PETER DAVIES artist
I had two favourite shows this year:
The first is Steven Parrino at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. This show had the hairs raised on the back of my neck. It was both moving and thrilling. It was accompanied by two related shows, one of artists who influenced him, the other of artists he influenced like Banks Violette. It looked amazing, and in the light of his untimely death perfectly clarified his importance (unappreciated during his lifetime) and his relevance to now.
The second is Rudolf Stingel at Sadie Coles in London. He is the man of the moment, the "new" Martin Kippenberger and Richard Prince. His huge black and white photo realist appropriation of a photocopy from a text book of a Francis Bacon self-portrait was fantastic. It was completely daring and totally obnoxious. He celebrated and trivialised the whole history of photo realism and appropriation in one fell swoop. He encapsulated the joy of the physical appearance of an art work with the ideas behind it. I have been excited by it and thinking about it ever since.
DAN PERFECT London-based artist whose solo show at the Chisenhale Gallery in London opens on 16 January 2008.
One of the highlights of the year for me was the small retrospective show of Prunella Clough's work at Tate Britain. It was a real delight to find such thoughtful and serious work in such gentle guise - a truly independent mind engaged in describing the world of sensation and perception. Lovely! Also Glenn Brown's exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, New York. A tour de force of confident and genuinely strange paintings.
CEDAR LEWISOHN artist and curator and currently the Long Weekend programmer at Tate Modern in London.
Music-
kool kid- d-block (dem d-block boys vol.3).
I brought this LP at the start of the year and its been on my headphones virtually non-stop ever since. d-block are Sheek Louch, Jadakiss and Styles P and they're totally raw. It's pure ghetto aggression that often verges on profoundly poetic lyricism ("you'd think I was born in a pot, the way my blood boil, moods so dark, white people call me a black hearted nigga..."), all set to the kind of beats and bass lines that shake buildings.
Exhibition-
John Russell -
John's show, 'Ocean Pose', at Matt's Gallery, was easily one of the best exhibitions I saw all year - museum/biennale-quality work that's so out there it's come back in, made a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich, then vomited it all up again in the style of a neon Jackson Pollock made out of raw meat.
Books/fanzine -
Daddy magazine no.2, produced by Peres Projects
Daddy magazine is a work of art, an exhibition and so much more, from the laylex cover which disintegates in your hand like something out of hr.giger, to the transgressive (often trans-gender), content, part scrap book, part knossosian labyrinth. Really, i get lost in this magazine for days.
Movie -
The standout film for in 2007 had to be 'Zodiac'. This was an unusual and brilliant film for a number of reasons. The main thing that made Zodiac important as a mainstream picture, is films like this just don't get made these days. It was far more in line with the brooding 1970's mode of film making such as Dirty Harry or Deer Hunter than the kind of things we're used to seeing on general release today. Zodiac is a movie about a serial killer and a cop obsessively trying to find him, but who fails. This simple idea of having an unresolved storyline is virtually unheard of today. We, apparently, can't deal without a cut and dry ending. I applaud the director David Fincher for sticking his neck out to produce what will surely be looked back on as a classic.
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