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And Now a Word from Our Sponsors

Save the date! The show curated by Mazen's Nicola at CCS Bard opens on April 13! Below you can find few words that introduce the show, which will also features works by Matthew Barney:

What if we walked into an exhibition and looked at an art object keeping in mind not only the claim of the artist, but also the significance of the ties and nodes of its constitutive network of power and money? The modes of production of an artwork and the forces driving its placement in an exhibition, museum, or collection are often highly inter-connected; still, all the curators interviewed for this project have agreed that the presumably autonomous meaning of the work has to be detached from the economic and power dynamics behind its production and placement. These dynamics should arguably be kept behind closed doors, becoming hearsay, if not gossip. Curatorial practice plays an important role in keeping these two dimensions apart. But who benefits the most from this separation? Is it the work, the artist, or the institution? Is it the general public or, at the end of the day, is it neo-liberalism? And is it true that the detachment of capital from meaning has served art well? As a matter of fact, this separation has also resulted in the creation of  ‘grey areas’ of business. Especially as the art market has grown from the small, passionate community of the early 1990s to a $50 billion industry today.

Participants in the art field have argued that for the last 20 years the relationship between dealers, collectors and curatorial practitioners has never been properly regulated because personal ethics were usually sufficient to steer a true course. Nonetheless, individual principles cannot be expected to withstand the avalanche of private wealth that, quite dramatically, hit the contemporary art field over the last two decades. The complexity of dealing with the strings attached to financial support in the arts is growing at the same pace as the number of individuals of great means who have been recently involved in the art world. This new crowd of patrons can’t understand why there’s a genuine resistance to the way private funding shapes the production of art and its meaning. The lack of regulation – and, more generally, the lack of accountability – is favorable for these individuals. It distorts what is accepted as common practice through the few official policies in place. Many art professionals insist there is no need to further scrutinize a market that prompts few consumer complaints. But has self-monitoring kept pace with the increasing treatment of art as a commodity?

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"We are billions worlds on a world here"

Hello folks, here's a short piece for you to read in these snowy day: a review/preview of Camille Henrot's numerous endeavors, written by Mazen's Nicola Ricciardi and published in the February issue of Mousse Magazine. Enjoy the brief reading and stay warm.

"I recently stumbled upon an intriguing anthology of short fantasy stories edited by Ray Bradbury. Published in 1952, "Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow” features words by, among others, Cheever, Steinbeck and Kafka. In the book’s introduction, Bradbury writes: 'We are billions worlds on a world here, each of us sees a different elephant; instead of seven blind men on the road to Delhi, we are multitudes of the seeing who do not see because each of us is himself.' Instantly, I thought it could have been an appropriate epigraph for an essay on the work of French-born, New York-based artist Camille Henrot. Yet it is equally apt for this brief review, which will introduce, in a few words, the multitude of endeavors that the artist will embark on in the forthcoming year.

With solo shows from Paris to New Orleans, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC and the Silver Lion for promising young artist at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013 was a productive and rewarding year for Henrot. 2014 sustains this momentum, with numerous projects and exhibitions already on the agenda, spanning from Berlin’s Schinkel Pavillion to the Sculpture Center, and the New Museum in New York City (which in May will provide an overview of her work from the past several years, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari). Most upcoming is a new touring show, “The Pale Fox”, which opens at the Chisenhale Gallery in London at the end of February. It will proceed to Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris, followed by Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and finally, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster.

This new body of work aims to create a correlation between the construction of knowledge and its relationship to tactual experience, and to connect the history of the universe with the universe of the artists’ studio. It is an extension of the “desire of encapsulating all of human knowledge” which formed part of the premise for “Grosse Fatigue” (2013), the video-work presented and awarded in Venice last year (which will be screened, in partnership with Chisenhale, at the Tate Modern on February, 28th). It also constitutes another step along the road mapped out over the years by Henrot’s thoughtful investigation into human beings and their culture, and a continuation of her intensive research into various national museum archives, as part of her residency at The Smithsonian.

The Washington DC institution, with its diverse collection of over 130 million items, embodies the will to 'increase and diffuse the knowledge among men' that seems to animate Henrot’s practice. The interest in systems of knowledge and organization of information is evident in the presentation of her work, adapted into the diverse media of sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and animated films (that is, a body of work almost as eclectic as The Smithsonian’s collection). It is even more explicit in her loosely “anthropological” approach, which allows the artist to tie together bequeathed myths and notions of identity, to capture the eternal human obsession to catalogue the world and blend it with interferences reflective of our current digital era. For example, this is expressed in “Grosse Fatigue” through the use of multiple windows opened at the same time on a desktop.

Like a timeless and tireless explorer, Henrot breezes past borders and across cultures. She moves elegantly from the Japanese tradition of the ikebana (chosen to explore the connection that exists between the languages of nature and of culture in “Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers?”, 2012), to ancestral rites of passage in the South Pacific Ocean (reversing the normal course of colonial influence in “Coupé/Décalé” ,2010). Further, she models pieces of car engines to create objects inspired by African art (a reference to the migration of symbols as well as to the economic circulation of objects, in “Endangered Species”, 2009), and even brings to light a legendary submerged city (to draw a parallel with the disappearing wetlands occupied by a tribe of Indians in Louisiana in “Cities of Ys”, 2012).

It is her hope that, by browsing through traditions and ideas with the curiosity of the amateur and approaching cultures through their partial connections rather than their differences, one could increase a sense of global empathy. 'Art and anthropology are the venues for examining and integrating the fantasy and subjectivity of the researcher,' the artist told Mousse’s New York Editor Cecilia Alemani in a 2012 interview. Once again, her words seem to echo those of Bradbury in the thought-provoking introduction to his anthology. Writes the American fiction writer: 'For all its reality, life is still a fantasy. For it is not only what life does in the material world that counts, but how each mind sees what is done that makes the fantasy complete'."

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Barbarians at the gate

Fantastic news! After 5 years, Patrick Tuttofuoco will returns to Milan with a solo exhibition - and it's curated by Mazen’s Nicola Ricciardi! It is a honor for us, and a great pleasure too, to be working closely with Patrick, who's also a long-time friend. We owe a lot to him. This new series of works is somehow dedicated to Milan itself - the city that has seen Patrick growing up both personally and artistically - and arises from the need to deal with the transformations of the urban context, the mutations of consumption, and the permeability of the city’s art system: six brand new sculptures, loosely inspired by the barbarians depicted on the facade of Milan's "Casa degli Omenoni" (pictured above), which continue the artist’s investigation on and around the human figure and its possible transfiguration.

The sculptures will "invade" Patrick gallery in Milan - Studio Guenzani - as well as some external spaces - both public and private - that sit outside the context of art, but that nonetheless decided to get involved in a sort of negotiation, and exchange; these spaces, that are so far still secret, will host one sculpture respectively, and in return will give to the artist a symbolic object, to be displayed in the gallery for the duration of the show. Not readymades or mere appropriations, but concrete and tangible signs of a thought -  that it is only in the predisposition to be contaminated that every place bears inevitably inscribed the idea it has of itself. The exhibition opens on March 28, 2014 - and we're going to most more info and details on the project by then. The show is also part of "The Spring Awakening", a program of events, openings and special visitors’ hours, starting on the Spring equinox and continuing throughout miart 2014, the city's main art fair. Stay tuned!

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Of Brooklyn Rails and Minus Objects

The new issue of The Brooklyn Rail is out! This month it features a review made by Mazen's Nicola Ricciardi on “Michelangelo Pistoletto: The Minus Objects 1965-1966” at Luhring Augustine’s in Bushwick. The show features the seminal series of sculptures that the Italian artist made between late 1965 and early 1966. To be honest, the original anti-establishment ethos in the work is a bit compromised here by its presentation in a top-notch commercial gallery and, moreover, in an area intensively hammered by gentrification processes. In addition, the fact that “poor materials” are now ubiquitous in contemporary art spaces—in part as a direct consequence of the Arte Povera’s lesson—has loosened the original rebellious vigor of the Minus Objects. Still, the Bushwick re-enactment is worth visiting. And if you want to read more about it, here's the link to the article.

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From Brooklyn to Billowing

Our friend Francesco Simeti invited us to collaborate on his new project, that premieres today in Switzerland. We gladly accepted. The first step was to write a brief text on the project, that soon will be extended and hopefully become part of a solid publication on the work. For now we're happy to present you the short version, written by Mazen's Nicola Ricciardi. More to follow, but in the meantime check out Francesco's work. And if you're in New York that means taking a ride on the D line and getting out at the 18th Ave station in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Francesco Simeti | Billowing January 30th, 2014 | PRIMOPIANO | Lugano (CH)

Rock formations, sand dunes, a tangle of thorns and other fragments of an impervious nature. The work of Francesco Simeti seems an archive, only apparently disorganized, of bucolic tales and Arcadian landscapes. In his narratives and in his wallpapers the human element – often embodied in mechanical shapes and industrial silhouette - it's just a fleeting presence, ephemeral yet constant as a slow, unavoidable process of erosion. Not an invasion, but rather a "mutation" of the landscape. Not an inexplicable degeneration, not a mysterious disease, but the outcome of a wound deliberately left open, neglected. In this metastasis, cause and effect merge, victims and perpetrator blend. Just like in the painting that inspired the series of works presented by PRIMOPIANO. In the battle for the reunification of Lianzhen, troops of different armies become blended and indistinct, aided by dense fog banks and curled lines of smoke. The same elements are reproduced in the wallpapers made by the artist, where stylized gusts of wind sweep thick clouds that could either come from an Irish sky or from the chimney of a power plant. Also the clouds, after all, are a form of mutation: a rupture in the equilibrium of oxygen in the atmosphere caused by the commingling of other substances.

That is, a matter of molecules. Or rather, of small details, which is one of the main keys to the interpretation of Simeti’s practice. So are the titles of his works - practical grips for understanding his art, that comfort even the most indolent observers. "Billowing", for example, brings to mind the image of an undulating mass of smoke as well as a piece of fabric filled with air and swelled outward. In the video installation bearing this tile, such dichotomy is made explicit through the march of the banners: their flags whipped by the winds, and at the same time shrouded by a fog that seem to come from an invisible as much as anachronistic chimney. Simeti puts the viewer in front of an ambivalent scenario, where the aesthetic gesture walks hand in hand with the desire to raise environmental awareness. Meanwhile, the Manchu armies stroll in and out of the picture, like puppets in a shadow play. Or like the characters of an “Opera dei Pupi”, the marionette theatrical play, typical of the artist's native land, where Orlando and Rinaldo battle always and forever to win the heart of the beautiful Angelica. They embody the fierce will to fight "in the most invisible of the invisible wars" – that is, the one we fight with ourselves. An open and endless struggle. Just like the one between Humans and Nature.

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On a different note

We inaugurated a new year of posts on this blog with a light touch, a short story from The New Yorker that we hope you've enjoyed. But now that NYE's euphoria and bubbles are over, we'd like to open a discussion on a much more serious topic. The fact is that 2014 actually started with an article in our email inbox: a commentary from the Village Voice forwarded by a friend of ours precisely on January 1st. The piece was wrapping-up the year just passed, which, according to the journalist Christian Viveros-Fauné, had ended very much as it had begun - with money at the center of an increasingly rotten art world. Interestingly, the article also featured the text of an email sent by a prominent public relations company to The Voice, kindly suggesting a “profile piece” on Peter Hort, son of Susan and Michael Hort who host the annual Welcoming Brunch of the upcoming Armory Show. The email ends like this:

In regular finance, if you have insider information about a stock, it is illegal to invest in that stock. In the art world, it is not only legal - it is done regularly. Peter Hort, along with his wife and family, are the people who create the insider information.

There are certainly far more scandalous examples of the shadiness of the art world than this. Still, this email is important proof: that, in New York especially, “art is no longer just art, but crooked finance”. The kind of crooked finance that today is not merely accepted among otherwise reputable folk, but encouraged. The Village Voice goes on: A year-end wrap-up of art in New York City would be meaningless without mentioning the single greatest transformation to have struck the visual arts globally: namely, that the art market has turned into one big corrupt casino, a place where price fixing, market manipulation, bribery, forgery, theft, and money laundering have become as popular as risky mortgages were in 2007. The evidence of this transformation is everywhere, if one cares to look. There are scandals, court cases, indictments, and suspiciously skyrocketing auction records.

The situation is pretty clear, but often the reaction of those in the field is simply a shrug. A prominent Director of art institutions whom we recently met and had a chat on this very subject told us: "Well, you're telling me that the art world is perverted by money? Of course it is! But you know what - the public doesn't care, and also art history doesn't care". Still we, as cultural producers, partake in the writing of that very same history. Therefore, rather than simply assuming that art is a dirty business, or speculating further about the bursting of the latest contemporary art bubble, it should be far more significant to sharp our focus on what can be done - on a practical level - to shape up a new equilibrium. And the sooner we take this on, the more capable we are of ensuring that the art market’s recent growth has not come at the expense of belief in the fundamental value of art itself. Because, it must be firmly said, art, after all, is more than just empty paraphernalia for social, political or financial enrichment. Let us know what you think about this.

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New Beginnings

Greetings, friends of the Blog Of Mazen! Here's we are, at the dawn of a new year, the fourth since we started this project - that has changed many, many times since 2010. We've learned from our mistakes and shaped this thing we call Mazen little by little, mainly thanks to the wisdom, words, and experience of all the friends, partners, and contributors, that we met along the way.

2014 has started with A LOT of good news for us: new projects, new commissioned, new ideas - and we'll keep you posted on all this. But for now, let's start with something light, and that has nothing to do with art: that is, a funny short story by B.J. Novak that we found catching up with past issues of the New Yorker over the winter break. it's a story about the man that invented the calendar, and it starts like this:

January 1st—Ha! That feels fun to write. I’m excited. I’ve been thinking about doing this for so long—I went through my notes and it turns out I came up with this idea all the way back on Day After Day After Very Cloudy Day...

Enjoy the reading, and each day of this year that has just started. All the best.

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The good, the bad and the best of 2013

Each December, Artforum invites a group of distinguished critics, curators, and artists from around the world to revisit the year in art. This year, the magazine features the personal Top Ten of people like Okwui Enwezor, Lynne Cook, Julia Peyton-Jones among many others. Apparently, the overall "winner" for 2013 is Steve McQueen, as his retrospective at the Schaulager in Basel is the only single event mentioned by at least four different people. And we couldn't agree more. Still, it is a bit harder to agree on the second most present occurrence - that is, "Spring Breakers", listed at least 3 times (just like Rosemarie Trockel's "A Cosmos" at the New Museum, that indeed deserves the podium). The thing is that, in a year in which the discourse seems to be constantly shifted by pop singers self-identifying as individual avant-garde movements, bringing a movie like "Spring Breakers" in the contemporary art arena is probably very cool, but also not very interesting. Yes, we get it: "Disney tween starlets hilariously undulating, snorting cocaine, and going to jail in bikinis" is sooooo our times. Like a million other things that we'll probably forget about in the next 6 months or so. We did our best trying to see "something more" implied in James Franco's ode to "his shit", but in the end we just are left with the only possible comment:

Anyway, enough with complaining about other people's list. Here's a unique opportunity for you reader to critique our own highlights of the year. We decided to limit it to a Top 3, with no specific order - just three little things from 2013 that we believe we will carry with us in the years that follow (besides the above mentioned shows by McQueen and Trockel). The first spot goes to "3", the last feature of the new movie trilogy Allora & Calzadilla realized this year for the Festival d’Automne in Paris in which the artists examine the history of music and, more specifically, the connection among our primitive cultures, our origins and the function of the sound. The film "3" in particular takes as its subject the Venus of Lespugue, one of the world's best known Upper Paleolithic Venus figures, sculpted in mammoth ivory. There are many hypotheses surrounding the Venus’ paradoxical or "peculiar ideal" of beauty due to her exaggerated proportions that could be read almost as deformities; but in the artist’s research into the field of biomusicology, they came across a speculative hypothesis according to which her linear measurements closely match the diatonic scale of the Vedic Aryans, also known as the Dorian mode of the ancient greeks. Taking this theory as a point of departure, the artists attempt to portray, in visual and musical terms, a process of transcription of the Venus figure into music, using the proportions of the statue as a musical scale: the film thus depicts cellist Maya Beiser performing a score composed by David Lang based upon these rules. The piece is beautifully captivating and awe-inspiring, both visually and musically. Watch it and then try convince us on "Spring Breakers".

The second of Mazen's highlights of 2013 got to another piece that is concerned with music - that is, Ragnar Kjartansson's "A Lot of Sorrow" at MomA PS1. If you read this blog frequently, you should know by now that Ragnar is a friend and that we really, really like what he is doing. Also, we're HUGE fans of The National, so just the idea of Matt Berninger singing one of our favorite songs for over 6 straight hours deserves to be part of our list. Bust besides personal taste, friendships and musical affiliations, the piece was genuinely one of the most intriguing art experience we had this year. By stretching a single pop song into a day-long tour de force Ragnar continues his explorations into the potential of repetitive performance to produce sculptural presence within sound. Still, it must be said that repetition is a common tool in performance art, and Ragnar did not invent it  (just think of “Vexations,” the piano motif by Erik Satie that was meant to be performed eight hundred and forty times in succession). But what happened under the VW Dome at PS1 was pretty unique, and moving. If, for the band, it was a Stakhanovite marathon, for the audience it felt like a dream on a repeating loop that won't let go.

Last but not least, the third item on our 2013 cart of goodies is a book: Dave Hickey's "Pirates and Farmers: Essays on the Frontiers of Art". Arguably one of America s most unconventional art/cultural critics working today, Hickey -a man who has decided he’s through with the art world, but will never be done with art - has once again assembled a collection of searing essays that challenge the critics cultural status quo. It's an extremely thought-provoking and at the same time enjoyable reading. And the author is one of the sharpest mind when it comes to art criticism: due to the new extreme popularity, oversimplification and commoditization of contemporary art, Hickey recently announced his retirement from the field of criticism by saying things such "I miss being an elitist and not having to talk to idiots." As his own friends have pointed out - and this is very explicit in "Pirates and Farmers" - Hickey often comes across as an irascible but amiable bar buddy, the kind you don’t mind indulging as he holds forth on topics he clearly knows more about than you do. And if at times your pal makes some wild associative leaps, well, you drain your beer and signal for another round. Well, cheers to that. And to a 2013 that has been extremely productive, fun and full of good news for Mazen.

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From Kanye to Overby via Mousse #41

One of the few good news coming from Miami these days is that Mousse is debuting its new issue. Interestingly, it features a conversation between our friends Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter that says a lot about what's happening to contemporary art nowadays, and in particular in Florida as we write (for instance, Kanye West talking design with Hans Ulrich Obrist). Writes Cornell: "We’re living in a moment when contemporary art has unprecedented popularity. The expanded art market has lured celebrity interest into its VIP echelons; rappers are reflecting on the canon; pop singers self-identify as individual avant-garde movements. Swarms of attention surround these spectacular events and yet, at the same time, the future of mass culture is in question due to media’s dispersion and personalization." All very true, and if you want to know more you can read the full conversation here.

But this issue of Mousse also features a couple of reviews by Mazen's curator Nicola Ricciardi, beside his regular "Starring" column. One of these is the result of a conversation with Alessandro Rabottini, the curator of GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo, Italy that has organized a very intriguing travelling exhibition on the work of Robert Overby. Below you can find Nicola's piece with some pictures of Overby's works (and yes, we chose the works resembling the most the above collage by Kanye on purpose...). Enjoy. Robert Overby - Works 1969-1987 Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève January 31st  — April 27th, 2014 In 1971, Robert Overby went to a derelict, burned-out building in Los Angeles called the “Barclay House”, painted thick layers of latex rubber directly on the building facades and architectural fragments, let the latex harden and then peeled it off. The resulting serial castings recorded every bump, scratch and blemish on the house in meticulous detail, mapping out air vents, pipes, patch repairs, and grooves marking the edges of cladding. The features often exaggerated the sense of decay and the passage of time, making it more of a personal interpretation rather than a loyal reproduction. Among the pieces from that series of work, which spanned everything from single doors to 5 meters long walls, there’s one that stands out, called “East room with two windows, third floor”. The rusty, iron-tinged ocher palette, the decadent plasticity of the rubber latex, the two windows that resemble vacuous eyes, make it look like a weirdly anthropomorphic ghostly mask; it is a simultaneously haunting and haunted vision that is hard not to be captivated by. Interestingly, the rough, almost primordial, quality of those hollow windows will, in a few months’ time, be contrasted by the shimmering and luminous windowpanes surrounding the galleries of the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Genève, where from January 30th the first institutional survey exhibition of Overby’s work in Europe will be presented. The show, which is curated by Alessandro Rabottini, will then travel to the GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo, Italy in May, and finally to the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway, from September 2014.

Windows will not be the only strong contrast integral to the Genève show: the numerous concrete and plaster casts made by Overby in the seventies will stand out sharply against his “stretched drawing” series from the same years (for example “Magnetic Stretch”, an intriguing piece made of shiny PVC and resin in bright, artificial colors); Overby’s subtle, faint, and slightly out of focus paintings of headless torsos (including the exquisite “Vertical torso with grey edge” from 1973) will be at odds with the “montages” series, where collages of explicit close-ups stills cut from porn movies generate over-detailed and straight-forward visual rendering of various orgies. As a matter of fact, Overby has been shifting between styles, media, practices, materials and school of thoughts throughout his career. But while most of his pieces differ in appearance, they are all connected by the artist’s fascination with façades, planes and skins of people, of buildings, of inanimate objects (like the 1971’s “Rubber sock” included in the show that it was allegedly his first rubber cast). As Andrew Berardini wrote exactly a year ago for this very magazine, “[Overby] skinned many a building, the skin more real than the thing being skinned.” In the end, his investigation of the interaction between surface and meaning drew Overby to produce a number of “masks”, some maybe accidental like the cast of the East Room of the Barclay House, some more unequivocal, as illustrated by perhaps his most iconic painting, “Pink head”, a flesh-colored latex rubber facemask. It is an intriguing and somewhat disturbing image; at first it looks like a painterly version of a shot by Jimmy De Sana in his collaboration with Terence Sellers; but if one looks at it less superficially he or she will soon notice that the neck ends abruptly, the face has no nose, the lips are painted onto the rubber, wrinkles catch the light where breath suctions it in, the narrow eye-holes are crooked and misaligned, with only one eyeball weirdly peering through. Once again, Overby proves that rather than just recording the surface his interest lies in exploiting its imperfection, in revealing the flaws in the crust.

It is not by chance that all the painted S&M masks and the latex wall casts presented in the Genève exhibition look flaccid and slack like slough, the dead outer skin shed by a reptile. Earlier critics of Overby’s work pointed out that this limpness might recall Claes Oldenburg’s works - but those had a kind of candidly dull happiness written all around them, while Overby’s stand out more as an admission of defeat. It is also worth noting that beside “Pink Face”, another seminal portrait is presented here, “Untitled (Monk Restoration)” from 1973. The painting, which comes from a series of copied old-master portraits, depicts a curly-headed young monk in adoration, shown in profile. The two images could hardly be more antithetical, but in both paintings, in much the same way that too much makeup makes a face look ghastly rather than fresh, the artist highlights flawed lines and pictorial weaknesses rather than concealing them. As art historian Ian Blom pointed out, speaking of Overby’s work, “it tells stories the way a cadaver on a dissection table does - what used to be ‘just life’ is now ‘information’.” And as a matter of fact, the surprising range of the artist’s production presented in the show leaves the viewer itching to see just what’s inside that lifeless body, who’s hiding behind the flawed mask. Suddenly, you just want to dismember more, to dig deeper, to frantically scratch at all those surfaces and explore the imperfections hiding within.

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A jump to the future and a blast from the past

It has been announced today that Okwui Enwezor will be the artistic director of the 56th Venice Biennale, due to open in 2015 on 9 May. The Nigerian-born, German-based curator and museum director will be the first African-born curator of the biennial. Enwezor has been the director of Munich's Haus der Kunst since 2011, but has also curated Documenta 11 in 2002 and he has organized several biennials - from Seville to South Korea - and the major traveling survey of post-war African art “The Short Century” (2001-02). The news of course took us back to last summer, when we were in Venice ourselves, working on Massimiliano Gioni's Biennale. So forgive us if we go on an early-throwback-Thursday and re-post here a full array of blog entries from that incredible experience: from the unpacking to the fine-tuning via Gioni's decision-making process and all the new amazing professionals and friends (yes, we're talking about you, Ragnar!) that we met along the canals. And while you enjoy this blast form our (recent) past, please also join us in wishing Mr. Enwezor the best of luck for his new adventure. Jump on it!

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Thanks, but no thanks

As the Art Basel Miami week approaches, all sort of papers here in New York - from online art zines to general-interests media outlets - are wondering how posh, pop, and celebrity-driven the whole event will be this year (especially following the various "I'm-So-Into-Art" exploits made by people like Kanye West or Lady Gaga ). To be honest, the Miami-thing was never of particular interest for us, and all this cluttering - even before the opening - made us even more skeptical about this year edition. That's why, in the end, we've decided not to go, despite the fact that we were officially and kindly invited to (we won't drop names here because we respect people working there, no matter what). Anyway, we believe that this story featured in today's New York Times pretty accurately describes what is going to happen - especially this quote: "For decades, the MGM lion has roared under the slogan 'Ars gratia artis,' or 'Art for art’s sake.' Now, on Madison Avenue, executives are busily thumbing through their Latin dictionaries to figure out how to say 'Art for marketing’s sake.' Well, thanks but we're out, and we're taking the lion with us.

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Ties and detachments

Beloved readers, here's another little anticipation for you. The hot news is that we're currently starting an "investigation" on a particular work by a particular artist: Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. It all started from a question, raised by Mazen's Nicola Ricciardi in an academic paper he's currently working on: who benefits from the separation between the artistic claim of a work of art and the power/economic dynamics behind its placing in an exhibition, museum or collection? In order to draft a possible answer, we're drawing a case study leveraging on series of photographs that Barney’s took and sold in order to finance “Cremaster 1” in the mid-90’s. Here's one of the gelatin silver prints in self-lubricating plastic frame that are part (and courtesy) of the Marieluise Hessel Collection.

The idea is to  visually display the funding structure, the spheres of influences, and all the ties that made the Cremaster Cycle possible literally “attached” to the work (possibly through a series of colored cotton strings on the wall), in order to stimulate the viewer to make his or her own mind around the question above. The entity–relationship model that will originate from Barney’s piece is so far largely based on data collected following the very thought-provoking manual "How To Conduct Investigative Research" written and published online by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, as well as on anecdotes registered through direct interviews (while for the network visualization we're thinking about Graph Commons, the collaborative 'network mapping' platform developed by Istanbul and New York based artist Burak Arıkan). All of the above is still pretty much work in progress, but we'll keep you posted as things develop!

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Preview of the preview: Martin Creed

Here's a special treat for the readers of The Blog Of Mazen: the sneaky preview of the 'preview' that Mazen's Nicola Ricciardi wrote for the 41st issue of Mousse Magazine on Martin Creed's retrospective opening at the Hayward Gallery in London at the end of January (plus a brief review of the two Creed's shows jointly organize by Hauser & Wirth and Gavin Brown's enterprise in New York City). Enjoy!

Martin Creed at Hayward Gallery

If one takes a detailed look at all the reviews, the press releases, each of the critical texts written over the years on and around the work of Martin Creed, he or she will soon notice that two adjectives are used more often than the rest: playful and thought-provoking. As a matter of fact, these two words could easily be applied to almost any piece conceived, created or performed by Creed. For example, walking along Greenwich Street in New York in these days, you might well come across an anonymous-looking light-grey car, parked ordinarily enough with doors shut and engine off, but that extra-ordinarily springs to life. At pre-determined times all of its mechanical processes start simultaneously; doors and windows magically open, air conditioning blasts, the horn blares and so on and so forth. This work is part of the solo exhibition by the Scottish artist jointly organized by Hauser & Wirth and Gavin Brown’s enterprise that opened on November 8th in New York City. The piece is undoubtedly playful – with its windshield wipers and headlights flashing on, as if a real-life relative of “Herbie the Love Bug”; and it’s irresistibly thought-provoking as well, as it continues Creed’s practice of “taking gentle but surgically precise liberties with public space in order to ignite the audience’s imagination” (the most notable reference to this tradition being “Work No. 227, Lights going on and off”, which earned him the Turner Prize in 2001). At the same time it must be said that Creed’s work goes well beyond these two categories, and another show, opening towards the end of January at the Hayward Gallery, aims to tell the bigger story.

This exhibition, which occupies both floors of the Hayward as well as its outdoor terraces, is the first major survey of Creed's work. It presents a variety of pieces, from room-sized installations to neon signs and music videos, narrating the journey from his early works (including a clay sculpture of a raised fist that he made as a schoolboy) to his most recent commissions. Among the latter is “Work No. 1000 (2009-10)”, a monumental color series comprising 1000 prints made with broccoli that was cut in cross-section, dipped in 1000 different colors of paint and then used as stamps to leave their imprints on paper. The piece was originally commissioned by Bob Rennie for his collection at the Wing San in Vancouver, but it will be shown here for the first time in the UK. Cliff Lauson, curator at the Hayward Gallery, said of the work that "it resembles a huge colorful mural", and it is indeed visually stunning. But to be fair it is also a pretty dumb exercise (I remember an interview with Creed in which he stated that the number of colors was picked out of the air for the work: “another way of looking at it: It’s a fuck of a lot”, the artist said). However, in a paradoxical twist, it is precisely this apparent stupidity that makes the work less clichéd. While I would love to claim the contrary, this is not in reality “hot news”, as I’ve heard Creed himself calling his art stupid. I recall for example an interview in which the Scottish artist was referring to a claim allegedly made by Gerhard Richter about his own work: “He wanted his paintings to be stupid like nature,” Creed said, “and I think about that a lot, of making something like nature, partially in the sense of being stupid”. Nature is, by its very nature, stupid because it is unpredictable, and often completely impossible to rationalize. “The world’s just really weird,” Creed continued, in what it seems is a call for people to sometimes just stop thinking – that is, aspiring towards the uncommon aim of non-thought-provocation.

As a matter of fact, Creed is attracted by polarities (from the on / off dichotomy of “Work No. 227” to the “Thinking / Not Thinking” song and video - pictured above - that he released on Telephone Records, his own label, in 2011). And if thought-provocation finds its counterpart in the above-mentioned stupidity, it is also true that Creed’s work is not just plain playful but, upon closer examination reveals a rather gloomy and sad disposition. As Massimiliano Gioni pointed out in an essay from one of the most interesting and enjoyable publications on the artist (“Martin Creed: Works”, published by Thames & Hudson in 2010), his work has “an intimate, personal even melancholy sphere that all too often gets overlooked. On and off, up and down, open and closed are all expressions that could just as easily be applied to moods, happiness and depression, euphoria and dysphoria”. To me, these intrinsic polar separations form an integral part of another art – music - that has often and continuously been explored by Creed himself; the latest case in point being the Southbank Centre commissioning him to create a new work for the organ to coincide with his retrospective at the Hayward (the musical performance, entitled “Face to Face with Bach”, will premiere on March 30th at the Royal Festival Hall). I firmly believe that it is impossible to discuss “composition” and “improvisation”, for example, as if they were two unique and clearly delineated activities; in the same way, the Hayward Gallery’s show aims to demonstrate once for all that Martin Creed’s work is not just playful and thought-provoking, but also stupid and sad. And yes - that’s a good thing.

[blogofmazen]

The Silent University: enrolled!

Today we met with Turkish conceptual artist Ahmet Ögüt to talk about the publication Mazen's curator Nicola Ricciardi is working on as part of his collaboration with Mousse Publishing. It was also the occasion to see the artist "on the job" as he was in New York to present his "Silent University" project during Performa13. The Silent University is an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by and for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. It is led by a group of lecturers, consultants and research fellows. Each group is contributing to the programme in different ways which include course development, specific research on key themes as well as personal reflections on what it means to be a refugee and asylum seeker.

During the Performa event we also met our friend Fawz and Isak - read the story of their own project during the Performa days here - and both them and Nicola in the end "enrolled" in the University (and will soon receive a nice student card like the one above), in the spirit of the project - that aims to address and reactivate the knowledge of the participants and make the exchange process mutually beneficial by inventing alternative currencies, in place of money or free voluntary service. We'll keep you posted on what would be Nicola's contribution :)

[blogofmazen]

"It is ok to be of a time"

Last night we attended an amazing dinner + performance at 49B Studios in Brooklyn organized by two of our best friends in the city - Fawz Kabra, talented curator,  and her lovely husband Isak Berbic, which is a very interesting artist, and professor. The night was the occasion to eat delicious food from the Middle East - recipes of Fawz's mom - and also take a closer look at Isak's ongoing project "From the Life of Engineer D.M." that works within the parameters of photography and text to engage the capacity of memory to be an activity that is produced within the viewing process. Assisted by trope, collective cultural memory, and aesthetics of documentary and the archive, "D.M." mines this plasticity of recollection and produces fiction based on unknown details of actual events. We're sure you gonna hear more about this project in the future. As for the time being, congrats to our friends!!

[blogofmazen]

Halloween with Banksy

It's the talk of the town, especially on the Internet: Banksy, world-renowned recluse and PG-13 provocateur is wreaking organized havoc on the streets of New York City. The result, the public show "Better In Than Out," is part scavenger hunt and part performance piece, with a new work popping up each day throughout the month of October, in neighborhoods far and wide. But there's also a side effect to all this hype - that is, a whole bunch of artsy minded fellas dressing like Bansky graffitis for Halloween this year. Like our great friend Alvise, pictured below, dressed as the artist's signature "flower thrower". Ans yes, he did it right.

[blogofmazen]

In conjunction with the MoMA’s first major exhibition of sound art, "Soundings: A Contemporary Score", the museum also presented the first U.S. performance by cyclo. (Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda), entitled cyclo.id., on October 6. Since their collaboration began in 1999, cyclo.’s work—live performances, CDs, books, and ongoing research—has focused on their shared interest in the visualization of sound. We were there, and we have to say that we witnessed an amazing performance. Here's a brief video from that evening. Basically, it was a rave party in a poshy atrium - nobody danced, but still it was so damn good.