The group exhibition 'analog histories in primary colors' at neugerriemschneider—featuring work by Mike Nelson, Sharon Lockhart and Simon Starling—is a contemplative exploration of the temporal nature of industry. The exhibition reflects on industrial societies that left machinery abandoned and defunct, and the implications of these...
In March, the National Gallery of Australia will unveil its most recent significant international purchase, Francesco (2017), a sculptural portrait by Urs Fischer of respected Italian art curator Francesco Bonami standing atop a refrigerator, looking intently at an iPhone in his hand. The sculpture is designed to be burnt: wicks are inserted at...
In March 2019, the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) acquired Urs Fischer’s four-metre red wax sculpture, Francesco (2017), for their permanent collection. With wicks running through its wax frame, Francesco is designed to be lit and slowly melted like a candle. Documenting Francesco ’s decomposition via social media, the NGA recently...
The 58 th edition of the Venice Biennale, May You Live in Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff–from London’s very own Hayward Gallery–proves to be as interesting as its title promises. Venice is an easy city to get lost in, and it’s easy to see why Proust dubbed the city’s labyrinth of alleyways a network of 'innumerable slender capillary...
The Shrinking Universe, the exhibition by Ireland’s representative at the Venice Biennale 2019, Eva Rothschild, has just opened in one of the event’s main venues, the vast Arsenale, once the workshop of the Maritime Republic and still an architectural wonder. Rothschild, a Dublin-born sculptor long resident in London, has a strong track record in...
'The weird thing about Venice,' says Eva Rothschild, sitting in her Hackney studio, surrounded by crated sculptural components ready to ship to the Biennale, 'is that it’s the shiniest show in the world, and everyone else has done it before, except for the artists.' It’s true: most of the 87 national pavilions at the Biennale are run by teams who...
There are hundreds of exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale. Alongside the main exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, there are 90 national presentations, many in nearby pavilions in the Giardini and in spaces around the Arsenale, but also dotted throughout Venice. Then there are the official collateral exhibitions in museums and galleries...
In comparison to Victoria Morton's past exhibitions (her 2010 solo show at Inverleith House in Edinburgh, for example), the paintings in this presentation, Treat Fever with Fever, felt less schizophrenic, less overtly agitated by implicit figuration. They were also unaccompanied by the installation elements and photography often associated with...
Among the white walls of the galleryverse, the artist Urs Fischer’s works are colourful, colossal, ever playful, and always a little enigmatic. From a towering bust of Katy Perry filled with modelling clay to a painting of Liz Taylor covered with a kiwi, Fischer infuses each of his projects with his signature dose of acrid humour and child-like...
The first of two final paintings—taking the total to 90 since the Hamilton Bequest began in 1927—has been newly unveiled at Kelvingrove. Glasgow artist Victoria Morton's Soliton will hang at the gallery's south east stairs next to Salvador Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross.
Jonas Wood's East Hollywood studio — a refurbished industrial space hidden behind a razor-wired metal gate — is populated with the familiar objects that appear in his paintings. There are colonies of potted plants and basketball paraphernalia that ranges in size from plush couch cushions to man-sized orbs. Every room is filled with...
Between Wimbledon and the FIFA World Cup, there's been plenty of distractions from London's unusually Mediterranean weather of late.
Thomas Houseago's drawing studio, in the Frogtown neighborhood of Los Angeles, is smartly outfitted with plywood bookshelves, comfortable couches, and a low table perennially laid out with a stainless steel carafe of hot water, a bamboo whisk, and an assortment of matcha tea bowls. It's a contemplative domestic scene set against an exhilarating...
During an online search for Lawrence Durrell's writing I found this passage in a review, "Durrell's ideal of the novel is one of haute cuisine with great quantities of pepper and garlic" (Patrick Parrinder, London Review of Books, June 1985) and thought it was a good description of a lot of painting right now. Forever Now, the Museum...
Imagining places in which to explore ideas is a fruitful field for many contemporary artists, from a single room to an entire world. The fact is, architecture is a common language; whether or not we know the specialist terms, we know our brutalism from our Belle Époque, and the ideas associated with each. That means there's a lot for an artist to...
Urs Fischer came to public prominence in 2011 when he melted a full-size wax replica of Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Woman at the 50th Venice Biennale. Giambologna's tour-de-force has stood in the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence since 1583, and today the acclaimed Swiss artist returned to this theatre of art and...
Ugo Rondinone: I ♥ John Giorno —the first major U.S. exhibition about the American poet, artist, activist and muse John Giorno—has opened simultaneously across 13 locations in New York City. I ♥ John Giorno is a work of art by Giorno's husband, the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. The exhibition is a celebration of the life and work of...
I learned early on from the eats, such as Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs—and the Pop artists too—that archives were very important. This was around the late 1950s, or the beginning of the '60s. So, I just saved all of my work. My parents had a house in Roslyn Heights, Long Island, and for fifty years I brought everything I made...
Creature, a thematic exhibition at The Broad, is one of those shows, like the recently opened Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work at the New Museum in New York, whose meanings and context have been jolted, scrambled, and reloaded by the resistible rise of Donald J. Trump. As it so happens, Creature opened on November 5th, the Saturday...
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s artistic practice is expansive – spilling into fashion, film and other commercial areas. The artist turned to curating in the early 2000s, producing several projects, including Superflat (an exhibition that toured Nagoya Parco Gallery, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center and Henry Art...
Glaswegian visual artist Jim Lambie (b. 1964) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1994 and has since gained international acclaim, winning the 2005 Turner Prize for the installation Mental Oyster, and exhibiting at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Hishorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, amongst...
While it’s easy to be glib about a practice that’s neither conceptual nor critical, one wonders if a museum can also be home to less complicated pleasures: a ludic approach to space and matter, a visceral feel for what’s interesting, a sense of style. I guess it depends on what you’re into. In Moscow, Garage wants to create...
For the past two decades, Studio Voltaire has operated as a forward-thinking creative hub in London. Established with the altruistic intention of supporting excellent emerging and established artists, the studio is multi-faceted: it runs exhibitions, events, educational programs and reinvests profits into initiatives to benefit artists.
The Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art is a not-for-profit institution established in Geneva in 1983 by collector Dakis Joannou, originally to support projects of the Contemporary Art Centre of Geneva. But for its very first time shows a selection of the Dakis Joannou Collection in Geneva.