MAUREEN PALEY founder of Maureen Paley gallery in London.
My favourite exhibition of the year was David Wojnarowicz at Between Bridges. The video was one of the most moving pieces of work I have seen in a long time. I found it a startling retrospective of the deceased artist's work. I would also like to choose 'The Third Mind', curated by Ugo Rondinone, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
GLENN SCOTT WRIGHT co-director of London's Victoria Miro Gallery.
My top show of 2007 is the opening exhibition of the new MCA Denver, as much for its environmentally- and art-friendly architecture by David Adjaye as for the series of solo single room presentations by artists responding to the new building.
JAVIER PERES founder of Peres Projects which has galleries in Los Angeles, Berlin and Athens.
My favourite shows at my Berlin gallery this year are:
Dean SAMESHIMA's "NUMBERS"
Sameshima has been exploring the area of male sexuality and desire for a decade and his most recent foray into the field has resulted in a series of beautiful, yet coded as ever, paintings composed of primary colours filled with dots and numbers. Connect the dots, and an image will appear, but as simple as that may seem, the task is nearly impossible as there are hundreds of numbers dotting these colourful landscapes. However, as tempting as decoding the images may seem, that is not at all the point of these works. Rather, the colours used as the backdrop for each of these works is a reference to the "hanky codes" used by Gay men in the US and Europe from the 1960s-1980s to indicate the sort of sexual activity the sought.
Paul LEE's "HARBOUR"
Lee's first solo exhibition in Europe features works using the simplest of materials - used soda cans, xerox copies, towels, plywood, socks - yet with his restrained vocabulary the young Brit explores themes of misplaced and displaced desire in a constant and thoughtful manner. HIs sculptural works collapse the prioritization of basic forms with a conceptual investigation of natural elements, physical effects, and primal human interplay with both. Lee's works with a slowly growing lexicon of materials - some referring to neo-dada and pop forbears (light bulbs, sea-sponges, soda cans, magnifying glasses), others more banal (towels, pillows, sacks, socks) - to create work for the wall, the floor and sometimes both at once.
In my LA Gallery, it was:
Matt GREENE's "The Defenders of Reality"
For this exhibition, Matt presented 5 large scale paintings, each with his classic surfaces compiled with layers and layers of paint and various mediums. However, it was the images that came forth that really moved me and made this one of his most important bodies of work to date. In a bold move, Matt chose to paint himself as the main character of his giant canvases, the valliant shemale, the submissive frenchmaid, you get the picture. His candid representation of self, made these paintings more compelling for me, and the way he worked his surfaces again confirmed that he is one of the best painters of his generation, hands down!
Foundations:
Fractured Figure: Works from the Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Jeffrey Deitch - Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece
A thought-provoking and complex look at the human figure, and all that distinguish us from our fellow earth dwellers. Stand out works by the likes of Maurizio Cattelan, Urs Fischer, Dan Colen, Terence Koh, Jeff Koons, Andro Wekua, George Condo, and John Bock. A must-see exhibition filled with works from one of the great contemporary collections of our time.
Museums:
Maurizio Cattelan at Museum fur Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main)
Since March of 2007, Cattelan has been showing new works, all made specifically for the MMK and displayed in and around the museum. The works are being installed without notice or fanfare, they just pop up, sometimes in unexpected places, including as propaganda-style posters on bus shelters and city ad stands normally used for advertising ballets, opera and the theater. For me, Cattelan remains one of the greatest artist to emerge from Europe in many decades and he never ceases to impress me with his singular ability to bring attention to issues of social concern.
At the time I visited the MMK they also had a spectacular On Kawara installation, their superb Beuys works, and new additions to the collections from the likes of Cady Noland and Steven Parrino (holy shit are they amazing!!!) which came from the Rolf Ricke Collection.
Kunsthalle/Kunstverein:
Gardar Eide Einarsson: "South of Heaven" at Frankfurter Kunstverein
The young Norwegian's first institutional solo in Germany presented new and recent works offering insights into sub-cultures from Europe to America, and always with a potent socio-political view on matters that are often over simplified in western mass media. Keeping with his usual black & white colour schemes, Einarsson presented works in such diverse media as drawing, video, sculpture, painting and wall paintings - all pointing towards references to various seminal artistic movements of the last 50 years, but which together define the most recent practices dominating the art scene of our generation. This show kicked ass!
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