February 2015 in Artforum
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This month in Artforum:
Material Witness:At a moment when images by the millions—whether video footage or polemical caricatures—are being blocked, destroyed, or silenced, art historian David Joselit examines the status of visual evidence in the most disparate of spheres, from the case of Eric Garner to the work of cover artist William Pope.L:
“How can we account for the fact that the video of a police officer pressing his arm against Garner’s throat—a document that could not have been less ambiguous—did not ‘speak for itself’ before the members of a grand jury?”
–David Joselit
Film scholar D. N. Rodowick reflects on the machinic eye of seminal filmmaker Harun Farocki,whose contribution to contemporary cinema is vast yet remains obscure:
“The simplest and truest thing one can say about Farocki’s work is that it is the product of a life engaged in the critique of images by images.”
–D. N. Rodowick
Carroll Dunham on Chris Ofili:
“The exhibition was permeated by a belief that painting can speak—has always spoken—without becoming just a talking point.”
–Carroll Dunham
Paul Galvez on Isabelle Cornaro:
“In Cornaro’s hands, the aesthetic is not so much the classic antagonist of consumer culture; it is rather that culture’s shadow and double.”
–Paul Galvez
Kathy Noble on James Richards‘s Raking Light:
“Raking Light is a romantically mournful work, as if an elegy to the moving image.”
–Kathy Noble
Openings: Nicolas Linnert on Henning Fehr and Philipp Rühr:
“Fehr and Rühr push the recombinant logic of montage to a frenetic pace that denies any cathartic, synthesized resolution.”
–Nicolas Linnert
And: Anne M. Wagner on Sculpture after Sculpture at the Moderna Museet; Beau Rutland on Sturtevant at the Museum of Modern Art; Marc Siegel on Paul Sharits in Kassel; and 1000 Words from Aura Satz.
Plus: Jonathan Rosenbaum on André Singer‘s Night Will Fall; André Rottmann on the collected writings of Renée Green; Venus Lau on the Tenth Shanghai Biennale; Svetlana Alpers on Rembrandt at the National Gallery in London;and Siobhan Phillips on Claudia Rankine‘s Citizen; finally, Hong Kong–based curator Cosmin Costinas shares his Top Ten.
