Month: February 2016

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Janice Kerbel

Agnieszka Gratza

This feature on Janice Kerbel appeared in an event-themed issue of Metropolis M in Dutch translation: Janice Kerbel has a knack for learning languages. Since graduating with an MA from Goldsmiths in 1996, the London-based Canadian artist, who had previously studied cultural anthropology at the University of British Colombia, has become proficient in several languages: the language of flowers for Nick Silver Can’t Sleep (2006), a radio play for insomniacs whose characters are all nocturnal plants; the language of sports broadcasting for Ballgame (Innings 1-3) (2009), a play-by-play commentary of a live baseball match; the language of theatrical lighting for … Continue reading Janice Kerbel

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Alexander Calder

Agnieszka Gratza

This review of Alexander Calder at Tate Modern appeared in Flash Art International:   One may wince at the chosen subtitle — “Performing Sculpture” — of this otherwise well-judged exhibition tracing Alexander Calder’s progression from the figurative to the abstract, or, as Penelope Curtis aptly puts it in her essay for the accompanying publication, “from sculpture depicting performers, to sculpture that performs.” The show’s curators likewise do not shy away from anachronism, projecting our highly contemporary infatuation with all things performative onto inanimate sculptural objects that, however “mobile” (a term Marcel Duchamp coined in 1931 to characterize Calder’s motorized abstract … Continue reading Alexander Calder