Barbican’s Another kind of life: Really?
Is social documentary photography’s fate to stop absorbing life’s contradictions and move towards a common, shareable, spectacular language?
Author: Helton Levy
I am a journalist and media researcher based in London, UK.
Memory and indifference: Thomas Dozol at French Riviera
Susan Sontag once said that the painter constructs, and the photographer discloses. But what if the photographer is also able to hide things from the spectator? In the show ‘Memory Played Like a Violin’, Thomas Dozol does it by covering his photographs with colorful stripes, to which he adds abstracts shapes, patches, and other graphic marks that are […]
Listening to Stan Douglas
The way Stan Douglas works with aerial images is intriguing. Using long-distance shots, like those of live TV police persecution, he composes large-scale photographs of ordinary neighborhoods. Most of them are presented as if they were telling the multiple stages of a public disturbance, or as he puts it, “riots”. In this exhibition at Victoria […]
The militarized Da Vinci in London
Should we be glad we are able the so-called “new” Da Vinci, in a so-called last chance before it goes into the market? Should we be happy because we live in a city that allows you the chance to see it? Should we be content that they allow us to see it before the piece […]
The Soul of a Nation: Mixing sociology with art
A good theme, excellent artists, relevant debate. What could possibly go wrong? Tate Modern just finished showing its version of the Afro-American arts scene since 1963. As anyone who have ever lived in the United States, I used to see “black art” as somehow a mainstream thing. Whether because it stemmed directly from the media-oriented protests, […]
Documenta 14 debates immigration and democracy
It sits on a medium-size, industrial city at the heart of Germany’s Hesse State. The city of Kassel receives once again the Documenta 14. Although the art show has had an earlier edition in Athens, Greece, it is here that we better acknowledge its spread, disarticulated, and site-specific project. Without wrapping itself in only one sign, as the […]
Natives at the 2017 Venice Biennale
The 57th Venice Biennale has decided to dedicate a large pavilion of its Arsenale section to the art of native communities around the world. An example of this incursion is the large embroidered hut designed by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, entitled “Um Sagrado Lugar” or A Sacred Place. Neto’s original proposal was not only to […]
Pangaea or Panacea: Where continents collide
At first impression, the idea of an ‘art pangaea‘ seems to make sense. “Latin American” and African contemporary artists together, inhabiting the same mega-continent, as it was 270 million years ago. In the present, the exhibition features artists from both places. showing what they have to say about their home countries, but more than that, they […]
Serra and the shadow of a space
It is just a tiny exhibition room, but the artwork in it makes it incredibly bigger. Richard Serra presents some of his recent drawings, thought for the Courtauld Gallery, in London. They look like big black spots, but are result of a much thoughtful technique. First Serra composes a draft in canvas, and then covers […]
All the way to California: Mark Bradford & Larry Bell
Mark Bradford’s works are huge. A single canvas in exhibition at White Cube Gallery has 5/16 x 145 ¼ inches, or 272 x 369 cm. Fifteen years after his first major solo show, Bradford brings to London the finest of his recent production. We have here colorful and powerful paintings with elaborated titles, such as […]
Nostalgic for the future (but not too much)
Lisson Gallery is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2017, but we can applaud now in 2014. Nostalgic for the Future is an exhibition organized to both commemorate the date, when it come, and feature interesting current contemporary production by the gallery’s set of artists. The focus here is at those producers residing or born in […]
Home truths for public eyes
An interesting approach to art and motherhood is on display at the Photographer’s Gallery in London. The institution invited artists to pose with their children, unclothed, and evoking different moments in the life of a mother. The result is seen in the exhibition “Home Truths”, curated by Susan Bright. These are images of intense emotional attachment, making it deeply […]
Oscar Murillo: On being glocal
Crossing from the extreme West to the extreme South of London is not that easy. On my way to South London Gallery, I remember the allegory of going South. Going far and hence, constructing easy meanings for popular apprehension. Who are those who live there? How do they live? Similarly, when artists, writers, and media representations […]
