Gleanings

Chaleur humaine (literally translated as ‘human warmth’) is the debut studio album by French singer-songwriter Christine and the Queens, released in 2015. It’s also the title of this year’s edition of the ‘Art & Industry Triennial’ in Dunkirk, France, a large-scale exhibition presenting more than 250 works by close to 130 artists, primarily from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The exhibition is developed in eight chapters which unfold at different locations in the small beach town: the LAAC (Contemporary Art and Action Museum), the FRAC Grand Large, the former AP2 shipyard workshop and other public spaces throughout Dunkirk.

Starting from 1972 and spanning to the present day, ‘Chaleur humaine’ explores themes such as oil, nuclear energy, landscape transformation, the body at work, fatigue, cars, pollution, recycling and sustainability. 1972 is a symbolic date: in this year the first Earth Summit took place, the manifesto by the Club of Rome The Limits to Growth was published and the first complete image of the earth as seen from space was unveiled to the world. It’s a moment in history when the alarm bells truly start ringing for international awareness of ecological issues. It’s the moment when climate carefreeness becomes questionable and, on the contrary, transforms into a major cause for concern.

There are many things to discover in this exhibition. The triennial commissioned several new works, such as a piece by Pablo Bronstein and a magnificent bronze installation by Laure Prouvost that is installed along the town’s boardwalk. Likewise, there are several historical artworks from the Centre Pompidou’s collection, as well as works from local museums such as Suzanne Treister’s prints from the Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – FRAC Lorraine. Interestingly, curators Anna Colin and Camille Richert went the extra mile to select for this exhibition many works made by female artists that have been kept in the vaults of the Pompidou and other local museums for far too long. It’s a real treat to discover at this triennial photo works by Jo Spence or Sophie Ristelhueber’s chromogenic prints from the early 90s and see them presented next to installations from their better-known contemporaries such as Hans Haacke or Joseph Beuys. (Els Roelandt)

Peckham is home to one of the largest Nigerian communities in the UK. So it should come as no surprise that the South London Gallery has dedicated a major group exhibition looking at the connections between the Nigerian capital and Peckham. Showcasing works by thirteen Nigerian and British-Nigerian artists, ‘Lagos, Peckham, Repeat’ highlights the relationships, culture, shared history, communities and art that link the two places. One of the standout pieces is I’d rather not go blind (2023), in the main gallery: a filmed performance that Temitayo Shonibare (1995) staged on a London Overground train. The artist’s face is completely covered by a long, ginger wig — which she fiddles with throughout the journey, oblivious to the reactions of other passengers. Across the road in the Fire Station, SLG’s second site, seven more artworks are displayed in separate spaces spread out over three floors. The most moving of these are to be found in two screening rooms on the first floor. One shows No Archive Can Restore You (2020), a five-minute video by Onyeka Igwe (1986) filmed in the former Nigerian Film Unit, one of the first outposts of the Colonial Film Unit — an ‘educational’ film organisation set up by the British imperial government in London. The abandoned condition of this building hints that people cannot and do not want to see the films it houses — and their revelation of colonial legacies. Meanwhile, through his recreation of the living room in his childhood home, Adeyemi Michael (1985) invites us to imagine his mother as he saw her when he was growing up. The film, Entitled (2018), shows her wearing Yoruba ceremonial attire as she rides through the streets of Peckham on horseback: a powerful and empowering image that was also used for the exhibition poster. (Luc Franken)

Ever since Puccini’s opera La bohème (1896), bohemians have been simultaneously revered and feared as courageous creatives willing to sacrifice everything for their art. The Czech Republic’s western region, Bohemia, is named for the pre-Roman Celtic tribe Boii. ‘Bohemia: History of an Idea, 1950–2000’ memorialises the bohemian zeitgeist sweeping cities. Fueled in part by a reaction to bourgeois society, this mindset departed post-war Paris for New York in the 1950s, pervading artworks by filmmakers Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie and portraitist Alice Neel; subsequently blew into London, inspiring Richard Hamilton and Ken Russell; and continued on to San Francisco, Vancouver, Tehran, Zagreb, Prague, Beijing, Mexico City and then back to London. Organised by decade, ‘Bohemia’ includes 77 artworks by 39 artists and duos working in ten countries. Like the opera, ‘Bohemia’ captures characters inhabiting these scenes, enabling this exhibition to double as historical record and bohemian case study. Borrowed from a host of international collections and galleries, most of the artworks are on view in Czech Republic for the first time. Of special interest are Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1979–1986), some 600 slides documenting East Village denizens; as well as images of: Chinese performance artists Zhang Huan, Wang Jin, and RongRong; Yugoslavian performance artist Tomislav Gotovac; and subcultures in Prague and West Berlin, shot by Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková. (Sue Spaid)

‘Heute ist Morgen’ (Today is Tomorrow) is the statement artist Ulrike Rosenbach chose as the title of her current retrospective at ZKM, Karlsruhe, covering a decades-long art practice which combines elements of performance video, experimental cinema, conceptual photography and site-specific interventions. Rosenbach is a pioneer of art in which feminist and technological concerns and their relationship are addressed. The exhibition in Karlsruhe anchors her work within an art-historical context while shedding light on the distinctive features of her practice and what sets her apart from her contemporaries. Rosenbach’s work processes and actualises themes, motifs and symbols from Egyptian, Greek and Hindu mythology. Her practice also incorporates Christian iconography into concrete experiences involving active bodies in real time. It’s worth noting that her work shares a spiritual bond with the cinema of Kenneth Anger, who exploited the evocative power of images and fiction within the realm of the (private) body. The exhibition in Karlsruhe is an act of historical justice recognising the tremendous contribution of an artist who has been overlooked in recent years; however, it is also a celebration of true experimentalist who radically eschews canonization — a tension that plays out in interesting ways in this long-overdue retrospective.

Puerto Rico-based artist duo Allora & Calzadilla are some of the most lyrical artists of their generation. Their work evokes complex political and philosophical questions through research-based projects, which are narrative driven and depart from specific mediums. One of the centerpieces at the current survey exhibition at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, titled Entelechy, 2020, is exemplary: a cast replica of the lightning-stricken tree that led to the discovery of one of the most important cave painting sites, Lascaux, by some teenagers during World War II in France. Reminiscent of a science-fiction film script, the otherwise true-to-facts story is played out in the exhibition space through the sculpture to suggest a sense of destiny, spirituality and meaningful coincidence. In the exhibition, the earlier videos Under Discussion (2005) and Returning a Sound (2004) delve into Western imperialism by featuring the story of environmental and political abuse of the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico by the US and NATO: used as a bombing exercise location, Vieques and its citizens are the forgotten subjects elevated to main protagonists and subjects for political arguments advanced by the artists. However, the work excels when its philosophical importance is treated with subtlety, steering away from an ethnographic look. For example, the sculpture Petrified Petrol Pump (2010), a limestone-covered petrol pump with a hinted anthropomorphic shape, elevates the environmental discourse to the level of allegory. (Piero Bisello)

‘Coming Home Late’ at IMMA, Dublin, presents a selection of recent paintings by American artist Jo Baer (1929, Seattle) inspired by her experience of the Irish landscape. A prominent figure of the Minimalist painting movement in the New York art scene of the 1960s and 70s, Baer explored the formal limitations of the medium, developing a unique visual language of ‘non-objectivity’ in her black-and-white hard-edge paintings. Following a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, Baer felt she had exhausted the terrain of Minimalist painting and relocated to County Louth, Ireland. Over the next seven years, she gradually rebuilt her visual idiom towards what she termed ‘radical figuration’: a non-narrative fusion of figural elements, texts, images and symbols.

The exhibition title ‘Coming Home Late’ alludes to the temporality Jo Baer utilises in her work. IMMA presents recent paintings by Baer that reflect on her stay in rural Ireland between 1975 and 1982, during which time she found inspiration in the archaeologically rich Irish countryside. Developing her strategy of ‘image constellation,’ the paintings utilise spare, geometric compositions in combination with imagery referencing Neolithic artefacts and myths. Archival material relating to Baer’s exhibitions in Dublin during the 1970s is also included in the exhibition, mapping her engagement with the art scene of the time. (Perri MacKenzie)

Despite her beginning as one of the major yet underlooked figures of American minimalism, Japanese-born Kazuko Miyamoto has proven her eclecticism and debt to the New York scene over a fifty-year long career. Museo Madre in Naples currently presents the first historical overview of the artist in a European institution. Curated by the museum’s director Eva Fabbris, the exhibition heavily features Miyamoto’s iconic string constructions from the 1970s; these are compositions of yarn stretched over nails the artist sets up on the walls following precise instructions, producing abstract arrangements that occasionally overflow onto the floor. The exhibition also includes sketches and recent maquettes: artworks in their own right that provide important insights into the artist’s earlier visual research. A true adopted New Yorker, Miyamoto often combined the algorithmic and formalistic lessons of minimalism with more socially grounded work in the city, despite there being no sign of militantism per se in her artworks. She was an active member of one of New York’s most important project spaces, A.I.R., and founded her own in the 1980s, Gallery Onetwentyeight, after leaving A.I.R. along with her close friend Ana Mendieta. At Madre, the exhibition recalls this social aspect of the artist’s career, whilst giving glimpses of her later works: from 1980s Land Art-inspired paper bridges installed outdoors, to performative clothes and textile pieces often imbued with references to her native Japan. (Piero Bisello)

Since the early 2000s, the name Tauba Auerbach has been synonymous with what Roberta Smith, in her first New York Times review of the artist’s work (2003), describes as ‘abstraction by other means.’ Tauba Auerbach, born in 1981 in San Francisco and now living in New York, traces the visible and invisible patterns, structures and rhythms that shape our universe. Experimenting across mediums is Auerbach’s hallmark. The generous show at the Fridericianum in Kassel — Auerbach has the whole building to their disposal — consists of two parts: an overview of their work featuring paintings, drawings, weavings, films, artist’s books, typography and sculptures, and an extended presentation of their publishing project Diagonal Press.

One of the show’s most delicate moments is the presentation on metal plinths of several works of woven glass beads, made especially for this show. These works, which all carry the name ‘Org’, are a mixture of textile work and sculpture characterised by an innovative aesthetic and formal language, and at the same time a remarkable versatility. It’s these works, with their crystalline and lacy presence and their touch of familiarity, that give Auerbach a strong position, uniquely placed in the slippage between contemporary art and design.

The presentation of Auerbach’s publishing project Diagonal Press is an extra reason to visit the show. Diagonal Press was founded by the artist in 2013 and aims to continuously give more space to their experiments in the fields of typography, book design and production, as well as the applied arts. The spectrum of its output ranges from books, calendars, posters and flags to toys, accessories and jewelry. These are produced in unlimited and unsigned editions to make them accessible to a broad public. (Els Roelandt)

Focused on soil and clay as artistic medium, South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape’s solo exhibition at Kiasma is sure to cover a lot of ground. Following site visits around Finland to bogs, swamps, forests and landfills (to learn how dirt and rubble excavated from construction sites are managed), Bopape had a residency with Frantsila, a herb farm that grows 20 wild plants and herbs that they use to create healing teas, detox peat, medicinal salves, ‘functional’ fragrances and much more. Located two hours north of Helsinki, this regenerative organic farm inhabits land farmed by the same family for ten generations. While Frantsila stresses soil’s role in nurturing the healing powers of plants, Bopape esteems soil as a repository for decayed plants, dead animals, minerals and glacial till, which comprises clay, silt and sand, linking fertile soil to cycles of regeneration. Bopape has thus conceived an exhibition aimed at acquainting Kiasma visitors with soil’s vitality and historical legacy, as well as Finnish paganism, which persisted in some areas until the twentieth century and resembles the Sami religion. Using a 750 square-metre gallery as her studio, she will construct several round huts covered in clay, enabling people to lie down inside and dream. Unbeknownst to visitors, they will sense her special scent meant to ease social tensions and prompt connectivity with strangers. The café will offer those keen to awaken their spirituality a dream-stimulating tea. (Sue Spaid)

In his large-scale paintings depicting dreamlike and mythical scenes, Michael Armitage (1984, Nairobi) weaves together multiple narratives, drawn from historical and current news media, popular culture and his own memories of Kenya, his country of birth. His current show at Kunsthaus Bregenz takes its title from a 2019 work by the artist. In the centre of this image, a figure strides toward the viewer. The facial expression and hunched shoulders — an accusatory stance — convey a certain readiness to fight. Attached to their chest and waist are two canisters of tear gas. Armitage created the painting after seeing a demonstration by Kenya’s largest opposition party in Nairobi in 2017. He has said that he is more interested in the people than their leaders. His predominant concerns are the social and political issues facing our contemporary global society, and he focuses on the universal social problems that many choose to deny. He has a firm belief that art is an agent of social change and, through his captivating figurative style, he compels the viewer to take a closer look at the issues his art addresses. Armitage’s compositions are intensely colourful, vibrant, and moving. Events and imaginings are intertwined into rich narratives. Traditional motifs from European painting enter into his scenes. He paints with oil on lubugo, a traditional bark cloth from Uganda that is beaten over a period of days, creating a natural material that, when stretched taut, has scattered holes and coarse indents. These imperfections then all become part of the artwork. (Luc Franken)

‘The definition of artistic activity occurs, first of all, in the field of distribution.’ This quote from Broodthaers could have been the motto for the life and work of Dick Higgins (1938–1998), an influential American artist, poet, theorist and publisher. He noted that the best works of his time typically fell between media, a phenomenon he called Intermedia. Visual poetry and calligrams are good examples of this skilful blending of text and image. Higgins also worked constantly between the two. After participating in the Fluxus movement in the early sixties, he returned to New York to spread the artistic experiments he had witnessed in Europe. To this end, he founded his own publishing house, Something Else Press (SEP), which alternated between publishing books and inexpensive pamphlets, distributing them as widely as possible in Europe, Canada, Mexico and South America. The Great Bear pamphlets included unique small works by George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Dieter Roth and Wolf Vostell, among others. For the exhibition at the Reina Sofía, curators Christian Xatrec and Alice Centamore drew on the publisher’s extensive archives to create an exhibition that reflects Higgins’ pivotal role in promoting and establishing an avant-garde scene across the Atlantic. (Pieter Vermeulen)