#304 October 2015

Also, in this issue:

Beau Rutland describes the skillful facture, playful wit and unassuming topicality of Rachel Rose’s videos.

“Rose creates spaces that look so much like our everyday lives, yet have been slightly augmented, perhaps with an unexpected jump cut to seemingly unrelated found footage.”

—Beau Rutland

Two recent exhibitions have invited a reconsideration of the institutional narratives associated with the scientific discipline of archaeology: Christodoulos Panayiotou’s “Two Days after Forever,” hosted by the Cyprus Pavilion at the 56th Biennale di Venezia; and the “twin” exhibitions “Serial Classic” and “Portable Classic,” co-curated by Salvatore Settisand held at the Milan and Venice venues of the Fondazione Prada. In conversation, Panayiotou and Settis contemplate the authority of ancient art and the many challenges that a political understanding of archaeology can pose.

Carlos Fonseca digs into the spectral echoes of the avant-gardes that populate Valeria Luiselli’s novels.

“Luiselli is a writer who has undertaken the project of rewriting the Latin American literary tradition purged of the ambitions — or pretensions — of representing the histories, moods and pathologies of an entire continent.”

—Carlos Fonseca

Ruba Katrib surveys the art of Heman Chong, who questions the conventions of contemporary art reception, combining them with popular narrative forms like film and novels.

“Chong carefully dissects and aggregates information, letting associations run wild. He presents partial threads of communication, disperses authorship and creates situations.”

—Ruba Katrib

Veeranganakumari Solanki introduces the emerging Indian artists Nandan Ghiya, Sahej Rahal, Prabhakar Pachpute, Tanmoy Samanta, Rathin Barman, Prajakta Potnis, Hemali Bhuta, and Shreyas Karle.

Kari Rittenbach discusses the authorial non-production in the work of Cameron Rowland.

“Rowland’s examination of received standards stresses the deeply rooted injustice of American exceptionalism, drawing attention to the structural artifice of the white cube and the system of white-supremacist patriarchy in which the whole of high cultural production is circumscribed.”

—Kari Rittenbach

In Arena:

Sadie Coles, London; Eugene Tan on the National Gallery, Singapore; Robert Walser’s Looking at Pictures by New Directions; Charles Esche on the 2015 Jakarta Biennale; Angel Haze; Wim Peeters on Office Baroque, Brussels; Melanie Bühler on Lunch Bytes; Elysia Crampton.

And finally, in Reviews:

Sarah Charlesworth at the New Museum, New York; Sarah Ortmeyerat Bodega, New York; Keren Cytterat the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; “Theories on Forgetting”at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; A.L. Steinerat Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Teresa Burgaat the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, Buenos Aires; Eloise Hawserat the ICA, London; “The Boys, the Girls and the Political”at Lisson Gallery, London; “After Babel”at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Mathieu Maloufat Lars Friedrich, Berlin; Bill Lynch at Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Lawrence Abu Hamdan at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen; Tony Ourslerat Luma Foundation, Arles; Fausto Melottiat the NMNM, Monaco; “La Grande Madre”at Palazzo Reale, Milan; “Bartered Collection”at Mumbai Art Room; Ming Wong the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Dinh Q. Lêat the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.