For 2011, treat yourself with Mousse.

Get 5 issues and a gift at home.

Elena Filipovic, Marieke Van Hall, Solveig Østebø, eds.

Ok, what else were we really expecting? Isn’t it the least surprising topic of all? Notwithstanding any dismissive objections, the most convincing being to me that we are overfed up with biennials, it’s time to take the biennial as a cultural object, without profiting from the mania generated by such a phenomenon nor being excited and complacent in front of something so shockingly successful (see at page 91: “The term biennial is not protected by copyright and consequently is open to abuse,” René Bloc). It’s time then to take it seriously, to acknowledge its role and question its aims, because there is a lot worth investigating, for sure. It’s just too big of a thing to keep it chatty as I’m doing know. So if you feel the need to be opinionated about it, brace yourself and–if you can–swallow this dictionary-sized, rewarding anthology. (Stefano Cernuschi)

Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern
512 p. • softcover • English
www.hatjecantz.de

Just a stone’s throw from the new Whitechapel Gallery — even less, if you take the Central, Circle, Metropolitan or Hammersmith & City line to the Liverpool Street stop — Raven Row is a non-profit space that opened its doors in 2009, sparing no expenses. Not that there was a need to. Director Alex Sainsbury is, after all, the son of Sir Tim Sainsbury, i.e., head of the second richest family in Britain. In a building that was constructed by the silk mercers who set up shop in the area around 1750, seriously damaged by fires between 1950 and 1970, and then abandoned for a decade, the renovation by 6a Architects studio has left the traces of its history still visible—accentuated them, actually. The gallery’s programming is designed to be as appealingly scrupulous and selective for specialists as it is tantalizing for the art-curious public, with a particular focus on established international artists who somehow have not become well-known or received proper attention in England.
After Ray Johnson, Harun Farocki and Eduardo Paolozzi — just to cite the first names that come to mind — the spaces of Raven Row will be turned over to filmmaker and photographer Hilary Lloyd, who has developed the exhibition project by following the evolution of the space over the last three years. (Antonio Scoccimarro)

56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS
www.ravenrow.org

Issue #1

There must be a reason why Italians publish so many magazines… Perhaps a collateral effect off to the chronic stasis that numbs Italy, a land where new things have been happening so slowly, if at all, for so long that people maybe had more time to think and write about them. Any how, this is the latest addition to the ever flourishing architectural editorial production, one boasting a kind of bizarre declaration of independence as editor’s letter, and a very defined topic in what they call “innocent architecture,” a concept I’m still trying to grasp exactly. Matter-of-fact, it’s a seriously interesting and smartly designed collection of essays and articles about obscure but significant projects, some of them never built, many of them product of collaborative practices, all of them fascinating rediscoveries.

(Stefano Cernuschi)

San Rocco, Venice
152 p. • softcover • English
www.sanrocco.info

Uta Barth’s sixth solo-exhibition at Andréhn-Schiptjenko juxtaposes new colour photographs with a major series of previously unseen early black and white pieces. Although taken thirty years apart, these two distinct bodies of work compliment and contextualize each other, demonstrating the development of Barth’s ongoing investigation of the nature of vision and the act of perception itself.

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‘Psycho Painting’ is a group show exploring the mental processes that determine painting and artwork. The exhibition tackles the conflict between the cerebral and emotional in the work of David Adamo, John Armleder, Kerstin Braetsch, Brendan Fowler, Xylor Jane, Jacob Kassay, Gerhard Richter, Kaari Upson and Lesley Vance. Each of the selected artists has been invited to prepare a piece that engages this tension; inevitably letting the emotional or rational part of their work become preponderant.

Kateřina Šedá, No Light, 2010, installation view at Galleria Franco Soffiantino. Courtesy: Galleria Franco Soffiantino, Torino.

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While from an art-historical point of view Pop Art is mainly associated with male protagonists, the exhibition POWER UP – Female Pop Art intends to undertake a revision of this understanding through the presentation of outstanding women artists’ positions.
The work of Sister Corita, like that of Evelyne Axell, Christa Dichgans, Rosalyn Drechsler, Jann Haworth, Dorothy Iannone, Kiki Kogelnik, Marisol, and Niki de Saint Phalle, stands for feminine strategies of artistic self-empowerment during the Pop Art era, particularly in the 1960s. The exhibition does not postulate some genuinely feminine art, but strives to focus on a number of outstanding women artists’ oeuvres in the field of Pop Art and to shed light on their identity-creating practice and their view of women’s role in society which was very much determined by patriarchal notions in the 1960s.

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Featuring – Alek O., Salvatore Arancio, Matteo Bertini, Marco Bruzzone, Rossana Buremi, Giovanni De Lazzari, Luca De Leva, Derek Maria Di Fabio, Luca Francesconi, Andrea Kvas, Alessandro Laita, Renato Leotta, Samuele Menin, Igor Muroni, Federica Palmarin, Agne Raceviciute, Chiaralice Rizzi, Manuel Scano, Cecilia Sergi, Alberto Tadiello, Santo Tolone, Mauro Vignando, Adriano Nasuti-Wood.

Curated by Frank Boehm

Photos: Andrea Rossetti

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J. Parker Valentine’s work is deeply rooted in drawing. While her diverse practice spans film, photography, collage, and clay and fabric sculptures, her distinctive mark registers throughout. Developing narrative through abstraction is key for Valentine (b. 1980 in Austin, Texas) ; on her delicately balanced MDF panels, her drawings (and simultaneous erasure) might suggest the fragments of a figure or form, but it is the visibility of process that steers our encounter. The artist seems to constantly pursue a definition of form while at the same time avoiding it. The non-resolution of her system of creation shifts our perception from a bi-dimensional surface to a sculptural level where an innumerable number of composite concepts take form.
Click on see more to view other images of Valentine’s exhibition at Supportico Lopez.

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Hito Steyerl’s solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, London, presents a new film that incorporates a trio of works – After the Crash, Before the Crash and Crash – which employs the setting and characters of an aeroplane junkyard in the Californian desert to tell the story of the current economic climate.
In Free Fall (2010), the space of the junkyard allows various ‘crash’ narratives to unfold, with the stories of actual crashes and the remnants and afterlife of these machines becoming metaphors for economic decline. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle, finding perfect example in the form of the Boeing 4X-JYI, an aircraft first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which was subsequently flown by the Israeli Airforce before finding its way to the Californian desert to be blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster Speed.

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From December 18, we will present our latest titles at at Fahrenheit 39, a project focused on those fields of the art that use the book as a media. The self-produced publications, which are often limited editions and hard to find, give birth to new points of view on publishing, which reflects a will of re-think the book as an object and its production. Looking at this phenomenon, Fahrenheit 39 tries to make up our mind on the current Italian condition, inviting the public to explore and reflect on those publications.

Featuring – Erica Preli, Unità Di Crisi, Blisterzine, Archive Books, Automatic Books, Tankboys, Elena Xausa, Eleonora Marton, Emilio Macchia, Ryts Monet, Shs Publishing, Niccolò Mazzoni, Sabrina Campagna, Riccardo Lorusso, Blauerhase, Müge Yilmaz, Futuroscopio, Documentary Platform, Melissa Destino, Jonathan Pierini, Michela Povoleri, Aut, Annina Galmozzi, Osservatorio Fotografico, Stefano Faoro, Zizi Collective, Teiera, Irene Bacchi, Daniela Venturini, Silvio Lorusso, Aedizioni, Filippo Nostri, Aurora Biancardi, Maria Rosaria Di Gregorio, Veronica Viotti, Cesuralab, Claudia Polizzi, Luigi Amato, Umberto Mischi, Mauro Bubbico, Joseph Miceli, Studio Temp, Mousse Publishing, Luisa Lorenza Corna, Stefano Terigi, Tommaso Garner, Leonardo Sonnoli, Giuliana Racco, Luciano Bobba, Istituto Bauer Milano, 3/3.

In her first solo show with IBID PROJECTS, Rallou Panagiotou presented a series of large-scalesculptures and paintings. The visual characteristics of these works suggest references to Modernism and Pop Culture and specifically in the structural and spatial elements of 80’s NewWave music videos and videogames.

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Text — Dieter Roelstraete
Visuals — Pierre Bismuth

Why is pleasure—not just visual pleasure—so often ignored in curatorial practice? Dieter Roelstraete guides us through a reflection that sets out from a brief anecdote and urges us to think about the role of entertainment and amusement in contemporary art curating, a practice in which gravity prevails over the centripetal forces of humor and pleasure, seen as a sort of taboo.

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