Like a newspaper in its matter of fact presentation of content, Cady Noland / Santiago Sierra at KOW Berlin, curated by Alexander Koch and Nikolaus Oberhuber, appears purposefully removed of emotion. We never make eye contact with other humans, backs are often turned, or we find ourselves averting our eyes for our own protection. We stand on the outside looking in. No one makes a[…..]
Javier Téllez engages subject matter that often makes people uncomfortable. Delving into topics such as mental illness and institutional power, the artist critiques contemporary society by questioning passive or harmful notions of normalcy. Téllez’s film Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See takes its name from an essay by Diderot and is inspired by a famous Indian parable. In the parable,[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley People dress for commencement everywhere, but in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the effort seems more concerted than it has at other graduations; I imagine the girl in the Birkenstocks with the frayed cotton skirt and matching cardigan thought as hard about her look as the woman in sage, Grace-Kelly style satin and patent leather[…..]
‘Neue Alte Welt’ (New Old World), an exhibition of Ulla von Brandenburg’s recent works, is on view at The Common Guild, Glasgow till 21 May 2011. Presented across two levels, the exhibition proceeds as a journey where one seems to travel from the perspective of an audience and performer, before entering the backstage. The first room features Chorspiel, a black and white film set in[…..]
The title for Takeshi Murata’s current show—Get Your Ass To Mars—is a command, stolen from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Hauser/Quaid character in Total Recall, based on Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.” For the Hauser/Quaid character, what awaits him on Mars is textbook Dick: a conspiracy based on money and greed; instability in memory and identity, or in discerning reality; plus our own[…..]
How does meanwhile effect an artwork? British artist Anthony McCall’s exhibition at Luciana Brito in São Paulo suggests a retrospective of an artist who returned to art-making in the last decade after an over-20 year hiatus. McCall’s reemergence is marked by revisiting and further developing what began as his “solid light” films made in the early 1970s: installations of hazy, darkened rooms with slow-moving beams[…..]
While the most beautiful world in the world may be that which is in your own mind, what happens when your mind fails you? Not just a matter of truth vs fiction, but a fundamental physiological failure that causes your mind to lose the ability to register, and remember, that which is around you – That reality is far from beautiful. I recall studying the[…..]
