Your Reviews...
Shows you like - or don't

The Revolution Continues: New Art From China

Saatchi Gallery, King's Rd, London, SW3 4SQ

OK, so it is a bit weird to promote this on the saatchi website, but it would also be weird not to. Xiang Jing 'Your Body' made me feel so small, and as I watched and was watch, there was an eerie vibe between me and the sculpture.Yue Minjun's figures laugh at the that which is beyond painting- is that us? But strangely, I feel like i am not involved in the joke, but the one being laughed at. I particularly liked Zhang Huan's Donkey.... A must see!!!!

Jenny Holzer

Guggenheim

From dusk to 11pm, make it you mission to see Jenny Holzer's projection at the Guggenheim. The best use of the oddest white space to be see in Manhattan.

Leigh Ledare, “You Are Nothing to Me. You Are Like Air"

Rivington Arms, Lowereastside, NY

The work references the artists mother, who was a famous ballet dancer, who was tormented by her subsequent decline in her career. Photographs, videos, and assemblages are disturbing, particularly the edited video of his mother attempt at a soft core movie.

Jean-Luc Mylayne

Gladstone Gallery,NY

Big color photographs of common birds doing their thing in dusty rural landscapes in Fort Davis, Texas, and Bernal, New Mexico. There are hints of mankind in the images,but the birds take pride of place (even thought they are tiny).These large format images are undeniably sumptuous and are lovely on the eyes.

No Information Available

Gladstone Gallery, 12 rue du Grand Cerf, Brussels, Belgium, Europe

Gladstone Gallerys new group show is curated by Francesco Bonami, “No Information Available.” In his 1970 breakthrough exhibition “Information” at the Museum of Modern Art, Kynaston McShine helped define the new realm of conceptual art. In the thirty-eight years since, increasing access and continual bombarding of information has radically transformed the world, and with it conceptual vocabularies of art have come full circle.

Brighton Photo Fringe Festival

Many

Photo Fringe, offers a decent range of photography now, influenced in part one would hope by the excellent Photography Degree at Brighton Uni. Too much to see in one day, well worth a few hours of anybodies time.

AVANT-GARDE CHINA: Twenty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art

The National Art Center, Tokyo 7-22-2 Roppongi Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan

I find it interesting, that Chinese art in large museums is predominantly shown in large groups; Chinese art is yet to find it's way around the discussions of the Chinese spirit, and for works to be seen, above the content of the country it is made in. A great and necessary exhibition.

Liquid Crystal Painting

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

Liquid Crystal Painting, could roughly be described as a review; on display are installations and paintings by artists such as Yasumasa Morimura (b. 1951), Sam Taylor-Wood (b. 1967), Julian Opie (b. 1958), Brian Eno (b. 1948), Dominik Leijman (b. 1969) and Bill Viola (b. 1951). One would not be dissapointed with the exhibition, only by the slightly odd (or perhaps predictable?) curation, and ham fisted title.

Stacy-Lynn Waddell water/weight

Branch Gallery, Durham NC

Waddell brands canvas and paper, creating scarred surfaces. Through the work she tells a story of a girl who find herself at the bottom of the occean and wonders how to spend her time. Very delicate work.

Winkleman Gallery, New York

The Chadwicks - The Genretron

A reproduction of the Chadwicks' famous Genretron.The jewel of Chadwick Manor, The Genretron is a panoramic model built by the Chadwicks in the nineteenth century for the close study of Dutch landscape painting. It is view from a hole in the middle. Figures are arranged in compositions like famous dutch paintings. It was very popular in past centuries. It doesn't quite have the same effect, since the creation of the tv, but it was remarkably entertaining.

Surface Sounding- Ten Curators - Ten Artists

See Line Gallery, Los Angeles

Curated by Janet Levy, and sub-curated by ten other curators, who each selected one artist to show works relating to surface. Michael Dee produced negative star photographs, Janet Rosener created abstract paintings, with references to nature, John Bucklin collects and discovers objects.. but needless to say this show isnt just about the artists, but about the larger idea of relationships between artists and curator, and how this relationship links to ideas of surface.

Massimo Bartolini: Concert room with voices

D'Amelio Terras, New York

Massimo documents the weeks before the demolition of a psychiatric hospital. Interviews with patients run alongside images of heaters being thrown into the courtyard. The cacophony of projections and narratives disorientates the viewer.

Art & Alchemy

NEXT Gallery, NY

Each of the artist-alchemists in this exhibition uses found materials to transform waste into wonder.The geometry of Linda Stillman, 'Good Morning'is much more charming than its material (coffee filters and acrylic medium).This show proved that no finance can create adorable work

Neil Gall : The Outward Urge | Jonathan Bragdon : Why My Drawings Are Not a

Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Witzlebenplatz 4, Berlin, Germany

Ribbons flow across the canvas, and the viewer is taken on a journey in and out of the work. The textures and layers are created but in superflat oil. They are very sexy works.

The Fullness of Time: Cordova, Griffin, Hewitt and Moreno

Arndt & Partner Zurich, Switzerland

Is it past, is it present, is it real or not. There are many questions risen by this show. The four US artist question appropriation, using methods ranging from archives to still lives.

\“An Improbable Coincidence of Wants,” Rowland Contemporary, Chicago

The Franks

the work is a clean break from what I have seen in the past and a good direction for them. thought-provoking and humorous.

Turner Prize 2008

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG

The same thing happens every year, you know the Turner Prize is on, and you say you will go after the art fairs, but you never do. The you say you will go in the new year, and forget. Do it now. Its a tough one, but my bets are on Cathy Wilkes.

Mark Rothko

Tate Modern, London, UK

I do not think I know anyone that dislike his work, and on visiting the show, I fell in love with Rothko again. I love them for their scale, intense colour and mood. They weren't a poster with the wrong colors, they were completely right!

Jacques Villeglé-La comédie urbaine

Centre Pompidou, Place Georges Pompidou, Paris

Cette exposition, qui rassemble plus d'une centaine d'oeuvres des années 1940 à nos jours, aborde de manière thématique le parcours de l'artiste depuis l'éclatement typographique et les grandes compositions abstraites colorées des débuts, jusqu'aux récentes juxtapositions rythmiques issues d'affiches de concerts. L'oeuvre de Villeglé est un formidable sismographe de nos «réalités collectives» telles qu'elles sont distillées par l'espace urbain dont l'histoire nous est restituée à travers celle, singulière, de ses murs. Tres bon!

“Angles in America”

Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

The currator Terry R.Myers selected 7 artists which uses geometry as an approach to both art and life. The show isn't as autistic as it seems, especially when you look at Jim Isermanns (Cube Weave) which has the color and glamour that goes beyond shapes and formalism.I also liked Matta-Clarks work which showed carved geometric voids into Chicago building’s walls and roofs with a chain saw.

\“An Improbable Coincidence of Wants,” Rowland Contemporary, Chicago

The Franks

Chicago based art and design duo,pay homage to Ed Ruscha, but do not stand out within their own right. They should slip in more of their expertise. Until 25

Richard Long

Spike Island - Bristol

Richard Long's work, looks fantastic in the large central space of Spike Island. Rarely, does an artist use the tall exhibition space to it's full potential, each wall is decorated with a large clay/mud work. One is a spiral of clay hand prints, wobbly muddy and fun, the other, a formation of his signature 'mud splatter' rectangles. Great to see in the flesh and a great use of the gallery.

'Can we Stay Over Tonight'

Plan 9 - Bristol

Plan 9's Exhibition, 'Can we Stay Over Tonight', is a fantastic exhibition; only three works fill the various gallery spaces, and this really gives each of the three artists work enough space to breathe, but also puts emphasis on the space itself. The largest work fills the main gallery space; a part finished escalator, with tarpaulin covering one half, giving the sense of the building as a whole and comments, one assumes, on the potential redevelopment of the site as a shopping centre.

Christian Marclay, “Cyanotypes”

Paula Cooper Gallery,Chelsea, Newyork

Marclay shows blueprints of distroyed tapes. They look like a stringy blue and white Pollocks, with a hint of x-ray. He also shows a Video 'Looking for love', where he isolates words from pop lyrics. It was a nice salute to outmoded technology.

Chen Jiagang, “The Great Third Front”

Edwynn Houk Gallery, NY, USA

Chen Jiagang’s new large-format photographs depict a world of industrial dislocation with eerie formal power.The title of the exhibition refers to China’s policy in the 1960s of building enormous factories that soon became the centers for entire cities of workers. As the country’s priorities changed in the 1980s, these facilities were mostly abandoned, leaving vast concrete wastelands.Female figures stand within theses disintegrating landscapes, some staring directly at the viewer. The dusty grey tones shows a lonely side to chinese growth and commerce.

Yinka Shonibare MBE

Museum of Contemporary Art, The Rocks,Sydney

Clashing brash fabric and figure combine many cultural references spanning over many eras. The sublime works think about colonialism, which works in relation to Australian audiences. These sculptures are farm more luxurious than previous works I have seen, they are undeniably good.

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard

Kate MacGarry, 7a Vyner St,LONDON E2 9DG

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollards work explores the borders between art, pop music and popular culture. These works explore how the audience are directly addressed, and our relationships to tv and media. Must see.

Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth

BFI Southbank, London

Oscar-winning French duo create detailed long unedited video. You would have to see it to do it justice, but I is amazing what can be done without computer generated animations.....its good fun. p.s. If you haven't seen Be Kind Rewind yet, you must

Art Under the Bridge

Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY

All roads lead to Brooklyn, as both the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge converge in the little area with big ideas known as Dumbo. The bridge to somewhere indeed a weekend of art at it’s best. “Art Under the Bridge” is a weekend festival of open studios, interventions, strange parades, music and a bit of humor in these tumultuous times. Projects by artists included a video of free floating fetus images projected on the walls of a little alcove of the Brooklyn bridge, a huge strange media organism piece sponsored by Current TV, clone babies in a carnival glass box to win for $2, parades of strange superheroes, dancing participants on grass throwing flowers under a huge grid of color blocks, an infinite wishing well of light and mirrors in a lobby and the open studios at 55 Washington Street. As the world is turned upside down and inside out, we ride the roller coaster belted in our seats. Artists did not go gently into that good night but rather came out swinging fearlessly. At 55 Washington Streets Open Studios, artist Kyle Goen brings together both message and aesthetic in political art. Working primarily in a combination of painting and printmaking as well as large installation pieces, the works bravely take on the issues of our history and it’s consequences. In Geon’s piece, "John Walker Lindh Tea Towels" the progression of the portraits is chilling. More so for me is the fact that they are printed on a domestic material whose purpose is to “clean up a mess, to wipe it clean”. The texture of the fabric lends itself to the newsprint dot, reinforcing notions of printed media images, identification photos, wanted posters and morgue photos. The orange red tones of the prints and woven material have an unsettling beauty to them juxtaposed to the images. For the price of a token and a quick train ride, this weekend brought the best views from the Brooklyn side.

Charley Toorop; Surtout pas des principes!

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

27 September 2008 – 18 January 2009 "Charley Toorop (1891-1955) is regarded as the most prominent female Dutch artist of the 20th century". There is a vast amount of work here, the most interesting are the Self-Portraits, which have a similar, stern look to the work of Frida Kahlo. Unsmiling, looking directly at the viewer, they are a gender historian's wet dream. Which is precisely the enjoyable game here, trying to avoiding thinking too hard about the social context of these portraits, especially, Self-portrait, 1928, and Self-portrait, 1940, enough to enjoy them as interesting paintings, as paint.

Sung Hwan Kim

Witte de With

September 13, 2008 - October 26, 2008 The highlight of this exhibition is; 'Summer Days in Keijo – Written in 1936 (2008)' which is based on Swedish ethnographer and zoologist Sten Bergman's travel log of Seoul in the 1930's. The film is overlayed with present-day images of Seoul creating a mocku-menatry of sorts. Revealing and highlighting both the passage of time and the ridiculous attempt to see your own country through someone else's eyes. Fantastic.

Fresh Air Machine

Calvert 22 / 22 Calvert Avenue - london - E2

Russell Eade deserves further exposure of his weird ghost like, glam but grungy, perhaps, replacements for paintings or adverts. Harry Pye's joyfull collaborative art romp occupies a world where painting is evidence of a communal sociable activity. An invitation to join a cult of niceness. The idea, at first, made me want to vomit but then I was won over with the absolute sincerity and wanted to join in myself.Clare Price's sink estate rebellion meets monitor monkey meltdown paintings have a clashing currency while Liz Neals sumptuous domestic/museum mashups combining craft and life with a childs eye for wonder are good reasons for enguaging with this raw, difficult show that seems, I think, to muse on the individuals place in the world and the possibility of influencing it.

Street Art

Tate Modern, London

Pearl, I believe what appears to be a gun is actually a camera.A stereotypical image turned on its head the presciptive viewer put in the centre of the piece of work. Its a great big piece of public sculpture that stretches right accress the Thames. A massive trap and request for the viwer to take more time in forming an opinion of what they witness.My rating is just for that piece as I have not seen the rest of the show.

Annette Messager: The Messengers

Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Originally seen at the Pompidou, Messager's work makes it's way to the heart of the funky Roppongi Hills complex. Collections of kitsch stuff, wordpuns and other stuff resonate with a childlike infatuation with the world around us. Occasionally brilliant.

Jeff Koons

Palace of Versailles

This exhibition is glorious and ridiculous. The exhibition has set off a host of calls of "Not here!" from the french conservative right. Which goes to show why the French contemporary art scene is so far off the mark; a fear and rejection of contemporary ideas. The exhibition is after all, temporary, and and it's legacy will highlight the importance of Versailles. In other countries, Germany perhaps, a contemporary artist showing in an alternative space would hardly surprise the authorities, let alone shock. Aside from all the hoo haar'ing about Jeff Koons showing in Versailles, I don't actually think that it shows Koon's work in the best light, perhaps it is too near to the kitsch it often parodies.

• Giorgio Morandi, 1890–1964

The Metropolitan Museum of Art,NY

The Italian still life master is in town, so it’s a chance to see a great presentation of his life work. The predominantly small works have soft hues, strong masculine lines contrast with feminine curves, with the selective self-portraits mixed in.

Primavera 2008

Museum of Contemporary Art, The Rocks.Sydney

The MCA's annual show of young artists. Primavera curator, Hannah Mathews, has selected 13 artists from five different states. Their works range from traditional paintings to cross-disciplinary works involving performance, architecture and music. The talking point of the show is the six-metre high inflatable Disney castle by Perth-based artist Marcus Canning entitled The Pink Wienie, its shiney and sexy, and steals the limelight form subtler works like Mark Hiltons depictions of violent contemporary events in the style of Persian court tapestries and medieval frescoes.

Roger Hiorns – Seizure

Artangel at Harper Road, london uk

Hiorns has created a blue cavern made of copper-sulphate crystals. This was created by filing an entire flat with a swimming pools worth of copper sulphate solution, which crystalises on everything in sight, then draining the fluid, so art-goers like you and me can have a gander. It is a spiky kind of flocking, which is mesmerising and kitsch. Ends Nov, so you have a month, but I would see it sooner than later, as it starts to deteriorate.

High Wire- Catherine Yas

German Gynmasium, Pancras Road, Camden, London

Breath taking four screen projection,commissioned by Artangel. The show presents a multi view of the high wire walker Didier Pasquette at Red Road in Glasgow in 2007. If you fancy the sensation of vertigo, go for it.

Gerhard Richter-4900 Colours: Version II

Serpentine Gallery

Comprises of bright monochrome squares randomly arranged in a grid formation to create kaleidoscopic colourpaintings. I glad I didnt miss this chance to catch Richters work.

Christine Aerfeldt and Elinor Evans

Wyer Gallery, London, UK

Both artists present women in paintings, but I particularly like the work of Aerfeldt, which references her Estonian heritage, and allegorical imagery.

Zhu Yi Yong - Red Star

798 Avant Gallery, New York

Chinese artist Zhu Yi Yong. - Red Star shows new works that expand on his ongoing exploration of the popular child's game, cat's cradle. Yong presents photo real monochrome paintings of children, holding strings in the shape of a star. These are meant to symbolise a time of innocence, but also shows a deeper level that relates to young china, and it development on the world stage. I sometimes find it difficult to read the heavy symbolism of Chinese art, but the more I see the more I begin to understand the alternative language they use.

Edra Soto "The Greatest Companions"

Mutherland, Chicago

Soto presents paintings of her memories of Puerto Rican icon, Iris Chacon, and her show in the 1970's. The paintings have a shabby Chic appeal. But glow with the buzz of entertainment and alluring latino culture.

TINA B. - The Prague Contemporary Art Festival 2008