Maria Chiara Valacchi

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  picks February 22, 2018

  Erin Shirreff and Elia Cantori

  The works of Erin Shirreff and Elia Cantori, shown at separate Banca di Bologna locations for two exhibitions curated by Simone Menegoi, have something in common: an investigation of the cosmos and the darkroom. Two new works by Shirreff are installed at the Palazzo De’ Toschi, where an underlit, sacred atmosphere welcomes viewers and draws their attention to a video projected on a large, double-sided screen, Son, 2018, which reveals a view of nature determined by perceptual disorientation, beginning with the title, a homophone of the word sun. The artist, fascinated by the total solar eclipse

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  picks December 11, 2017

  Vlatka Horvat

  For her first exhibition in Italy, Croatian artist Vlatka Horvat has installed eleven works across the gallery’s two floors. “Surroundings” pays homage to the horizon, as both a spatial boundary and a goal to which one can aspire, ideologically and physically. The show’s natural path opens with two wooden tables created in 2016, titled Set Right (Table Leg) and Set Right (Tabletop). Reduced to structural skeletons, they boast delicate additions of ribbonlike cardboard, attached with white adhesive tape, as if to conjure missing parts. At Some Length, 2017, is a straight line at eye level, more

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  picks November 16, 2017

  Nick Mauss

  Nick Mauss’s third exhibition with this gallery, arranged throughout both of its Rue de Braque locations, features works that deal with reflection, both literally and metaphorically. In the shadowy arena of Campoli Presti’s ground-floor space is the video installation The Moment (all works 2017). From a projector hung close to the ceiling, an image of a hand drawing an enigmatic sign is cast onto a mirror hanging from a wall. From there, the image is reflected onto the wooden floor, creating a subtle holographic effect while transforming the symbol into a viaticum for artistic creation. We also

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  picks August 29, 2017

  Hiroshi Sugimoto

  In the deliberately dim light and cozy ambience of two large contiguous rooms at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto has installed twenty photographic prints from his “Theaters” series. The exhibition, curated by Filippo Maggia and Irene Calderoli, marks the debut of this new series, created over the past three years, which focuses on the interiors of large Italian theaters chosen for their distinctive architecture. The characteristically black-and-white images are the result of advanced photographic techniques and extended exposure times, which captured

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  picks August 21, 2017

  Karl Holmqvist and Klara Liden

  In a large Roman apartment on Via dei Mille, the Indipendenza gallery hosts “Lavoro” (Work), a collaboration between Karl Holmqvist and Klara Liden. This project, originally exhibited in 2016 at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, now includes a new combination of works, some on view for the first time, as well as older installations and videos, such as Nhite Woice, 2015, in which Holmqvist and Liden improvise a synchronized dance. The dialogue underlying the exhibition, activated by twenty-nine works overall, opens with the interaction between Linden’s emblematic Poster Painting, 2012—layered, painted

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  picks August 17, 2017

  Micol Assaël

  Micol Assaël’s solo exhibition “Lettura Di Un’Onda” (Interpretation of a Wave), curated by Bruno Corà and Valentino Catricalà, presents new work across the entire top floor of the Palazzo Belmonte Riso. The Roman artist activates a discrete dialogue with a large permanent installation by Jannis Kounellis composed of old wardrobes suspended from the ceiling. In three adjacent rooms, Assaël has installed four works made from paper and magnets that hang on accordion folding supports which are mounted on horizontal planks built from old windows (typical of working class Sicilian architecture) and

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  picks June 13, 2017

  Yoko Ono and Claire Tabouret

  From the entrance of the Villa Medici, throughout its rooms, and even through its outdoor space, an extended juxtaposition of installation works by Yoko Ono and paintings by French artist Claire Tabouret leads viewers along a complex path. The show creates a dialogue between Tabouret’s new paintings of female figures—with watery backgrounds and energetic, gestural strokes—and Ono’s conceptual, participatory works. Ono’s video SKY TV, 1966–2017, consisting of thirty screens showing live transmissions of Rome’s skies—sets the stage for a counterpoint between her Painting to be Stepped On, 1960–2017,

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  picks February 07, 2017

  Pieter Vermeersch

  Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch’s second solo show at this gallery’s Paris location comprises seventeen abstract paintings, all Untitled, 2016, made on canvas and marble. They do not readily blend into the architecture of the space—a strategy the artist has employed before.

  The show opens with a series of large chromatic fade-outs on canvas. Each painting has been defaced with scratches: meditative gestures that seem to function as indices of the body. In another room of the gallery, two paintings with more rigid monochromatic gradations, created to mirror each other, have been partially obscured

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  picks February 06, 2017

  Peter Buggenhout

  Amid the whiteness of a large room in the Palazzo De’ Toschi an installation by Peter Buggenhout takes on the significance of an imposing archaeological find—a mass of detritus, postatomic in feeling, that has touched down from the sky. For his debut solo show in Italy, curated by Simone Menegoi, the Belgian artist offers one of his largest works to date, The Blind Leading the Blind #65, 2014. The title, taken from a masterpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, is a metaphor for Buggenhout’s poetics, which aims to demonstrate the fragility of human knowledge

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  picks December 27, 2016

  Patrick Tuttofuoco

  Patrick Tuttofuoco’s first solo show at this gallery features five new works. The artist has long been interested in the impalpability of reality—the possibility that the past cannot be historicized and the future is the new present—and in this show, titled “Pretty Good Privacy,” he underscores a contemporary existence increasingly split between actual and virtual experience. As soon as visitors cross the gallery threshold, they catch sight of a work on the floor, A Better Place (all works 2016), a scrolling LED screen that both reproduces and parodies the extent to which cutting-edge technology

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  picks November 28, 2016

  Marc Camille Chaimowicz

  French artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz, one of the early proponents of a multidisciplinary approach to art that dovetailed performance and installation, now orchestrates a project devoted to the architecture of its venue, La Triennale di Milano. Chaimowicz compares the aesthetic affinities of this space to the oneiric aspects of metaphysics. “Maybe Metafisica,” curated by Eva Fabbris, follows a circular trajectory that—beginning with Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Figliol Prodigo (Prodigal Son), 1973—retraces in stages Chaimowicz’s expressive forms, seen in decorative panels, furniture, and highly

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  picks October 28, 2016

  Betty Woodman and Kiki Smith

  Exhibiting together for the first time, Betty Woodman and Kiki Smith initiate an intense dialogue through a selection of their large-scale paintings, tapestries, sculptures, and graphics. Along the long walls of the main gallery, Smith’s atonal and transcendent works interface with Woodman’s colorful and flamboyant vision of domestic interiors, creating a complete visual imbalance that dwells, respectively, on natural landscapes and private imaginative spaces.

  Four large canvases by Woodman (Summer Tea Party, 2015; Reversal, 2016; Betty’s Room, 2011; Table and Rug, 2016) are characterized by the