The city where I grew up, Culiacán, is home to three generations of drug lords — and a peculiar outdoor garden filled with contemporary art.
Allora & Calzadilla
Posted inArt
10 Actually Fun Works to See at Art Basel Miami Beach
MIAMI — Entering into the cavernous mouth of an art fair, it’s pretty easy to know what to expect — some blue-chip art, some provocative booths, and a few rare modernist works sprinkled throughout the contemporary avalanche. Thankfully, there are usually a few pleasant surprises. Here are ten works I actually enjoyed seeing at Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) 2012.
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Sportswear in Art
With the Hunger Games, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier and Halloween garment construction on my mind, all I could think about this weekend was athletic wear, so I thought I’d pull you into my crazy and share some references to athletic wear in art and visual culture.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, droit de suite, art conservation, Daniel Burren and Allora & Calzadilla, ruin porn, hacking Ikea, top auction prices of 2011, the world’s first spaceport, Penguin books logo and architecture tattoos.
Posted inArt
Seeing Through the Crowds at the 2011 Venice Biennale Part I: The Giardini and Pavilions
Editor’s Note: Peter Dobey published a series of photo essays (1, 2, 3) about this year’s Venice Biennale at the beginning of June. This is a long-form essay (to be published in three parts) that explores the work at the Biennale.
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PARIS — It is difficult to write about Venice, just like it is difficult to really SEE Venice. Individual experiences of art fade away into the oversaturation that is the Venice Biennale in the same way the city of Venice is sinking into the Adriatic. There is the ontological experience of Venice and the problem of one’s ability to encounter it. Then there is the physical impossibility to see everything the Biennale offers you and all the things it doesn’t, especially when in Italy.
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Photos from the 54th Venice Biennale, Part 3
More images from the world’s oldest and largest art biennial event, the Venice Biennale, including photos from the American, Egyptian, Iraqi, Israeli and Polish pavilions, view of various social events and other random sightings.
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Photos from the 54th Venice Biennale, Part 2
More images from the world’s oldest and largest art biennial event, the Venice Biennale, including photos from the François Pinault Foundation, the French, Haitian, Danish, Swedish, Swiss and the Venezuelan pavilions.
Posted inOpinion
Is America Tanking in Venice? [UPDATE]
Love it or hate it, Allora & Calzadilla’s entry to the US Pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale is a showstopper perfectly tuned for the art world’s version of the Olympics.
Posted inOpinion
Allora & Calzadilla’s Hole-y Piano
This video was produced for MoMA’s ninth installment of the Performance Exhibition Series, which features Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, more commonly referred to as Allora & Calzadilla, and the staging of their haunting performance “Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano” (2008). The duo will be representing the United States during the next Venice Biennale in 2011.
Posted inArt
Art Basel Miami in Pictures
There’s no point in giving you a “review” of the mothership of art fairs in Miami, Art Basel Miami Beach, so I thought a photo essay with some observations were more appropriate.
I admit that I got a little bored after three hours of wandering around. I found myself seeing the same thing and getting the same numbness I get during marathon holiday shopping trips or walks through ancient souks … there’s only so much merchandise you can see in one stop.
It was still refreshing to see some galleries display the prices of their wares freely, and examples of excellent abstraction by names mostly absent from the art history survey books, but I was most shocked to discover what must be the most awful Basquiat I have even seen in my life.
Posted inArt
Cutting the 2011 Venice Biennale Jargon
Curated by Bice Curiger, best known as the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the respected art magazine Parkett, the 2011 Venice Biennale will be titled ILLUMInations, in a play on words and typography that now comes standard for big deal exhibitions. The name is a combo of “illuminate” and “nations,” terms that Curiger uses to refer to the “dissemination” of the “current developments in international art.”
In other words, the Biennale will take as its theme the spread of ideas and artistic currents beyond the limitations of national boundaries and identities, taking on culture at the international level rather than on a country-to-country basis. Yet the Biennale is known for its use of national pavilions to stage exhibitions as something akin to national artistic showcases. How do you go post-national with a nationally and politically charged event?
