e-flux Criticism

Vija Celmins’s paintings and sculptures seem at first like perfect copies of the world, writes R.H. Lossin. But these subtly evasive works suggest that mimesis is not a lesser version of reality but rather its “enchanted double.” e-flux.com/criticism/6066…

Jörg Heiser’s roundup of the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale reflects on the possibility of openness and complexity against a backdrop of global turmoil. #venicebiennale e-flux.com/criticism/6068…

REVIEW: The 2024 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art places its emphasis on the interior lives of artists, writes Vivian Ziherl, anchoring this survey among the practices, landscapes, and social histories of South Australia. Read here: e-flux.com/criticism/6060…

EDITORS’ LETTER: Amidst the violent dispersal of student protests in the US, the editors reflect on the politics of listening and seeing. e-flux.com/criticism/6063…

REVIEW: Joan Jonas’s drawings of all kinds of living creatures anchor her multifaceted practice and, Filipa Ramos notes, reflect the curiosity the artist has about the animals in her life and work. @drawingcenter e-flux.com/criticism/6018…

REVIEW: A survey of Emanuel Proweller’s paintings suggests to Ren Ebel that this striking body of work—balancing figuration, abstraction, and bold use of color—deserves wider recognition. e-flux.com/criticism/6018…

A first posthumous retrospective in her home state for the Louisiana-born artist Tina Girouard, writes Cat Kron, foregrounds the textile banners she used as props to make the case that her 1970s performance works have been unjustly neglected. e-flux.com/criticism/6016…

A new biography of Candy Darling illuminates the life of the superstar of Warhol's films, writes @mckenziewark, who attempted the impossible: to embody classic American femininity within the frame of the cis gaze. e-flux.com/criticism/6003…

EDITORS’ LETTER: Is it true that—in a censorious culture—only those are free to speak whose values align with their surrounding consensus? And if so, how might artists continue to express real dissent? e-flux.com/criticism/6000…

REVIEW: Issam Kourbaj’s "impulse to catalogue” as a response to the ongoing civil war in Syria has led him to connect different experiences of exile through what Tom Denman describes as "small boats and other metaphors." e-flux.com/criticism/5988…

In their meditations on disgust, identity, and empathy, Mary Helena Clark's films and photographs force us to reconsider our often exploitative relations to non-human animals, Chris Murtha notes. e-flux.com/criticism/5956…

A survey of Esther Malangu's work is most revealing when the work slips the various narratives imposed upon a Ndebele painter who has become post-Apartheid South Africa's "unofficial artist laureate," writes Ben Eastham. e-flux.com/criticism/5950…

Shot in an eerily empty Vatican City, Catherine Opie's photographs manifest a sculptural presence, writes Sylvie Fortin, giving form to vestiges of violence lurking in the institution's shadows. @lehmannmaupin Read here: e-flux.com/criticism/5949…

REVIEW: The classically trained dancer turned artist and choreographer Madeline Hollander challenges the separation of art from science, Maddie Hampton notes, highlighting the potential for beauty in the mundane. e-flux.com/criticism/5917…

REVIEW: How might "political art" be more than mere sloganeering? Suneil Sanzgiri's treatments of historical anticolonial struggles, writes Phil Coldiron, suggest new ways of acting in the present. e-flux.com/criticism/5916…

REVIEW: Jane Jin Kaisen unearths the personal, political, and mythological histories of Korea's storied Jeju Island through a combination of careful research and close attention to the lives of its inhabitants, writes @dylanhuw. @eseacontemp e-flux.com/criticism/5914…

An exhibition in Santiago of early works by Alfredo Jaar titled after Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, writes Juan José Santos, examines the political and cultural ramifications of Pinochet's US-backed coup that same year. @MNBAChile e-flux.com/criticism/5886…

EDITORS' LETTER: At the dawn of an uncertain year, the editors reflect on how thinking about artifacts of the near past might help us to orient ourselves in the present. e-flux.com/criticism/5884…

REVIEW: This year's edition of Condo—50 international galleries showing work across 23 London spaces—is full of artworks onto which to project emotion, writes Orit Gat, from a slumped plush figure reciting poetry to a spill of pink silicon. e-flux.com/criticism/5872…

REVIEW: In Naoki Sutter-Shudo's staging of the tensions between artist and critic, writes Gracie Hadland, is the artist harking back to a bygone era of robust debate or trying to pre-empt critical scrutiny with a cheap joke? e-flux.com/criticism/5862…