Photography (Photography)

Custom-built for a silent film star in 1934 in Santa Monica, the Sten-Frenke House is an idiosyncratic icon. Designed by the architect Richard Neutra, its gray glass, white expanses, and simple forms exude austerity. Luisa Lambri’s photograph Untitled (Sten-Frenke House #04) (2007)recalls the unembellished elegance of the structure while also alluding to modernist painting; the image is less a picture than an abstract expanse that conveys its own flatness.

Photography (Photography)

Adrien Missika follows in the footsteps of the Brazilian landscape architect and artist Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994), a designer of gardens, parks and promenades who introduced modern landscape architecture to Brazil. Marx’s work is characterized by the use of native tropical vegetation as a structural element of design. He worked with Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa, the architects of Brazilia, and with them, the tropical plant became a motif in urban architecture.

Painting (Painting)

This is one of the most important works Schoorel has made to date, a triptych that has as its subject matter a garden scene with what looks like a pond. One of her largest works, it seems highly suited to a Parisian collection where Monet’s Nympheas in the Orangerie represent the summit of treatments of such subjects. Typically for Schoorel, the painting is as much about absence as presence and examines the amount of information the viewer needs to construct meaning.

H.2. N. Y Skeleton of the Dump revolves entirely around the performance “Homage to New York” (1960), of the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), during which the machine built by the artist in the gardens of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) had to self-destruct itself in 27 minutes, but, in the end, it had to be finished off by firemenbeing called in after it erupted in flames. Since the discovery of Jean tinguely’s retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London, in 1982, Michael Landy spent two years researching and sketching (charcoal, oil, glue, ink) from his previous research carried out at Museum Tinguely in Basel, and at the MOMA in New York.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Discrepancies with Oaxacan Textile II by Leonor Antunes is a hanging sculpture composed of three elements made of brass. This sculptural work was originally produced for the exhibition Discrepancies with Clara Porset (2018) at Museo Tamayo, which featured reassembled objects from early 20th century Cuban designer Clara Porset. Antunes’s work explores Mexican traditions through a contemporary context.

Photography (Photography)

Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis. Starling found photographs of a hang dating back to 1929, taken by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the German New Objectivity photographer. Firstly, he researched the artworks that were presented then which for the most part had been restituted or acquired by private collectors after the war.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Between 1951 and 1974, Dr. Albert M. Kligman, a professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania, oversaw medical experiments conducted on incarcerated people at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. These non­therapeutic tests ranged from athlete’s foot powders, dandruff shampoos, deodorants, and detergents, as well as more hazardous materials such as dioxin, radioactive isotopes, and mind-altering psychotropics. During his tenure at Holmesburg, Dr. Kligman worked for companies such as Johnson & Johnson, developing the acne medicine Retin-A, and for Dow Chemical Company and the U. S. Department of Defence, testing the ‘tactical herbicide’ Agent Orange.

Photography (Photography)

Comprised of fifty-one photographic postcards, Antin’s 100 Boots is an epic visual narrative in which 100 black rubber boots stand in for a fictional “hero” making a “trip” from California to New York City. Over two-and-a-half years, Antin photographed the boots against different backdrops across the U. S., and then turned the pictures into postcards, which she then mailed to approximately 1,000 people around the world. In conjunction with the boots’ “arrival” in New York City, the postcards were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art.

Installation (Installation)

Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement. Each waveform represents a syllable of the sentence “Primero estaba el mar.” This sentence is the first verse of the Kogui poem of creation. For the Koguis, an indigenous community from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Colombian Caribbean coast, water was the absolute presence before the creation of the universe.

Installation (Installation)

Each day, Yuji Agematsu smokes a pack of cigarettes and wanders the streets of New York City looking for trash. Needless to say, he finds it everywhere: bottle caps, gummed hair, translucent miscellany, sick feathers, hot pink plastics, unknown, and more. The varied bits are then constellated by the artist in cellophane cigarette wrappers—modest vitrines for his steady collecting habit.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication. In the series, Rogan alters the magazine’s pages by erasing the image of the magicians doing their tricks, leaving only the background of their performances on view. These contexts range from the more overtly staged scenario in Silencer #16 —the erased magician is about to perform a trick on his assistant trapped on an odd, almost dada looking box—to the more “colloquial” Silencer #17 in which the absent magician’s silhouette appears in what seems to be a children’s hospital.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Drowned Wood Standing Coiled (2011) consists of two sculptures, inextricably linked. In each, pieces of driftwood are bundled together vertically and entwined with rope, which cascades to the floor in a tightly wound coil. Placed side by side on the ground, these sculptures anthropomorphize into partners who are literally and figuratively bound.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory. The watercolor images on each note paper document the artist’s visits to various Chinese ‘New Villages’ in Malaysia. The studies, some in color and others in grey-scale, from this series include architectural ruins, portraits of people and animals, and groups of people in protest.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Her 2015 work Orión is a black flag-like cloth with glow-in-the-dark symbols embroidered in the shape of the constellation. In the place of stars, Martínez has substituted the logos of international corporations and entities that use stars as their symbol; celestial navigation commanded by the logic of international corporations. Easily spotted is the smiling face of the Carl’s Jr. / Hardee’s logo, the three-pronged Mercedes-Benz emblem, Walmart’s six-pointed asterisk, and the starry cluster of the Subaru shield.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

In Bodily Study of Unthinking Groups, Harrison combines two disparate materials into one stratified stack: automotive clay (used in detailing cars) forms the earthy base, while fragments of zebra skull become imbedded in this falsified soil. Harrison’s forged archeological artifact compresses two cultural contexts together: that of Africa, represented by the bleached zebra skull; and that of Detroit, the birthplace of the American car. Detroit’s Matthew Angelo Harrison works at the intersection of sculpture and technology, building his own 3D printers (which rise to the status of sculpture), and using these creations to formulate others.

Installation (Installation)

Sylbee Kim’s Unindebted Life is a single-channel video, commissioned and premiered at the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021). This work is a major production by the artist, addressing her attempts to attractively integrate and intersect elements such as bodies and minds, ancient spirituality, heterogeneity, class and capital, digital temporality, and particular aesthetics of the post-internet generation. In the work, the vitality and the movement in calligraphy motifs, revealed through the flashing light presented in the screen panels and video sequences, are related to the moment of change inherent in the body’s cell energy and living things.

Photography (Photography)

In order to make If I dig a very deep hole (2007) the artist looked for the extreme geographical opposite of Paris when drawing a straight line throughout the globe. Then, he went to this place, the Chatham Islands in New Zealand, to photograph the full moon before coming back to Paris to take a picture of that same moon. This work brings together two diametrically opposite places, two singular experiences, two different moments and the same full moon.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

East of Ukraine became a place of armed conflict with Russia-backed separatists, who proclaimed parts of (the) Donetsk and Lughansk oblast (administrative region in Ukrainian) to be ‘People’s republics’. This region, in conflict since spring 2014, is where most of the charcoal is extracted. It is with this same coal that artist Nikita Kadan realizes this drawing in 2018, representing a field on which is juxtaposed a small photograph.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Selected Scripture is a series of silkscreen prints that Hong Hao has been working on since the 1980s. The series includes 37 prints to date, each of which resemble pages of an ancient open cartography book. In this series, the artist reflects on the authoritative influence of ancient books that shape dominant understandings of the world.

Painting (Painting)

Ventana indiscreta (Rear Window) by Karen Lamassonne takes its title from Hitchcock’s renowned 1954 classic. The painting is part of Lamassinne’s Homenaje a Cali [Homage to Cali] series, developed by the artist in 1989 in a nostalgic attempt to immortalize Cali at a time in which violence from drug trafficking had rendered it unlivable, and the generation that Lamassone had lived it up with had all but dispersed. Lamassone had formally established in Cali around the middle of the decade at a time in which the hangover from the 1971 Pan-American Games and an artistic effervescence had transformed it from a provincial sleepy town into a newly discovered urban (and sexual) labyrinth, one that was fit for the artist’s own explorations around its representation.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text. The performance begins with two broad-knife-wielding characters circling each other in conventional operatic steps. Oblivious to the presence of these two on stage, additional characters, in a mix of period costume and contemporary dress, enter the stage in increasing droves to consume a various of foods laid out on a table until they collapse and pile on top of each other.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Vieques is an island off the mainland of Puerto Rico used by the U. S Navy and NATO forces as military testing ground as from the 1940s. Civil disobedience and active protest movements initiated by local inhabitants and an international support network led to the end of the bombings and progressive demilitarization in 2002.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Squid Currency is a series of 13 non-calibrated double-sided tin coins made using a casting technique dating back to Neolithic times where cuttlebones (squid bones) were carved by hand and then used as a mold. Natsuko Uchino draws on research into tin mining across the world, which takes place largely in China and Bangladesh as well as in Potosi, Bolivia where silver has been depleted due to the production of coins and other ornate riches during the 16th century Spanish Empire. Tin has a low melting point and is easily up-cycled from vessels such as measuring cups and kitchen utensils found at yard sales.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Edinburgh Castle on the Bin Bag features a model of the Edinburgh castle constructed by using shiny black cards placed on top of an open, full black plastic trash bag. The model is delicate, with detailed rendering of windows and a flagpole. Despite the negative association of black plastic trash bag, this work offers a sense of wonderment in it its scale and subject matter.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Théâtre de poche video is inspired by Arthur Lloyd / “Human Card Index”, a magician who was famous for being able to take out of his pockets any image requested by his spectators. His coat hid over 15 000 different prints. In Aurélien Froment’s work, a magician presents images by making them appear, disappear or move in space.

Textile (Textile)

The Korean title for U: Repair the cowshed after losing the cow = Too late is —a famous Korean proverb meaning “you are doing something when you are already late to do it”. This work by Seulgi Lee is a nubi (traditional Korean quilt) blanket project that shows Korean proverbs expressed as geometric shapes. Nubi blankets were used as single sheet summer blankets in Korean households until the 1980s.

Painting (Painting)

In this untitled acrylic painting, Tessa Mars explores the long-lasting effects of colonialism on the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, particularly in terms of female vulnerability and resilience. Drawing on her interest in retelling stories of her native country, and confronting the past and the present, Mars portrays her cultural essence and heritage by imagining spiritual spaces that connect people and land across time. With a pictorial practice that highlights pastel colors, the divinisation of the figures on the canvas and the spiritual elements within the composition ultimately enhance the narrative of her Caribbean ancestry while conflating the distinctions between autobiographical and historical events.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

“There is a tapestry of sounds around us.” – Tania Candiani Tania Candiani has long been interested in Acoustic Ecology: the study of relationships between humans and our environment mediated through sound. A poetic text by Candiani narrated by writer and MacArthur fellow Josh Kun is featured in this three-channel video, For the Animals. The artist carried out visual research for the project: scanning, sampling and borrowing from books, vintage videos and images of material that informed her process.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In “Untitled II (Mapping text)”, 2009, Langa abstracts language in an attempt to change the familiar into the absurd. With reference to comic speech bubbles, Langa combines in a sea of blue gouache a series of nuanced references to identity and politics with “Black Maria” alongside nostalgic and subtle phrases such as “mom be with me, I need u now” and “I didn’t listen.” Through this gathering of references “Untitled II (Mapping text)” forges a poetic and vulnerable site to engage with his personal experiences while simultaneously suggesting the senseless structure of language. This work resonates to larger world of art, politics and popular culture through layering assorted references, piling up meanings that are cryptic and ambivalent, yet resonant with multiple interpretations.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Victory at Sea is a simple mechanism made from cardboard and found materials that mimics the Phenakistoscope, an early cinematic apparatus. The piece requires the viewer to turn a wheel and look through a small hole in order to see a briefly animated succession of small drawings of sailors.