Preview: International Shorts

MIXED EXPOSURES

“Say cheese” is not, one suspects, a phrase overused by flaneur photographer Beat Streuli in his covert quest for fleeting facial expressions that reveal an urban state of mind. This summer Streuli targeted the inhabitants of Turin; the resulting color studies will be on view at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea between September 9 and November 5. In direct contrast, Hannah Wilke‘s “performalist” works are willed and strategic self-exposures. Extended across two Berlin venues, a major retrospective, “Interrupted Careers: Hannah Wilke,” will examine the artist’s sculptural, video, and photographic output, including documentation of her 1970s nude performances and her moving record of her own death from cancer (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst and Haus am Kleistpark, Sept. 2–Oct. 8). Former General Idea member AA Bronson‘s images are no less affecting. Large-scale photoportraits celebrating the lives of Bronson’s collaborators Jorge Zontal (1944–94) and Felix Partz (1945–94) will feature in his Wiener Secession exhibition (Oct. 5–Nov. 26). The term “performalist” might also be used to describe the photographic activity of Ulay. Best known as Marina Abramović’s collaborator, Ulay has amassed a diverse archive of notes, documents, and photographs over the past thirty years. His exhibition at De Appel Amsterdam will probe photography’s ontological status: Courtesy of a photolab temporarily set up in the gallery, the artist and invited curators can expand or modify displays as they wish (Sept. 8–Oct. 22).

The sometimes-disappearing subjects of Miguel Rio Branco go on view this October at the Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro. In the past decade, the documentary photographer focused on Rio’s Afro-Brazilian culture, its brothels, abattoirs, and boxing academies; long exposures (Rio Branco’s signature technique) result in vibrantly saturated colors and sometimes turn the human figures into wisps of smoke. The show will also include a large installation and several paintings from the mid ’70s to the present. Mexican–Los Angelean joint-resident Rubén Ortiz Torres likewise has an eye for hybrid phenomena. His surreal photos feature US-Latino cultural collisions: Mexican Beatles impersonators, Guatemalan Indians using Pepsi and Coke as holy water, and other unexpected admixtures (Grazer Kunstverein, Oct. 7–Nov. 5).

DESIGN MARKETING

This fall, the Frankfurter Kunstverein will show new work by video artist and club impresario Daniel Pflumm. Or should that be “neu” work? Last September, Pflumm exhibited mock promo videos at Berlin’s Galerie NEU: recycled TV ads from which the brand names of “new” German goods had been erased, leaving only the “neu.” Further Pop product for the digital age is promised for Pflumm’s Frankfurt show (Oct.13–Nov. 19). Back in Berlin, mass-marketeer Jeff Koons will set up his stall at the Deutsche Guggenheim with a specially commissioned suite of giant “Easyfun” paintings (Oct. 27, 2000–Jan. 14, 2001) . Expected ingredients: fantastic colors, plastic subjects, elastic cultural values. But maybe Koons should note the title of Rudi Gernreich‘s retrospective at the Künstlerhaus Graz. “Fashion Will Go Out of Fashion” surveys the life and work of the revolutionary Vienna-born US designer, originator of the monokini and promoter of egalitarian, unisex clothing styles. A “virtual” catwalk designed by Daniel Egg and Coop Himmelb(l)au will give visitors extra-vivid insight into Gernreich’s vision (see O’Brien, p. 25; Oct. 7–Nov. 26).

NON-OBJECT LESSONS

“Separate ‘things,’ ‘forms,’ ‘objects,’ ‘shapes,’ etc., with beginnings and endings are mere convenient fictions,” wrote Robert Smithson in these pages in 1968. A number of artists exhibiting this autumn might well endorse his idea. At IVAM Valencia from September 21, 2000, to January 7, 2001, six early works by Michael Craig-Martin, including that elusive non-object An Oak Tree, 1973, will show alongside a new site-specific installation comprising as-yet-undetermined “objects” and those instantly identifiable brightly colored walls. At the Salzburger Kunstverein from October 26 to December 10, a major new project by arch-dematerializer Ann Veronica Janssens will test her own proposal: “In the absence of light it is possible to create the most clear images.” An experiment in perception, space, light, and time, the installation will be accompanied by one or more interventions around the city. Up north at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, “Low Slung” will bring together Tom Burr‘s post-Minimal pieces from the past seven years, featuring works from his 1995 exhibition “42nd Street Structures” as well as models, montages, and sculptures that graft issues of architecture, access, and property ownership onto Minimal forms (Sept. 16–Nov. 12). Liam Gillick goes at the structures that surround and determine us from an equally critical angle. His first major British show, at the Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, will feature his post-Minimal partitions, wall paintings, and a collaborative film (Oct. 8–Dec. 22). And at the Kunsthalle Wien this fall, the spotlight is on Robert Smithson himself. This documentary exhibition will focus on works conceived for the medium of reproduction, including films, photographs, slide lectures, photo-texts, and film drafts (Nov. 24, 2000–Feb. 25, 2001). An accompanying book includes the first-ever German translations of Smithson’s texts—an exciting prospect for German-speaking artists and Smithson enthusiasts in general.

SURF’S UP

Gary Hill denies that he’s a video artist: According to him, he’s just “surfing the medium.” Fine, but how many surfers work the territory between image and text? And translation into Japanese doesn’t present a problem. Watari-Um, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, will present five large video installations, and a live performance by Hill and Paulina Wallenberg-Olsson (Sept. 1, 2000–Jan. 14, 2001). Also navigating textual and visual crosscurrents are Eran Schaerf‘s mixed-media installations “docufictions” that employ fragments of narrative and explore nonverbal languages. Schaerf’s “As If Said” runs from November 19, 2000, to January 14, 2001, at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. Meanwhile, at the Malmö Konsthall, artist and film director Peter Greenaway will be “flying over water.” Exploring the myth of doomed aviator Icarus, Greenaway’s multimedia installation will transform the entire Konsthall, examining topics as diverse as ambition and aerodynamics, feathers and failure (Sept. 16, 2000–Jan. 14, 2001).

—Rachel Withers

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HANDMADE’S TALE

To end the year 2000 in a most unsettling way, visit the Serpentine Gallery’s exhibition of strange handmade objects that don’t move or speak or have anything to do with electronics but are content to occupy their place on the wall, without “representing” anything. This selection of Brice Marden‘s paintings and drawings from the ’90s (Nov. 17, 2000–Jan. 7, 2001) will provide the undreamed-of opportunity to return to old questions—formal thought, perception, contemplation, possibly even beauty if you’re feeling a bit nostalgic—which Marden, like nobody else, knows how to pose as if they dated from this morning.

—Jean-Pierre Criqui

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CALL TO DISORDER

“I will not make any more boring art,” John Baldessari incited a group of Nova Scotian art students to write over and over on the walls of their school gallery in 1971. In like spirit, “Indiscipline” curators Barbara Vanderlinden and Jens Hoffmann invite Martha Rosler, Boris Groys, Carsten Höller, and others to ponder the ways such artistic rule breaking becomes the rule—and to break a few rules as they go. Each will create an event to take place at one of several sites around Brussels between October 26 and December 3; performance, interactivity, and interdisciplinarity are the show’s watchwords.

—Rachel Withers

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EITHER OAR

John Bock: artist or raftsman? Judge for yourself at the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, this fall. The venue’s island setting has inspired a waterborne experiment on the river Weser, involving a raft specially designed by abject-absurdist Bock, an underwater camera, and, of course, the artist’s own person. One performance will take place during the opening; photo and video documentation of the previous week’s watery outing will show alongside the raft itself from September 2 to October 29.

—Rachel Withers

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GUY WIRED

With its paranoid-sublime vision of sleepless alienation in a perpetual present, techno-landscapist Doug Aitken‘s prize-winning 1999 video installation Electric Earth has practically gained canonical status since its unveiling at last year’s Venice Biennale. Seen by some as twenty-first-century continuations of the (Robert) Smithsonian project, Aitken’s virtual vistas use the formal devices of video—panning, cutting, and looping—to underline the psychological impact of contemporary industrial and urban settings. Two brand-new works by Aitken will be on view in the main hall of the Vienna Secession between October 5 and November 26.

—Rachel Withers