Photography (Photography)

In Are You Lonely Mr. Claus? , a bottle of whiskey, a red rose, a lit cigarette, and an assembly of kitschy Christmas memorabilia (Santa’s hat, a sugar cane) are displayed side-by-side with artifacts that denote some sort of (typically Californian?) summer leisure time (sea shells, sun block and goggles).

Film & Video (Film & Video)

After Reality is a video by Zhou Tao, which was born out of his residency with the Kadist Foundation in Paris in 2012-13. Prior to arriving to the residency, the artist had begun filming in in Guangzhou, China, capturing footage of the lush vegetation from the semi-wild and semi-urbanized zones of Guangzhou’s urban fringe and a group of Dragon Boat rowers training in the adjacent river. As he arrived in Paris, he was confronted with the radical difference with which Europeans arrange and organize environments: the highly manicured cityscapes of Paris in stark contrast with the overgrown abundance of Guangzhou.

Painting (Painting)

Arima’s free brushstrokes gesture towards traditions in Expressionist painting, and Ticket could be seen as an attempt at “pure painting” in which the aesthetics of the medium supersede content. But if his portraits resist social commentary, they nonetheless challenge conventional standards of beauty through a decided embrace of decayed forms and colors. Inspired by underground creative cultures, his paintings have the slipshod spontaneity of graffiti and other types of street art.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Audra Knutson’s work, The Death , is a hand-pulled linocut print inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge . Set in what appears to be a pathway inside a small town, the scene features two central figures: a man seated on a chair with a skull on his lap, and a girl writing the message ‘voilà votre mort, monsieur’ on a nearby wall. The girl’s message echoes the expression in the man’s face, who appears resigned or as described by Knutson “accepting death or a monotony in living, and not embracing beauty.” The large areas of solid ink in contrast with the delicate linework create a sense of theatricality and drama, and add to the mysterious and surreal nature of the scene.

Painting (Painting)

Arima’s free brushstrokes gesture towards traditions in Expressionist painting. As with the acrylic painting Ticket (also 2015), Person in Red Sweater could be seen as an attempt at “pure painting” in which the aesthetics of the medium supersede content. But if his portraits resist social commentary, they nonetheless challenge conventional standards of beauty through a decided embrace of decayed forms and colors.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Audra Knutson’s work The Oblivion was carved and printed in conjunction with the print The Death . Also a hand-printed linocut, many of the details in this work are based on photocopies of images sourced by the artist from her local library. At the time she was making these works, she recalls looking at ‘beautiful, sad, timeless and stark photographs taken in old-work segments of Europe and being influenced by their aesthetic and emotional gravitas.

Performance (Performance)

In Fiction on Auction , the site of the auction is used to stage a fiction where the right to appear as character in Looking for Headless is offered to the highest bidder: the name of the successful biddder as registered for the auction will form the name or identity of the character appearing in the novel. Looking for Headless is written by the fictitious author K. D and tells the story of two artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby who collaborate with an author, John Barlow. Goldin and Senneby investigate an offshore company on the Bahamas called Headless Ltd whilst Barlow writes a docu-fictional murder-mystery, also called Headless, based on these investigations.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Meeting #100 is one in a series of text works by Jonathan Monk. In this series, the artist attempts to organize meetings somewhere in the world. The audience is given the details of a meeting—the place, date and time—and nothing more.