picks August 23, 2017

Nan Goldin

For Nan Goldin’s first solo exhibition in Ireland, “Weekend Plans,” curated by Rachel Thomas, the artist’s iconic slideshow, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1985, inevitably sets the tone. It’s impossible to avoid the impact of her most famous work, a record of Goldin’s harrowing life from 1970 to 1985, featuring an assortment of family, friends, and lovers. The slideshow is intimate, built around a narrative arc and accompanied by an upbeat sound track, from Maria Callas to the Velvet Underground. This closeness is palpable and heightened by the intensity of the artist’s subjects: sex, drug

print Summer 2017

Giorgio Griffa

Through a radical formal reduction, Giorgio Griffa unites rule and poetry. Since his early days, working within the context of Arte Povera and Minimalist painting, he has maintained with his concise vocabulary an exemplary consistency and freshness. His painting, always focused on the rhythm and sequence of marks, is simultaneously rational and lyrical. And this show, which revisits his work from the late 1960s to the present, creates a dialogue through assonances among works from different decades.

Griffa works on raw, unstretched canvas hung on the wall with small nails; he applies diluted

print April 2017

Giuseppe Penone

Since the 1960s, Giuseppe Penone’s work has been based on an osmosis between the vegetal and human worlds; his forms are marked by time and are always dependent on the relationship between nature and the artist’s body, and above all on a certain spiritual quality that allows him to perceive the secret rhythm of natural flows. And yet with this exhibition, “Equivalenze” (Equivalences), I was unable to avoid an off-putting feeling of chilling formalism. The show features some materials familiar from Penone’s work, such as terra-cotta, and some that are new, such as micro-drilled oxidized brass,

picks March 26, 2017

Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani

Abebe Bikila was the first African athlete to win an Olympic gold medal; he set a world record in Rome in 1960 after running the marathon, barefoot, in two hours and fifteen minutes. His historic achievement is the cornerstone of Freedom of Movement, 2017, a three-channel video installation by German artists Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani. Weaving a tale with threads of history and current events, the work conjoins the win’s strong social impact with a profound sense of humanity.

The first video blends archival film clips of the Ethiopian marathoner’s race and his epic victory beneath the Arch

print March 2017

Ernesto Neto

“If the sacred serpent had not offer[ed] the fruit of the knowledge tree, the apple love, to Eve, and told her to share it with Adam, they would be till today in the Paradise beautiful, and we, where would we be? There would not be we, you and me, none of us. So, the boa serpent gave birth to humanity.” This handwritten statement, welcoming visitors to Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s immersive take on the Garden of Eden, put forward a novel interpretation of the Book of Genesis. Scrawled on the gallery wall, the text characterized the serpent not as a trickster but as a primordial generative

print March 2017

Fabio Mauri

Giving priority to ethics over aesthetics, Fabio Mauri has penetrated the West’s heart of darkness, analyzing the falsehoods of the ideologies that have characterized twentieth-century European history, revealing their pervasive mechanisms of cruelty. His rigorous inquiry focuses on the system of signs and symbols that Nazism and Fascism used to create consensus, seductively manipulating the masses. Investigating the forms—and even the beauty—through which totalitarian regimes have represented themselves, he asks us to personally participate in historical contradictions and to confront

picks January 17, 2017

“You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970”

The years 1966 to 1970, which formed and devastated much of a generation, marked a definitive cultural break during the postwar period in Europe and the United States. The widespread counterculture movement that united London and San Francisco generated a revolution in music, graphic design, fashion, and social behavior. In a lively, multifaceted setting, there was youthful rebellion, lots of great recreational drugs, sexual freedom, feminism, underground publications, anti–Vietnam War protests, the Monterey Pop Festival, and Woodstock.

This exhibition deftly illustrates those five years, without

print September 2016

Anish Kapoor

“Today You Will Be in Paradise,” Anish Kapoor’s exhibition at Gladstone Gallery this past spring, embarked on a visceral journey through the body, displaying sculptures that emulate its muscle fibers, fat, and intestines in a profusion of blood-red fluids, drippings, blobs, and creepy organic matter. Fearlessly, his senses fibrillating, Kapoor burrowed into the world of flesh.

Kapoor’s chief material, silicone, is significant: It is a substance associated with plastic surgery, most notably with breast implants, and here it conveys the body’s materiality with intensity and luminosity. While the

print May 2016

Marzia Migliora

In this highly political show, “Forza lavoro” (Work Force), Marzia Migliora examined the transitional moment of a dying architectural structure, the Palazzo del Lavoro in Turin, designed by Pier Luigi Nervi in 1959 for the Esposizione Internazionale del Lavoro (International Labor Exhibition) organized by Giò Ponti for Expo ’61. A majestic environment and a masterpiece of engineering, it is now in a state of total ruin following years of neglect that culminated in a devastating fire in August 2015. The building’s decay is rendered even more excruciating by its imminent conversion into a luxury

interviews April 26, 2016

Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni’s exhibition “Ally,” which is on view at the Fabric Workshop and Museum through July 31, 2016, is a “retrospective,” redefined. This exhibition, occupying four floors of the museum, manifests as a series of performances, installation environments, videos, and sculptures. Conceived and performed by Antoni, this presentation is also a deeply collaborative enterprise, having been developed with the choreographer Stephen Petronio and movement artist Anna Halprin. A book about “Ally” will follow, edited by British performance scholar and writer Adrian Heathfield. Here, the artist talks

interviews April 21, 2016

William Kentridge

William Kentridge had the audacity, in 2012, to propose an 1,804-foot-long drawing along the banks of the Tiber River, the largest public art project in Europe. It has recently come to life with the help of Kristin Jones, a New York–based artist who strongly believes in the notion of collaboration and acted as the artistic director of the whole project. Jones has worked with Kentridge for many years, against all manner of bureaucratic obstacle, to make Triumphs and Laments: A Project for Rome—an epic frieze with ninety figures, some as high as thirty-two feet—possible. This gargantuan work

print March 2016

Yoko Ono

To those who wondered why Yoko Ono’s “The Riverbed” comprised two separate installations, identical in their components, that were sited in two separate galleries in close proximity in Chelsea, the answer quickly became evident. The show resonated differently in its two locations: In my experience, the installation at Galerie Lelong was more concentrated, silent, and intimate, while the one at Andrea Rosen Gallery was more luminous, open, and social. Others might have felt differently. But that is all to the point, for each visit was unique, affected by its participant’s individual memories and

picks February 17, 2016

Jimmie Durham

Like a haiku in four verses, this exhibition is cadenced between sounds and silences, mixing poetry with a touch of irony. Jimmie Durham presents two silent videos and two sound pieces, all made in Italy and altogether favoring an eclectic language that softens the works. Even the title of the show, “Sound and Silliness,” indicates that its significance should be sought in lightness and immateriality.

In I Rondoni di Porta Capuana, 2013, an enveloping sound piece recorded in Naples, the songs of migratory birds create a concert of tones integrated with the noises of the city. With nature allowed

picks January 08, 2016

Robert Ryman

With only twenty-two paintings produced over six decades, this Robert Ryman exhibition is a summa of the artist’s process, via the reduction and synthesis of the fundamental elements of painting. Different mediums, textures, and supports—canvas, paper, aluminum, fiberglass, Plexiglas—are used to investigate the luminous frequency of white in all its possible gradations. The artist has chosen to exhibit the paintings under natural light, and he is right to do so. I viewed the show when the sky was clear, then when it was cloudy, and then under artificial light. The last condition was decisively

picks December 16, 2015

Mario Rizzi

For more than a decade, Mario Rizzi, a photographer and filmmaker attuned to sociopolitical changes in the Islamic world, has been investigating the fates of individuals and communities uprooted from their cultural traditions and homes by regional conflicts. Al Intithar (The Waiting), 2013, the first part of his trilogy Bayt (Home), 2012–, is a thirty-minute film at the center of this exhibition. It was shot in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, just four miles from the Syrian border. At the time, the camp accommodated approximately forty-five thousand refugees (the number is now around eighty

print September 2015

Lara Favaretto

IF, AS THEODOR ADORNO once famously asserted, “museums are the family sepulchres of art,” last spring’s presentation of Lara Favaretto’s 2010–15 series “Good Luck” transformed Rome’s MAXXI into a full-blown cemetery—albeit a quasi-Minimalist cemetery seemingly designed by Donald Judd with input from Walter De Maria and the stalwarts of Arte Povera. Each of the series’s twenty sculptures (there are eighteen on view in this exhibition) commemorates a different historical individual. But you wouldn’t know it at first glance: The monuments—composed of various arrangements of wood, polished

print September 2015

Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni’s spring exhibition at Luhring Augustine featured a striking group of seven cast-resin sculptures: quasi-surrealist amalgams of bones, body parts, and everyday objects (a flowerpot, a stool, branches, and so on). Inspired by the tradition of milagros, the votive offerings that are hung in Latin American Catholic churches to invoke protection and healing, Antoni’s new work continues her decades-long exploration of the body and its psychological and spiritual dimensions.

In to channel, 2015, one of the show’s most visceral pieces, an overturned flowerpot acts as a pedestal for the

picks May 18, 2015

Donatella Landi

In two videos now making their debut in Italy, Donatella Landi offers variations on nature and culture, passion and reason, to reveal profound changes that have occurred in both the social realm and the environment. In Casting Madonna, 2011, a ten-minute loop, a woman sits against the backdrop of an ancient town that is partially hidden by a green drape. She holds a baby in her arms (the arrangement is directly inspired by Titian’s 1510 Gypsy Madonna), and there is an intense interplay of glances between mother, child, and camera. The baby moves spontaneously and innocently, while the woman

picks February 26, 2015

Davide Monaldi

Davide Monaldi’s current exhibition is a poetic statement, whispered rather than vaunted, through a series of self-portraits. Each enameled ceramic figure depicts the face of the artist as a child; stylized into a full, flat shape. However, the atmosphere here is not that of a carefree age of innocence but rather one of solitude, a time marked by fears and anxieties: the child hidden in a corner, his head inside his sweater, from which only his terrified eyes poke out (Shy Boy, 2012); or the lonely birthday party of a sad little boy (Happy Birthday, 2010); or the family where every member has

print February 2015

Francesco Clemente

Two tents stood alongside each other at Mary Boone Gallery’s Chelsea space, facing off like opposing armies. Recalling the tents in Mogul gardens (if not the camouflage tents still in use by the Indian military), these richly evocative cloth structures were masterfully crafted. To produce them, Francesco Clemente collaborated with artisans from Jodhpur, India, using techniques such as block printing and embroidery. Then he painted sprawling, multipaneled mural-like pictures on the interior walls. These designs, drawing from a globe-spanning range of references (Christian religious tradition,

Ida Panicelli