Month: July 2014

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Franz West

Agnieszka Gratza

This preview of Franz West’s “Where is my Eight?” at the Hepworth Wakefield appeared in Mousse: “What is sculpture?” Austrian artist Erwin Wurm ponders in an interview. “Sculpture is to add volume, to take volume away, and you can also say that when you gain or lose weight.” His own sculptures and installations, which often look as if they had been subjected to a brutal fattening-up regime or diet, warrant the analogy. Take the bloated Fat House (2003), for instance, and its counterpoint, Narrow House – a mere sliver of a place that visitors could walk straight through at the … Continue reading Franz West

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Solaris Chronicles

Agnieszka Gratza

 This piece appeared on artforum.com: Left: LUMA Foundation founder Maja Hoffmann with architects Annabelle Selldorf and Frank Gehry. Right: At the “Solaris Chronicles” event. (All photos: Herve Hote) THE TWENTY-ACRE PARC DES ATELIERS, a defunct SNCF railway yard on the outer edge of Arles, might only be a fifteen-minute walk from the train station. But as I stood in midday heat last Sunday, with no taxis in sight, Maja Hoffmann’s proposal to build a station closer to the Ateliers made perfect sense to me. Not so to my French travel companions, who saw it as a sign of how out … Continue reading Solaris Chronicles

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Berlin Documentary Forum

Agnieszka Gratza

This report from the Berlin Documentary Forum appeared on frieze.com: Rabih Mroué, Riding on a Cloud, 2014; all images courtesy Berlin Documentary Forum / Haus der Kulturen der Welt Spread over four days, the programme of parallel screenings, performances, live broadcasts, seminars and talks presented in two adjoining spaces at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, besides two audiovisual installations displayed elsewhere in the building throughout the Berlin Documentary Forum (BDF) and beyond, made this visitor long for the ability to be in two (or more) places at once. Basma Alsharif, Doppelgänger, 2014; photograph © Basma Alsharif Bilocation, and the … Continue reading Berlin Documentary Forum