#302 May – June 2015

In this issue:

Martine Syms sits in conversation with Los Angeles-based artist Charles Gaines.
“The question of what is black art is still a legitimate one. The problem before with the identification of any kind of art of the margins was that the solutions being sought were rooted in essentialism. So whatever black art is, it has to be tied to something essential and core. If you just remove the essentialist models, you can ask the question legitimately. And you’ve got a lot better critical tools today to do that.”
—Charles Gaines

Last summer, Genius declared a new mission to “annotate the world.” In practice, it means that soon on any site, a user could type the prefix genius.it to any URL, and arrive at a page annotated by countless Genius users. Orit Gat met with Genius’s Tom Lehman, Christopher Glazek and Emily Segal to discuss where the website is going and what the road there looks like.

Boško Blagojevic introduces New-York based artist Bradley Kronz.
“Kronz often presents us with work that is materially insignificant; that is, made from inexpensive or discarded material. But through operations of framing, presentation and doubling, he creates what appears to be a kind of auratic context of care and importance between himself and these objects.”
—Boško Blagojevic

Mitchell Anderson reviews the art of Switzerland’s 56th Venice Biennale representative Pamela Rosenkranz.
“Rosenkranz crafts works about humanity with the air of someone who is not human. Imagine the disposition toward humans spouted by popular representations of superior humanoids and you’ll find this mimicked subtly in her work.”
—Mitchell Anderson

Nicknamed “the enfant terrible of the design world” by specialized publications, Tobias Wong was an expert at playing with artistic conventions — the ready-made, appropriation, viral tactics, impersonation, provocation and societal commentary. Five years following his departure, Cyril Duval,a.k.a. item idem, highlights the relevance of his practice.

On May 1, the 2015 edition of the World’s Fair opened in Milan. The event marks the culmination of a decade of radical transformations to the city’s urban fabric, its political governance and its design, art and fashion industries. Michele D’Aurizio, Gea Politi and Lodovico Pignatti Morano met with three figures whose creative outputs are indissolubly tied to the city: architect, visual artist and educator Ugo La Pietra; fashion designer and entrepreneur Giorgio Armani; and writer, poet and visual artist Nanni Balestrini.

Robin Peckham spotlights Chinese artist Tianzhuo Chen.
“In the Chinese context, what is fresh and new about Chen is the fact that an artist would be willing to draw from the imagery of popular culture and the underground; as soon as it makes it out, the nucleus of the work shifts, and it is the specific connections between spirituality, clubbing, cartoons and drugs that become interesting.”
—Robin Peckham

Sylvain Amic discussed the work of Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani.
“Parmiggiani’s work has never stopped being rooted, ever more deeply, in the culture, the land and sky of Italy. But it is an Italy taken as a metaphor for humanity as a whole, not of a tradition with paralyzing virtues.”
—Sylvain Amic

Plus, in Arena:
Peter Bläuer on Liste 2015, Basel; Eric Mézil on the Collection Lambert, Avignon; Del Vaz Projects and Park View, Los Angeles; Tom McCarthy‘s Satin Island; Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev on the 14th Istanbul Biennial; Vetements, Paris; Sarina Tang on Currents – Art and Music, Beijing/São Paulo; Holly Herndon‘s Platform; Florence Derieux on FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; The Sunday Painter, London; No Problem: Cologne / New York 1984–1989.

And in reviews:
Barbara T. Smith at Andrew Kreps, New York; Sascha Braunig at Foxy Production, New York; Sara Clendening at The Green Gallery, Oak Park (IL); Agency at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Pat O’Neill at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles; Laura Lima at Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Human Rights Human Wrongs at the Photographer’s Gallery, London; Andrea Büttner and Brit Meyer at Piper Keys, London; Goutam Ghosh at Standard, Oslo; Mitchell Syrop at Croy Nielsen, Berlin; Abdoulaye Konaté at Blain | Southern, Berlin; Laurent Dupont and Lucy McKenzie at Svit, Prague; Mathieu Briand at Maison Rouge, Paris; Margaret Honda at Triangle, Marseille; Sam Falls at the Fondazione Giuliani, Rome; Slavs and Tatars at the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery; Kei Imazu at Yamamoto Gendai, Tokyo; Andy Boot at Minerva, Sydney.

The issue will have special distribution on the occasion of Frieze New York (booth M6), Art | Basel (booth Z4) and during the 56th Venice Biennale.

Finally, we are pleased to announce that Los Angeles-based writer and independent curator Eli Diner has joined our editorial team. Diner has contributed to Artforum, Bookforum, the Bulletins of the Serving Library and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Most recently he co-curated the exhibition The New Gravity at Overduin & Co., Los Angeles, and co-edited a book of the same title. This summer in Los Angeles he will launch a new project-space sculpture garden called Hakuna Matata.