Viewing articles from 2019/05

Copperfield Gallery, 6 Copperfield Street, London SE1 0EP

Alba Folgado in conversation with Marco Godoy

Marco Godoy: My we, your we, our we. Installation view at Copperfield, London

Alba Folgado speaks to artist Marco Godoy about his exhibition My we, your we, our we at Copperfield Gallery. His interest in the complexity of power relationships and the mechanisms that are used to perpetuate social divisions are made evident through the different works that one finds in the space.

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Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Rd, London E3 5QZ

Mandy El-Sayegh: Cite Your Sources

Mandy El-Sayegh, Cite Your Sources (2019). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2019.

Verbal language dominates and hits you like a wave; pages from the Financial Times are pasted up the gallery walls and underfoot; silk-screened advertising copy, schematics and Arabic calligraphy are layered on top of maps, passport-photocopies, grids and each other. Review by India Nielsen

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Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Krymsky Val, 9 строение 32, Moskva, Russia, 119049

Pavel Pepperstein: The Human as a Frame for the Landscape

Pavel Pepperstein, The Human as a Frame for the Landscape, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2019

The work of Pavel Pepperstein is, to western audiences, often impenetrable — not least because it often relies upon references to in-jokes and Russian-Language text. Pepperstein is interested in exploding-out historical moments and psychedelic experiences and picking through the debris. He’s called it “the spiritual backstage”. Review by Lucy Holt

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Napoleon, 319 N 11th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107, USA

Lydia Rosenberg: The Complete Subject

Lydia Rosenberg: The Complete Subject, Napoleon, 3 May - 26 May 2019

There are several layers to Lydia Rosenberg’s highly conceptual, experimental exhibition ‘The Complete Subject’, currently on view at Napoleon, each relying upon people’s individual perceptions of meaning. What you get out of ‘The Complete Subject’ absolutely depends on your tolerance for this kind of self-perpetuating thought experiment. Review by Deborah Krieger

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Cell Project Space, 258 Cambridge Heath Rd, London E2 9DA

Anna-Sophie Berger: A Failed Play

A Failed Play, Installation View, 2019, Anna-Sophie Berger

It is fitting that the accompanying exhibition text for ‘A Failed Play’, written by Anna Sophie-Berger herself, opens with a story that leaves out the play entirely. The focus is on everything but - Beckett’s declaration of it as a failure, his begrudging agreement to translate it for publication in English, and the fight that ensued over copyright following his death. Review by India Nielsen

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Marian Goodman Gallery, 5-8 Lower John Street, London W1F 9DY

Allan Sekula: Photography, A Wonderfully Inadequate Medium

Installation View of Allan Sekula: Photography, A Wonderfully Inadequate Medium

‘Photography, A Wonderfully Inadequate Medium’ presents an extensive exhibition by the late American artist and writer Allan Sekula (1951-2013). While the title aims to highlight the medium’s aporias, the show extends across photography, performance, text, and video, contrasting photography’s material mediations with its claim to realism. Review by Hugh Nicholson

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MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Blvd, Milton Keynes MK9 3QA

The Lie of the Land

The Crowning

Milton Keynes is quite unlike any other place in the UK. A new, modernist town built in the 1960s to provide somewhere to live for people who worked in London. A town built out of concrete, marble and glass. A town built on a grid. A few decades later the place became known as a haven for various subcultures; ravers, skateboarders and boy racers all flocked to the town, youthful rebellion disrupting the grid. Review by Ryan Hughes

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VITRINE, Basel, Vogesenpl. 15, 4056 Basel, Switzerland

If it’s not meant to last, then it’s Performance: A Q&A with Alys Williams

If it's not meant to last, this it's Performance, 2019. Installation view. VITRINE, Basel.

VITRINE, Basel’s current group exhibition explores how transient artworks are challenging the existing systems of value surrounding art. ‘If it’s not meant to last, then it’s Performance’ brings together work by Tim Etchells, Paul Hage Boutros, Sophie Jung, Clare Kenny, Hannah Lees, Wil Murray, and Rafal Zajko. Alys Williams, the curator, talks about how the exhibition came to be and the ways in which performance is reshaping the art market. Interview by Susie Pentelow

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Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St, Shadwell, London E1 7QX

Is This Tomorrow?

Jacolby Satterwhite and Andrés \Jaque / Office for Political Innovation, 2019, Spirits Roaming the Earth

'Is This Tomorrow?’ has invited architects and artists to work together to create a series of installations on the future, many of whom are working together for the first time. But whereas the 1956 exhibition aimed to position the arts as a positive and driving force for society, in ‘Is This Tomorrow?’ it is wider developments, be they technological, social or political, that become the dangerous forces the collaborators seek to address. Review by Bernard Hay

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6, Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo, Japan

Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions

Alter, [* Still image from: Justine Emard, Soul Shift, 2018, Video 6 min.]

Every three years the Mori Art Museum organises a new edition of ‘Roppongi Crossing’, a survey exhibition that presents a “snapshot” of Japan’s contemporary art scene. Begun in 2004, this year’s take on recent goings-on has been organised by the in-house curatorial team of Tsubaki Reiko, Tokuyama Hirokazu and Kumakura Haruko around the theme Connexions. Review by John Gayer

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Bloc Projects, 71 Eyre Lane, Sheffield S1 4RB

Joy Labinjo: As We Were

Untitled

Six vividly-coloured paintings hang in the exhibition space at Bloc Projects, a small artist-led gallery in Sheffield presenting an entirely new body of work by British-Nigerian artist Joy Labinjo. Most focus on an individual or two against a bright, opaque background; the paintings are large, smooth and confident in their application, and bold and graphic in their style. Review by Clare Robson

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Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038, USA

Christina Quarles: But I Woke Jus’ Tha Same

Change'll Come (Eventually)

‘But I Woke Jus’ Tha Same’ is a solo exhibition featuring Christina Quarles’ new paintings and drawings in which she explores how bodies interact in social environments. At first glance, her command of a rich artistic language—gestural and controlled, textured and flat, biomorphic and angular—makes her work immediately intriguing. Review by Vivian Chun-Wei Lin

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