Month: December 2014

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Amsterdam Art Weekend

Agnieszka Gratza

This report from the Amsterdam Art Weekend appeared on artforum.com: Left: ‘An Evening with Anthony McCall’ at EYE. (Photo: Dimer van Santen) Right: Artists Gabriel Lester, Laurent-David Garnier, and Carlotta Guerra. (Except where noted, all photos: Agnieszka Gratza) A MAN WALKS into a bar and greets another: “Wasabi.” What on earth does that mean? “What’s up,” artist Gabriel Lester had to spell it out for me. The bar, furnished with slanted black wooden stools designed by Robert Wilhite to facilitate encounters rather than comfort, is the setting for BOB’s YOUR UNCLE, a recurring event at the back of the Kunstverein … Continue reading Amsterdam Art Weekend

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Best of 2014

Agnieszka Gratza

This round-up of my three favourite show in a French context appeared on artforum.com: Latifa Echakhch, L’air du temps, 2013, chinese ink, wooden cloud scenery, canvas, acrylic paint, and steel wire, dimensions variable. Installation view, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2014. ALEXANDRA BACHZETSIS’S RIVETING NEW PERFORMANCE and installation piece, From A to B via C, comes in three versions, respectively destined for theatrical, museum, and online viewing. I caught the premiere of the first iteration staged as part of the Biennial of Moving Images at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (September 18 to 19, 2014). Three dancers—including Bachzetsis herself—mirrored each other … Continue reading Best of 2014

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Andro Wekua

Agnieszka Gratza

This review appeared in the Agenda section of Mousse: Courtesy: Sprüth Magers, London. Photo: © Stephen White. Andro Wekua is fond of mystifying titles and the one chosen for his début show at Sprüth Magers proves no exception. One can only speculate about the meaning of “SOME PHEASANTS IN SINGULARITY” and what relation, if any, it bears to the works presented in the two ground-floor rooms of the blue-chip gallery’s London outpost. The name does bear a family resemblance to “Pink Wave Hunter” (2010-12), Wekua’s series of architectural models of notable buildings – stripped down to their façades – in … Continue reading Andro Wekua

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Pattern Recognition: Florian and Michael Quistrebert

Agnieszka Gratza

This feature on the Quistrebert Brothers originally appeared in Dutch translation in Metropolis M: Florian & Michael Quistrebert – Amnesic cisenmA , (detail), 3 channel video installation, 2011 ‘Abstract painting, now some 75 years old,’ wrote Bridget Riley in 1983, ‘is still relatively in its infancy. If Mondrian was the Giotto of Abstract painting, the High Renaissance is still to come.’ Abstract painting is a vast country, one more often than not defined by what it is not: non-representational, non-figurative, non-objective. For much of her long career, spanning five decades or so, Riley has been more narrowly associated with ‘op … Continue reading Pattern Recognition: Florian and Michael Quistrebert