previews

  • Roni Horn, You Are the Weather (detail), 1994–96, sixty-four color photographs and thirty-six black-and-white photographs, each 10 3/8 x 8 3/8".

    Roni Horn, You Are the Weather (detail), 1994–96, sixty-four color photographs and thirty-six black-and-white photographs, each 10 3/8 x 8 3/8".

    “Roni Horn aka Roni Horn”

    Collection Lambert en Avignon
    5 rue Violette
    June 21–October 4, 2009

    Tate Modern
    Bankside
    February 25–May 25, 2009

    Whitney Museum of American Art
    99 Gansevoort Street
    November 6, 2009–January 24, 2010

    Curated by Mark Godfrey, Donna De Salvo, and Carter Foster

    A welcome survey of Horn’s work tracks her thirty-year engagement with post-Minimalist form as a container for affective perception. Expect selections from her cycles of “pair objects”; the complete 100-photograph installation of “You Are the Weather,” 1994–96; and—investigating the topography of Iceland as a landscape of libidinal folds and fissures—the artist’s book series “To Place,” 1990–. Newer pieces will include sculptures in glass, abstract word drawings, and a rubber-floored room. The accompanying publication promises a “Subject Index” of writings by the artist, Matthew Barney, Anne Carson, Tacita Dean, and Nancy Spector, among others, and will doubtless benefit from Horn’s long-standing interest in books as objects. Art historian Briony Fer contributes the lead essay.

    — Frances Richard

  • Aleksandr Rodchenko, Novyi Lef, nos. 8–9, 1927, ink on paper, 8 15/16 x 6 1/16".

    Aleksandr Rodchenko, Novyi Lef, nos. 8–9, 1927, ink on paper, 8 15/16 x 6 1/16".

    Aleksandr Rodchenko and Liubov Popova

    Tate Modern
    Bankside
    February 12–May 17, 2009

    Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
    Calle de Santa Isabel, 52
    October 19, 2009–January 31, 2010

    Greek State Museum of Contemporary Art
    21 Kolokotroni Street, Moni Lazariston
    June 18–September 20, 2009

    Curated by Margarita Tupitsyn

    Though the Russian avant-garde’s commitment to interdisciplinarity arguably exceeded contemporary notions of multimedia practice, exhibitions of Constructivist art today tend to examine the period by way of gender, medium, or a single artist’s output. This show cuts across categories by presenting diverse works by two of the movement’s most influential practitioners, revealing the aesthetic currents that shaped their various projects from 1917 to 1929. The approximately 350 objects on view will include Liubov Popova’s textile designs and canvases from her early Painterly Architectonic series, Aleksandr Rodchenko’s iconic cinema posters, the artists’ costume and set designs, and their respective contributions to the landmark 1921 show “5x5=25.”

    — Nicole Rudick

  • Spartacus Chetwynd, Hermito's Children, 2008, promotional material for a television pilot.

    Spartacus Chetwynd, Hermito's Children, 2008, promotional material for a television pilot.

    “Altermodern: Tate Triennial”

    Tate Britain
    Millbank
    February 3–April 26, 2009

    Curated by Nicolas Bourriaud

    A dozen years after he minted the term relational aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud has a new buzzword: altermodernism. For the influential French curator and critic, this is what comes after postmodernism; a renewed response to reality, in which artists consider our globalized moment—hallmarked by ubiquitous communication, travel, migration, and standardization—via work that is postmedium, interdisciplinary, puckishly drawn to deceptive fictions, and eco-friendly. And intercontinental: In Bourriaud’s iteration of the fourth Tate Triennial—an event doubling as his latest catchall’s coming-out party—expect to see British artists such as Tacita Dean and Marcus Coates, foreigners-in-residence (Gustav Metzger), and even a few “passersby” (e.g., Loris Gréaud, Rachel Harrison). A preceding series of daylong colloquiums (or “prologues”) aims to stoke debate; T. J. Demos, Okwui Enwezor, Carsten Höller, and Tom McCarthy contribute to the catalogue.

    — Martin Herbert