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Why Are London Museums Royally Overhung?

Johann Zoffany, “The Tribuna of the Uffizi” (1772–78), oil painting, 123.5 × 155.0 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle

LONDON — “Now, Joe, you see those palm trees painted there? Those are his signature marks. There’s a nasty bug going around eating them in Spain, did you know that?” Upon overhearing this, I think, when looking at David Hockney’s “A Bigger Splash,” entomology isn’t exactly the first topic that springs to my mind.

It’s lunchtime on a weekday, and I’ve decided to visit the celebrated David Hockney retrospective at Tate Britain. So did hundreds of other people, apparently. I can’t help overhearing the comments of my fellow visitors, and not because I’m being nosy. I confess that I do sometimes find eavesdropping on museum chitchat to be more interesting that the art itself, but this isn’t the case today; there’s just not enough physical space near the painting for me, my new friend the entomologist, poor Joe, and everyone else around us.

I suppose it was naïve of me to expect that the curators would have chosen to allocate “A Bigger Splash” a more isolated spot, one suitable for the pilgrimage. High numbers of visitors shouldn’t be a problem if handled correctly. It’s the bad management of the exhibition space that is worrying.

From the numbers of works in this room alone, I assume Tate must have been particularly successful with their loan requests: Pictures are hung very close to one another, and there is literally not one empty wall to give the eyes a rest. So we all stand there in front of “A Bigger Splash,” fighting for a moment of intimacy with the painting, while in Spain some nasty bug is eating all the palm trees.

In room after room, Hockney’s pictures densely plaster the museum’s walls. The artist’s not-exactly-restful palette, combined with the crowds of old British ladies in flashy raincoats and the groups of rowdy schoolchildren (many wearing fluorescent safety vests) do the rest. I leave the show with a desperate need to spend half an hour staring at a blank wall.

I am about to appeal to the First Commandment of Modernism — “Less Is More” — but I have the suspicion that Mies van der Rohe is probably too busy turning over in his grave to hear my prayers. In fact, he must be really spinning by now: Hockney’s Tate survey is just one of the countless London exhibitions stuffed full of art like a trussed turkey.

Here’s an exhausting irony: Tate Modern’s room dedicated to Minimalism is so packed with works that it looks more like an industrial warehouse than a museum, which might be a helpful reminder of the origin of Judd & Co’s aesthetics, although I’m sure that wasn’t the original intention. The lethal combination of over-full exhibitions and intricate architecture at Whitechapel makes every visit to the gallery a challenge, and the Royal Academy of Arts is hardly better: Last year’s RA Abstract Expressionism exhibition was so filled with canvases that it must have disoriented even the most learned scholar, and the recently closed show of Russian art was no better, so crammed that it resembled a slovenly fair of post-revolutionary memorabilia. There the curators had surpassed themselves: Selections of Dziga Vertov’s movies and other films were screened above the plethora of pictures and vitrines of documents displayed below. A single Kandinsky should be enough to fill one room; there visitors, already worn out after the first two rooms, inevitably overlooked important pictures, passing them by them like wallpaper.

The British public might have some ongoing issues with this topic. Critic Mario Praz famously employed the Latin term horror vacui (“fear of emptiness”) to criticize the suffocating interior design of Victorian households. Little has changed since then, apparently.

It is not only a problem in density but also one of length. Put simply, these exhibitions are far too long. Though to this, the public has developed a surprising adaptability and now faces the prospect of museum-going by getting fully equipped — trekking shoes, walking sticks, and water bottles have become essentials.

Though finding new alternatives to the white-cube paradigm is certainly a laudable venture, curators and directors of public institutions seem to have forgotten that their responsibility should be to make art accessible, understandable, and enjoyable, not to punish their visitors with it.

The risk of perpetuating endless, cramped exhibitions is more urgent than ever. It will eventually leave art viewers completely saturated, passing by priceless masterpieces in the same way we absentmindedly scroll through our Instagram feeds. When it comes to artwork, “the more the merrier” isn’t necessarily the best option. It is time for curators to make some brave choices: Abandon self-congratulation and exhibitionism. Include fewer artworks in your shows, select better, and convince the public that it’s still fine to leave the museum without feeling drained. Our ability to appreciate art — and our poor feet — will be much better for it.

First published on Hyperallergic, 19 April 2017

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DIANE ARBUS - BEFORE THE SQUARE FORMAT

Diane Arbus, Woman on the street with her eyes closed, N.Y.C. 1956; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved.

“I am full of a sense of promise, like I often have, the feeling of always being at the beginning”, wrote Diane Arbus in her notebook in 1957. diane arbus: in the beginning, organized by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, focuses exclusively on the first seven years Arbus worked as an independent artist. The pictures in the exhibition are mostly 35mm dating from 1956 to 1962, before Arbus moved to the square format that would make her work so distinctive and immediately recognizable. Diane Arbus received a camera as a wedding gift from her husband Allan and started making photographs sporadically in the early 1940s. The Arbuses worked together in fashion photography for over a decade, she as a stylist and he as a photographer, until Diane decided to dedicate herself full time to photography in 1956. That same year, she enrolled in Lisette Model’s Greenwich Village photography class and began numbering her negatives.

Left: Diane Arbus, Female impersonator holding long gloves, Hempstead, L.I. 1959; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved / Right: Diane Arbus, Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. 1961; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved.

In 2007, Arbus’s daughters Doon and Amy donated their mother’s archive – a treasury of photographs, letters, negatives and prints – to The Met. diane arbus: in the beginning is the result of eight years of scrupulous research of the archive, cataloguing its largely inedited materials. Indeed, more than two-thirds of the photographs have never before been published. For an Arbus fan, looking at these inedited works has something of a discovery of lost treasure. There are curious-looking ladies strolling around the streets of New York; a series of photographs taken in cinemas, both of the audience and the screen, one of which features the opening credits, appropriately titled, A DOMINANT PICTURE; a portrait of Miss Stormé De Larverie, “the Lady who Appears to be a Gentleman” as the caption describes (and then a key figure in the Stonewall Riots); a picture of a James Dean sculpture at the Coney Island wax museum – decades ahead of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s comparable series of wax sculptures – accompanied by a laconic billboard remembering the grim end of the actor: “Killed in a [sic] automobile accident Sept. 30. 1955. The tragic ending of a young great actor…” 

Left: Diane Arbus, Kid in a hooded jacket aiming a gun, N.Y.C. 1957; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved / Right: Diane Arbus, Lady on a bus, N.Y.C. 1957; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved.

The photographs taken during this period originate from casual encounters with subjects, in contrast to the more canonical portraits we immediately associate with Arbus’s work, and testify to the transition that occurred in her photographic practice. At this point in time, Arbus was preparing herself, slowly but steadily, to penetrate the world with her idiosyncratic characters. However, albeit timidly, circus performers, transvestites, midgets start to appear in her works. One can recognize, already in these pictures, the Arbus we all know and love, pushing to emerge from behind. Most of the images featured “in the beginning” were taken on the streets of New York, somewhere between Times Square, the Lower East Side and Coney Island, following the great tradition of American photography that drew inspiration from the city, going back to Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, or documentarians Robert Frank and Walker Evans, and, of course, including Arbus’s contemporaries and fellow New Documentarians/street photographers Garry Winogrand and Lee Freidlander. But while the majority of these works comes from casual city encounters, some portraits are already the result of Arbus’s restless research on the edge of human kind. Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. N.J. 1961 is a perfect example in this sense. The portrait of the bare-chested man covered in tattoos sitting at a table in a bar, commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar, ideally accompanied by a page of notes in Arbus’s notebook, meticulously listing her subject’s tattoos: “left leg. Flying dragon with snake; large peacock; 2 ft wide eagle on chest; the horrible 3 on stomach; Frankenstein Dracula; Phantom of the Opera…” The same scrupulous interest for the detail would characterize Arbus’s photographs to come.

Left: Diane Arbus, Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved / Right: Diane Arbus, The Backwards Man in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1961; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved.

First published on WideWalls, April 2017

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INTIMACY AND VULNERABILITY IN COBALT BLUE - LISA BRICE AT STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY

Exhibition View, Lisa Brice @ Stephen Friedman Gallery, San Francisco, 2017. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery.

Stephen Friedman Gallery has recently opened its first solo exhibition of works by South African artist Lisa Brice. Brice is known to the British public for her participation in the remarkable group exhibition Making and Unmaking, curated by Duro Olowu at Camden Arts Center in London last year. The show at Stephen Friedman features a series of gouaches lining the walls of the gallery in a compact display. In these works on paper, which keep the immediacy and the closeness to ideas typical of drawings, the artist returns to her main subject matter, painting images of women in rich cobalt blue. The artist uses the pigment straight from the tube, modulating light and shade with the single color alone. To Brice, blue has a personal meaning. It reminds her of Carnival in Trinidad, where she initially did her residency in 2000 in a group, which included fellow artists Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, often re-visiting the country ever since. The Blue Devils, traditional characters in the Carnival masquerades in Trinidad, are usually male performers who paint their clothes and skin blue. The ebullient energy of the color from those celebrations is overturned, transformed into the melancholic figures – all female – that occupy Brice’s gouaches. There is probably no better color to suit the intimacy and vulnerability of her subjects.

Work by Lisa Brice. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery

These are girls, women, teenagers, maybe models, prostitutes, mothers. They hide from unwelcome gazes, while they undress, they wink (are they really winking?) to us, they are alone, they stand in groups, they are lonely. Some of them come back in different settings, now isolated, surrounded by the whiteness of the paper, now maliciously hidden behind too light curtains. They spitefully offer up their bodies for viewing, they are too busy looking at their reflections to notice that we are invading their spaces, their lives, their presences. The narrative content that at times claims influence over the figures is sublimated by the depth of blue, which unifies the series of works and compels us to look at at the body of work as a whole as well as singular pieces. There is at play, here, a conscious insistence on the act of looking. Brice’s figures are often partially concealed by doors, repeatedly veiled by the transparency of curtains. Very frequently, they engage with mirrors, looking at themselves and being looked at, at the same time. Their awkward, inelegant poses don’t do anything but to reiterate the invitation to our gaze to linger on them. We become voyeurs, however reluctant, witnesses of the imposed intimacy of unknown bodies.

Work by Lisa Brice. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery

Art history is too voluptuously filled of similar imagery for Brice not to be tempted to borrow some. In particular, in these gouaches there is a clear attraction to those artists that, roughly at the end of the 19th century, unapologetically started to depict female nudes in the banality of their everyday lives. From the young women in tubs by Pierre Bonnard and Edgar Degas to Toulouse Lautrec’s clumsy prostitutes, Brice revisits the catalogues of gestures and affectations, also quoting quite literally fragments from Balthus and Manet. What might have turned into a pretentious and anachronistic exercise becomes instead a smart act of self-reflection on the language and the tropes of painting. If Brice’s blue figures recall the typically modernist dynamics of power between models and artists, their substance lay somewhere else: in the subversive act of presenting these nudes to a public that is today extremely aware of racial and gender roles and self-presentation through social media.

First published on WideWalls, April 2017

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Curatorial Practices London Calling. Ma l’Italia non va buttata via. Una conversazione di Camilla Boemio con Francesco Dama (IT only)

Francesco Dama è un giovane critico e curatore indipendente che lavora a Londra. Negli ultimi anni, un numero sempre maggiore di curatori ed artisti italiani hanno deciso di trasferirsi all'estero. Diventa inevitabile affrontare l'argomento, e indagare come stia cambiando Londra, dopo l'uscita del Regno Unito dall'Unione Europea.

Camilla Boemio - Puoi parlarci del tuo percorso curatoriale? «Ho studiato storia dell’arte a Firenze e a Roma, città in cui ho maturato esperienze lavorative in gallerie d’arte pubbliche e private.

Francesco Dama - Dopo la laurea magistrale mi sono trasferito a Londra, dove vivo tutt’ora. Qui curo le mostre per una galleria d’arte contemporanea, scrivo e lavoro a progetti indipendenti. Le gallerie commerciali sono molto attente alla curatela delle proprie mostre - che è indispensabile - nonostante non vi pongano troppa enfasi. Mi piace l’idea di lavorare a fianco degli artisti e a ritmi sostenuti, ma nell’ombra.

C.B. - Sembra ormai che per occuparsi d'arte (e non solo) con un certo rigore, e una tranquillità, sia indispensabile lavorare all'estero. Quanto è diverso il sistema dell'arte Inglese rispetto a quello Italiano?

F.D. - «Non sono pienamente d’accordo. Conosco molte persone in Italia che si occupano d’arte con competenza, professionalità e rigore, nonostante le difficoltà economiche e burocratiche. Certo, il sistema dell’arte Italiano è molto diverso da quello Inglese, che è a sua volta diverso da quello londinese. La capitale britannica vive una realtà eccezionale, diversa da quella del resto del Paese e da qualsiasi altra capitale europea. A Londra si concentra una buona parte di quell’establishment internazionale che forma il mondo dell’arte: collezionisti e art advisors - per lo più colti e attenti - gallerie private con fondi spesso maggiori dei pur ottimi musei pubblici della città, case d’aste, ecc. Ovviamente, questo non favorisce gli artisti più giovani, che hanno difficoltà ad affrontare le spese di uno studio, per esempio. C’è poi una cospicua disparità in termini di risorse fra Londra e il resto del Paese. Èl un problema generale – forse il più grave in U.K. – che ha ripercussioni anche sul sistema dell’arte. Fortunatamente, da qualche anno una serie di iniziative pubbliche e private sta cercando di bilanciare questa irregolarità, nonostante recenti tagli ai fondi pubblici stiano cominciando ad avere effetti negativi. Non è difficile prevedere come la Brexit aggraverà ancora di più la situazione. Dal canto suo, l’Italia ricopre un ruolo marginale all’interno del mondo dell’arte contemporanea, per motivi economici e culturali. Il nostro Paese non è abituato a ragionare e a riflettere sull’arte contemporanea, in primis perché non la conosce e forse perché è distratto dall’enorme responsabilità di occuparsi della conservazione del suo straordinario patrimonio artistico. Ciò non preclude affatto lo sviluppo di realtà qualitativamente eccellenti in ambito contemporaneo, che di solito sono a iniziativa privata. Anzi, credo che proprio questa posizione marginale crei dinamiche interessanti. Le pressioni del mercato tipiche di città come New York o Londra, semplicemente non esistono in Italia, e questo è un fatto del tutto positivo».

C.B. - L'attuale fase socio-politica internazionale è una graduale degenerazione di un sistema verso il massimo disordine e l'ordine Istituzionale conservatore. Come sta rispondendo il sistema dell'arte Inglese alla Brexit? Come stanno cambiando gli investimenti d'arte, nelle gallerie e nelle Istituzioni?

F.D. - «Qualche settimana prima del referendum sulla Brexit, Wolfgang Tillmans inaugurava una mostra da Maureen Paley fortemente politica. L’ingresso della galleria era tappezzato da posters contro la Brexit, disegnati da numerosi amici artisti britannici, fra cui Antony Gormley, Bob e Roberta Smith, Martin Creed. È stata una fra le reazioni più intelligenti e sensibili al problema che abbia visto. Dal punto di vista del mercato, la sterlina debole ha significato un maggiore interesse dei collezionisti internazionali verso le gallerie britanniche. Le aste a Londra immediatamente successive all’esito del referendum, lo scorso giugno, sono andate particolarmente bene, ad esempio. La maggior parte dei musei e delle istituzioni pubbliche andrà incontro a una sorte diversa, perché dovrà fare a meno delle sovvenzioni Europee. In ogni caso, la questione Brexit è ben lontana dall’essere risolta ed è quasi impossibile fare previsioni. Resta un senso generale di smarrimento e incertezza che è difficile da gestire, in arte come in ogni altro ambito culturale».

C.B. - Quali sono secondo te le mostre museali più interessanti da visitare in questo periodo a Londra, e le tre mostre da non perdere assolutamente nelle gallerie?

F.D. - «Wolfgang Tillmans alla Tate Modern, senza dubbio, e Alex Baczynski-Jenkins da Chisenhale Gallery. Nella gallerie: Urs Fisher da Sadie Coles, Simon Dybbroe Møller da Laura Bartlett e Do Ho Suh da Victoria Miro».

C.B. - Quali sono gli artisti emergenti più interessanti secondo il tuo giudizio?

F.D. - «Prem Sahib e Celia Hempton fanno parte di un gruppo di artisti/amici che ha studiato e lavora a Londra, scambiandosi opinioni e consigli. Sono molto attento al lavoro del fotografo Paul Mpagi Sepuya, che ha una personale in corso a Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. Gli americani Grear Patterson e Charlie Roberts lavorano con il loro retaggio culturale con leggerezza e intelligenza, mettendo in discussione l’identità americana. In Italia, fra gli altri, seguo il lavoro di Gianni Politi e Gabriele de Santis».

C.B. - Come stanno evolvendo le pratiche curatoriali?

F.D. - «Non sono sicuro stiano evolvendo in meglio, di certo cambiano, e cambiano continuamente, come è naturale che sia. Nell’ultimo periodo il ruolo del curatore si è estremamente dilatato. Il concetto stesso di curatela è stato rivisto e ridiscusso, al punto da diventare un fenomeno culturale. Il verbo "curare” si applica a tutto, da Instagram alle playlists di musica, dalle ricette di cucina ai vestiti. È uno dei termini più amati dalla pubblicità. Il rischio è di svuotare la parola del suo significato, dimenticandosi del valore professionale del curatore. Tornando alle pratiche curatoriali, al momento si discute molto sulla discriminazione di genere nell’arte contemporanea. È paradossale come il mondo dell’arte, per quanto liberale, sia ancora fortemente discriminatorio nei confronti delle artiste donne. In questo i curatori, soprattutto in ambito istituzionale, assumono un ruolo di rilievo, dovendo affrontare numerosi problemi etici e di metodo. La recente espansione della Tate Modern, ad esempio, ha spinto il museo a ripensare l’ordinamento della propria collezione, per adottare un approccio più inclusivo ed equo, aumentando il numero di lavori di artiste donne e di artisti non occidentali. Tali decisioni curatoriali affrontano alcune problematiche fondamentali della storia dell’arte, contribuendo a ridiscutere i filtri culturali con cui interpretiamo e studiamo le opere stesse (basti pensare, in primis, al canone modernista, composto esclusivamente da uomini bianchi occidentali). Nonostante le buonissime intenzioni, il riallestimento del museo spesso confonde i visitatori, che sono travolti da una successione infinita di opere d'arte prive di una narrazione coesa».

Pubblicato su Exibart, 29 Marzo 2017

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Photographs that Pick Apart Gay Archetypes of the 1970s

Hal Fischer, “Leather Apparel” from Gay Semiotics (1977, printed 2014) carbon pigment print, 24 prints in handmade case with denim covering, each print: 20 x 16 inches (50.80 x 40.64 cm) (All images courtesy the artist and Project Native Informant)

LONDON — In a scene of William Friedkin’s movie Cruising (1980) Al Pacino, who plays a straight New York officer who is under cover to investigate a series of murders linked to the gay S&M scene, goes in a sex shop. Puzzled by a display of colored handkerchiefs, he asks a sales assistant what they are for. The obviously bored reply is a very detailed one: “A light blue hanky in your left back pocket means you want a blow job; right pocket means you give one. The green one: left side says you’re a hustler; right side you’re a buyer. The yellow one: left side means you give golden shower; right side you receive.”

The hanky code discovered by this fictional officer was in a fact widely used in the US during the 1970s by gay men looking for casual sex. Men with colored hankies in their jeans pockets could be spotted in numerous gay clubs and in the streets of major urban areas.

Around that time, Hal Fischer, who had moved from Chicago to San Francisco to study photography and was getting involved in art criticism, was experiencing the vibrant gay community of the Castro and Haight-Ashbury districts. In February 1977, Fisher started to work on a series of black and white photographs documenting the “signaling devices found in the gay community”, as he later described his research. Combining images with text and captions printed into the photographs, Fisher consciously employed semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) to deconstruct some of the codes used by the San Francisco gay community to find and select sexual partners:

Traditionally western societies have utilized signifiers for non-accessibility. The wedding ring, engagement ring, lavaliere, or pin are signifiers for non-availability which are always attached to women. Signs for availability simply do not exist. In gay culture, the reverse is true. Signifiers exist for accessibility.

The resulting series of photographs is often witty, with a subtle irony coming from the contrast between the erotically charged nature of the pictures and the clinical style of the captions, reminiscent of a medical book.

After describing in great detail the meaning of a red handkerchief, the author feels the need to warn his readers that “red handkerchiefs are also employed in the treatment of nasal discharge and in some cases may have no significance in regard to sexual contact.”

Hal Fischer, “Blue Handkerchief/Red Handkerchief” from Gay Semiotics (1977, printed 2014) carbon pigment print, 24 prints in handmade case with denim covering, each print: 20 x 16 inches (50.80 x 40.64 cm)

Fischer’s self-described “Jewish humor” involves a good dose of self-criticism, and critique of the very methodologies of semiotics itself, which by the late 1970s, had been well embraced by artists and academics.

Fischer’s pictures were first exhibited in San Francisco’s Lawson de Celle Gallery in 1977, and then published by NFS Press the following year, in a book titled Gay Semiotics. The publication was successful and had a wide circulation back then, but once it went out of print, it became a rarity, until a second edition was released in 2015. In the meantime, the pictures had been included in exhibitions at MOCA, Los Angeles, and SFMOMA, San Francisco.

The current show of Fischer’s photography at Project Native Informant, in London, includes different bodies of works from that period and confirms a renewed interest in gay life in the 1970s, the hedonistic pre–AIDS crisis era characterized by sexual freedom. A further sign of a resurgence of interest in Fischer’s work is the recent music video for the song House of Air by Australian musician Brendan Maclean, which went viral on YouTube before it got removed. (Please note this video is NSFW.) The clip unapologetically borrows Fischer’s aesthetics, adding color — both literally and metaphorically — to it.

A series of portraits of men exemplifying what Fischer calls “archetypal gay images” is also included in the show. In this series, the photographer identifies five basic archetypes, derived from the erotic imagery established in gay magazines, connecting them with specific elements of American culture. If the origins of some of these are almost cliché, like the “cowboy prototype,” some others are less immediate. For instance, Fischer links a “natural prototype,” illustrated by an attractive naked man surrounded by conifer, with the American folk tradition. In particular, he mentions the 19th century idea of a virile individual in communion with nature that is expressed in literature by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain, and in figurative art by Thomas Eakins.

Hal Fischer, “Archetypal Gay Images” from Gay Semiotics (1977, printed 2014), carbon pigment print, 24 prints in handmade case with denim covering, each print: 20 x 16 inches (50.80 x 40.64 cm)

Following a similar intention, some pictures illustrate the gay street fashion of men hanging out in Castro, revealing a great deal about gay subculture. While these portraits today may remind one of the street style photography of fashion blogs or American Apparel ads, their main source of inspiration is, quite evidently, August Sander’s ambitious project People of the 20th Century. Adopting the rigorous documentary approach of the New Objectivity, the German photographer famously spent decades, from the early 1920s to his death in 1964, taking an exhaustive visual record of German people, from beggars to industrialists. People of the 20th Century became an invaluable document of pre-Nazi Germany, its portraits divided into categories meticulously showing, in the words of its creator, “all the characteristics of the universally human.” With little textual information — the only indications about the people portrayed are in the titles which name their profession — the photographer invites one to read the images through the clothes and poses of his models.

In the same way Sander travelled around Germany looking for human archetypes, Fischer went out in the street looking at his friends, identifying different types coded through clothes, from the “forties funk” to the “hippie” and the “uniform man.”

Hal Fischer, “Street Fashion – Jock” from Gay Semiotics (1977, printed 2014), carbon pigment print, 24 prints in handmade case with denim covering, each print: 20 x 16 inches (50.80 x 40.64 cm)

Fischer is very generous in labelling every prominent element in the look of these types: the satin gym shorts of the “jock,” the boots of the “leather,” and the Levis jeans of the “basic gay,” which all contribute to shape the different characters. Poses are also telling: there couldn’t be more difference between the flirty attitude of the “jock” and the hyper-masculine posture of the “leather.” Keeping a levity that never fails to make the work enjoyable, sexual identities and desires are thus collected, anatomized, and classified.

Gay Semiotics never intended to be a complete catalogue of gay archetypes. It is, rather, a celebration of a delimited group of people acting in a particular time and space.

Fischer gave up photography in the early 1980s and although he has been asked to revisit his project, he has refused. Documents are pertinent only if they relate to a defined experience. Yet, it is the nature of signs to shift in significance.

Approaching today’s gay communities — anywhere in the world — with intentions similar to Fischer’s would be a fascinating exercise. The expanse of meaning always waits to be unfolded.

Hal Fischer: Gay Semiotics continues at Project Native Informant (Morley House 3rd floor, 26 Holborn Viaduct, London) through April 1.

First published on Hyperallergic, 9 March 2017. 

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ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACES - BRAUTIGAN'S CYBERNETIC POEM BROUGHT TO LIFE AT PALAIS DE TOKYO

Exhibition view of Sous le regard de machines pleines d’amour et de grâce, Palais de Tokyo (03.02 – 08.05.2017). Photo: Aurélien Mole.

In 1967, the American writer Richard Brautigan handed out copies of a short poem entitled All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace in the streets of San Francisco. The poem opens with a pastoral scene, describing a utopian future where machines and animals live in perfect balance, and humans are free of labour, “watched over by machines of loving grace”:

“I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.”

The current group exhibition at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, takes the most famous line of Brautigan’s poem as its starting point, bringing together artists of the likes of Isabelle Cornaro, Michael E. Smith and Pedro Barateiro. In the cryptic language of the press release, these artists “examine the impact of the market economy and new technologies on the production of our emotions and their representations”. While some of the works exhibited respond to the theme of the impact of technology to our lives, quite didactically – as is the case of the visionary cartoons by Marie Mathématique (1965-1966) – the majority of them don’t; consequently, Brautigan’s poem should be taken more as a pretext than a programmatic incipit to the show. As it usually happens, the exhibition is best enjoyed without reading any captions or – even worse – the press release, leaving only the vivid scenes by Brautigan to guide the visitor. A sense of levity is maintained throughout the exhibition, starting with Mika Tajima’s works. Her Negative Entropy series, woven paintings whose patterns are originated by digitally transmuting recordings of endangered technologies including weaving machines, are installed next to her more recent production of cocooned mood light sculptures, titled Meridian. The same sense of intimate reflection is to be found in Marjorie Keller’s film Objection (1974), which documents all the family possessions present in her childhood house, and in a site-specific installation by Lee Kit, who has arranged a complex yet delicate display of lights and video projections.

Exhibition view of Sous le regard de machines pleines d’amour et de grâce, Palais de Tokyo (03.02 – 08.05.2017). Photo: Aurélien Mole.

But it is only with Marie Lund’s work that the exhibition really takes off. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace presents three different bodies of work by the Danish artist, elegantly displayed in the biggest room of the show and partially interacting with an installation of concrete sculptures by Pedro Borateiro. Lund’s minimalism reminds us of the difference between design – however good – and art, carrying a weighty content, which is sometimes difficult to find in other works included in the exhibition. Here the artist presents Attitudes (2014), a series of cylindrical sculptures obtained by moulding the inside of jeans, showing the traces of the fabric’s folds and stitching. As both plinths and sculptures, these “legs” suggest a human presence frozen into a paradoxical mobility, which can also be found in Vase (2017), a series of copper sculptures made for the exhibition. Inspired by animal forms such as shells, and then enlarged out of proportion, these sculptures refer us back to the concept of crossbreeding machines and animals as described in Brautigan’s poem. A similar play on surfaces and communication between the inner and the outer can be found in Stills (2015-2017), a series of old curtains from a primary school stretched onto frames. Hung very close to one another all along the room, the canvases reveal slight colour nuances, originating from the combined action of sun and time. The unmistakably shape of the curtains, detectable in each work, is in fact derived by the contrast between areas bleached by the sun and others that stayed protected by its direct light during the previous use of the fabric. As with a photogram, the motifs on the canvases appear by exposing the surfaces to light for shorter or longer periods of time, making the passing of time palpable. Lund’s retreat in old fabric is quite far from the futuristic images of Brautigan’s poems. Yet, both have a persistent interest in metamorphosis and hybrids. And it is reassuring to discover that the loving grace of Brautigan’s machines, still nowhere to be found in today’s technology, can actually come from materials as simple as fabric.

First published on WideWalls, March 2017

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CY Twombly’s UNEARTHING OF THE PAST - SIGNS, MARKS AND LUMPS OF PAINT

View of the Nine Discourses on Commodus series by Cy Twombly, 1963. Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, Bilbao. © Cy Twombly Foundation.

There is a picture of Cy Twombly taken in Rome by Robert Rauschenberg in the late Summer of 1952. Twombly, then 24-year-old, was on a travel scholarship visiting Europe, for the first time, and North Africa with Rauschenberg, whom he had met two years earlier at the Art Students League in New York. In the picture, Twombly stands next to an enormous sculpture of a hand pointing its index finger at the sky—one of the fragments of the Colossus of Constantine. The young man stands between the ruins, as hypnotized by the iconic gesture of the marble, his gaze absent. More than 1600 years stand between him and the immovable hand of the Roman Emperor and yet the two are extremely close… Twombly’s first trip to Rome would influence his whole life and career. After returning to Italy several times in the following years, the artist married an Italian aristocrat, Luisa Tatiana Franchetti, and moved to Rome in 1959. The artist, who had been interested in ancient Greece and Rome since his youth, had found fertile ground for his research. By then, his distinctive visual language based on graffiti-like scribbles had already been formed.

Left: Cy Twombly – Lemons, Gaète, 1998. Dry printing on cardboard, 43,1 x 27,9 cm. Collection Fondazione Nicola del Roscio. © Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, courtesy Archives Nicola Del Roscio’ / Right: Cy Twombly – Coronation of Sesostris, 2000. Part V: Acrylic, wax pencil and graphite on canvas, 206,1 x 156,5 cm. Pinault Collection. © Cy Twombly Foundation, courtesy Pinault Collection

The current exhibition at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris is probably the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist in Europe, and it is a shame that it won’t travel to other museums. The exhibition effortlessly displays some 140 works – including paintings, works on paper and photographs – organized around three major series of works, starting with Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963), based on the grim figure of the Roman Emperor Aurelius Commodus, to then develop Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam (1978), inspired by the reading of Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad and ideally concluding with Coronation of Sesostris (2000), influenced by Egyptian mythology. While Twombly gradually became an essential figure in the Italian art world, during his lifetime his art was often little understood back in the U.S. His commitment to classical mythology and ancient history as well as his decision to base himself in Rome rose quite a few eyebrows in contemporary American art circles. In 1964, when Nine Discourses on Commodus was exhibited for the first time at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, critics – amongst which Donald Judd, champion of Minimalism – lamented the artist’s abandonment of the then burgeoning New York art scene. The series, dominated by a grey background onto which Twombly painted swirls of yellow and red, nodded to existentialism, reminiscent of the tormented paintings by Francis Bacon. The exhibition was, in Judd’s words, “a fiasco.” Indeed, Twombly’s interests couldn’t have been more distant from the incipient American movements of the time: on one side, Minimalism, with its sterile aesthetics and programmatic refusal of any narration; on the other, the problematic celebration of contemporaneity and consumerism embraced by Pop artists.

Twombly kept on looking at the past, at the transcendental contents of classical mythology as well as at the historical figures that would claim to be descendants of that very mythological time. Gods and heroes of the past come back as groups of signs, marks sometime organized in letters, lumps of paint; like in the triptych Ilium (One Morning Ten Years Later), (1964-2000), one of the highlights of the exhibition. Here the characters populating Homer’s narration look more like scattered notes than shaped sentences. Like the hieratic hand from the colossus of Constantine, they return to light as fragments. Yet Twombly’s works never feel unfinished or incomplete. A particular integrity is to be found in every fragment, unearthed from the past. Approaching the study of Greek mythology, scholar Jane Harrison once described the Olympian Gods as, “a bouquet of cut-flowers whose bloom is brief, because they have been severed from their roots”. According to Harrison, in order “[to] find those roots, we must burrow deep into a lower stratum of thought, into those chthonic cults which underlay their life and from which sprang all their brilliant blossoming”. Flowers never interested Twombly too much. Always digging his hands into the moist soil of time, the artist spent his whole career looking for those hidden roots.

First published on WideWalls, March 2017

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Collector Valeria Napoleone on the Need to Support Women Artists

Valeria Napoleone in her London flat (© Mariona Otero; all images courtesy Valeria Napoleone and Touchstones Rochdale)

LONDON — When London-based collector Valeria Napoleone started her collection in the mid 1990s, she resolved to acquire only works by women artists. Over the years, the collection has grown at a steady pace, covering a wide range of media, from pottery to video. Notably, Napoleone avoids blue-chip names, supporting artists at the beginning or in the middle of their careers, such as Lily van der Stokker, Ella Kruglyanskaya, and Ida Ekblad. The collector is also known for developing enduring relationships with those artists she supports.

Alongside her attempt to address gender inequality in art, Napoleone is an active patron of a number of arts organizations, including the ever resourceful Studio Voltaire, a nonprofit gallery based in south London. She’s also a member of New York University President’s Global Council and sits on the board of the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City.

For the first time in almost two decades, key works from Napoleone’s collection are accessible to the public in Going Public – The Napoleone Collection. First shown at Graves Gallery, Sheffield last year, the traveling exhibition features pieces by the likes of Monica Bonvicini, Tomma Abts,  Shirin Neshat, and Mai-Thu Perret. In December, the show moved to Touchstones Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, where it is still currently installed.

I met with Napoleone to talk about her collection, gender equality in art, and the meaning of going public.

Francesco Dama: Let’s start with Going Public. Why did you decide to work on the project, and why now?

Valeria Napoleone: Private collections going public is a very sensitive subject. Collectors have always been loaning to institutions, but what is very different at the moment is the context. Quite a few incredible exhibition spaces are now closing due to cuts in public funding. So there is a sense of emergency and a need for creativity. It’s not just about loaning; it’s about collaboration.

What I’ve been doing at Sheffield and Rochdale came very spontaneously, like everything in my life. Both cities have communities that are quite deprived of contemporary art. They are not exposed to it, and I think it’s absurd. Art is not just for the art lovers; it can be appreciated at many different levels. So when [the museums] initially approached me with the idea of showing my collection, I instinctively said “yes.” That was the beginning of a lot of work and discussions.

FD: Did you work with the curators at the museums?

VN: Yes, we worked together, but the final decisions were mine. I selected the pieces, and we curated them in the space, with minor changes in the display between the two exhibitions. Touchstones Rochdale is much bigger, so we could accommodate bigger works. It was fascinating to curate pieces that I know well — that are part of my collection — outside the domesticity of my place.

Installation view of Going Public – The Napoleone Collection at Touchstones Rochdale

FD: So the collector becomes the curator?

VN: Yes, you do the extra step because you want to make an impact. And you want to maximize this impact. When I started the selection process, looking at my inventory, thinking about the communities in Sheffield and then Rochdale, I didn’t want to alienate anybody. I wanted to open doors to contemporary art and to be connected with them, stirring conversations. So I selected works that could engage rather than put them off. Nothing too conceptual, nothing too dry. I selected works that reflect the way I collect, considering the span of time of my collection. I included pieces I bought in 1997 and some I acquired in the past three years, starting with Monica Bonvicini’s video “Hausfrau Swinging.”

FD: Your activity in the art world could be described as an effort to address gender inequality. However, I sometimes feel puzzled by some art events or exhibitions that promote themselves as supporting gender equality in art. I sometimes have the feeling that the artworks on display have been selected only because of the gender of their makers, rather than their quality. It’s like curators want to tick all the boxes of political correctness.

VN: These days museums and curators are not immune to being seduced by the market and trends. It is often that they do not take risks or follow their own visions. Women artists have been left behind for so long that to catch up and have prominent presence in museums takes visionary and courageous individuals, who are rare. Most often incredible women artists are represented not by the so-called “blue-chip” galleries, but by younger or mid-career gallerists who have a tough journey ahead and lots of work to do. They not only have to navigate the gender inequality and bias, but also market-driven choices on behalf of curators.

Installation view of Going Public – The Napoleone Collection at Touchstones Rochdale

FD: How do you address this disparity? Can you give me a concrete example?

VN: As you know, I sit on the board of the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. In October of last year we relaunched the Great Hall Exhibitions, adding a special focus on the practice of women artists. What’s different from other, similar programs is that ours is based on two exhibitions a year only. This allows time to build up context around the show. The committee selects the artist, the students of the institute curate the exhibition and create work around the program: screenings, talks, discussions, performances.

FD: As with any cultural process, this will take time …

VN: Absolutely. It’s not going to happen in a generation. We have to navigate it carefully and give the right message. It’ll take time, but it’s also very exciting. We can be catalysts; we can inspire people to look in new directions.

Going Public – The Napoleone Collection continues at Touchstones Rochdale (The Esplanade, Rochdale, UK) through March 11.

First published on Hyperallergic, 27 February 2017

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Guerrilla Girls Find - Surprise! - that European Museum Collections Are Heavily White and Male

Guerrilla Girls, Is it even worse in Europe? (2016), Whitechapel Gallery, London (photo by David Parry/PA Wire)

LONDON — The Guerrilla Girls strike again. The Whitechapel Galleryrecently commissioned the feminist collective to create a new artwork for the gallery, resulting in an exhibition. Is it even worse in Europe? resurrects the 1986 Guerilla Girls campaign “It’s Even Worse in Europe” by conducting an up-to-date survey on gender and racial inequality in European art institutions.

Earlier last year the collective distributed a questionnaire to 383 European museum directors. The Guerilla Girls went straight to the point, asking, among other questions, the percentage of artworks by female, African, Asian, South Asian, South American, and “gender non-conforming” artists in the museums’ collections.

The nature of the questions has changed little since the anonymous American collective started to challenge the art world’s inequity in the 1980s, reporting to the public facts and numbers about the domination of white male artists in the art world. The current show is just another confirmation of how slowly changes are taking place on the matter.

Guerrilla Girls, Is it even worse in Europe? (2016), installation view at Whitechapel Gallery, London (photo by Dan Weill)

The foreword to the survey, shared on a poster in the exhibition, reads:

The Guerilla Girls focus on the understory, the subtext, the overlooked and the downright unfair. Art can’t be reduced to the small number of artists who have won a popularity contest among bigtime dealers, curators and collectors. Unless museums and kunsthalles show art as diverse as the cultures they claim to represent, they’re not showing the history of art, they’re just preserving the history of wealth and power.

Roughly one fourth of the contacted institutions responded — 101, to be precise. A full list of those that didn’t reply or refused to participate has been placed on the floor, for visitors to step on. The replies, arranged in posters around one room of the gallery, are insightful of the current make-up of collections at European institutions. Predictably, the figures are not encouraging: among the museums that did reply, for instance, only two have 40% or more women artists in their collections, while 21 have fewer than 20%.

A less expected find is that the majority of European museums don’t even keep statistics on how many of their works are by underrepresented populations. This is worrying, as it reveals a general lack of self-awareness.

Guerrilla Girls, Is it even worse in Europe? (2016), installation view at Whitechapel Gallery, London (photo by Dan Weill)

As much as the questionnaire sheds light on pressing and relevant issues, some of its premises have limits. Asking museums about the numbers of works by female artists and minorities in their collections is certainly necessary to bring attention to and keep the pressure on the topic, but it’s definitely not enough. Acquiring such artworks is relatively easy; effectively communicating them, creating relevant narratives around them, is much harder. A recent example is Tate Modern’s major extension, which has pushed the museum to take a more inclusive and fair approach in displaying its collection, increasing the number of pieces by non-Western artists. However, if these curatorial decisions have honored the intention of giving exposure to overlooked artists — thus rethinking the modernist canon — the operation at times has resulted in an endless succession of artworks with no cohesive narrative.

On the one hand, the Guerilla Girls, 30 years later, are still reminding us that museums have overdue issues to address. On the other, we need to continue pushing the conversation around inclusive representation in a more nuanced direction — one that not only considers who institutions are representing, but also how.

Guerrilla Girls: Is it even worse in Europe? continues at Whitechapel Gallery (77 –82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX) through March 5.

First published on Hyperallergic on 11 January 2017. 

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A Cozy Night in London’s New Hotel for Artists

LONDON — The first “hotel for artists” in the UK, Green Rooms, opened in Wood Green, North London, last Spring. Designed to attract artists, actors, and musicians, the hotel offers affordable accommodations at a discounted rate (starting at £18 per night) to any creative. Beside dormitories, doubles, and en-suite rooms, Green Rooms also features two studio apartments, a gallery space, and two bars.

The enterprise occupies an Art Deco building constructed in 1925 for the North Metropolitan Power and Electricity Company. It is owned by Haringey Council and was previously used as offices, although it had been vacant since 2009. When renovation works started last year, the site was in a state of disrepair. With the aid of a regeneration grant secured from the Greater London Authority, Green Rooms’ founder Nick Hartwright, a builder-turned-entrepreneur who is well trained in restoring buildings for art and theater groups, oversaw an operation that radically transformed the space, removing temporary walls and false ceilings that had been fitted over the years.

When I first visited Green Rooms early last spring, the hotel was still undergoing its finishing touches. Although it was not completely furnished, with some rooms still works in progress, I was able to have a look around and get a feel for the space. I spotted some of the original architectural features, such as the bathrooms’ mosaic tiling and the industrial iron beam structure that had been left exposed in some rooms, thanks to Hartwright’s thoughtfulness. My interest in the project was enhanced by the hotel’s location: not the over-popular and over-gentrified East London, but Wood Green, possibly the least hipster district in the whole city. Ask any Londoner: Wood Green is certainly not known for being a cool, artsy destination — which is exactly why the project had me immediately intrigued.

A few months later, once the hotel was fully up and running, I was invited to spend a night on the premises.

I arrive on a typical Saturday night. The ground floor lobby, with room to seat 50 in the hotel’s restaurant, is full of chatting people enjoying drinks. In a corner, a DJ mixes Cuban music with Billie Holiday songs.

I have a look around. The lobby is furnished with a mix of authentic vintage and contemporary British craft furniture, featuring original pieces from the 1920s and 1930s manufactured by the historical brand Heal’s. The sofa I sit down on comes from Barry Davison and is the firm’s original classic. Most of the pieces have been sourced by Green Rooms’ chairman Kurt Bredenbeck, the hotel entrepreneur who founded the successful “luxury-budget” hotel chain The Hoxton. While some elements of the clean, modern style that has made The Hoxton fashionable are on view also here, Green Rooms feels less urban. The austere lines of 1930s design are tempered by the glassware, the textiles, and the more playful character of 1970s furniture. Solid oak reigns, giving the room a generally unassuming and cozy quality.

It’s time to order some food. The hotel runs a kitchen incubator program: Every six months, a different up-and-coming restaurateur is given the chance to gain experience and offer their food to the guests. The program has begun with Esteban Arboleda’s Colombian Street Kitchen, and it’s already getting popular. Fame has preceded Esteban’s empanadas, so I have little doubt about what I will order.

The spontaneity and kindness of the waiters make up for the service, which is not always swift. While waiting for dinner, I have a chat with Ashley, a violinist from Sidney visiting London for work. “I discovered the hotel through social media,” he says. “It’s always tricky, as a musician, to stay in hotels when you’re visiting some new place and you have work to get done. I haven’t been making too much noise, but it’s nice to know I’m staying in an artist-friendly environment.”

Indeed, the hotel has a full program of events and concerts (which are always followed by after-parties), and on the third floor, lit by a skylight finished in patterned Flemish glass, is an exhibition space that is easily as good as quite a few galleries downtown.

For the record, the empanadas are excellent.

Even though I don’t get to sleep into one of the four rooms that include special pieces designed by cult UK fashion brand FOLK, my bedroom is decent. As with the downstairs areas, I appreciate the unassuming feel of the room. The atmosphere created by the vintage furniture is shaken up by a bespoke metal coat rail and the bedside tables, which were made by a local North London firm. Altogether it’s is cozy and elegant — and, quite importantly, quiet.

In the morning, I leave the hotel rested and content.

Green Rooms ticks all the boxes to become a hub for artists and creatives in an area of London that would be otherwise very unattractive. The public seems to have responded positively to it. The restaurant is nice and busy, and the interior design, which gives the place a lot of character, is drawing people in. The real challenge now will be to turn the initial buzz into lasting success. This writer’s fingers are crossed.

First published on Hyperallergic on 29 November 2016

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A Tribute to Oscar Wilde in the Prison Where He Was Incarcerated

Outside the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always midnight in one’s heart.

So Oscar Wilde wrote in “De Profundis,” the 55,000-word letter composed during his imprisonment in 1897. The recipient of the writer’s most tormented and beautiful lines was his friend, lover, and ultimate reason for Wilde’s own incarceration and financial ruin: Lord Alfred Douglas, or “Bosie.”

The story is more or less known: In 1891, Wilde began a close and troubled friendship — soon turned into sentimental relationship — with Douglas, a handsome and capricious young aristocrat. Despite the disapproval of Douglas’s family, the two kept on seeing each other, until Douglas’s father accused Wilde of sodomy. The chain of events that followed shortly after led to a series of trials culminating in Wilde’s conviction for gross indecency. Down on his luck and publicly shamed, the writer was sentenced to two years of hard labor, the maximum sentence allowed. Wilde was then moved from jail to jail, his health and psyche shattered, spending the last year of his conviction at Reading Gaol in London. It was there, in his isolation cell, that Wilde wrote “De Profundis.”

Reading Gaol was a working prison until 2013; this year, it opened to the public with Inside, a major new project by the art organization Artangel, inviting visual artists, writers, and performers to respond to the work of the prison’s most famous inmate.

New artworks by the likes of Steve McQueen, Jean-Michel Pancin, and Wolfgang Tillmans have been installed in the prison’s corridors and wings, while pieces by Vija Celmins, Rita Donagh, Peter Dreher, Félix González-Torres, Richard Hamilton, and Roni Horn are also exhibited in the cells. The more one ventures into the cramped space, the more it becomes clear which works were conceived as site-specific installations and which were simply adapted to the context. This struck a good balance, with some works being overwhelming in their acute references to the pain of imprisonment, and others more generally pointing to the shared and related human experiences of love and loneliness. In some of the cells, you can read and listen to recordings of “letters of separation,” a project for which acclaimed writers such as Tahmima Anam and Deborah Levy have composed a letter to a loved one from whom they have been forced to separate.

If Inside’s program sounds ambitious and potentially overwhelming on paper, experiencing it is a different thing. Visiting a prison is, itself, a rare and demanding experience. Designed during the Victorian era, Reading Gaol was conceived with the mission of reforming criminals. Its design, considered progressive for the time, was based on a cruciform plant, with long wings of cells stretching out from a central atrium. Above it, the prison’s manager, from his office on the first floor, could clearly see down each wing, surveying every action in the building.

This systematic structure, a perfect example of the imposing architecture inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon between the 18th and 19th centuries, funnels the visitor down particular paths. Very often, the cells are treated as singular display units, defining a claustrophobic exhibition space.

Wilde’s personal confessions in “De Profundis” become the starting point of wider conversations concerning the stigma associated with homosexuality, oppression, loss, and memory. Moving from cell to cell, visitors encounter Marlene Dumas’s portraits of Wilde, Bosie, Jean Genet, and Pier Paolo Pasolini — all persecuted for their sexuality; Doris Salcedo’s popular installation “Plegaria Muda” (2008–2010), made of wooden tables and compacted earth, in honor of the Colombian desaparecidos; and Robert Gober’s disquieting sculptures.

Perhaps it’s Nan Goldin who manages to best achieve a particular sense of truth to the space and project. A series of intimate photographs of the German actor Clemens Schick, a muse to the artist for decades and a recurrent subject in Goldin’s work, covers one of the cells in a way that recalls how inmates stick cut-outs of female models and actresses to the walls. Schick is here often depicted in a domestic environment, and frequently naked. The handsome actor reminds of the threatening beauty of Bosie, while the plastering of photographs on the walls hints at the obsessive quality of some relationships.

The most prominent feature of Inside brings the focus back to Wilde’s work, staging weekly readings of “De Profundis” in the prison chapel. For them, Artangel invited actors such as Ben Whishaw and Ralph Fiennes, and singer, poet, and icon Patti Smith. The performance series started with a moving reading by Neil Bartlett, who has been studying Wilde’s work and legacy for decades, and will end with actor Rupert Everett reading Wilde’s final work, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” (incidentally, Everett is currently working on an upcoming biopic on the writer, titled The Happy Prince, in which Everett plays Wilde).

Listening to Wilde’s most intimate words is not easy. His account of his excruciating love for Bosie, sifted through painful admissions and regrets, inevitably pushes us to confront our own. Confessions that we never made, perhaps not even to ourselves, start to surface.

Few dare to live through life as Wilde did. For that, we feel safe and maybe even jealous. Inside goes deep into these mixed feelings, finding authentic ways to approach the writer’s oeuvre, so often cited but so little truly understood. In this, the public readings take on a crucial role: They put the public in contact with the exasperated beauty of Wilde’s text, penetrating one of the most painful and rumored relationships of the 19th century.

Inside: Artist and Writers in Reading Prison continues at HM Prison Reading (Forbury Road, RG1 3HY, Reading, UK) through December 4.

First published on Hyperallergic, 22 November 2016

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Five Questions with Charlie Roberts

Bright, bold and playfully irreverent: Charlie Roberts’ works open an entire world of possibilities where high and low culture mix and merge. He masters abstract as well as figurative subjects, employing a wide array of techniques, including wood carving, painting, graffiti and sculpture.

The artist – who’s heavily influenced by hip hop – collaborated with Danish menswear brand Soulland for their highly successful spring/summer 2016 collection, featuring hand painted suede jackets, printed shirts and hoodies. Amuse caught up with him ahead of his exhibition opening later this week at Marlborough Contemporary.

You’ve been described as a “cultural magpie”, drawing inspiration from popular culture, art history, advertising, comics. How do you manage to keep everything in place? I don’t really manage to keep things in place. I have tried to organise and sort my studio practice but it has not been creatively fruitful. It seems to work best just to follow my nose and let my outside interests naturally find their way into the studio. At the moment, I’m into performed magic and its history and am sure that somewhere down the line it’ll show up in the work.

The title of the show comes from the legendary rapper The Notorious B.I.G’s 1994 debut single Juicy. How and how much hip hop culture has influenced your work? The title of the show makes a nod to Biggie’s Juicy, but also the song that gives Juicy its hook, Mtume’s Juicy Fruit. Biggie and Puff took the 1982 sex funk jam and turned into rap’s most iconic come-up anthem. It’s a perfect snapshot of the birth of the economic and cultural dominance of rap and a celebration of a young man bringing his family and community out of poverty and on to the stage of world art and culture.

They were brilliant to name the song Juicy [the word appears nowhere in Biggie’s song], as it gives shine to the hook material and at the same time the word is so evocative of the spirit and content of the song. I always picture a peach about to pop or a girl blowing big wet bubbles of Juicy Fruit. The ability and freedom with which 90s rap artists repurposed and revitalised music of the recent past has always been an artistic inspiration to me.

Rap music and culture is a huge influence on me. I’m a big fan and think that we are in the most exciting time in rap in my fandom. I love 21 Savage, Chief Keef, Kodak Black, Famous Dex, Future, Gucci, Katie Got Bandz, Rae Sremmurd, Soho Dice…to name a few of the newer guys.

The works in the exhibition are all gouache and oil on paper, but you work with different techniques. How do you decide which medium to use for your next work? I rotate materials based on season and interest level. I tend to do the wood work and sculpture during the summer when I can be outside and paint more in the winter. When I get too comfortable with a medium I change it up to break my flow and try to squeeze something weird out again. The watercolour tends to be best for the more illustrative works.

You were born and raised in Kansas, USA, studied in Vancouver and now you live nearby Oslo. Living in Norway must be very different from the American lifestyle. What’s the US like from a Norwegian perspective? It is strange being away. These are scary times for America and the world.

Which other artists do you follow at the moment? Chris Rexroad, Drake, Richard Carr, Kristian Touborg, Victoria Duffee, Carly Mark, Constance Tenvik, Raina Hamner, Johnny Negron, Julien Ceccaldi, Irena Jurek, Alexander, Touborg, Jeanette Hayes, Louisa Gagliardi, El Franco Lee, Heath West.

First published on Amuse, 20 November 2016

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The Venezuelan Artist Playing on the “Exoticism” of Latin America

Over the past few years, Venezuelan artist Sol Calero has put on a series of vibrant installations that mimic everyday life in her home country. The latest in these series of works, Casa de Cambio, was shown at Art Basel last summer and quickly became a Instagrammer’s dream. The installation appropriated the décor of a Venezuelan currency exchange, complete with colourful wall coverings, exotic travel themed posters, cabinets of tacky jewellery and fake palm trees.

Calero isn’t new to such staging. In the past, she’s transformed the immaculate spaces of European art galleries into a Salsa dance school, a restaurant, an art school and a cyber café. Earlier this year, at David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, she created a telenovela set and filmed episodes of a fictional-yet-credible TV series, featuring the dramatic acting and flashy interiors typical of the genre.

Calero often disguises her paintings within the installations, inviting people to interact with the environments she develops. Her sets – carefully re-creating crucial social spaces in Latin America – work with our preconceptions and expectations, exposing the formulas through which South American culture has been distorted and received by Western countries.

The artist often quotes the US doctrine of the “Good Neighbor Policy” pursued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, as a way of befriending Latin American countries in the hope of creating new economic opportunities. For this purpose, the North American film industry depicted Latin American through a highly-idealised image of exoticism that was perfectly embodied in the movie star Carmen Miranda, the “lady in tutti frutti hat”.

Always over the top, wearing garish colours and her iconic fruit hats, Miranda – herself Luso-Brazilian – became for the West a symbol of South America at large, meaning that marked cultural differences within the continent were often dismissed. Calero addresses these issues (still persisting today), re-appropriating in her paintings the exotic fruit associated with Miranda’s exaggerated persona.

Paying homage to her previous installations, Calero has intelligently painted some parts of the Laura Bartlett gallery in pastel colours: a yellow pipe, some peach and green walls. Although not strictly necessary to the exhibition, these gentle details help break up the dazzling white space. But as the title suggests (Solo Pintura, or “Only Painting”) her current exhibition gives more autonomy to her paintings, here installed without the staging props of her previous installations. In doing so, more attention is directed to the compositional elements at play in the works.

Calero’s long-lasting interest in the surface of things (one of her signature pieces are wallpapers) is noticeable in paintings with the mosaics and coloured splinters of glass directly applied to the canvases. The slatted Venetian blind, interrupting the view of the paintings with a uniform flat surface, reaffirms the bi-dimensional quality of the canvases.

Calero’s super-flat surfaces might well be a metaphor for the cultural facades artfully built for mass consumption. But peel off the first layer and there might be something else behind it.

Sol Calero: Solo Pintura, 23 Sept – 13 Nov 2016, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London

All images: courtesy of Laura Bartlett Gallery, London. 

First published on Amuse, 26 September 2016

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Camille Henrot’s Melancholic Mondays

Installation view, Camille Henrot, ‘Luna di latte’ at Madre — Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, 2016 (photo © Amedeo Benestante, courtesy Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee, Naples)

NAPLES, Italy — Mondays are meaningful: they represent small beginnings, opening the week with new possibilities and challenges ahead. Mondays can also be dominated by a deep melancholy, as we retreat from spiritual considerations and return to the mundane matters of the week.

“I don’t care if Monday’s blue,” sang the Cure. But French artistCamille Henrot seems to care a great deal.

Henrot explores the complexity of the “moon day” in the exhibitionLuna di Latte (“milky moon,” in Italian), at the Museum of Contemporary Art Donnaregina (MADRE) in the center of Naples. The pieces presented here, small sculptures and works on paper, represent a selection of never-before-shown material produced while working on Monday, Henrot’s current solo show at the Memmo Foundation in Rome. There, she is presenting a series of frescos inspired by the day of the week and the iconography of melancholy.

The artist’s practice is informed by a voracious appetite for images from and references to popular culture, literature, philosophy, anthropology, science, and art history. An exemplar of Henrot’s hunger is the frantic video “Grosse Fatigue” (2013), which earned her both a Silver Lion at the 2013 Venice Biennale and the attention of the art world. Lasting less than 15 minutes, the video tells the story of the creation of the universe through screenshots and videos that appear in quick succession on a computer screen. “Grosse Fatigue” covers a vast terrain of human knowledge, mixing pictures of scientific specimens and found videos with mythological narration and an array of quoted references to Buddhism, Kabbalah, and Inuit legends.

Collections appear often in Henrot’s work. The artist is fascinated by the different ways that humans attempt to make sense of the world, including the organization of objects and images. The week, of course, is another tool we use to impose order on the chaos of existence. Following its form, Henrot is starting her project withMonday and Luna di Latte, and will then develop it further, exploring the remaining days of the week. It will culminate in a solo exhibition taking over the whole Palais de Tokyo in Paris next year.

Camille Henrot, “Study for Contrology” (2016), resin (photo © Amedeo Benestante, courtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris; Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee, Naples)

The “milky moon” of the exhibition in Naples refers to the full moon of the month of May, which represents spring’s awakening as a prelude to summer. Traditionally associated with abundance and fertility, the milky moon is also thought to cause strong melancholic feelings.

Melancholy has a rich cultural history. It was one of the four temperaments matching the four humors in ancient Greek medicine. Dürer grappled with it in his iconic engraving “Melencolia I” (1514), as did Edvard Munch in a series on the subject. Art historians, too:Aby Warburg, a chronically melancholy soul himself, had an acute interest in the subject, which was picked up and developed by his colleagues Fritz Saxl, Erwin Panofsky, and Rudolf Wittkower.

Henrot is well aware of all this, but she never allows her dense syncretism to produce heavy or obscure results. She adopts her signature playful attitude, employing light hues and a cartoonish style. And she keeps her associations loose: I recognize the classic melancholic pose — one hand on a cheek, absent gaze — in several portraits in the show, but she’s not interested in re-creating Munch. Instead, she has gathered reproductions of the artworks she uses as references in binders available to visitors, together with images found on the internet — a linking of different media and methods of transmitting meaning.

Installation view, Camille Henrot, ‘Luna di latte’ at Madre — museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, 2016 (photo © Amedeo Benestante, courtesy Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee, Naples)

For the installation, Henrot extends the preexisting decorative elements of the museum by painting the walls of the space to create a classical space. Her trompe l’oeil columns and painted panels evoke the décor of many Italian villas without parodying them, like a gentle tribute.

Her sculptures and works on paper have the same effect: they manage to constantly hint at their sources — some elegant Art Deco lines here, a Cubist volume there — while avoiding looking anachronistic or tacky. Her pastels display the jocosity and facility of line that were Picasso’s and Matisse’s, yet they emerge as brilliant examples of her own talent, thanks to her skill as well as her distinct style.

Depicting melancholy, Henrot seems to imply, requires a great deal of playfulness.

Camille Henrot’s Luna di Latte continues at MADRE (Via Settembrini 79, Naples, Italy) through October 3.

First published on Hyperallergic, 20 September 2016

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Eroticism, Exile and Isolation on a Volcanic Island

It’s not easy to get to Stromboli, off the north coast of Sicily. Ferries are infrequent and often disrupted by stormy weather. Once there, life isn’t simple either: there are electricity black holes, the landscape is barren and the supply of goods is inconsistent. That’s why a mere 500 people live here alongside the constant menacing presence of the active volcano.

But over the years, Stromboli has played host to come of our great creative minds: Marina Abramović spent five years on the island; Italian artists Giovanni Anselmo and Mimmo Paladino lived there; Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and Mimmo Jodice have been regularly spotted there.

And every year since 2011, Volcano Extravaganza, a free public art festival, has taken over the island. Organised by the London-based Fiorucci Art Trust, it brings together cutting-edge artists for a week of performances, lectures and art activities. This year’s edition, I Will Go Where I Don’t Belong, has been curated by French artist Camille Henrot and the trust’s Director Milovan Farronato and it focuses on the inevitability of isolation, the necessity of exile and the danger and eroticism of distances.

Film was also a big theme. Farronato explained that it is “very important to the mythology of the island and the suggestion to do screenings in Strombolians’ houses grew out of the fact that Camille, when she was thinking about this project, was using a lot of films as research.” Ingrid Bergman’s character in Roberto Rossellini’s film Stromboli, Land of God (1950) was the main inspiration. In the celebrated film, Bergman plays a displaced Lithuanian woman who faces the difficulties of living on the island, among hostile people who don’t understand her.

Other screenings included Ellen Hovde and Albert Maysles’ iconic Grey Gardens (exploring the eccentric and reclusive lives of Edie and Edith Bouvier Beale in a Long Island’s estate) and Jean Epstein’s Le Tempestaire (revolving around a woman who is worried for her fiancé, out at sea during a storm).

The group exhibition that Henrot curated featured works by Mike Nelson, Rachel Rose, Isola e Norzi and Walter Sutin. Farronato told us, “From the group exhibition exploring the theme of the shipwreck – with Camille’s mural of waves and mythical characters overlaid with photos from Crossing the Line Ceremonies, and paintings of shipwrecks and storms – to the final act of abandonment, a constellation of themes and events supported our weeklong narrative.”

The programme of performances saw contributions by several international artists as well. Ragnar Kjartansson, who’s currently having an exhibition at the Barbican in London, drew on the perimeter of the island to perform a musical voyage exploring isolation. The Vinyl Factory staged DJ sets by Afro-disco Italian pioneer Beppe Loda and artist-poet Juliana Huxtable, as well as a performative concert by electronic duo Tempers, who wrote lyrics inspired by the place. As ever, the Volcano Extravaganza was a force of nature.

First published on Amuse, 27 July 2016

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From a Missing Woman to an Overpowering Odor, Adventures from London’s First Art Night

Celia Hempton’s installation at 180 Strand as part of Art Night 2016 (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

LONDON — “Have you seen Betty? She has big boobs! She has disappeared!”

A curious man dressed in worn-out clothes interrupts my thoughts while I’m standing in line to access “After After” (2013), a work by Laure Prouvost installed in Admiralty Arch, an Edwardian building near Trafalgar Square.

Together with nine other projects, Prouvost’s piece was part of Art Night, a new one-night-only summer festival that opened up some of London’s landmarks and usually inaccessible locations to the public last Saturday, July 2. Like the popular Nuit Blanche held annually in cities around the world, Art Night intends to bring together the artistic community and the art-going public for a single evening. It was free, although most of the events were accessible only by booking tickets, which quickly sold out. The project was founded by a collective of young entrepreneurs, Unlimited Productions, and guest curated by the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) with Kathy Noble. Locations for the first edition were spread across the Northbank and Southwark: Joan Jonas and jazz pianist Jason Moran performed in Southwark Cathedral, Cecilia Bengolea projected a video in Covent Garden, Alexandra Bachzetsis presented a performance in a neo-Gothic building in Temple. In planning my visit, I realized that attempting to see every venue would be impossible, so I decide to focus on a selection of events close together, starting with Prouvost.

“Have you seen Betty? She has big boobs! She has disappeared!”

I can’t tell if the pungent stench of pee I smell comes from this man or from the spot where I’m standing. Is he drunk? Mustering all of my (fake) British composure, I smile politely and answer: no, I haven’t seen Betty. In fact, I’m very sorry, but I don’t know Betty at all.

The line moves quickly, and I leave the man behind to find myself in a corridor that leads to a pitch black room. People get impatient waiting for their eyes to adapt to the darkness and start using their torch apps to make some light. I get a glimpse of what looks like a seat before an array of film sequences and strobe lights begins spotlighting sculptures, paintings, and objects around the room. A recording of the artist’s voice — her French accent is recognizable — offers fragmented clues and narration. Someone called Betty is missing (I guess the man at the entrance wasn’t as random or as drunk as I thought). She liked to dance. Some footage of squids is projected on a wall, interlaced with colored lights turning on and off quickly.

Installation view, Laure Prouvost, “After After” (2013), Biennale of Lyon, France (image courtesy the artist, MOTInternational, London and Bruxelles, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, and Biennale de Lyon 2013; © Blaise Adilon)

I can’t concentrate on the voice because I’m too distracted by the confusion created by the installation. I see here many of Prouvost’s anti-narrative devices at play; she’s attempting to create multisensory experiences and even evoke synesthesia. When the voice describes a squid squirting ink, a real spurt of water splashes the audience.

I’m leaving the room completely spaced out when a disheveled, middle-aged woman appears from a door and whispers for me to come through her secret passage. I’m so overwhelmed by what I’ve just experienced that I don’t question her, nor does a small group of fellow spectators. We follow her through a bright, surreal space completely covered in white tiles to what she calls the “After After Party.”

“The Queen has been here last week, did you know that?” she asks me. I’m so puzzled I can’t manage a reply, although the image of Queen Elizabeth II going through this orchestrated mess makes me giggle.

I’m now in a small room with suffused blue lighting. A young lady who’s playing drunk offers me shots of a mysterious red drink. It seems rude not to accept, so I take a sip from a plastic cup. It’s pure vodka. She insists I have another shot. And another one. The messy lady magically reappears — where has she been? — and informs us it’s time to leave. I reach the street high on the experience and tipsy. A performance is about to start nearby.

Linder, ‘Destination Moon. You must not look at her!’ (2016), at the Duke of York Steps, ICA, London, as part of Art Night 2016 

On the steps leading to the Duke of York Column, the British artist and musician Linderhas put together Destination Moon. You must not look at her!, a theatrical performance with live music. A choir, a tap dancer in garish attire, flamenco dancers, male models wearing jean onesies, and some curious characters in white rabbit costumes are all moving around on the makeshift stage, to music that’s slow but rhythmic, often spaced out by cymbals. The audience is a mix of passersby, tourists, and more committed viewers. Some seem to have come directly from the pro-EU march that has seen tens of thousands of people protesting the result of the Brexit referendum this morning. The guy next to me has painted his beard blue and stuck gold stars on it, to honor the EU flag.

I’m still recovering from Prouvost’s experience, so I leave Linder’s live collage for something quieter, in Charing Cross station. There, Korean artist Koo Jeong A has created “Odorama,” a site-specific installation on a disused Tube platform. “It’s where they shot Skyfall!” exclaims a James Bond fan in the crowd. As my precious event map confirms, it is, indeed, the same location.

Koo has created an installation with nothing more than lights and a particular scent, with the intention of altering the public’s sense of reality. As I walk downstairs, a sweet, earthy smell gets stronger and stronger. It comes from the wood of the Asian Agar tree, which is used around the world for various purposes. While the trees need to mature for hundreds of years before their wood can become useful, it is the resin they produce to fight fungus and mold that’s at the core of the scent. “We are not allowed to fell the naturally growing tree, as they are protected by law as endangered species,” reads an accompanying artist statement. “We can only collect fallen wood cut by lightning and thunder, moved by the winds and rivers over the years: the journey of this piece of wood is a long one.”

Koo Jeong A, “Odorama” (2016), at Charing Cross Underground Station, London, as part of Art Night 2016

Although I find the story of the trees fascinating and the space truly uncanny, I struggle to find a convincing link between the two, to the point where the location becomes the real draw. I wander through the abandoned platform for a while, but the scent is so intense it goes to my head. I start sneezing; my hay fever doesn’t appreciate contemporary art, apparently. And I’m in good company: not far from me, a girl has the same symptoms. It’s time to move on.

Outside, my allergies are soothed, and I head to my last stop: the Store, a section of a disused Brutalist building overlooking the River Thames. British artist Celia Hempton has created a site-specific installation there.

Hempton is known for her paintings depicting the human body — male and female genitalia, in particular — in attractive pastel tones. For Art Night, she has built up a theatrical space composed of three of her signature wall paintings joined together. This temporary structure divides the room, offering two different spaces to hang her work. On the side facing an adjacent building site and the Thames, the artist is showing three large canvases of female nudes, while the other side features four little canvases depicting the source of the River Thames. Following a clever curatorial conceit, the nudes are installed to confront the building site, which is populated during the day by male workers. (Hempton has been attracted by such sites for a long time, occasionally painting them in situ.) The paintings of the source of the Thames are an ideal counterpart, as the artist depicts the spring in sensual terms: the water gushing from it makes a gentle crevice in the ground, the origin of the river, which the artist has sexualized to suggest female genitalia. Leaving the building, I think about the ancient anthropomorphic statues of rivers that are present around Rome, where Hempton lived for a while.

Celia Hempton’s installation at 180 Strand as part of Art Night 2016

Although very enjoyable, the majority of the events I visited tonight slipped more towards entertainment than art. While Provoust’s employment of actors added new elements to her piece, the whole most closely resembled something like an elaborate murder mystery game. Engaging with the public in such a direct way certainly served the artist’s intention to make “a different kind of 3D film,” as she described it, but it also raised questions about the way art is experienced by the public. On the other hand, Hempton’s installation felt sincere and straight to the point, without jeopardizing the poetry of its concept. People seemed to enjoy it no less.

Walking home, I stop for a moment to watch the city at night: tourists are enjoying this rare warm evening by dining outdoors, some people are coming out of a theater, pubs are stuffed with soccer enthusiasts watching the European Championship. I’m ready to leave my critical conjectures and artistic concerns behind, when a thought strikes me: what on earth happened to Betty?

The first edition of Art Night took place at various locations around London on July 2.

First published on Hyperallergic, 8 July 2016