previews September 1999

Ceal Floyer

Karachi-born, London-based Ceal Floyer creates evocative installations by the sparest of means. In a past show, for example, she simply placed a ballooning black garbage bag by the doorway of the exhibition space; in another “white cube” she pinned a cash-register receipt (also white) to the wall, documenting her purchase of, you guessed it, white items—flour, candles, mozzarella. In Bern the artist is showing new work: video installations, sound pieces, and “Ink on Paper,” a series of drawings made by pressing felt-tip pens onto blotting paper until all of the ink has been extracted. Available

previews January 1999

“FROM/TO”

Fareed Armaly gathers threads—from architecture, music, graffiti, and television—and weaves them into complex installations. The work draws strength from its maker’s multiple cultural identities: born in 1957, to Lebanese parents in Iowa, he has lived in Europe since 1988. “FROM/TO,” Armaly’s “cartographic intervention,” maps the evolving identity of the Palestinian people, from 1948 to the present. Among the myriad projects to unfold: the journals (faxed weekly to Rotterdam) of five women living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan; hundreds of fin-de-siècle postcards of Palestine;

previews January 1999

Georg Herold

Herold’s reflections on artistic creation are often disorienting but always full of wit and wile. Herold, who was born in 1947, glues bricks to canvases, exhibits hooked pot holders, and fashions roofing laths into sculptures that he covers in text and supplies with titles like “This Man Is Good to His Wife.” Curator Bernhard Bürgi has selected some seventy works from the last two decades, including an installation of stacked pumice stones, lath sculptures, paintings with (real) caviar, buttons, or bricks affixed to the surface, and Herold’s newest objects, painted plates. Keep your fingers

previews January 1999

Moshekwa Langa

A man in blue jeans, his torso bare, holds a microphone and strikes a pose in front of the black leather sofa. His head is cropped from the image. True Confessions: My Life as a Disco Queen is the title of this 1998 photograph by Moshekwa Langa, a young South African artist who currently resides in Amsterdam. At twenty-three years of age, this “symbol for the new South Africa” has already exhibited in four international biennials and now garners his first solo museum show, a 5000-square-foot installation that will include photographs, videos, large-scale drawings, and paintings. The catalogue

print November 1998

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Most artists value the barrier between art and its public, the assignation and maintenance of various roles (e.g., active artist, passive consumer): don’t touch, don’t smell, art is here, life is there, Ladies and Gentlemen, stay behind the cord. Very few take up the gamble involved in giving art over to general consumption as did Joseph Beuys in his Documenta 7 project to plant 7,000 oak trees and install 7,000 basalt columns, each inscribed with the name of an individual subscriber. That Beuys called into being 7,000 status symbols and an equal number of “Beuys-Tree-Preservation-and-Cultivation

previews May 1998

An Unrestricted View of the Mediterranean

The first thing visitors will encounter at the entrance to the Kunsthaus Zürich this summer will be a view-obstructing wall of sandbags. On the other side of Fabrice Gygi’s Alps of sand, curator and Parkett editor Bice Curiger will present her take on the contemporary Swiss scene, with 200-plus works on display by artists ranging from well-kept local secrets to emerging international stars (e.g., Pipilotti Rist, Sylvie Fleury, and Thomas Hirschhorn). A video lounge will focus on work from the ’90s, while a “flashback room” showing art produced in the ’70s should help put the exhibition in

previews May 1998

Rirkrit Tiravanija

In Rirkrit Tiravanija’s exhibitions, doing is as important as looking. In this large show of his work, curated by Rein Wolfs of the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, you will be able to sample Tiravanija’s curry, enjoy a glass of beer, or jam on the guitar in the rehearsal studio set up for the visitor. The artist will also present two new installations. Visit the mechanic who will be tinkering with the artist’s broken-down 1972 Opel Commodore for the two-month run of the show. Or do some grocery shopping, as Tiravanija is installing a branch of Migros, the Swiss supermarket chain that backs the

René Ammann