Lauren Dyer Amazeen

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  picks October 18, 2012

  Mohamed Bourouissa

  For his exhibition “Le Miroir,” Paris-based Algerian artist Mohamed Bourouissa photographed staged settings with his friends and neighbors, part of that portion of the population known to many in Paris as Les Banlieusards—those living in the neighborhoods outside the Boulevard Périphérique, a busy highway that forms a ring around Paris. Constructing the scenes within these sites, the artist reveals what he calls the “invisible tensions” of being the “other” in contemporary France. Bourouissa allows the natural exchange of gazes and gestures among the participants to occur spontaneously, which

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  print Summer 2012

  Torsten Lauschmann

  Experimenting with old and new technologies to explore the performative and sculptural possibilities of moving-image installations, Glasgow-based artist Torsten Lauschmann mounted five disparate pieces in this AV Festival event to create a peculiarly cogent installation that unfolded in time, changing constantly as the pieces playfully interacted in an array of combinations. The individual works—including several projections, a digital player piano, and a snow machine—provided mechanical movement, sounds, and light integral to the overall effect. Lauschmann programmed certain aspects

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  picks April 27, 2012

  “Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art”

  Glasgow’s art scene has evolved on its own terms—always mingling the gutsy and the experimental. Showcasing work by over 130 artists in diverse sites across of the city, this year’s festival encapsulates the city’s energy with a thoughtful range of new installations. Take, for instance, Karla Black’s Empty Now (all works 2012), which is made of seventeen tons of meticulously layered sawdust. Periodically, the Glaswegian artist alters this delicate work with tiny beads of color from cosmetic products. Hanging clouds above, Will Attach spans the Gallery of Modern Art’s neoclassical ceiling with

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  picks October 04, 2011

  Stephen Sutcliffe

  Through his astute method of collage, Glasgow-based artist Stephen Sutcliffe’s exhibition “Runaway, Success,” addresses the nature of the awkwardness—self-doubt, uncertainty, risk—that is inherent in the creative process. Overlaying colors and hand-drawn images on film footage and adding sound tracks in his videos, Sutcliffe performs experiments that destabilize and cast doubt on originality.

  In We’ll Let You Know, 2008, a young Ian McKellen expounds on Shakespearean acting, while Sutcliffe has integrated a voice-over—as if coming from offstage, a voice makes verbal jabs like “Be as quick as you

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  print September 2011

  Maria Hedlund

  Swedish artist Maria Hedlund’s exhibition “Upplöst (Dissolved) included several series of striking gelatin silver photographic prints. The subject of Hyttödammen II,” 2006–11, is a private collection of insects (dragonflies, butterflies, flies, bees, and beetles) accumulated by a teacher who in the early 1960s obsessively catalogued these little creatures from the pond in central Sweden after which the series is named. Hedlund (who herself collects quirky animal relics) eventually purchased the collection from the student who inherited it, and has photographed each box of insects twice: with

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  print Summer 2011

  Christine Borland

  With “Cast From Nature,” Christine Borland continued her ongoing examination of medical practices, focusing on depersonalization and the use of teaching aids such as simulated patients. A residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios allowed the artist an extended period of time to develop a work in public. The project took shape as she began trying to unravel the mystery behind a nineteenth-century sculpture that was once part of the notable collection of the Anatomy Museum of Edinburgh University. Making full use of her contacts in the medical profession, she sought out the original plaster-cast

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  picks May 02, 2011

  Ulla von Brandenburg

  Experimenting with the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, German artist Ulla von Brandenburg’s exhibition “Neue Alte Welt” (New Old World) centers on Chorspiel (Choir Games), 2010, a black-and-white operatic film with text, music, and concept by the artist. The film’s narrative unfolds with a Bergman-like blend of explorations in literature, psychology, and theater. Shot in a forest, the film has a sparse set delineated by a white rectangle painted on the ground. Contained within this area, five performers weave the tale of a wanderer arriving in a town where he meets four family members spanning three

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  print March 2011

  Stansfield/Hooykaas

  Scottish artist Elsa Stansfield and her Dutch partner, Madelon Hooykaas, pushed the European time-based media scene with their intuitive explorations from 1972 until Stansfield’s sudden death in 2004, since which time Hooykaas has continued on her own. This winter, to accompany “Revealing the Invisible: The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different Perspectives,” Hooykaas compiled a book chronicling their work, featuring essays by eleven scientists, art historians, and philosophers from around the world. The exhibition itself—of video, sculpture, photography, and sound works from 1979 to

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  picks December 29, 2010

  “10 Dialogues: Richard Demarco, Scotland, and the European Avant Garde”

  The eightieth birthday of the Scottish artist, writer, and philosopher Richard Demarco was the catalyst for this exhibition, which examines his formative connection to ten artists (Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramović, Tadeusz Kantor, Paul Neagu, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Gunther Uëcker, Rory McEwen, Ainslie Yule, Alastair MacLennan, and David Mach). In the 1960s, Demarco explored contemporary art scenes in eastern Europe and curated groundbreaking shows including “Sixteen Polish Painters” (1967), “Four Romanian Artists” (1969), and “Eight Yugoslav Artists” (1973). Concurrently, he introduced Scottish

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  print October 2010

  Nicholas Hlobo

  Although some might think of the works in his new series as assemblages, Nicholas Hlobo refers to them as “Paintings” because he creates each piece on a stark white canvas. He begins by using a box cutter to slash the canvas—what he calls a “harsh approach to bring in new elements, change things, a painful process.” This trenchant action cannot be reversed. Hlobo then binds materials such as tire rubber and ribbons to the canvas by stitching, adding texture through puckering and embroidering. As he experiments with these materials rife with symbolism related to the culture of postapartheid South

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  picks September 29, 2010

  Martin Creed

  Martin Creed’s playful and perspicacious exhibition “Down Over Up” centers on the concepts of increment and ordered process. Creed uses recognizable objects and materials to build his sculptures, and many are stacked in progressions of size, height, or tone: a tower of cardboard boxes; an orderly pile of chairs; wood heaped according to width, in piles increasing from one to six planks; a row of seven nails hammered side by side in descending order of length and width. Additionally, Creed has turned the elevator into a sonic sculpture—Work No. 409, 2005–10—in which the sounds of a chorus singing

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  print September 2010

  Jim Lambie

  With his show “Metal Urbain,” Jim Lambie created a dense metal milieu. Pushing the nature of the material, the artist experimented with metal’s malleability as the core of his new work. The exhibition featured a wall-to-wall metal floor titled Metallica (all works 2010), a group of crushed suits of armor set in cast cement blocks atop metal plinths, and a series of metal paintings, each titled Metal Box. The floor was made of rectangular plates laid in a pattern formed by their varying sizes and finishes—matte aluminum, mirrored stainless steel, rusted steel, and patinated mild steel. The mirrored