#313 March – April 2017

This issue gathers together artists and practitioners concerned with the development of creative languages “for empowerment,” all of whom “weaponize” creativity. In a tacit homage to Lutz Bacher’s interview project “Do You Love Me?” our cover artist Puppies Puppies meets with fellow Los Angeles–based artist Nancy Lupo. To his question, “What do you think about power in my work?” Lupo replies: “We are mutually vulnerable. The project of finding out when and where love begins is irresistible because it allows you to inscribe yourself into something that’s already happening. You get to choose your archetype, although it’s true that archetypes can be vexing, as are readymades.”

Also in this issue:

Associate Editor Tess Edmonson surveys the drawings and narratives of Amsterdam-based Chinese artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

“As Wang moves in and out of alignment with a fixed and oversimple image of Asian culture and subjects, she both lives through and performs her alienness.”

– Tess Edmonson

Charlotte Laubard examines the “self-taught” Italian artist Roberto Cuoghi, whose empirical methodology infuses creation with emancipation.

“What stands out in Cuoghi’s practice across the twenty years since he left art school is his obstinate drive to develop each project like a leap into the unknown.”

– Charlotte Laubard

In his exploration of Raymond Pettibon as an art-world outsider turned insider, Associate Editor Eli Diner discusses the phenomenon of zines in vitrines.

“The obsolescence of the social and political milieu that incubated Pettibon’s snide and violent comics of sexual anxiety and juvenile delinquency facilitates the transfiguration of the drawings into happily deracinated luxury commodities.”

– Eli Diner

Tayyab Amin addresses the sound environments created by musical collective NON WORLDWIDE.

“In headphones, it demands full attention. The same music on a sound system feels like an attempt to rewrite and re-canonize the physical and cultural architecture of club spaces that are so often tainted with white-supremacist heteropatriarchy.”

– Tayyab Amin 

In Reviews:

Beverly Buchanan at Brooklyn Museum, New York; Ann Greene Kelly at Chapter, New York; Andrea Crespo at List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (MA); Cauleen Smith at University Art Galleries, Irvine; Ian James at Vacancy, Los Angeles; General Idea at Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Do Ho Suh at Victoria Miro, London; Alex Baczynski-Jenkins at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Emily Wardill at Bergen Kunsthall; Raoul De Keyser at Zeno X, Antwerp; Sean Snyder at Neu, Berlin; Omer Fast at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Tala Madani at Le Panacée, Montpellier; Peter Campus at Jeu de Paume, Paris; Jean Pigozzi at Gmurzynska, St. Moritz; Huda Lufti at Gypsum, Cairo; Trevor Young at Magician Space, Beijing; Tetsuro Kano at Yuka Tsuruno, Tokyo.