GREGOR MUIR director of Hauser & Wirth in London
One of my favourite shows of the year has to be Paul McCarthy's touring exhibition at SMAK in Ghent. Whereas I'm used to seeing artworks integrated into museum spaces, this felt like everything had been turned upside down with the entire building being reconfigured so it became a vital part of the exhibition. Huge sections of the museum's walls were removed to gain better vantage points overlooking the larger installations. This wasn't just about creating more space, but enabling a dynamic accord between artist and institution. Looking around the show, it became increasing evident that the museum had taken very real risks in order to stage this breathtaking display. I also felt incredibly lucky this year to have caught Andrzej Wróblewski at the National Museum in Warsaw, Isa Genzken in Venice, Roni Horn's 'Library of Water' in Iceland, silkworm breeder and artist Liang Shaoji in Shanghai, Kai Althoff in New York and Ellen Gallagher at Tate Liverpool.
GOSHKA MACUGA Polish artist based in London
My favourite show of 2007 was Klaus Weber: The Big Giving, initially made for the Herald Street Gallery in London. Second was Henry Moore in Kew Gardens - one of the best days in the park in 2007.
REBECCA GELDARD London-based freelance writer and critic, and regular contributor to Saatchi Online's magazine
Many great works might get lost in the vast Parasol Unit space but even the smallest of Armen Eloyan's paintings held their own in this survey-like exhibition showcasing his extraordinary narrative bent and ongoing painterly struggle. It's the varying evidence of Eloyan's mental processes made visceral that makes these dark and often difficult paintings so compelling. The tension between his social observations and the fight to override obvious technical deftness is as taught at handholdable size as within dirty, epic billboard-scaled canvases. The cartoonish characters running amok across one muddy ground after another bear close resemblance to the graphic antihero, while their actions ape the onscreen antics of reality TV figures. Eloyan flicks the cultural timeline like a whip through these paintings disturbing the figurative status quo of each image to remind us that nothing is new and that each stereotypical human façade is shot through with the same, corruptible set of primal desires.
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