Installation (Installation)

In a 2002 Pentagon press conference, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addressed a question about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction with an unforgettable evasion: there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, the latter being the most precarious. In a trilogy of nearly identical sculptures by A. K. Burns, the artist conjures the same string of word compounds on a metal gate nearly 15 years after Rumsfeld’s infamous statement. Resembling ubiquitous black fences across New York City, Unknown Unknown presents the paradox of this statement as a physical division and linguistic deviation, acting jointly as both a threshold and obstacle.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Tectonic Model is made from a number of leather bound books piled up in different formations that resemble architecture on top of a sawhorse desk. Tiny cranes of about ten centimetres in height are attached to the top of the books, which have their tassels laid out. The intricately balanced arrangements, with some books standing free and upright, gives the impression that the cranes might have stacked the books themselves by lifting the tassels.

Painting (Painting)

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. Entitled “Bibliography (1): The Lonely Ones,” the list outlines representations of solitude that has been imposed on individuals or communities. Chong divides these archetypes into three over-arching notions: the Hide-away, the Castaway and the Prisoner.

Painting (Painting)

Simon & Gus by Bobo is a binaural and fantastical artwork that tells the story of a sea steading maker-hobbyist as told from the perspective of an arduino board, and a mars dwelling stop motion animator as told from the perspective of a stop motion armature. The stop motion animator attends an artist residency on the red planet, and eventually sets out to start his own artist colony (a martian animation studio) with stupefying hubris. The result has disastrous consequences, with the martian ghosts eventually swallowing his soul, and his armature gaining full access to the animator’s motor skills and control of his ability to move.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The installation Infinity and Infinity Plus One by Cao Shu is a modern fable of destruction, collective consciousness, and future memory told through the lens of a seaside hotel erected in the 1990s on an island in China. Combining 3D-rendered images and shot footage, the work travels through a seemingly-unlimited number of rooms, infinite corridors, and breathtaking viewpoints on site. Meanwhile, an official voiceover tells an absurd story about philosophy and mathematics in the form of a monologue.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

In this work, Saâdane Afif quotes André Cadere’s round wooden batons using the copy share and remix principles. Cadere’s sculptures, batons constituted with a mathematical chain of painted wood segments containing one error in the succession of colors, can be presented according to any possible configuration (on the wall, floor, hung or not). In the catalogue documenting the project, Power chords, there is a facsimile (another type of quotation) of one of Cadere’s conferences: “Présentation d’un travail, utilisation d’un travail” (presentation of a work, use of a work).

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Jeep Comics is based on the second of only two issues published by RB Leffingwell and Company in 1944–45. Though largely unknown, their protagonists, Jeep and Peep, embody the ethos of “Golden Age” comic books in which magically empowered heroes triumph over evils to boost patriotic enthusiasm.

Installation (Installation)

Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials. One of the nine parts of this work is Page 22 (Half Folded Library) , a site-specific installation for which Pak covertly folded dog-ears on page 22 of every second book (a total of approximately 15,500 books) in the 58th Street Branch Library in Manhattan. By claiming it as a “solo exhibition,” Pak intentionally turned a public institution into a private and personal museum where his works are more or less a “permanent collection.” Being open-ended as far as further interpretation (or not) by readers who encounter the folded pages, the project tests the political and social potential of personal gestures in the public realm.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Do ut des (2009) is part of an ongoing series of books that Castillo Deball has altered with perforations, starting from the front page and working inward, forming symmetrical patterns when each spread is opened. The books belong to O Mundo dos Museus (The World of Museums), a collection conceived by the Brazilian designer Eugênio Hirsch in the 1970s. More than simply a catalogue of artworks, each offers the reader a promenade through a different world museum and its functioning, starting with photo reportage of the building, its urban landscape and architecture, the management and restoration of works, and visitors walking though the galleries.

Photography (Photography)

Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years. While exploration was mainly a matter of geography during the 19th century, the 20th century brought the mental exploration of our unconscious, triggered by the discovery of psychoanalysis. Koester is interested in documenting minor events, forgotten by History, in order to reintroduce them into collective memory.

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 the pages of an ancient cartography book. In this series, the artist reflects on the authoritative influence of ancient books that shape dominant understandings of the world.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

“The Lebanese wars of the past three decades affected Lebanon’s residents physically and psychologically: from the hundred thousand plus who were killed; to the two hundred thousand plus who were wounded; to the million plus who were displaced; to the even more who were psychologically traumatized. Needless to say, the wars also affected Lebanese cities, buildings and institutions. It is clear to me today that these wars also affected colours, lines, shapes and forms.

Painting (Painting)

The impressionistic surface of Wild Money (2017) recalls the 1950s paintings of Philip Guston. Its creases recall human skin, while the filigree pattern of red skeins implies what lies beneath. The body is fully implicated in this work.

Photography (Photography)

Arms & Legs (Specif. Elbows & Knees), etc. : Arm (with Bottle) belongs to Baldessari’s most recent series of paintings in which the artist brings together photographic, painted, and three-dimensional elements, to juxtapose unlikely body fragments such as noses and ears, elbows and knees, or eyebrows and foreheads.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The voids in Baldessari’s painted photographs are simultaneously positive and negative spaces, both additive and subtractive. In Person with Pillow: Desire, Lust, Fate , a woman’s facial expression is obscured by such void, leaving only her posture to suggest her emotional state. The two images stacked above the woman can be read as comic-style thought bubbles, intimating that she has lust, desire, and fate on her mind.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Like many of Dr. Lakra’s works, Cortes y la malinche is a drawing done on a found vintage magazine page. The text at the bottom of the page, “reclinandose inocentemente sobre el regazo de Hernan-Cortés,” translates to, “reclining innocently in the lap of Hernan Cortés,” and refers to the Spanish conquistador who brought down the Aztec empire. Malinche was a native Mexican who served both as Cortés’s translator in both the Mayan and Aztec languages, as well as his lover.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Shahbazi’s early drawings in the series “Oh No…” are reminiscent of comic strips or children’s coloring books. Subjects are rendered graphically and set against flat solid colors. The origin of these drawings is a mix of her own collection of images and the Arab Image Foundation’s collection in Beirut, Lebanon.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The photographic quality of the film Baobab is not only the result of a highly sophisticated use of black and white and light, but also of the way in which each tree is characterized as an individual, creating in the end a series of portraits. The monumental and unnatural aspect of the baobabs turns them into strange and anthropomorphic personalities. Adding to the descriptive aspect of the film, the sound is a recording of the environment, of sounds made by animals, and participates in this peaceful contemplation.

Painting (Painting)

Figueiredo’s succinct forms are rendered in bright hues of yellow, red, green, and blue, with white and black defining positive and negative spaces within the overall geometry. His Revelos are part painting, part relief, and part sculpture—they separate from the wall, creating spatial complexities within their bounds, and imply movement through the simplicity of their shapes. Though based on the shape of a simple square, each Revelo animates beyond that limitation, the folded and layered canvas sheets, the cuts and slices of contrasting paints creating movement from stasis.