A full century after the founding of the Soviet Union, the title of dissident Russian artist Victoria Lomasko’s first solo exhibition in Italy—presented as part of Brescia’s Peace Festival—feels particularly apt: It takes courage to call oneself “The Last Soviet Artist” nowadays. Continue reading Victoria Lomasko
This captivating group exhibition takes its cue from Antoine Lavoisier’s famous maxim: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.”
Continue reading Nothing Is Lost. Art and Matter in Transformation
Spread over eight rooms in the Baroque former summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), Donna Huanca’s current exhibition has an opulence all its own. Bright and dim spaces alternate throughout the Lower Belvedere, evoking an initiatic journey into a brave new world. Continue reading Donna Huanca
Weaving together poetry, sound, and sculpture, “Garden of Memory” styles itself as a conversation à trois between artists who are bound by friendship and love. Poet and painter Etel Adnan serves as the link among her longtime collaborators Robert Wilson and Simone Fattal, both of whom she met for the first time in the summer of 1972 in Beirut. Her poem Conversations with my soul (III), 2018—here read aloud by Wilson over speakers and heard by Fattal’s sculpted angels—folds into another dialogue, this time between the poet’s different selves. Continue reading Garden of Memory
Displayed in stable stalls and outdoors at Cuadra San Cristóbal, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Sean Scully’s paintings and sculptures gain a lot from their unusual setting. The Luis Barragán–designed private residence and equestrian center is all vibrant color and clean lines. Although his palette is much wider than Barragán’s own and his bands of color are fuzzier around the edges, the artist’s works resonate with and meld into their semi-rural surroundings. Continue reading Sean Scully at Cuadra San Cristobal
When Eileen Gray’s ill-fated 1929 architectural gem E-1027—a beautifully proportioned white modernist villa overlooking the sea at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, near Monaco—opened to the public in 2015, the controversial restoration project that started in 2006 and saw successive teams of architects and administrators undoing and redoing each other’s work was far from over. Continue reading Kasper Akhøj and Eileen Gray
This Critics’ Pick of Jasmina Cibic’s Belgrade show appeared on artforum.com: Jasmina Cibic, Tear Down and Rebuild, 2015, HD video, color, sound, 13 minutes 52 seconds A conference room has never looked this good. Immaculately dressed and made-up, the four female speakers seated at the round table beneath a vast, elegant glass dome could be characters from Sex and the City were it not for their posh British accents and the fact that they appear to be debating the merits and demerits of an unspecified building slated for demolition. Culled from speeches by public figures, state officials, dictators, and architects … Continue reading Jasmina Cibic: Tear Down and Rebuild
Conversation Pieces 