Innholdsfortegnelse for No.32 i L'Officiel Art

Somewhere between a think-tank and a club, the eponymous brand’s institutional hybrid is currently being overseen by technophile artist Trevor Paglen and AI specialist Kate Crawford. Their live program contains a series of talks, performances, and an installation on the state of contemporary digital surveillance, where the artist Hito Steyerl will take visitors through issues such as the politics of facial profiling and the use of AI by authoritarian states. In the art nouveau architecture of this début de siècle atmosphere, the artists have developed several windows and displays marked by characterology, a pseudoscience based on methods of personality reading. It attempts to decipher an individual’s character and intelligence through their appearance. Inspired by this anxious historical precedent, Paglen and Crawford have created a digital panoptic installation where the visitor…

What gave you the motivation to become an artist? I was attracted to art at a very young age. It was for me fundamental and my paintings were an attempt to understand the world around me. I grew up in Iran, during the revolution and the eight years of war with Iraq. I experienced chaos and turmoil. At this age, I was trying to overcome these experiences, expressing them visually. Later, I realised that there was a deeper explanation for this war, a truer version than the one shown in the media. What interests me is what lies beyond history. This is where art comes in: it’s an alternative and personal way of showing the world. What are you influenced by? The pioneering artists fascinate me. Especially the way in…

Chus Martinez, Spanish art critic, director of the Art Institute of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design, in Basel What are Ryoji Ikeda’s particularities? The uniqueness of his work is based on the way he mixes a reflection on both mathematics and the cosmos. He creates true technological symphonies in which numbers are converted into musical notes and lights in a philosophical way. The ultimate idea in his work is to establish a link between the different scales of what coexists in the universe, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. His works are, so to speak, collections or treatises on how humans try to understand and dominate the world around them, on how we must learn to reconsider ourselves in front of many other forms of life…

1. Mind Of A Dragon I first heard this brilliantly executed 2step track on Rinse.fm early 2019, with a sound signature going “Its the mind mind mind . . .”, and it turned out to be producer M.O.A.D. He belongs to a new-school wave of UK garage acts, often signed to Kiwi Records, and I m now on his mailing list, where he pumps out a new track or remix every week and throws parties. It must ve been his instagram videos, where he records old rewindable cassette and record player toys as artwork for his sound that really drew me in. Here´s a producer that is meticulous even in the aestethics; I like to catch the whole artistic vision. 2. The 12-Step programs If you or a loved one…

Fiona Alison Duncan is the Canadian-American author of Exquisite Mariposa and the organizing host of Hard to Read, a lit series. 1. Grazie a Dio Per L’Aborto ‘Grazie a Dio Per L’Aborto’: This year, artist Viva Ruiz merchandized her graceful dove, hands, and “Thank God for Abortion” slogan into a series of postcards, posters, tote bags, and t-shirts, available in seven different languages. I bought Spanish, French, and Italian editions of the poster as gifts for friends from New York’s Participant, Inc., where Ruiz had a show. 2. Central Casting Central Casting: In 2019, I played a sick patient on New Amsterdam, a 1980’s AIDS ward visitor on Pose, and a 1970’s Zurich bank client on the forthcoming Hunters starring Al Pacino. It takes an hour to register as a…

1. Yellow vest protesters on the Frech roundabouts Those suburbs and territories, neither city, nor countryside, become the spaces of new political sensibilities. The roundabout, as a new kind of public space, empowers political issues and forms of life. 2. The death of Charles Jencks The American theorist and architectural historian was the first to use the term postmodern in 1977. He compared this style to “a double decaffeinated ristretto.” His method of classification and diagrammatic way of thinking are still relevant today, the Po-Mo moment far less so. 3. The Jade Eco Park in Taïwan A park by Philip Rahm architects and Catherine Mosbach landscape designer. A site of contemporary follies which deals with climatic issues and where architecture disappears behind atmospheric effects. A first attempt at anthropocene architectural…

1. Eko Atlantic City A mass reclaimed land site hosting a large scale real estate intervention in West-Central Africa. An attempt at inserting global city features and high-rise technology in Lagos, Nigeria. With a few structures built and raw infrastructure framing its surfaces – in 2019 it remains our favourite quasi-virgin city. 2. Reuters Data Center Started in 1987 by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners is one of the few architecture hosts of computing powers that can still pretend to pass as a proxy for human labour. We believe that the only reader available to unlock the UK as a late high-tech stronghold is this temporary configuration of a commercial structure on Oxford Circus. . 3. Sep Ruf Discovering the life and waves in the professional work of postwar architect…

Marcelo Alcaide is a cultural producer and director at A.CO, REIF.LIFE & COURREGES 1. Lula da Silva Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president, was imprisoned during the last elections, as a result of his supposed involvement in ‘Lava Jato’ – which has still not been proven to this day. The result of his imprisonment led to Bolsonaro’s election. Since then, Lula has been active from prison and now, since he is out, he has been participating in rallies against the extreme right-wing government taking place across the country. Truly inspiring. 2. Jannis Kounellis Jannis Kounellis retrospective at the Prada Foundation in Venice, May 2019. 3. Courreges SS20 soundtrack Last September I had the opportunity to direct Lafawndah and Jeff Mills and produce our Courreges SS20 soundtrack at Studio Ferber…

Billy Tang is a the senior curator at Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai) 1. Opera for Animals at Para Site (Hong Kong) I travelled from Shanghai after co-curating my first institutional exhibition at the Rockbund Art Museum and arrived in Hong Kong straight into the busy art fair week. It was a pretty intense experience having just opened an experimental butchery, plus a fully-functioning bar on the top floor of our museum, as well as a whole body of other new works by Tobias Rehberger for his solo exhibition that we worked on together. Going from this into Hong Kong, I was confronted with a typically dense encyclopaedic exhibition that filled the whole space of Para Site to the brim. In the midst of this, I found solace in the work…

This year, the Taiwanese artist Hsu Che-Yu, the Chinese artist Hao Jingban and the Vietnamese artist Thao-Nguyên Phan all thought they might win. But it was the pretty 33-year-old brunette, straight from Manila in the Philippines who dethroned them, earning the award they had been waiting for: the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award. They will have the privilege of exhibiting alongside her until January 5, 2020, in a room at the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM). It’s no coincidence that Eisa Jocson was selected. First of all, she is unclassifiable: she comes from a classical ballet background but received training in the visual arts. She says she is a dancer and as much a choreographer as a performer. Her obsession? Bodies in movement and their representations in places where they are…

Thirty feet underground, you might find yourself in one of these crayères, or chalk pits, listed as a UNESCO heritage site. This is where Ruinart keeps its wines, inviting us to a magical show. In the darkness, there is first this gigantic, all-steel root, which is 7 meters high. And then on the walls, these rays of light are accompanied by sounds escaping from a dozen hanging bubbles. It looks like the reflections of the sun at the bottom of the ocean. And it’s not just an impression: it once was an ocean . . . and this layer of chalk surrounding it was its bottom! That’s the meaning behind Retour aux sources, the name of the immersive installation created by the artist duo Mouawad Laurier. It’s a little glimpse…

Queer Is Not A Label is a recurring party in Paris since 2019. Founded by Kévin Blinderman (artist, member of the run-space Treize in Paris) and Paul-Alexandre Islas (artist, DJ), these noisy, aggressive and emo parties put forward DJs who place questions of identities at the heart of their musical practice. 1. The first episode of Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken is an isekai-type anime (reincarnation in another world) where the story is about a human being reincarnated as slime (the relaxing and viscous paste popular on Youtube). We find it to be the most relevant identity possible, even if the rest of the series does not develop in a transcendent way … https://www.jetanime.to/tensei-shitara-slime-datta-ken-1-vostfr/ 2. Venus Liuzzo’s YouTube video Venus Liuzzo’s YouTube video ‘WHY DO…

Jeremy Lecomte is Maître de Conférences (Assistant Professor) at l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles and editor of Glass Bead, https://www.glass-bead.org/. 1. Richard Dawson, 2020 (Weird World, 2019) After the sublime Peasant (2017), Richard Dawson strikes back this year with a beautifully crafted, lucidly dark yet realistically optimistic portrait of Brexit Britain … brilliant in both auditory and intellectual terms. 2. Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Lilies Film, 2019) Simply amongst the best films I’ve seen in recent years. It’s a film whose highly composed and controlled directing does not enclose but empower its characters and the story it tells – where history does not mean the past but a lively, powerful channel to transform the present. 3.Vincent Normand and Tristan Garcia (eds.). Theater, Garden, Bestiary. A…

Born in 2016, PailletteS is a collective of artists based in Marseille. As students they wished to organise libertarian parties with no place for judgements, or restrictions of any kind; everything is mixed up with a contemporary art uprooted from its usual boundaries. 1. DJ Detweiler DJ Detweiler’s DJ sets because they are to music what Duchamp’s Bath Tub or Sink Stopper is to a bathtub. 2. Llubljana Slovenia’s capital Llubljana, a city worth discovering for its green serenity and the art collective IRWIN . 3. Jacques Rigaut Jacques Rigaut, who died 90 years ago, “And if I affirm, I still question.”…

Based between Paris and New York, Not Manet’s Type (NMT) is a loose group of female artists, art historians and writers working on collaborative curatorial projects, exploring new exhibition contexts and fostering cultural activism. 1. Black Mass Black Mass, is an independent publisher promoting and publishing books and zines by Black artists. Established by Yusuf Hassan in 2019, they made an astonishing debut at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair. We’re very enthusiastic about this project because it aims to gather many talented and diverse Black artists from the U.S and Europe around a common interest and desire to explore Blackness, its effects, and affects through representations in images and texts. 2.@zouk.vintage @zouk.vintage is an Instagram account run by Marie-Julie Chalu, founder of the online magazine Afropea. We are big…

Alexander May (b. 1983, US) is an artist and curator living between Milan and New York. He’s the founder of Fondazione Converso, a non-profit art foundation located inside the 16th century former church of San Paolo Converso, Milan. 1. Best Nudes The figurative sculpture collection at the Archaeological Museum of Delos; the 1950s installation is impressively contemporary: the museum is only naturally lit and the relationship amongst the figures is one of the best I’ve seen. 2. Best Nap Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins’s ‘Untitled’ (Holding Horizon), created such a safe space during the opening weekend of the Venice Biennale that I was lulled to sleep by the hypnotic environment and performance. It was magical. 3. Best Near Death Experience First ever weekend on Fire Island thanks to Ronnie Sassoon, James Crump, Stefan…

1. Ambiens A film shoot in Buenos Aires across 2019-2020 by Ruy Krygier. The camera goes on either side embracing the surrounding environment; ambition, ambiance, circuit, intercourse, elections, favoreds, entourage, viscounts, limits, enterings and exits. Staring Cristian Dios, Camila Gassye and Victoria Colmegna 2. Bonny Exile In 2019, my gallerist went A.W.O.L. to become a personal trainer. She works at a facility that trains pro athletes from the NFL and NBA. However, she may have found a great space in Paris to continue the gallery chapter in 2021... but I can’t say yet. 3. Verano Negro Oscuro A walkthrough, a Fashion Exit. ‘FASHION VICTIM, DOLCE VITA, ENFANT GATÉ, 90S BUSINESSMAN, PLAYBOY, DOWNTOWN...’ A Memorial Runway featuring my male friends in the attire of my late father, Flavio Luis Colmegna, a…

1. Château-Chalon 2011, Philippe Chatillon Phillipe Chatillon uses a crystal harp and singing bowls to harmonize the wines. This brings an energy, a search of harmony. Dry, crisp, and incredibly fragrant, exceptional! 2. Vin Jaune 2010, Ludwig Bindernagel & Nathalie Eigenschenck A beautiful pale gold colour, it is an incredibly stylish wine, quite exotic on the nose with vibrant citrus and tangerine fruit and marked salinity on the long finish. 3. Arbois Vin Jaune 2011, Phillipe Bornard As with many wines from the Jura this wine has been made with a slight oxidative edge which gives it a beautiful, nutty, savoury, umami quality that makes for compelling drinking.…

The Community is a collective-run, Paris-based not-for-profit institute for multidisciplinary dialogue. 1. Normandy Hôtel / building The Normandy Hôtel was built in 1877 in Paris. The first large-scale renovation project in its history has recently started. In October, as to embrace the project, the hotel hosted the inaugural edition of the Salon de Normandy by The Community. Across one week, various old and historic rooms hosted 16 international exhibitors and 70+ artists. For the full-experience, The Community set-up a residency at the hotel for the month running up to the Salon, and we were honored to work in a mysterious room on the 1st floor facing the Louvre, whose previous occupant had been a local rabbi. thecommunity.io/salondenormandy 2. Cotton Club / bar A particular establishment in Pigalle, whose owner Lynda…

In his large-format photographs, which sometimes exceed a meter high, there are always empty rooms: here, paved stones in the corner of a corridor; there, a worn wall, decorated with some floral patterns. Elsewhere, there are deserted landscapes, a foggy bridge sprinkled with lonely trees. The void, always, and abandonment. Human presence in his pictures is sparse, except for naked female bodies whose faces you can hardly see because they are cropped in the framing. Sometimes, you only see the endless legs in suggestive positions. Bodies are also often blurred by playing with reflections or by superimposing images, by erasing the information and having images that seem unfathomable. It enables anonymity and lets the spectator, who can only believe in their own perception, have their imagination run free. This is…

Fendi and design, it’s an old story! It all started in 2008, at Design Miami, with design talks that brought together a young creative team, from the Campana brothers to Tom Dixon. It didn’t stop there: the following year, the brand did it again at Milan’s Salone del Mobile, with Craft Punk, a performance where the designers, supported by the craftsmen of the house, had a blast reinventing manufacturing methods. A series of amazing collaborations have followed each year: in Miami, Milan and Basel. This year, at Design Miami, Fendi’s creative director, Silvia Venturini called on the Swiss studio Kueng Caputo, led by Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo. They created Roman Molds, a collection of ten objects inspired by the architecture of Fendi’s Italian headquarters, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana.…

When Helen Cammock won the Turner Prize in December 2019, it was with three other nominees, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Tai Shani and Oscar Murillo, and so they equally shared the most prestigious of British contemporary art awards. One of the best endowed too, worth 40,000 pounds. The artists requested to get the collective win themselves, “In the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity, in art as in society”: “the political aspects we deal with differ greatly, but for us it would feel problematic if they were pitted against each other,” speaking with one voice, forever marking the history of the Turner Prize (created 35 years ago). Their themes? The misery of our time, resilience, patriarchy, migrations or the civil rights that they explore in their creations. Because the multidisciplinary practice…

1. Riverdale Season 3 Finale In a year pockmarked with television let downs, Riverdale continuously over-delivered shirtless guys and wack plots. Betty shot her serial killer dad after escaping an organ harvesting scheme run by a cult, Cheryl Blossom shot arrows at her mother, the founder of a life and death LARP game, and, in a flash forward cliffhanger, Jughead is, like, probably dead. It’s the TV we both need and deserve. 2. Speedparade 19 at Mikro, Zurich This annual weekend-long party in a humble shed of an exhibition space/music venue was ecstasy. Walid El Barbir, Flavio Audino, Luca Digilio and Nicola Kazimir run a club without members and toxicity: doors are open and music is the bouncer. Dancing until Sunday night my heart honestly felt like it was going…

1. Équihen-Plage I went on a little road trip with friends in the north of France to shoot the ‘my crown’ music video. We kinda didn’t have a clear plan, that’s how we encountered the best things that you never expect, like the sea, the sunset, the car pet. The North of France is solid. 2. One Punch Man A friend introduced it to me this summer, oh btw that friend is one of my top 3 too, the secret one strong outside but inside very lonely / mercy mercy him cause he ain’t hairy the end of the fucking world is coming slowly / don’t cry he will be there, the one last romantic he’s got a strong mind, he’s got thin hair too (oh wow i was so…

Philipp Timischl is an artist living and working in Paris. 1. Paris Moving to Paris. Not only did it become a huge trend in the art world at large, it also manifested itself as my personal highlight of 2019. And why not? It’s the best city in the world. Sure, a little pricey but everybody should totally déménager! 2. The working class The working class as a theme. I might be biased because of my personal social background and it might have never really been completely out of fashion to begin with, but I do feel a big comeback lurking. 2019 made talking about social classes radically chic again and I’m here for it! 3. Lieber tot, als rot weiß rot – T-shirt This beautiful piece of apparel designed by…

Clément Delépine lives in Paris. He is the Co-Director of Paris Internationale, a freelance curator and writer. 1. School strike for the climate / Fridays For Future July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded. I am not intellectually equipped to summarise the global consequences of climate change but I know it’s real. Since Greta Thunberg staged her first protest in 2018, awareness has been growing at an unprecedented pace. I really admire this generation for bluntly addressing the issue, refusing to be polite about it, and demanding action from our political leaders. 2. Ten Years, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings with Jesse Hultberg, Centre Pompidou (Paris) In May 2019, on the occasion of Move at Centre Pompidou, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings presented Ten Years, a project in two…

Edward Kienholz was buried back in 1994 in the front seat of his brown 1940 Packard Coupe, a dollar bill and a deck of cards in his pocket, a bottle of chianti and the ashes of his dog Smash in the seat beside him. It’s his wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz who drove Ed into his grave, literally, in the driver’s seat. Ed’s burial was supposed to be their final art installation, though incomplete until now. Indeed, the son of the Kienholz couple, Noah, confirmed that Nancy’s ashes will make it to the front seat of the Packard, driving Edward and herself into the afterlife.…

Julie Boukobza is a curator and art critic based in Paris. She currently runs the Luma Arles Residency Program as well as the 89plus Residency Program at the Lab of the Google Cultural Institute in Paris. She is also working on a solo exhibition at Converso in Milan opening on January 23rd 2020 with the British artist Michael Dean. In October 2020, she is co-curating an exhibition at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo with Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga in Madrid, Spain. 1. Rome, 1er et 2 novembre 1975 currently on view until January 5th 2020 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and September 2020 at the Contemporary Art Museum in Montreal. Last February, my friend the artist Lili Reynaud Dewar invited me to Villa Medici in Rome to act alongside…

Christelle Oyiri (also known as CRYSTALLMESS) is a French music producer, DJ and multidisciplinary artist based in Paris. 1. Saucy Santana I was growing increasingly bored of rap being polished and contained and then Miami rapper Saucy Santana shook the 2019 table with their single ‘Walk Em like A Dog’. The revenge bop every femdom fantasize about – and add to that a New Orleans bounce beat and you won me over! Also I do believe Saucy Santana is going to be the first LGBTQ and non-binary rapper to break out in the mainstream. 2. Steven Traylor I receive Steven Traylor’s work with no disclaimer, no resistance. Whether it’s a frenetic and mysterious low res video juxtaposing lusty twerk moves and car rodeos in slow motion, or candid black and…