At the cornerstone of Plato's theory of forms - where the essence of a thing is what we know, and that essence is its form - we find the humble chair. We don't need all chairs to look the same to know they fit into the category of items we refer to as a "chair", which we understand as a stool to sit on. The essence of something is also its purpose. So when an exhibition takes up the chair and negates its chairness, is it still a chair? Review by Jillian Knipe.
There’s something especially thrilling about seeing new masterworks for the very first time. Anyone who received and read a copy of Phaidon’s classic contemporary overview, Cream, may well remember that feeling. In 1998, (then) little-known art-world luminaries such as Hans Ulrich Obrist and Okwui Enwezor selected the brightest new young talents of the day; the book showcased Olafur Eliasson, Sarah Sze, and Kara Walker, among many others. Follow-up titles in that series featured similarly prescient picks, featuring works by Elmgreen & Dragset, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, and Yoshitomo Nara, to name just a few.
This season, Phaidon returns to this theme with Prime: Art's Next Generation. Once again, we appointed an esteemed panel of experts to select 107 of the best contemporary artists under the age of 40. The selection committee includes plenty of notable figures, such as Frieze’s editor-in-chief, Andrew Durbin; Victor Wang, artistic director and chief curator at M WOODS Museum in Beijing; Tate curator Fiontan Moran; Krist Gruijthuijsen, Director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin; and Bernardo Mosqueira, artistic director of Solar dos Abacaxis in Rio de Janeiro and curatorial fellow, of the New Museum in New York. From the press release
Thisistomorrow is giving you a sneak peak at some of our favorite artists included in the book! Click to find out more.
The Hague’s art space 1646 recently opened Meta Folklore, the first solo exhibition in The Netherlands by self-taught artist Janek Simon (b. 1977), showing his newest 3D printed sculptures. Growing up in Poland during the 1980’s amidst post-war dichotomies, Simon developed an anarchist political position and a resistance to reducing the world into categories. Combined with his urge to intrude on overpowering, opaque technologies, Simon sees the DIY approach as a tool to reappropriate technology and to empower people to dismantle simplistic constructs of reality, categorization and hierarchies. From the Press Release
‘Songs for living’ provides excerpts from Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace, Édouard Glissant’s Sun of Consciousness, and On Prayer, a poem by the Polish-American poet, Czesław Miłosz. From separate times and places these writers survived under oppressive regimes with the provocation of their art. What they had in common was that they fought for a spiritual clarity amidst the forcefulness of symbolic communions. From the press release.
Katie Paterson is one of Scotland’s most renowned artists, who looks up to the stars and back down at the earth, considering our relationship to the planet, cosmos, and deep time. Born in Glasgow in 1981 and studying at Edinburgh College of Art and The Slade School of Art, Paterson has featured in exhibitions worldwide, including Kettle’s Yard, Turner Contemporary, and BAWAG Contemporary. Paterson collaborates with scientists and produces in-depth research to create works that bridge the gap between science and contemporary art. Written by, Laura Baliman
Kraus is an intriguing character with an expansive curiosity for mythology and symbolism. He has come through a history of drug addiction and, as a side hustle, works as a stick and poke tattoo artist in New York. As with much of his work, in ‘Holy Unrest’, Kraus is thematically drawn to nature and paints using a restricted, largely blue, colour palette. For Kraus, the forms of nature are a language in which to express the human condition. I met the artist in a crowded cafe above a bookshop in Soho, London. A conversation with Sophie Naufal and US painter, Dylan Soloman Kraus
“I’ve always been drawn to the figure, not necessarily, or not only, its portraiture aspects, but more so body politics. Black people are often on the receiving end of images, but art school provided me with the important opportunities to think about how as an artist, I had the power to push back and to create images other than the nasty corrosive caricatures of Black people frequently peddled by the mainstream media and dominant culture.” Barbara Walker
In paintings, sculptures, and installations, Kaphar examines the history of representation by altering the work’s supports. In doing so, he reveals oft unspoken social and political truths, dislodging history from its status as “past” to underscore its contemporary relevance. New Alters: Reworking Devotion stresses the heterogeneity of Kaphar’s process by incorporating all the techniques he has employed to date into a single presentation that emphasizes the images’ surreality and strangeness. It is characterized by a layering of imagery and form and a strategic disregard for the consistency of ground and space. Shifts in scale turn some figures into miniatures and others into giants, while the use of gilded frames hints at a dedication to something beyond the physical. From the press release.
'Archives at Play' is an exhibition exploring our relationship with the past and how this informs how we make the future. At a time when it is more important than ever to challenge inherited ideas about ecology, equality, and identity, this exhibition uses archival structures - the ways we hold and engage with the past - as a tool for questioning the worlds we find ourselves within. The artists Gregory Herbert, Kelly Jayne Jones, Dr. Yan Wang Preston, and Chester Tenneson have been invited to take the concept of the archive as a starting point to develop a series of new works for Archives at Play. From the press release.
JA Nicholls delivers portraits of awkward emotions and moods, as much as faces and bodies. She’s never shied from portraying uncertainty and ambivalence, whether about gender, the female body, desire or ageing. This question of how we put ourselves together was explored in collage paintings for many years. ‘In Touch’ demonstrates the synthesis of Nicholls’ ideas and a self. There’s a looseness and cohesiveness without loose becoming careless. The main difference from earlier work is a joyful risk in the handling of the paint. Review by Cherry Smyth
The film, Everything But The World was conceived as a TV pilot plotting new narratives for new histories. A multi-genre docu-sci-fi, the series departs from the premise of a nature show by turning the camera onto nature’s least natural invention: us.
Connecting the repetitive movements of today’s warehouse worker to activities some 10,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors switched from hunting and gathering to farming full-time, Everything But The World challenges post-Enlightenment notions of “progress.”
“This is the story of what happens after your property and after your progress. It’s over. And baby, you didn’t survive.“
— Narrator, Everything But The World
Ayan Farah ́s paintings are produced within a cycle of material production and reclamation. Informed by the history of landscape and land art in formal and material sense respectively, these works are formed by the place the pigments are sourced and its geology. Often reflecting on personal history, the geographical location of the source material and the place of production is key. Socio-cultural concepts and geological properties as well as the aspect of mobility as part of the production process driven by Farah‘s own biography. From the press release.
Lowman has become known for deftly mining images culled from art history, the news, and popular media, transforming visual signifiers from these distinct sources into a diverse body of paintings, sculptures, and installations. Since the early 2000s, the artist has continually pushed the boundaries of his multimedia approach with works that are at turns critical, humorous, political, and poetic. In his work, Lowman stages an encounter with commonplace, universally recognizable motifs, questioning and revisiting their intended meanings while creating new narratives in the process. From the press release.
As pandemic lockdowns lift, I repeatedly visit the vestiges of the cell of a mediaeval anchoress, which once adjoined St James church in Shere. The stone lintel and two small openings in the church wall are all that remains of the tiny room in which Christine Carpenter, the Anchoress of Shere, is thought to have been entombed for most of her adult life.
The Anchorite tradition involved an individual, usually a woman, voluntarily forgoing village life to be enclosed in a chamber to pursue solitary, religious devotion. Walled in, the cell protected the anchoress from the sins of the world, shielding her from the mortal dangers of plague and pestilence as well as the social perils of moral temptation. Essay written by Kelly Large.
