Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Conversation Zheng Bo Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo's social, ecological, and community-engaged art practice has, in recent years, focused on moving beyond a human-centred perspective to an all-inclusive, multi-species approach. He takes up marginalised plants and communities of people as subjects in his large-scale interventions, which reintroduce wildness into...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Fair 2019: Conversations Extended 24 May 2019 : Sherry Paik for Ocula The weather was clement for the annual Auckland Art Fair (2–5 May 2019), which was again at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. This year's edition was a get-together of 41 galleries, mostly from around Auckland and across New Zealand, with 5 spaces hailing from Sydney and the rest from Cook Islands (Bergman Gallery), Hobart (Michael Bugelli Gallery),...
Office Baroque is a contemporary art gallery in Brussels that represents established, mid-career as well as emerging artists with strong institutional support. The gallery was incorporated in 2007 in Antwerp and has relocated to downtown Brussels in 2013 where it occupies the ground floor of a 1909 cast-iron Art Nouveau building. The gallery is owned by Marie Denkens and Wim Peeters who also founded the non for profit Extra City in 2004. Office Baroque represents 22 artists from Europe, America and Asia, focusing on primary market positions. The gallery has participated in Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze London and New York, Fiac Paris, Independent New York and Brussels, Art Brussels, Liste Basel, Miart Milan, Artissima Turin.
Ocula Insight Artist Insight: David Diao By Robert Ayers In a career spanning more than half a century David Diao has conducted a many-faceted exploration of the assumptions and comprehension of contemporary painting, which has been underpinned by vast erudition, a sharp critical intelligence, and a sustained sense of humour. Not surprisingly he enjoys a reputation as an insightful and stimulating...
Related Press Interview with John Divola FK : 9 April 2018 This spring the UK based photobook publisher MACK is releasing 'Vandalism'—pioneering work by California artist John Divola (1949). Created between 1974 and 1975, 'Vandalism' is a series that Divola shot in abandoned houses around Los Angeles. Coalescing photography, painting, installation, and performance art, the work plays with the often...
Related Press Exposées pour la première fois en Europe, les images de Robin Graubard retracent 40 années d'une existence dans les marges. Focus Le Vif : 13 December 2017 Take a Picture It Lasts Longer. Le titre est de ceux que l’on aime. Il va comme un gant autravail de Robin Graubard (États-Unis, 1951) qui s’est souvent plu à en raconter l’origine.La scène se déroule en 1963 dans un cinéma new-yorkais. Âgée de douze ans, Robin a emmené sa frangine voir _From Russia with Love-, le dernier James Bond.
Related Press Dear diary: photographers get personal at Fondazione Prada’s new space Wallpaper* : 24 January 2017 Critic and curator Francesco Zanot has organised an exhibition exploring photography as the new diary. Give Me Yesterday includes 14 artists born between 1976 and 1993, whose practices document the peaks and troughs of the personal, alongside names names familiar in the art world and popular on Instagram – Ryan McGinley, Melanie Bonajo, Leigh...
Related Press 'What we do for money' Manifesta 11 / Zurich Flash Art : 8 July 2016 Manifesta 11, the latest edition of the roving European biennial, seeks to explore what makes its current host city, Zurich, tick: work. It’s a reductive idea that the curator, artist Christian Jankowski, has chosen for an exhibition titled What People Do for Money.One assumes the curator knows that people everywhere work to financially...
