VINCENT HONORÉ was appointed Curator and Head of the Collection of the David Roberts Art Foundation in January 2008, in charge of the artistic programmes, the collection and the Foundation's new building in Camden. Prior to taking up his role with the Foundation, he was a curator at Palais de Tokyo - Site de Création Contemporaine in Paris and at Tate Modern where he worked on exhibitions such as Jeff Wall, Catherine Sullivan, Pierre Huyghe and Learn to Read. He has been commissioned as a guest curator on a range of projects including most recently Past Forward at 176, the Zabludowicz Collection and From a Distance at Wallspace Gallery in New York.
Being asked to submit your thoughts on the best exhibitions of the year, you are all of a sudden asked to face your amnesia, laziness and vanity at the very moment when you are entering a deep phase of hibernation, solely thinking about Christmas gifts and food. The apparent lack of substance of this exercise leads you to also reconsider your choices from the past year: it could be cruel. Funnily enough, when first thinking of the best of 2008, bad exhibitions immediately surface, many curatorial decisions give cause for thought, as of course does the market: its fury violently contradicted by the credit crunch, bringing fears, insecurity and hopes (back to the substance: less parties, more readings). But... what has been really the best for me?
Gustave Courbet at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris
2008 opened with Gustave Courbet at the Grand Palais. Courbet was the man behind the first scandals of modern art. He was the first artist to organise a solo exhibition in 1855 outside the traditional salon. A beautifully curated retrospective which came at the right time when art may be offered an opportunity to enter another phase: Courbet was "was both probably the last great classic painter and the first of the moderns", said Laurence des Cars, one of the curators.
Several projects by confirmed artists, various locations
Richard Serra created two major - essential - exhibitions: Monumenta at the Grand Palais in Paris and his show at Gagosian in London (his first show in London since 1992). How can one push you in such an emotional state with such minimal means? Damien Hirst realised the coup of the year with his sale at Sotheby's, making clear his art is a game with the market, the art world and the position of the artist (the coup of a contemporary Courbet perhaps?). It was not worth seeing the works (not all were bad), but it was crucial to be seen there. Jeff Koons' retrospective at Versailles: the perfect match of artist and location, a rare opportunity to reassess the richness, diversity, and radicalism of his œuvre. Koons is a contemporary master. John Currin's exhibition at Sadie Coles demonstrated how in Currin's work "the positive embrace of negativity, the wilful occupation and internalization of abusive visual system" (Norman Bryson), via appropriated porn images in the direct lineage of Courbet (Currin also re-interpreted 'The Origin of the World') and Otto Dix. Cildo Mereles's exhibition is by far one of the greatest exhibitions ever shown at the Tate and a real pleasurable experience, while Steve McQueen's movie, 'Hunger', avoided the usual vices of visual-artists-wanting-to-be-directors to concentrate on the very essence of cinema: the best movie of the year. He is represented by Thomas Dane Gallery in London.
Oscar Tuazon at Balice/Hertling, Paris
Let's move to a younger generation with Oscar Tuazon, an American artist living in Paris. His works at Artissima Turin presented by Balice/Hertling were the radical highlights of the fair. In the lineage of Gordon Matta-Clark or Robert Smithson, he questions the multiple links between architecture and sculpture, monument and ruin, tensions between materials, the survival of his own art, etc. His large-scale installation, beautiful and scary, for his solo at Maccarone, New York, was one of the treats of 2008.
Kadist Art Foundation, Paris
Similar in its spirit and the on-going quality of their programme to westlondonprojects in London, the privately founded Kadist Art Foundation offers a programme of residencies for artists and curators which ends with an exhibition in their space in Paris. This year, Pablo Pijnappel, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy o
and Cosmin Costinas participated. 'Like an Attali Report', by Cosmin Costinas, was an exhibition which unfolded fictions and images that offered an insight into different narratives referring to the disintegration of the communist utopia.
Nina Beier and Marie Lund
They have been everywhere. Nina Beier and Marie Lund not only created this year a group of mature performances and works ('I wrote this song for you', 'The Archives', etc), but they also made at least three great exhibitions, reconsidering political (in its broader meaning) memory and transmission in works now more inspired by early 20th-century literature and its interrogation of form and communication. 'A Circular Play' at Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, 'Two Women' at Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, and 'Good Fences, Good Neighbours', a double exhibition with fellow Korean artist Riflemaker and in particular her work, 'Ring') at Galleri Opdahl, Norway, have proven to be a series of exceptional exhibitions.
Walead Beshty: Science Concréte at China Art Objects Galleries and Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles
Walead Beshty's 'Science Concréte' at China Art Objects Galleries/Redling Fine Art in Los Angeles along with his installation at the last Whitney Biennial in New York revealed him as one of the most brilliant artists of 2008: as elegant as radical, involved in a constant research of photography's sources, playing with accidents and errors. Beshty moves freely between extremely seductive works (he's a fantastic colourist), post-minimal and conceptual proposals, abstraction, politics, sculptures, etc. No doubt 2009 will see him feature again in the highlights of the year with his contribution at the Tate Triennial and a possible solo show at Thomas Dane Gallery.
Benoit Maire at Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Benoit Maire's shy solo show at the Palais de Tokyo would possibly not gain him a place in this 'best of', but having seen a number of his projects in different group exhibitions (at De Appel, Amsterdam), fairs (at The Fair Gallery at Frieze) and his collaboration with Falke Pisano, Desert Solitaire, at Hollybush Gardens, London, it seems unavoidable to consider him as one of the most exciting artists of the year. Maire's recent formal experimentations (collages, paintings, sculptures) brilliantly play with heavily rooted contents. See his series 'Feuilles Blanches', small white paintings of boredom, cheap answers to Agnes Martin or Robert Ryman.
Katinka Bock: Kanon at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Synagogue de Delme, Delme
Bock's work revolves around a subtle awareness of violence, the possibility of destruction or collapse, the humble distortion of systems. As Emily Verla Bovino wrote in her review for 'Frieze': "Bock's works gather, transfixed, performing the motionless dance of inertia to silent music: their slight bodies push and pull against each other, endeavouring to find that tense stillness of being where the absolute resides."
Catherine Sullivan: The Triangle of Need at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Catherine Sullivan's 'The Triangle of Need' toured from the Walker Art Center to the A Foundation in Liverpool. The work resists any of the audience's expectations. Sullivan introduces themes, references, chronologies, locations, metaphors, narrations into a complex multi-layered video-installation that originates in an ambitious and schizophrenic performance in Miami and Chicago. 'The Triangle of Need' is Sullivan's most far-reaching work to date and the last climax of a process she inaugurated in the late 90s: an exploration of human mechanisms and inter-communication through dance, theatre, cinema and performance.
The last highlight of the year gathers a number of initiatives: a kind of global energy
Right after she created 'Solo Solo' in Los Angeles, a series of projects inviting International curators to show one single work of their choice, Hillary Crisp launched Crisp London Los Angeles in August. The commercial gallery presents solo exhibitions concurrently in both cities, constructing a kind of temporal and geographical bridge. She is thinking of launching a curatorial residency in Los Angeles among many other projects. Seventeen Gallery inaugurated a series of video exhibitions curated by Paul Pieron which were innovative and funny. Cylena Simonds's 'States of Exchange' at Iniva was a memorable show on Cuban art. Now an independent curator, she started an experimental project with Ben Borthwick (another notable curator working at Tate Modern), Butcher to provide a platform for artists, designers and producers to exchange services using the economic model of bartering. FormContent is a curatorial project space, initiated by Francesco Pedraglio, Caterina Riva and Pieternel Vermoortel. They created a space in which to experiment with ideas and exhibition formats, to foster an active collaboration between artists and curators while challenging their roles. 1to1 projects, led by Cecilia Canziani, is a network of independent art producers based in Rome. The network operates as a point of intersection for the development of diverse and innovative projects from exhibitions, events, publications, to talks beyond institutional structures. Evas Arche und der Feminist, New York, is a soup, a stage designed by an artist and a performance by another artist for a series of one-day events (on Sundays). Falke Pisano, Nikolas Gambaroff, Andro Wekua, Rirkrit Tiravanija, among many others, have participated this year. These projects (many others exist), which operate outside regular institutional routes, have provided curators with inspiration and artists with challenges.
|
