This article appeared in the FT‘s weekend edition: ©Thomas Wirthensohn   Serendipity is what brought Kathrin Messner to Sri Lanka — appropriately enough, given the word’s origin. Coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, it stems from Serendip, the Persian name for the island. She and her late husband Josef Ortner had been searching all over the world for a second home in a place where their daughter could go to school. “When we first came to Sri Lanka, more than three decades ago, it was only for a vacation,” she says. “Then we fell in love with this country.”Born and … Continue reading Kathrin Messner: one world foundation

This review of Ian Cheng’s show at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo appeared on artforum.com: View of “Ian Cheng,” 2015. A “smart story” is how Ian Cheng describes Emissary in the Squat of Gods, 2015, the latest of his live simulations and the centerpiece of this exhibition. Neither a movie nor a video game, yet partaking of both, this never-ending auto-generative animation indebted to Japanese film director and manga artist Hayao Miyazaki is smart in more ways than one: It combines artificial intelligence with a slick presentation. Placed aslant in relation to the wall on which the two-channel HD video … Continue reading Ian Cheng