culture as a whole.

At the heart of this exhibition is Molodkin’s exploration of the concepts of consumption and … Read more

Yevgeniy Fiks: The Song of Russia, 24 December 2005 – 24 January 2006, Gallery ArtStrelka Projects (Moscow)

Yevgeniy Fiks was born in Moscow and now teaches in New York, where he has been living for more than ten years. He presented his work in Moscow for the third time. Previously, he showed his work last year during the first Moscow Biennale at the group exhibition for émigré artists, “Post – Diasporas. Voyages and Missions”.

In December 2005, Fiks had a small solo exhibition that exhibited a work called “The Song of Russia” in a place that is very active … Read more

A Peculiar Fluid

“Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft” (blood is a very peculiar fluid) says Mephistopheles in Goethe`s Faust. Indeed, blood attracts us and makes us avert our eyes, it fills us with fear and tenderness. What a symbolic potential it has! After all, blood is a symbol of sacrifice, martyrdom and redemption as well as war, murder, and sustenance to the dead. On the one hand, the artist deprives human blood of its magical, ritual power using it in spite of the Biblical curse (“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the … Read more

Spot on… 9 September – 23 October 2005, ifa-Galerie, Stuttgart. 

Spot on… is the name for a series of exhibits instituted by the German ifa-galleries that selects pertinent works from previous Biennales and various photography festivals, with a preference for works from more “exotic” countries.(Past examples have been the Sharjah Biennale and Noorderlicht, presenting Arabian photography.)

The last Spot on… exhibition presented recent developments in Caucasian photography from Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. The focus of the exhibition was “to examine the subject of authenticity in photography from the perspective of the ‘documentary’”(See the web-site of the exhibition: … Read more

Amerika, May-June 2005, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

In her project entitled Amerika, Kristina Leko employs the tools of ethnology to explore the Croatian émigré community in America. The artist’s method is analogous to anthropological research, which takes culture as its object, is concerned with the contextual and involves fieldwork in the everyday.

While anthropology “deals in the present with the question of the other,”(Marc Augé, Non-Places, Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (Verso: London and New York, 1995), 18.) Kristina Leko evokes the intertwining of self and other, past and present, “Amerika” and the “old … Read more

    “I will paint every rule I or others have invisibly placed. Oh how they penetrate though and all over.” – Eva Hesse(Entry in diary from 28 October 1960, quoted in Eva Hesse, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.)

“Help me to peel this mountain of potatoes! Help me to swipe the floors! Knit with me! Help me to paint this landscape! Help me to be myself…and help yourself to be yourself too!” – Julita Wojcik

The essence here is trans-individual, made up of bonds that link individuals together in social forms which are historical and cultural, friendly ‘networks’ … Read more

1 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, January 28 – February 28, 2005, Various Locations, Moscow

“Our project, which happened to be the first of this kind in Moscow, presents the first alternative to the current formation of the Russia’s capital, which has been overlooked for a long time: this “neglected” center has never been integrated with the others. The logic of changes can form here recognition and glory of a new kind. This does not mean “again to conquer a central place,” but it refers to the assumption of “being in the center.”

– Curators’ Foreword to the catalogue … Read more

Anri Sala, Now I see, 12 October 2004 – 30 January 2005, Art Institute, Chicago

Upon entering the installation of Anri Sala’s Now I see (2004), his first 35-mm film, the viewer is enveloped in total darkness. The effect is, at first, purposefully disorienting; then a flicker of light flashes upon a 10 x 12 foot screen. A second or two later, the face of a young man emerges from the pitch-black along with the pulse of an electric guitar.

What follows seems to adhere to fairly standard conventions of rock video, with its guitar antics and male posturing, … Read more

Elhallgatott Holocaust/Hidden Holocaust, March 18 – May 30, 2004, Mucsarnok, Budapest

The Mucsarnok (or Kunsthalle) is a major exhibition space for contemporary art in Budapest and its region. This March 18 through May 30, it was also the site of the Elhallgatott Holocaust/Hidden Holocaust exhibition. To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz, no fewer than two other Holocaust related exhibitions also appeared. At the Galeria Centralis, Auschwitz: Reconstruction, Representation, Remembrance, and at The House of Terror, Iniquity.(Galleria Centralis is supported by the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation and … Read more

MEDITERRANEANS, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome at Mattatoio, Rome. 4 June – 19 September 2004.(Participating artists: Anri Sala (Albania), Adel Abdessemed (Algeria), Melik Ohanian (Armenia. Lives in France), Damir Niksic (Bosnia), Andreja Kuluncic (Croatia), Tomo Savic-Gecan (Croatia), Slaven Tolj (Croatia), Iman Issa (Egypt), Hassan Khan (Egypt), Mahmoud Rifaat (Egypt), Wael Schawky (Egypt), Panos Kokkinias (Greece), Deanna Maganias (Greece), Dimitris Tsoublekas (Greece), Yael Bartana (Israel. Lives in the Netherlands), Valery Bolotin (Israel), Amit Goren (Israel), Raffie Lavie (Israel), Michal Na’aman (Israel), Gill Shani (Israel), Nahum Tevet (Israel), Roberto Cuoghi (Italy), Avish Khebrehzadeh (Iran. Lives in USA), Raffaella … Read more

This Month I Menstruate, Gallery Art Factory, Wenceslas Square, Prague, March 3 – March 19, 2004

Exhibiting artists: Barbora Baronova – Pavlina Binkova – Veronika Bromova – Stanislav Divis – Roman Franta – Lenka Fritschova – Adela Havelkova – Milova Havrankova – Tereza Hendlova – Veronika Hubkova – Tereza Janeckova – Peter Javorik – Lenka Klodova – Gabriela Kontra – Iveta Kratochvilova – Katerina Mala – Rita Marhaug – Stepanka Matuskova – Eva Meisnerrova – Osamu Okamura – Pipi Modra Puncocha – Jiri Pliestik – Jana Stepanova – Petra Valentova – Jirina Zachova – Jitka Zabkova

In 1972, a … Read more