Month: March 2014

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Eric Baudelaire

Agnieszka Gratza

This report from ‘The Secession Sessions’ at Bergen Kunsthall appeared on artforum.com: Eric Baudelaire, The Abkhazian Anembassy, 2014. Performance view, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, 2014. Photo: Thor Brødreskift.   I’m running late for my appointment with the Anembassador of Abkhazia. The fact that it’s only a mock-embassy hosted by an art institution and that I’m meeting the anembassador of a country that does not even figure on some maps is no excuse. Maxim Gvinjia, Abkhazia’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, doesn’t seem to mind. I thank him for granting me an audience. The rules of the game have not been … Continue reading Eric Baudelaire

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Rituals of Rented Island

Agnieszka Gratza

This review appeared in frieze: Theodora Skipitares Skysaver, 1980, performance documentation The full title of Jay Sanders’s first show since his appointment as the Whitney’s first-ever curator of performing arts – ‘Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama – Manhattan, 1970–1980’ – could easily pass for an academic thesis. This tightly focused exhibition looked back to the golden days, if not quite the dawn, of ‘performance art’, a term which had superseded all other tentative labels by the mid-1970s, as Sanders points out in one of the well-researched catalogue essays. This was a time when … Continue reading Rituals of Rented Island

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Robert Ashley: That Morning Thing

Agnieszka Gratza

  This review of Robert Ashley’s opera That Morning Thing was posted on frieze.com:   Robert Ashley, That Morning Thing, 2011. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa. ‘Language, translation and misinterpretation’, the catch-all research theme chosen as a rallying point for Performa 11, would alone have justified the inclusion of Robert Ashley’s experimental 1967 opera That Morning Thing (curated by Mark Beasley) in this iteration of the performance art biennial. The work explicitly concerns itself with the question of language and rival, non-verbal modes of communication. Its three acts followed by an epilogue vividly – all too vividly at times … Continue reading Robert Ashley: That Morning Thing

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Zarina

Agnieszka Gratza

This review of Zarina’s “Folding House” appeared on Art Agenda: Zarina, Companions of the End of the Night, 2013.  “What’s not to like?,” a fellow critic concurred as I waxed lyrical about Zarina‘s solo show, which I had seen a few days before in Delhi. The opening was timed to coincide with the India Art Fair, around which a number of glittering events have coalesced in what has become the country’s art capital. Inscribed in gold, the black cardboard invitation and matching catalog cover depict the bare outline of a golden house from Folding House (2014), a set of 25 … Continue reading Zarina