Behind the Facts: Interfunktionen

Fundació Joan Miró
Parc de Montjuïc s/n
February 19–May 2, 2004

Curated by Gloria Moure

Structured around some of the most scrupulously unscrupulous projects highlighted in the twelve issues of the groundbreaking international journal Interfunktionen, this exhibition captures the enormous transformation of art that took place between 1966 and 1975 and crystallizes the exchange of ideas between Europe and the US in those years when both ends were burning. The one hundred works on view, by Günther Brus, Richard Long, Yvonne Rainer, and thirty-six other artists, were made during the journal’s run (though not all were featured in it) and were inspired by the events of the same period. The catalogue includes essays by, among others, Interfunktionen’s founding editor, Friedrich Heubach.

— Alexander Alberro

Vito Acconci

Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
Plaça dels Angels, 1
January 29–May 9, 2004

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

June 1–September 1, 2004

Curated by Corinne Diserens

It’s well known that the artist Vito Acconci was active in the mid-’60s as the poet Vito Hannibal Acconci, but until now not much has been made of his move from the page to the gallery and beyond. This exhibition aims to show how his poetry, in which the page was treated as a field of action with words as props, led to the performative occupation of real space—physical, psychological, and architectural. The curator has gathered close to fifty works for this purpose: film, video, and installations from the late ’60s to the late ’70s, as well as his complete audio works and three new films on the early years of his studio. The catalogue includes a selection of Acconci’s poetry and an interview by Thurston Moore.

— Barry Schwabsky

Julian Schnabel

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Calle de Santa Isabel, 52
June 3–September 6, 2004

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Römerberg
January 29–April 25, 2004

Curated by Max Hollein

The Schirn Kunsthalle is giving Julian Schnabel a retrospective covering the past twenty-five years and comprising over fifty paintings, many of them very big. While the artist lately seems omnipresent in the media, a serious consideration of his art has thus far been lacking. Did the ’80s begin with Schnabel’s first solo painting show at Mary Boone Gallery in 1979? Is the artist’s real future in Hollywood? Catalogue essayists Max Hollein, Robert Fleck, Alison Gingeras, Ingrid Pfeiffer, Kevin Power, and Maria de Corral also attempt to put Schnabel in context.

— David Rimanelli

Giuseppe Penone

CaixaForum Barcelona
Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8
September 21, 2004–January 16, 2005

Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou
April 21–August 23, 2004

Curated by Catherine Grenier

Well known in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, Giuseppe Penone has never been altogether accepted in the US: Perhaps his sense of nature is too classical for us, too aromatically Mediterranean. (In fact, the Pompidou might think about putting Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the Acoustiguide.) We prefer American contemporaries like Robert Smithson who deal with nature as a brute and impure force. Penone’s sculpture can sometimes appear kitschy, but this arte povera artist can also make exquisitely lyrical studies of humankind’s intricate embedment in the natural world. The eighty works in this retrospective, as well as the curator’s essay and the interview in the catalogue, supply the argument for the European sensibility.

— David Frankel