The New York neighbourhood of East Village has over the years spawned cultural phenomena of the most diverse character, being a seedbed of punk, hip hop, experimental theatre, Warhol superstars and, most famously, the Beat generation. And it has also given us Saul Leiter (1923-2013), a photographer and a painter, whose work is as singular …
Continue reading "Saul Leiter at the Photographer’s Gallery"
'To understand this tension, we need to return to the original meaning of the word 'emancipation': emergence from a state of minority. This state of minority...is, in principle, the same thing as the 'harmonious fabric of community',...[a] community...where everyone is in their place, their class, taken up with the duty allocated to them, and equipped …
In the times when possible terrorist attacks and the effects of the migration crisis are making their marks on people’s perception of national and personal security, a recent symposium at Turner Contemporary in Margate addressed the notion of risk and its manifestations as channelled through the works currently on view in the gallery. Organized …
'This capacity to see better is the reverse side of mortal danger.' Harun Farocki: Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (Images of the World and the Insctiption of War, 1989)
I would like to share today one of the most important thoughts that I came across in my philosophy classes at secondary school. Despite his peculiar personality and ritualized life (and some of his statements about women, such as 'A woman is embarrassed little that she does not possess certain high insights; that she is …
'All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors.' (Jacques Lacan) Kimsooja: To Breathe is on between 26 Oct 2015 and 4 Jan 2016 at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France.
decency is a relative thing even your family can betray you fake or real indifference is a powerful personal weapon humanism is obsolete it's better to be naive than jaded lack of charisma can be fatal moderation kills the spirit people are nuts if they think they are important talking is used to hide one's …
Federico Lorca's 1929 poem as found in Luis Bunuel's My Last Sigh: Cielo azul Campo amarillo Monte azul Campo amarillo Por la llanura desierta Va caminando un olivo Un solo Olivo. Blue sky Yellow field Blue mountain Yellow field On the empty plain Waves an olive tree Just one Olive tree.
I'm told you raised your hand against yourself Anticipating the butcher After eight years in exile, observing the rise of the enemy Then at last, brought up against an impassable barrier You passed, they say, a passable one. Empires collapse. Gang leaders Are strutting about like statesmen. The People Can no longer be seen under …
Continue reading "Bertold Brecht: On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B"
Slowly perusing my copy of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin's Holy Bible (it's not what it seems), I came across a photograph of two Asian women who are about to kiss. Underneath, a sentence is underlined in red pen: '[But] I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage …
Among the unrelenting discussion on the consequences of the capitalist production, consumerism and materialist character of today’s world has come an exhibition of understated photographs that deal with issues right from the opposite side of the spectrum. Shirley Baker’s (1932-2014) black and white and colour images of the lives affected by British post-war industrialism bring …
Continue reading "Shirley Baker: Women, Children and Loitering Men"
'Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.' (Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost quoted by Claudia Molitor, p.21) 'Oh, the joys of travel! To feel the excitement of sudden departure, not always knowing whither. Surely you and I are …
Continue reading "Excerpts from ‘Sonorama’ by Claudia Molitor"
Reinforcing the recently discussed notion of the permeable boundary between the real and the imaginary, there has been another work of art probing this territory, installed about a year ago in the Crystal Palace in Madrid. Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster's piece, called Splendide Hotel (2014), occupied space of the 19th-century building in the form of numerous rocking …
Continue reading "‘I is an other’ or Quietly Immersive World of ‘Splendide Hotel’"
Young Parisian photographer Guillaume Amat has recently completed a series called Open Fields in which he photographed natural and industrial landscapes of his home country while using a mirror placed in the centre of the scenes, resulting in beautifully composed, surreal images: Amat’s concept explores the ‘nature’ of spaces as well as the photographic medium itself. By …
'The distribution of the squares followed the irregular contours on the ground, and they were placed in a random parallel direction. Bits of earth spilled onto the surfaces, thus sabotaging the perfect reflections of the sky.' 'In the side of a heap of crushed limestone the twelve mirrors were cantilevered in the midst of large …
Continue reading "Extracts from Robert Smithson’s essay ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan’"
Christian Boltanski: Les Bougies P.S.- Boltanski's In the Blink of an Eye is currently on at Cricoteka (Krakow, Poland) in which the French artist creates a site-specific installation 'involv[ing] laying grass and cut flowers over the gallery’s floor' : http://www.news.cricoteka.pl/christian-boltanski-so-quick-tak-szybko/ This way, he stages yet another exploration into the binary of life and death- nature's …
One of the most reputable modern museums puts on a show of one of the least known artists of that era and...it is time. The first painting of Agnes Martin (1912-2004) that I have ever come across was Garden (1964) - a large canvas covered in a painstaking regularity of intersecting red and green lines that an …
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