CODEX at LiveInYourHead, Geneva ( 07.10-28.10.11) by Estelle Nabeyrat

  Everything in the world exists to end up in a book. (1) Codex was an exhibition and a series of three public presentations that took place last October in the outdoor gallery of the Head Geneva (School of Art and Design, Geneva). Codex had both one and many objects and goals; the main one […]

Simon Starling The Inaccessible Poem, Fondazione Merz, Torino, by Martha Kirszenbaum

The Inaccessible Poem is an exhibition conceived by Turner-Prize winner British artist Simon Starling. It is Starling’s first initiative in Italy, taking place at Fondazione Merz in Turin, a 1930s industrial building housing the collection of works by one of Arte Povera’s major figures, Mario Merz. The institution regularly stages exhibitions based on the research and […]

MEDITAÇÃO, TRANSE at Galeria Mendes Wood, São Paulo (27.08-24.09.2011) by Marta Mestre

MEDITAÇÃO, TRANSE is a group show that has just opened in Mendes Wood, one of the most interesting young galleries of Jardins, a neighborhood of São Paulo. Founded in 2009 with a careful selection of artists– from the Brazilian Tunga to the Catalan Daniel Steegmann– Mendes Wood presents a program, which according to the gallerists, […]

IT’S KINDA MAGIC – Hextacy, with Anna Særnblom and Charlie Roberts (28.10 – 6.11 2011) by Geir Haraldseth

Halloween was just around the corner and Tidens Krav, one of the many artist-run spaces in Oslo, invited the good people of the city to Hextacy, an exhibition by Anna Særnblom and Charlie Roberts, two artists based in Oslo. The two have previously collaborated as members of Freedom, an alternative country outfit, and now as […]

Objective Confess at Golden Gallery, Chicago (23.09-5.11.2011) by Alaina Claire Feldman

This fall, Chicago’s Golden Gallery presents Objective Confess, the first solo exhibition by artist Anthea Behm. The works in this exhibition situate the historical relations of modern art and the modern museum, the conceptual vicissitudes of art history and visual studies, oppositions of high and low, elite and popular and the recent controversies of intellectual property somewhere […]

All I Can See is the Management at Gasworks, London (7.10 – 11.12.2011) by Anja Isabel Schneider

All I Can See is the Management, Gaswork’s current exhibition brings together works that explore the concerns of labor politics from the 1970s until today. In addition, the show underlines the continuously fading boundaries between life and work, as poignantly illustrated in the September issue of last year’s Texte zur Kunst. ‘Life at work’ takes […]

CURATING FOR EXAMPLE On radio and transient curatorial practice in Colombia, Morocco and elsewhere. by Natalia Valencia

  Sitting in an improvised radio station in a modernist apartment in Medellín this past August, Colombian curator Juan A. Gaitán, Moroccan curator Abdellah Karroum and myself started a conversation that was recorded with an unfit microphone, an omnidirectional device that captured every sound in the room, instead of just our voices. The curators had […]

Some activities at Hard Hat: A HR Giger show, a Stephen O’Malley concert and new members. by Jeanne Graff

  1971: Giger’s exhibition is held at Bruno Bishofsberger in Zürich. 1979: Ridley Scott’s Alien is released worldwide. Since then: 1.3 teenager out of 7 has a HR Giger Poster in his bedroom.  Posters, films, photos, sculptures and all kinds of gadgets: HR Giger is the most pop, and certainly the most famous of all […]

Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial) by Fatima Hellberg

Titles have a stubborn tendency to stick, which is why the desire to call yourself something different is so interesting. A term that increasingly has entered curatorial jargon is that of ‘exhibition maker’. To ‘make’ rather than curate a show seems to hint at a more embodied relationship with labor, even a sense of craft […]

CONTINUUM_THE PERCEPTION ZONE Curated by Maria Arusoo at Tallinn Art Hall (25.08—2.10.2011) by Aliina Astrova

In the context of the post-Duchampian condition identified by the lack of “‘ontological’ difference between making art and displaying art”, Boris Groys defines the role of the curator as a mediator between the public space and the work of art (Politics of Installation, 2010). For him, the word “curate” is “etymologically related to ‘cure’: to […]

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE DAMNED at Landings Project Space (Arena), Curated by Fatima Hellberg and Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz at Vestfossen (31.07.-28.08.2011) by Gerd Elise Mørland

Performed (dis)organisation as running force Using the comprehensive archive of self-organized initiatives and manifestos put together by Tranzit.org for Manifesta 8 in Murcia last year, the two London-based curators Fatima Hellberg and Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz have created an admirably well-curated exhibition that discusses the importance of performativity and irrationality in such initiatives.

Honza Zamojski Me, Myself and I at Galeria Leto and Bookie at Piktogram Warsaw by Martha Kirszenbaum

  Honza Zamojski’s solo exhibition Me, Myself and I and his curated book-installation Bookie is constituted by a two-part project presented at Leto Gallery and in the office of Piktogram Magazine. Both institutions share a recently opened space inside a renovated industrial building nicknamed “Soho Factory” and are located in the Warsaw neighborhood of Praga. […]

ANARCHISTIC BOY SCOUTS – Squid, The Parallel Action (July to August 2011) at Kunsthall Oslo, Norway by Geir Haraldseth

Alternative modes of education, dealing with strategies of dissemination when it comes to language, knowledge and power, often with an anarchistic tint have become staples of the artistic community since the late ’60s. The Norwegian collective the Parallel Action have offered marathon seminars, stretching over the 37 ½ hours of the weekly workload for a […]

GONE WITH THE WIND at Raven Row, London (9.06 – 17.07.2011) by Anja Isabel Schneider

        An exhibition investigating sound art, curated by Ed Baxter, Gone with the Wind pays tribute to the pioneering work of Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi, and Walter Marchetti. Despite its overplayed title (here, alluding to one of Eastley’s sound installation employing nature’s forces of wind), the group show offers a compelling selection of recent and […]

NOBODY CAN TELL THE WHY OF IT Curated by Esperanza Rosales at 1857, Oslo (27.05 – 14.08.2011) by Geir Haraldseth

  SET, READY, GO The artist run scene in Oslo has gone haywire during the past few years. New spaces have opened up on a monthly basis and spawned countless versions of a similar mold of the artist run aesthetic. Run-down, all about the party, and with a certain machismo. There’s always an exception and […]

ANNA OSTOYA, Autopis I, II and III: Notes, Copies and Masterpieces at Galeria Foksal (Warsaw), tegenboschvanvreden (Amsterdam) and Silberkuppe (Berlin) by Martha Kirszenbaum

  “Autopis: Notes, Copies and Masterpieces” is a multiform traveling exhibition by Polish, New York-based artist Anna Ostoya, presented in three parts and three locations over the past few months. In Warsaw, Amsterdam (curated by Michal Jachula) and more recently Berlin, the artist has developed a singular body of re-appropriated works, organized around a precise […]

LASER/DISC/SCRATCH/DESTRUCTION by Raphael Montañez Ortiz Curated by Pedro Reyes at Labor, Mexico City (05.04 to 27.05.2011) by Natalia Valencia

  Unconscious integrity  In this exhibition, artist Pedro Reyes stages a moving and coherent homage to Raphael Montañez Ortiz (Born in NYC in 1934, of Puerto Rican, Yaqui and Irish descent), artist, educator and writer, creator of the Destructivist Manifesto (1957) and founder of El Museo del Barrio, who originally became known for his outrageous […]

ROISIN BYRNE at The Goma, Madrid (26.05 to 15.07.2011) by Chris Sharp

  For her first solo show at Madrid’s recently inaugurated galeria The Goma, the Irish London-based Roisin Byrne takes the break-up platitude, “It’s not you it’s me” and perversely stands it on its head. Indeed, the extent to which she perverts this classic, emotional stand-by of well-meaning bullshit is admirable. The opposite of a rupture, […]

HAROLD ANCART “Sous les palmiers, la plage” at La Chaussette, Brussels by Martha Kirszenbaum

installation view “Sous les palmiers, la plage” There is an imperceptible breath of mystery floating in the air over Brussels’s La Chaussette, where New York-based Belgian artist Harold Ancart presents his first European solo exhibition “Sous les palmiers, la plage”. The first element that catches the viewer’s eye in this exhibition is the chrome-mirrored floor, […]

SOCIAL SCULPTURE at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney (02.04 to 18.06.2011) by Anja Isabel Schneider

installation view from Social Sculpture Anna Schwartz Gallery Social Sculpture cannot be dissociated from Joseph Beuys who originally coined the term and went on to inscribe it in a highly political and social context, beyond materiality, with a utopian vision for social transformation. It is also the title of Anna Schwartz Gallery’s current group exhibition […]