artintelligence

The most engaging works in the KW aspect of the 5th Berlin Biennial were predominently videos. I have already posted on the best of these and from the hits on YouTube you appear to agree with me that Ania Molska, is especially praiseworthy, and I would add Patricia Esquivias‘ Folklore #1 which becomes more significant (from a socio-aesthetic standpoint) the more I think about it. David Maljkovic’s video Lost Memories from These Days also deserves honourable mention, because it is a little social-critical gem, especially as we approach the fortieth anniversary of May 1968. (more…)

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The story we are told is that Jeremy Deller saw some of the pretty, collective garden plots (Kleingaerten [little gardens]) in Munster when he flew over the city. He investigated this phenomenon and decided that they would be his contribution to the exhibition. The Readymade strikes again. (more…)

Suchan Kinoshita’s sound installation was one of the most impressive pieces in the Munster Sculpture Project 07. One can quibble about whether it is actually sculpture, but what is more interesting is that as sculptural installation art gradually leaves the limelight, aesthetic uses of technology (in this case three-dimensional sound) move towards centre stage as the most significant contributors to contemporary artistic production. (more…)

Valérie Jouve’s site-specific work for the Munster Sculpture Project 07 is more of a video installation than a sculpture, but then the concept of sculpture is so deconstructed now that the term can be applied to almost anything that isn’t flat and hung on a wall. (more…)

The Munster Sculpture Project was, overall, considerably better than Documenta 12, which is a remarkable statement considering that Munster had much less funds at its disposal. (more…)

VIDEOS ON THIS PAGE: Saadane Afif, Black Chords; NBP; Imogen Stidworthy, I Hate, 2007
In the first part of my report on Documenta 12 I noted that it is probably the worst Documenta of all time. Which is a great shame because Documenta used to be one of the great contemporary art exhibitions in the world. In this second part of my report I will begin to cut through the thicket of mediocrity to focus on some of the few good pieces in the exhibition. (more…)

We spent just two days at Documenta 12 before getting out of town to visit more interesting exhibitions. During our time in Kassel we trawled through Museum Fridericianum, Aue-Pavillon, Documenta Halle, Neue Galerie, and Schloß Wilhelmshöhe, which is pretty well everything. This year’s Documenta was quite as big as the 2002 Documenta, but the 2002 exhibition was beautifully curated and I remember I spent five days savouring the work. This year the experience was highly disappointing almost to the point of insult. If you really have to go and see for yourself, then try to get through the Fridericianum and the Aue-Pavillon in one day, by then you should be ready to leave town as soon as possible. We headed off to Karlsruhe to ZKM and I would recommend that, because it was richer even than Muenster (which is definitely good) which we went to later.

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This exhibition begins forcefully and ends on a whimper. The first works one encounters are without a doubt the best: 1st Light, 2005 and 2nd Light, 2006. The problem with the rest of the exhibition is that these two works say it all. The rest of the exhibits reiterate and progressively inflate and dilute the initial impact right up to the final whimper of 4th Light which casts itself over a pathetic charcoal drawing and literalises to death the motifs so beautifully and lyrically handled in 1st Light and 2nd Light. We find that Chan wasn’t really ready to fill up the Serpentine, and certainly revealed the weaknesses in his young oeuvre in trying to do so. But rather than dwelling on negatives we can focus instead on the really good works in this exhibition. (more…)

 Originally published in Eyeline contemporary art magazine, Australia, October, 2002

I was told that there was a ‘lot of film’ at Documenta. After seeing it for myself I would prefer to use the term ‘photomedia’ (embracing videography, world wide web, digital art, graphic design, books and other print media that employ reprographic imagery). After Walter Benjamin we are well aware of how powerful photomedia can be, and in many instances, although by no means all, the photomedia-art at Documenta was powerful and sophisticated, mainly due to its ability to convey information. This was a very political Documenta but more interestingly it was an exhibition that showed ways in which political art can combine an interaction with life praxis with a highly creative use of media. In this sense Documenta 11 indicated how far politically oriented art has evolved since the political pop art produced by New York artists such as Barbara Kruger and Hans Haacke in the late 1970s and 1980s. (more…)