artintelligence

I found Manon De Boer’s contribution to the 5th Berlin Biennial Two Times 4′33″, 2007-8 significant not because I liked it—I thought it was tedious—but because it is an especially clear sign of the degeneration of conceptual art into pretentiousness, self-absorption, and repetition. This was not a work of art at all, it was a non-musical, non-performance with a banal attempt at art tacked on at the end. (more…)

The most interesting works, in my opinion, at the KW institute—and indeed the Biennial as a whole—were videos and I have already posted on two. The next work I would like to treat is by Patricia Esquivias it is entitled Folklore #1, 2006. DVD 15min.  This video is intriguing due to its mixture of  anthropology, memory and absurdism.  (more…)

One of the stranger pieces exhibited in the Italian pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale was Mario Garcia Torres’ What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides), 2004-2006. This work consists of 50 black-and-white slides which advance slowly into one another via a dissolve effect, the whole show lasting nine minutes. At Venice the projection was very dark which intensified the notion that these images had possibly been discovered in a shoebox.

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Hu Xiaoyuan’s installation A keepsake I cannot give away, 2005, (photo-detail on left by Michael J. Hussman) was given a great deal of prominence in Documenta 12 and for good reason, she is a genuine discovery. The only previous exhibition I can find for her is in 2005: Mahjong–Chinesische Gegenwartskunst (Chinese Contemporary Art) at the Kunstmuseum Bern (Artfacts). I have criticised the curation of Documenta 12 because a lot of work on exhibition either wasn’t very visually inspiring or was presented with such minimal labelling that crucial contextual information was kept from the audience. This was not really the case for Hu Xiaoyuan’s work although, given that she was a new name, a little more context than the no frills–name, title, date, medium, size–label would have been welcome. (more…)

Rebecca Horn’s Der Zwinger was a rerun of a site-specific, immersive installation Horn had contributed to a previous Munster Sculpture Project and which was resurrected for the 2007 Sculpture Project. The venue was an historic building and part of the documentation accompanying the exhibition included a photograph of the building from the Nazi era, the caption for the photograph draws the viewer’s attention to the swastika in the front window. (more…)