Our annual exhibitions list per the end of the year is now a ten years plus old tradition, following the start of our platform in 2013. C-print just turned 11 this fall, and the one thing that does recur, is this list.
X. Shana Hoehn and Milagros Rojas, Shudders and Perforations, Deli, CDMX
While we’ve come to expect great things from CDMX as an art hub, Deli Gallery’s by now defunct space in the city made for an unexpected gallery visit back in January. While the gallery too no longer exists, the show that people kept recommending us to see during our gallery tour merits to be mentioned. Unassuming from the outside, behind a black discreet door hid a grand townhouse-like space where a two-person exhibition titled Shudders and Perforations with Los Angeles-based artist Shana Hoehn and local artist Milagros Rojas spread across several rooms on two different floors. The apparent dialogue between Rojas’ captivating pencil drawings (very refreshing to see in a gallery context), Hoehn’s intricate mixed media sculptures, telling of next-level craftmanship, and the space itself was just phenomenal. Some of the curatorial choices like keeping the massive window frames bare and by so, allowing also an extended dialogue with the exteriors, added an additional layer to already dense displays.
Photo: © Marta Ankiersztejn. Courtesy of Dansens Hus
IX. Marco da Silva Ferreira, Bisonte, Elverket c/o Dansens Hus, Stockholm
Marco da Silva Ferreira’s Bisonte, put a bit oxymoronically, began low-key epic at once, with the choreographer himself offering vocal chops with a tender and harmonious rendition of what gradually struck you as the quintessentially nostalgic Lambada by Kaoma. This, just as the gradually emerging choreography peafowled him into arm-swaying ”posturing” and 90’s Eurovision song contest diva mode.
”Posturing” is said here as a play on words, because there was a great element of ”fraudulence” cemented in this piece; of deliberately and transiently giving off air of being something much more formulaic than it is. Only to cunningly Pied-Pier-of-Hamelin you into full realization of how great and epic it is, running the full course past the finishing line, until there’s nothing left not to equate as epic. In contemporary pop music there is the distinction and division we now have learnt, between ”performers” and ”singers”, which has been put to the fore notably through the existence of half-assed singers who’ve commanded larger than life (also known as ”epic”) careers like Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. There must be an analogy in contemporary dance, only this was a troupe on stage who then would be neither one before the other; they were all of it. Bisonte was an elevation for the local dance stages this year.
VIII. Valentin Ranger, Hearts’ Choir, Public Service Gallery, Stockholm
The most unique gallery show seen this year in Stockholm is one that is in fact still on (runs until January 17); Paris-based, dual graduate from the Royal College of Art in London and Beaux-Arts in Paris, Valentin Ranger’s Hearts’ Choir at Public Service Gallery. It’s a show which reeks of institutional breadth with an eclectic body of work including drawing, intricate 3D videos and sculpture, spread across two floors. Aesthetically, Ranger’s work is an overload of expression. Each work seemingly carries its own narrative with recurring heart-shaped characters. At face value, “kawaii”, the works are deceptively layered, nodding subtly to a queer identity in a much less obvious manner than some of his peers. It’s a no-brainer to realize that money has been invested in producing and bringing this show to Stockholm. The standout elements; a sculptural arrangement in the shape of two fully wearable XL costumes alluding to Ranger’s extensive background in theatre (what can this guy not do?), and a screening room in the basement that for a moment catapults you to places far beyond the art borders of Sweden. The cave-like set-up (the space has previously served as bank vault), drenched in a reddish shimmer and its central video work for which the artist has worked with artist and producer Inès Cherifi, is a homerun. Ranger, who's already having a moment with past and upcoming exhibition stints at top Parisian galleries like Jocelyn Wolff and Mor Charpentier is one to keep an eye on in the year to come.
Photos: © Øystein Thorvaldsen, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Oslo Kunstforening
VII. Melanie Kitti and Elina Waage Mikalsen, where others had stepped there were traces, Curators: Koffi & Højgaard, Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo
Every time in Oslo we feel a little dismal at the thought of how despite being smaller (Or is it? Feels very sizable) than Stockholm, the local art scene there always makes ours look dull-ish. Oslo has its ways of delivering great art, often. Oslo Kunstförening was founded in 1836. In a two-person exhibition Elina Waage Mikaelsen showed t h e sculpture of the year for us. A spatially imposing sculpture; not a hyperbolic one, but a solid amalgam of the interests of sculptors to approach textile-based art, and of textile-based artists to to work in the ”expanded field”, closer towards Fine Art. This, provided the distinction between art and crafts-based art still exists , and it does, in many places, beyond a chimera that it doesn’t. Remember when it was such a tedious cliché for artists to bend and wrangle metallic rods and present stick figure-shaped sculptural orchestrations as a result? The gist there being the exposure of the physical labor investment into sculpture as a conceptual approach. Well, this is several leaps away from such reductive end. Overall, terrific union between Melanie Kitti and Elina Waage Mikalsen, where the former too presented for her distinctive sculptural work alluding to the millenial old tradition of figurations on stone. Melanie Kitti has previously shown in Stockholm at the Carl Eldh Studio Museum; bravo musuem! Per the curation of the young and emerging curatorial duo Koffi & Højgaard, the exhibition came across as very tight-knit and cohesive, blurring the otherwise sharply defining lines between the two artists.
VI. Danielle Firoozi, Let Me Cascade from My Highest Ground, Cromatica, CDMX
It’s not a surprise to us that we’d find two shows from CDMX on the list with the stellar scene that the city has to offer today. While most of the established galleries (the OMRs, Kurimanzuttos and Proyectos Monclovas etc.) are closed for the holidays, preparing for the spring season which usually coincides with fair week (Zona Maco and Material) in early February, the emerging galleries that have been booming since the pandemic keep the scene vibrant in the pre-season. It’s only by chance that we caught American-Iranian artist Danielle Firoozi's solo exhibition Let Me Cascade from My Highest Ground at Cromatica, curated by Eleanna Anagnos, which presented a wide range of works in materials ranging from synthetic hair, resin, aluminium, foam and flock. The juxtaposition of materials, the floor painted specifically for the show and the clever ways the works had been installed (sculptures hanging from the ceiling, works pinned to the pillars), in what could be considered a difficult” space with low ceiling height, altogether made for optics of arresting beauty. Almost a year later, it still stands out as memorable and for as curators; inspirational.
V. Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV, List Projects 29, Curator: Selby Nimrod, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (US)
Touching base in Boston and Cambridge, following a professional visit to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, we had wanted to visit MIT List Visual Arts Center for a long time, when finally getting around to it. The exhibition of artist couple Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV channeled right into concepts we were working with at the time. Full disclosure; a group exhibition called Bootleg, Baroque, which will now never see daylight was in the making to highlight the zeitgeisty notion of the renaissance of the Baroque in contemporary art. Brittni Ann Harvey presented a group of nifty "animalmorphic" chair sculptures that will be remembered as among the most exciting sculptures seen in 2024. The big wooden Gothic architectural frame of a work by Harry Gould Harvey IV appeared to stem from 1894’s Belcourt Castle; a Gilded Age era mansion for a wealthy banking heir in Newport, Rhode Island. It apparently was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt to mirror the Versailles' Hunting Lodge of Louis XII. Endlessly fascinating, the formal matters in the exhibition!
IV. Katarina Löfström, Visioner, Curator: Sophie Allgårdh, Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm
Katarina Löfström’s exhibition at Thielska Galleriet managed the feat of enhancing and (re)shaping the gaze on the permanent collection of the museum. "And it’s not just an abstract thought or concept; but a reality", wrote Ashik Zaman in our review of Visioner. "I usually have a set choreography of how I move inside Thielska Galleriet and take to what I already know interests me, and her interventions are actually bending that and making me look at exactly such artworks that would per usual protocol interest me less. That’s not saying little.", he added. Unlike some of her contemporaries from the time of her breakout, there’s a trajectory here that keeps pointing forward, with continuous shifts, shifts, shifts happening to the effect of progression, rather than stagnant ”artistic virtue signaling” per old merits. Visioner was not a retrospective per se, but it managed to be a solid amuse bouche, claim and proposition for the need of that to happen soon.
III. Matthew Barney, SECONDARY, Regen Projects, Los Angeles
People might be afraid to merge on the freeways of LA, according to Bret Easton Ellis' 1985 seminal debut and quintessential LA fantasy; Less Than Zero, but gallery staff are super nice in LA; NYC, take note. Everyone almost says I love you over there! While in LA in the summer, selectively had planned a compact schedule to see only a handful of exhibitions. At LA powerhouse galleries Regen Projects, BLUM (formerly Blum & Poe) and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. Lucked out; Matthew Barney’s exhibition SECONDARY was an exhibition in four parts, unfolding sequentially across four galleries around the world and we got to catch the LA chapter at Regen Projects. A Matthew Barney exhibition on view nearby where you are will feel like an event in time in itself; the mere scheduling considerably rare to catch, so you'll make it a priority. The exhibition(s) continued his interest in the relationships between the body, transmogrification, physical possibility and the history of violence that is embodied in the bedrock of the American psyche. Having in our curatorial work taken an interest in the overlap between sports and contemporary art; loved the sporting allusions and iconographies at hand. Matthew Barney himself used to be a football player once upon a time. You might have heard?
A very attractive exhibition; visually next-level and the installing, don’t even mention it. Everything about SECONDARY was compelling and no less than PRIMARY.
Photo: Thomas Zamolo. Courtesy of Dansens Hus
II. Mari Carrasco, Burn Baby Burn, Elverket c/o Dansens Hus, Stockholm
"Sweet, infernal, frenzical dreams are made of this. Even before the curtains pulls wide open, and two of Carrasco’s three performers are found at the periphery of the stage, engaging in a slo-mo', magnetic mirroring twist and jive, there’s something distinctively Robert Palmer-like 80’s casting over the scene as a sheer veil. I’m instantly thinking of the sensualism that icons like Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music and muse Jerry Hall brought to the table.", wrote Ashik Zaman in yet another Dansens Hus review this year. When the curtains did open up, what ensued as ”the smooth velvety” movements disintegrated into hard beats, was a solo delivery by Riccardo Zandoná, where he called upon the roster of grand James Brown league-type performers. Big swaying sideways arms; salsa allusions. It was Ricky Martin, Maria Maria era, and it was compelling. Mari Carrasco (very) notably also presented a collaboration with the Royal Opera this year for the Rotunda stage. Forever was boldly, perhaps not inexplicably, but boldly marketed towards a youth/teen demographic. An infernal life/death dichotomy, was nicely staged per way of what began in reverse fashion as the aftermath of an epic and brooding, presumably birthday party. Forever might not entirely have lived up to the euphoric transmission of Burn Baby Burn (or the epic The Heart prior in time), but damn, Carrasco had a great year, this year again.
I. Philippe Parreno, Voices, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul
While Seoul really delivered in terms of art (Claire Fontaine at Maison Hermès, memorable installations by Kimsooja and so on), it was Philippe Parreno's retrospective Voices at Leeum Museum of Art that came out on top. A beast of a show that brought to mind his by now iconic carte blanche show at Palais de Tokyo back in 2013, our first significant encounter with his ingenious body of work spanning over thirty years, and also his more recent show at Gropius-Bau in Berlin in 2018. As one has come to expect of Parreno, his shows brings thought to a "magical funhouse" that keeps you on the edge of your toes. His fish-shaped helium-filled balloons floating around in the space to the joy of young visitors and adults alike, and the auto-playing grand piano, two of his signature works were present in the show, and how swell! But it was the light installation in the basement with rotating walls and an unexpected pop-up performative element (or was it actually a performance?), that stole the show. Coincidentally, a major Parreno exhibition was just about to open at Haus der Kunst in Munich when we swung by there earlier this month. Regret to have missed it!
Ashik & Koshik Zaman