Month: April 2015

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UR Feeling

Agnieszka Gratza

This response to Simon Martin’s exhibition UR Feeling appeared in the Camden Arts Centre’s File Note series: ‘What I’m after is an emotional, affective landscape. Something as subtle and strong as the weather.’ (Simon Martin on UR Feeling) Site 01: Rising A site is ‘an area of ground on which a town, building, or monument is constructed,’ according to one definition. The town is a city within a city. Unreal City, eerily empty at weekends, teeming with white-collar workers on weekdays. The buildings, housing the London Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs and investment banks, are something you might conjure up in … Continue reading UR Feeling

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Rare Earth

Agnieszka Gratza

This review of ‘Rare Earth’ at TBA21 in Vienna appeared on KUNSTforum: “After the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, this is the age of Rare Earth” – or so Boris Ondreička and Nadim Samman, who jointly curated the stylish group exhibition titled Rare Earth at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) in Vienna, would have us believe. The modish appeal of the Anthropocene – which is being mooted as the dawn of a new geological epoch as we speak – lies behind this and other such inflated claims in the press release and promotional materials. Unlike the Anthropocene, … Continue reading Rare Earth

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What Could Happen

Agnieszka Gratza

This report from the New Territories’ “What Could Happen” appeared on artforum.com: Left: An outpost on Bernina Pass. Right: Camille Lacadée and François Roche. (All photos: Agnieszka Gratza) STEPPING INSIDE the plush lobby of the Grand Hotel Kronenhof in Pontresina—a mere four miles from Saint Moritz in the Engadin valley—felt like walking into a time warp. The beautifully appointed Kronenhof, overlooking the Roseg Glacier and a pine-clad valley, is what the Grand Budapest Hotel in Wes Anderson’s film may have been like in its glory days. A bottle of champagne was chilling in my room, but alas, there was no … Continue reading What Could Happen

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Nil Yalter

Agnieszka Gratza

This review of Nil Yalter’s solo show at MOT International appeared on art agenda: Nil Yalter, Rahime, Kurdish Woman from Turkey (detail), 1979. The recent resurgence of interest in the pioneering work of Turkish artist Nil Yalter (b. 1938), whose career spans four decades, owes much to Cornelia Butler’s 2007 exhibition “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In her retrospective of feminist art from the 1970s, Butler showcased La Roquette, Prison des Femmes (1974), Yalter’s early multimedia work, arguably rescuing it from near oblivion. For decades, the video, photographic, and drawing installation, … Continue reading Nil Yalter