art

SLEEK 60

7 December 2018 in Magazines Comment

The last four decades have been a rollercoaster in self-care jargon. Type “self-care” into Amazon, and hundreds of books appear with cloying names like You Are a Badass and Women Who Love Too Much. It’s easy to forget in our era of millennial self-care-as-a-badge-of-honour, that in the Seventies, it was a buzzword for the desperate. Despite self-care now being one of the most popular hashtags on Instagram, as a chaotic 2018 looms to a close, the idea of bubble baths or cancelling plans as routes to self-actualisation is beginning to look a little shallow.

In this issue of SLEEK we wanted to explore self-help. But instead of recommending the perfect perfume or the best film to watch for a night on the sofa, we’re casting a side-eye at a worrying cultural phenomenon.

FEATURING

Photographer and Instagram icon Nadia Lee’s portfolio looking at our contemporary obsession with the self
“Just Listen” an exploration of the work of human rights investigator and audio artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Man Booker prize longlisted author Sophie Mackintosh’s self-help inspired short story
An essay on “The Cult of Self-Care” by Kieran Yates
Profiles on the London artists fighting austerity and elitism in the art world
An interview with Los-Angeles based artist Martine Syms on her prodigious 2018 and her upcoming exhibitions in 2019
A profile on the religious influencer @jstlbby, beloved by the likes of Grace Wales Bonner and Naomi Campbell
One of SLEEK’s favourite photographers Ruth Ossai’s exclusive cabinet portfolio “9ja” shot in Lagos, Anamabra and Enugu State in Nigeria

Sleek Magazine

Martin Eder — Parasites

19 November 2018 in Books Comment

Martin Eder — Parasites
Hardback
2018

148pp 315 x 240 mm (13 x 10 inches)
Text by Hugh Allan and Jane Neal
Conversation with Thomas Girst
Published by Other Criteria Books
ISBN 978-1-906967-96-3

Martin Eder’s paintings are dominated by a shifting palette of vivid colour and hyperreal depictions of contrasting textures. His subjects, which range from oversized pets to nude men and women, question received ideas of value, taste, and ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. Published to accompany the largest solo exhibition to date for the German artist, held at Newport Street Gallery, London (September 2018 – January 2019), this hardback presents a selection of Eder’s work from the past fourteen years, with installation shots. Also included is text by Jane Neal and curator Hugh Allan, and a conversation between Eder and author Thomas Girst.

Other Criteria

Eric Fischl — If Art Could Talk

23 June 2018 in Books Comment

Eric Fischl: If Art Could Talk
Mousse Publishing

2018
English
128 pages
Hardcover, 20 × 25.5 cm
ISBN: 9788867493326

Texts by Peter Doroshenko, Eric Fischl

“I am one of the first generation artists who grew up in the suburbs. We grew up, post-WWII, in an ascendant America in which the suburbs was its utopian manifestation. We came into our art maturity painfully aware of the disconnection between what was promised and what was delivered.”
—Eric Fischl

Eric Fischl (New York, 1948) is one of only a handful of contemporary painters who regularly, though by no means exclusively, employs sourced images, culled from the internet, newspapers, and magazines, to inform his paintings. The artist then adds his own photographs and blends a final ensemble of information and storytelling. No kings or generals or momentous battles move across Fischl’s canvases, and most of his subjects are quotidian rather than grandiose—suburban bourgeois families, art world mongers and awkward social interactions. In his works, communication is nonexistent and boredom is pervasive. The book, published on the occasion of a solo show held at Dallas Contemporary museum, includes more than 120 painting reproductions and a conversation between Eric Fischl and Peter Doroshenko.

Mousse Publishing

Mousse 64

17 June 2018 in Magazines Comment

Mousse 64
Summer 2018

Mousse Magazine

CURA. 28 — The Ultimate Body Issue

16 June 2018 in Magazines Comment

CURA. 28
The Ultimate Body Issue

Our yearlong investigation into the body continues
CURA. 28 is devoted to different artistic experiences and practices—crossing generations, time, space, and media—revolving around the boundaries, powers, forms and interpretations of the body that exist within the present world.

What’s more

Bodies on the cover
A double cover by artists Amalia Ulman and Hannah Levy is presented by texts from Travis Diehl and Kat Herriman. In Ulman’s work the body—her body—is both the protagonist of a relentless re-enactment and a means to question the boundaries between illusion and truth. Levy’s sculptural installations and performances explore the figure and its politics through the objects we surround ourselves with.

Body of Work
Vincent Honoré’s conversation with Lynn Hershman Leeson provides an opportunity to delve into the artist’s multiform production, capable of creating a bridge between the political movements of the ’60s and the most contemporary themes of technology and science. Prem Sahib and Celia Hempton have been invited to reflect visually on their “body of work,” creating links between their own artistic production and the images which shape their personal imaginary: their visual essays are introduced by Huw Lemmey and Kathy Noble.

Political Bodies
Three essays reflect on the body from different perspectives: the dancing body, the loving body, and the collective body. Manuel Segade writes about the practice of voguing and radical performance, analyzing, amongst other examples, Charles Atlas’ major work Butchers’ Vogue and Glenn Ligon’s Condition Report; Fiona Alison Duncan talks about her project Pillow Talk, intended as a platform to discuss sex, gender, and love in our discomforting, novel, and wild time; finally Penny Rafferty interprets a selection of artistic collectives, examining their modes of production and communication tactics.

The Conversations
Anna Gritz enters into a dialogue with Sidsel Meineche Hansen about her ongoing research on sex dolls and robots; Piper Marshall’s 25 questions are this time addressed to Madeline Hollander, who explains the processes and concerns at the heart of her choreographic performances; while Margot Norton retraces with Anna K.E. the pivotal moments of the artist’s production, from her early video works to her most recent installations.

What’s HOT!
The HOT! section is devoted to a series of artists who—using different media and working in a variety of contexts—focus on the body as a subject, a theme, a key to understand the structure and the mechanisms of the surrounding world: Aria Dean is presented by Attilia Fattori Franchini; Louis Fratino by Alex Bennett; Young Joon Kwak by Ceci Moss; Julien Ceccaldi by Whitney Mallett; Stine Deja by Alice Bucknell; Paul Mpagi Sepuya by Nikki Darling; Yu Ji by Todd Von Ammon; D S Chapman by Micol Hebron; Nabuqi by Loïc Le Gall.

You can find CURA. 28 “The Ultimate Body Issue” in the best international bookshops in Italy and abroad, order your copy on CURA. website or find it at Art Basel (June 14–17). Or… stop by BASEMENT ROMA and buy one.

CURA. 28

CURA. 27

21 February 2018 in Magazines Comment

CURA. 27 Issue is out now!

A brand-new yearlong investigation aims to bring us into the sinuous folds of the body: body as a revolutionary field, as a space for antagonism and freedom, as an area of self-definition, questioning new identities, gender, race, and humanity. Body/antibody dichotomy expresses the relation between presence and absence, disclosure and concealment, materiality and virtuality.

Featuring a cover by George Henry Longly, launched for the event of his solo show at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the curator Adélaïde Blanc investigates the strategies by which Longly questions presentation systems and visual codes; while Milovan Farronato focuses upon the artist’s work on epidermal surfaces, Lucia Pietroiusti initiates a discourse on implosion, collapse, and fall. All texts explore the complexity of Longly’s work, creating an intense dialogue with a series of enigmatic masks, created especially for the occasion.

Starting his new section, Mathieu Copeland talks about anti-bodies within the body of art institutions; in dialogue with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Barbara Hammer explains how the human body can become a space of freedom, action, and disruption; Vincent Honoré speaks with Eleanor Antin about her seminal work, CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture (1972), and her recent CARVING: 45 Years Later (2017); Ellen Blumenstein’s seven exemplary artworks, here accompanying Kate Cooper’s images, reflect upon the body as “an interface in which subject and collectivity meet and the scenario in which the relationship between the two elements is negotiated”; Ben Vickers’ conversation with Kenric McDowell extends their dialogue on the AI and the broader impact and cooperation between human and machine; Marianna Simnett, introduced by Maitreyi Maheshwari, presents a visual essay of bodies and their relation to abjection, horror and monstrosity.

The series of conversations continues with Donna Huanca and Venus Lau, discussing the skin and body as sculpted, painted and performed; Chris Sharp examines the corporeal materiality and flexibility of ektor garcia’s work; Piper Marshall’s 25 questions to Eric N. Mack help us identify the main interests of his research on tactile assemblages; fabrics are also the focus of the young artist and designer, Lou Dallas, interviewed by Fiona Alison Duncan; Manuel Solano is the protagonist of an intimate dialogue with João Mourão and Luís Silva, in which he reveals the profound reasons behind a performative work where body is exposed, transformed, and reimagined.

The new series of portraits introduce four different approaches to themes of racial, sexual, and anatomical identities: Wu Tsang—by Noemi Y. Molitor—Christina Quarles—with Claudia Mattos—Andrea Crespo —with Alise Upitis—and Tabita Rezaire—by Oulimata Gueye.

The HOT! section is devoted to three hot artists: Cooper Jacoby (introduced by Annie Godfrey Larmon), Carly Mark (by Katja Horvat), and Nicholas Cheveldave (by Lennart Wolff).

The first issue of CLUBBING fanzine, guest-edited by Martha Kirszenbaum, is also launched on the occasion of CURA. #27, including Dick Jewell with Jesse McKee, Fleur Breteau’s extract, Samuel Kirszenbaum photos, and an original downloadable mix by Palestinian DJ SAMA. The fanzine is available for the international distribution and subscribers only.

Get Cura. 27