Elizabeth Schwaiger sets in motion a cacophony of styles, ideas, colors, and movements in this dense show spread out over two floors. The Texas-born, Brooklyn-based artist who unites architecture and still-life painting, portraiture and nature, draws viewers into her vision of the world, her mind, history, art history, and her studio, in stunning...
The day after a mob stormed the United States Capital, Elizabeth Schwaiger's painting Palimpsest (2020) takes on particular resonance. Almost eleven feet wide, and rendered in lush, deep shades of ochre, burnt sienna, tangerine and amber, the painting depicts, in confident, loose brushstrokes, a grand hall where some kind of meeting is taking...
Koki Tanaka How did you first encounter the work of Nam June Paik? I think it was through TV Buddha, but not sure which one. I just googled it now, and find out there are so many different versions of TV Buddhas by Paik...
Michael Rakowitz, the Chicago-based, Iraqi-American artist known for producing powerful works that often address complicated histories and events, such as the death of Tamir Rice—the twelve-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer in 2014—and ISIS's systematic campaign to destroy cultural heritage, has been named...
In the first week of June, Britain and France played host to a vast spectacle on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The commemoration events, tracing the timetable of the Normandy landings as they unfolded three quarters of a century earlier, marshalled a range of techniques, ancient and modern, to mark the occasion: church services, parades...
Last month, a new sake bar opened at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts: a softly lit tunnel of booze that promises the kind of entrancing conversation one can never quite remember the next morning. A permanent installation designed by the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2019 (the form of the flower is unknown to the seed) is furnished...
I have been a fan of Squeak Carnwath ever since I saw her painting Obit (2000) in a now-defunct Soho gallery nearly 20 years ago. I have been to her studio in Oakland, California numerous times; interviewed her for The Brooklyn Rail (November 2006); contributed an essay to the catalogue of her survey show, Squeak Carnwath: Painting Is No...
An existential inquiry into the nature of knowledge and history beat at the heart of the group exhibition Speaking Power to (Post) Truth at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York City. In one room, curator Sara Raza brought together five diasporic artists from around the globe: Ergin Çavuşoǧlu, James Clar, Mounir Fatmi, Nadia Kaabi-Linke and Shahpour...
On the Periphery of Vision, a group exhibition curated by Christopher Philips, features works in a variety of mediums including photography, painting, sculpture and film. On display is work by five artists: Bae Youngwhan, Michelle Charles, Koo Donghee, Shimpei Takeda and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The experiences depicted in the artworks border...
To walk into Jack, Sean Shim-Boyle's first exhibition at Jane Lombard Gallery, is to walk into a space where things are off-kilter, amiss, just slightly wrong. The gallery's main space is taken up by Mother! Mother! (2018), a large textual display made out of blue wooden letters that covers one whole wall. Further down the gallery, a mechanized...
In 1989, British author JG Ballard published The Enormous Space, a short story about Gerald Ballantyne, a man who withdraws from the world and fortifies himself in his abode, not due to agoraphobia but to 'experiment' with reducing his immediate environment to nothing but his house, committing what is in effect a slow suicide. OCAT Shenzhen's...
In 2006, the artist Michael Rakowitz took on a complicated, seemingly impossible task. He opened a store in Brooklyn to sell dates, with the chief goal of importing the sweet fruit directly from Iraq, and packaged in boxes that advertised their true origin. Some Iraqi companies had successfully circumvented the United Nations-imposed sanctions and...
The Kathmandu Triennale is an event developed on the back of past success of the Kathmandu International Art Festival, held in 2009 and 2012. The inaugural edition of Kathmandu Triennale (KT 2017) takes ‘The City’ as a thematic starting point – a catalyst to explore the many socio-cultural and political issues embedded in urban settings. Francis...
Held over nine sites and including 33 artists, the first edition of the Honolulu Biennial takes place between 8 March and 8 May 2017. Entitled Middle of Now | Here, the Biennial challenges the idea that Hawaiʻi is in 'the middle of nowhere'. Covering more than 30 percent of the Earth's surface, the Pacific is the largest unified living space on...
The hunt for the sculptures to sit next on Trafalgar Square's famed Fourth Plinth is over. As the Mayor of London announced, the small but towering stage for public art—arguably the most prominent in the world—will host works by the Chicago-based Michael Rakowitz and Londoner Heather Phillipson in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
Now in its eighth year, Art Los Angeles Contemporary presents established and emerging international galleries while maintaining a strong focus on Los Angeles. Founder and director Tim Fleming spoke to Flash Art about the latest edition, to be held January 26–29. What was your vision for ALAC when you started it eight years ago, and how has the...
A recreation of a protective deity destroyed by Islamic State and a sculpture of a scoop of ice cream topped with a drone have been shortlisted for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Organisers have now unveiled maquettes of the proposed works, which also include a white robe, to sit on the Fourth Plinth in 2018 and 2020. One of the proposed...
A case can be made that the Shanghai Biennale, widely regarded as a perfunctory affair, too disorganized and lackluster to justify its existence, now has the potential to intelligently introduce international contemporary art into a scene until recently dominated by Chinese art. And this year, that goal seems within reach, under the curatorial...
The unveiling at the National Gallery, London, of the five proposals for the next two commissions to fill the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square presents a typically broad and stimulating range of ideas from global contemporary artists. But it also marks a significant shift in the response to the Fourth Plinth phenomenon at the gallery, on whose...
In the two years since the last biennale, Shanghai has worked hard to consolidate its cultural position as an influential art hub in Asia – a place where contemporary art is important, relevant and available. For the 11th edition of the Shanghai Biennale, the choice of the the Delhi-based artist and curatorial group Raqs Media Collective...
Halfway through my solitary first visit to the 11th Shanghai Biennale, I was reminded of Marguerite Duras’s script for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). In it, she refers to the ‘particular halo’ that colours every gesture in Hiroshima, giving it a ‘supplementary meaning’ beyond the literal. Curated by Raqs Media...
At the 11th Shanghai Biennale, it isn’t possible to take a photograph without capturing people; the vast Power Station of Art—an electric plant turned kunsthalle since 2012—is busy throughout the preview day and public opening. The curators, Raqs Media Collective, have titled this edition of the biennale Why Not Ask Again:...
“Who sees me naked, and who spends time alone with me in the bathroom? Johnson & Johnson. Nivea.” This is how Lee Kit, Hong Kong’s representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale, discusses the personal hygiene product logos in the paintings that unassumingly populated his Walker exhibition, Hold your breath, dance slowly : as...
From September 22 through 25, the fifth edition of the EXPO CHICAGO art fair will take place at Chicago’s Navy Pier. The fair will present an array of national and international galleries, alongside specially organized exhibition projects such as IN/SITU and EXPO VIDEO. Flash Art spoke with EXPO’s director of programming, Stephanie...
