The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it. The work consists of a mirrored structure with a hidden motor that vibrates every so often. In this play of mirrors, the viewer first encounters their reflection, but in time the vibration distorts the image, making self-recognition impossible and suggesting the fragility of identity. Flutter ’s reflective surfaces also evoke the architecture of office buildings that shake just so in an earthquake. The sidewalk is a built environment and a social space rife with extreme fragility and it exposes economic inequity and systemic racism writ large. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the compounding forces of COVID-19 and the climate crisis have spurred a seismic shift in social life. Storefront windows, as across the country, have become a contentious space further driving apart the public and the private. During protests and social uprisings, boarded up windows of the former shells of buildings are transformed into political and collective murals and communal vision boards, reclaiming the sidewalk. Abdalian reflects in 2023 the conditions surrounding Flutter: Flutter was conceived as a context-responsive installation at a gallery in downtown Oakland, CA, during the summer of 2010 as residents braced for the verdict in the case of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who murdered Oscar Grant. In windows that face a pedestrian walkway, mirrored mylar quivers, ripples, and shakes in response to subaudio sine sweeps transmitted through tactile transducers. The actuated surface of the mirror visibly destabilizes the environment in which the work is situated, reflecting a status quo open to rupture. Installed in 2023 in San Francisco’s Mission District, the unstable image reflected in Flutter belies the relative calm pictured at KADIST’s 20th Street location. Banks are liquidated, layoffs are announced, and ever wider wars for capitalist profit loom. Rupture is the unavoidable expression of an unstable system. Here, viewers encounter their reflection within this process of inevitable change.
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
The work Calendars is composed of 1001 images of deserted public areas in Singapore printed on pages of a calendar set from the year of 2020 until 2096...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
The work Calendars is composed of 1001 images of deserted public areas in Singapore printed on pages of a calendar set from the year of 2020 until 2096...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
Tarantism is the name of disease which appeared in southern Italy, resulting from the bite of a spider called Tarantula...
The West Hollywood Artist Who Immortalised LA’s Golden Boys | AnOther A new exhibition in New York showcases the work of Kenneth Kendall, an artist who sculpted James Dean, Marlon Brando and more in the bohemian atmosphere of late 20th-century Los Angeles February 06, 2024 Text Miss Rosen Back in the 1950s, Hollywood’s fabled Melrose Avenue was still a sleepy street home to cabinetmakers and print shops catering to the local community...
90022 (Leonard Ave) by Guadalupe Rosales engages with memory, loss, grief, and nostalgia; themes that run throughout the artist’s practice...
Dans « Daaaaaalí ! », les inventions cinématographiques de Quentin Dupieux dignes du peintre surréaliste Cet article vous est offert Pour lire gratuitement cet article réservé aux abonnés, connectez-vous Se connecter Vous n'êtes pas inscrit sur Le Monde ? Inscrivez-vous gratuitement Article réservé aux abonnés Le peintre Salvador Dali (1904-1989), sur le toit de sa maison, à Cadaqués (Espagne), en septembre 1968...
Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
The title Untitled Passport II was first used by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in an unlimited edition of small booklets, each containing sequenced photographs of a soaring bird against an open sky...
Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...
This particular drawing, like many of Grotjahn’s works, presents a decentered single-point perspective...
Ranging from Baudelaire to the Koran, each of Hassan Massoudy’s drawings are titled with a quotation from a text...