frieze issue 145 out now
Dear Painter: curator Christopher Bedford asks five painters what abstraction means today. Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach, Matt Connors, Charline von Heyl, and Bernd Ribbeck respond to his questions on metaphysics, materiality, and representation.
Past Futures: five decades after the pioneering Japanese architecture group Metabolism was founded, Amelia Groom considers their legacy on the occasion of a major touring survey, while Rem Koolhaas talks to Nick Currie about the organic and flexible buildings that they envisioned: ‘A certain kind of madness is necessary to really get density. With the Metabolists we have pure ideas that are realized in the world, and that therefore retain a compelling density of meaning.’
One Instant: novelist Marie Darrieussecq responds to the filmic mediations of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva: ‘Gusmão and Paiva look at the world as if were the first time—this for me, is a definition of art.’
American Opera: first broadcast in 1983, Robert Ashley‘s TV opera Perfect Lives is a talkative exploration of sociability and storytelling. On the occasion of a Spanish-language update by Alex Waterman, Dan Fox considers this ‘opera for the screen-age.’
Also featured in the March issue: Isobel Harbison looks at work informed by the online debris of stock photography—including Aleksandra Domanović, Oliver Laric, Helen Marten, James Richards, Hannah Sawtell and the Yemenwed collective; and Jonathan Griffin looks at LA-based artist Kaari Upson‘s long term ‘Larry Project’.
Tristes Artists: Francesco Bonami finds that Germano Celant’s eight-venue exhibition ‘Arte Povera 2011′ fails the original spirit of the movement, transforming what was a revolutionary force into a legacy of bathos.
Living History: in the light of last year’s reopening of the Islamic galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jason Farago explores the institution’s surge in popularity.
Music: Simon Reynolds looks at what is behind the recent boom in ‘outsider electronics’ reissues.
Exhibition Reviews: Forty reviews from 28 cities in 17 countries, which include: the Bamako Photography Biennial; the 3rd Athens Biennale; Prospect.2, New Orleans; Lygia Pape at the Serpentine Gallery, London; ‘Danser sa vie’ at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Goshka Macuga at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw.
Questionnaire: artist Ragnar Kjartansson, ‘I like the look of everything. I am madly in love with the world.’
And: Sam Thorne on the untidy history of criticism; a short story by artist Bedwyr Williams; Lynne Tillman considers failure as a creative tool; Jennifer Allen looks at the economics involved when artists have children; Sean O’Toole on agitprop and the griot tradition; Brian Dillon reviews a new novel by Ben Marcus; and the Turkish artist Banu Cennetoğlu gives her ideal syllabus, plus Neïl Beloufa, Corin Sworn, Jonathas de Andrade and Wu Tsang.
Highlights from frieze.com:
A postcard from Cairo by Claire Davies
Damien Hirst’s bland ambition by Dan Fox
An interview with Artists in Occupy Amsterdam by Nick Aikens
Lana Del Rey and the myth of feminine tragedy by Zoe Pilger
An interview with pioneering musician Dieter Moebius by Geeta Dayal
