 02/01/06 Artforum
This month: Search Engine: The Art of Michel Majerus. Riding the first waves of the Internet revolution, Majerus crammed the digital efflux of our age into paintings that strained conventional definitions of the medium, moving from wall to floor to skateboard ramp and even to the Brandenburg Gate. On the occasion of a multipartite European retrospective of the late Berlin-based artists work, Artforum contributing editor Daniel Birnbaum samples the radically dissonant and disorientating oeuvre of a key 90s progenitor of painting in the expanded field. Majeruss production of images and visual environments represents one of the very few recent approaches to painting that cannot be understood in terms of a return to anything from the past.--Daniel Birnbaum Plus: Catherine Sullivan discusses her brilliant new work, The Chittendens, recently on view at Tate Modern in London and Metro Pictures in New York. In this series of films, mostly comprised of superimposed dissolves, actors follow disjointed, Fluxus-inspired choreographies rendered in cinematic styles of film noir and nineteenth-century period dramas--creating a kind of schizophrenic allegory for the economic unconscious of contemporary America. While The Chittendens draws together many marks of the past, it should provide a way of looking at a mismanaged, overly idealized, and dangerously nostalgic political present.--Catherine Sullivan And: Claire Bishop surveys todays remarkable proliferation of socially engaged art practice--ranging from that of Jeremy Deller and Atelier van Lieshout to Artur Zmijewski and Oda Projesi--examining the borders of aesthetics and ethics when it comes to critical valuation. This month, Guy Debords films--including The Society of the Spectacle--are made accessible to the public for the first time on DVD. Debord translator Keith Sanborn and Artforum contributing editor Greil Marcus discuss the virtues and vices of the re-release, and consider the works relevance today. Friendship--its costs, its joys, and the loss of it--is a theme explored in every one of Debords films. For the bonds of friendship, whether they endure or endure but a short while, offer the only alternative to the institutionalized isolation of the spectacle.--Keith Sanborn Also in Artforums February issue: Briony Fer reviews the booming, paper-laden Dada exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Yve-Alain Bois revisits the Russian avant-garde in a review of two new, groundbreaking books; Jeffrey Kastner considers Edgar Arceneauxs ever-expanding universe; Jan Tumlir experiences fear and loathing with Matthew Brannon; Rachel Kushner whacks some weeds with Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn; Irene Small visits Tropicália at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; J. Hoberman watches Carlos Reygadass new film, Battle in Heaven; Tom Holert looks for normality in contemporary art in Belgrade; and Caroline A. Jones attends Robert Storrs recent conference on globalism and the Venice Biennale. Visit Artforum online at http://www.artforum.com To subscribe, visit http://www.artforum.com/subscribe Visit artguide--Artforums free directory to the international art world, listing art fairs, auctions, and current gallery and museum shows in more than 400 cities--at http://www.artforum.com/guide |
