Art Brussels had three sections: Discovery that focused on work made the past few years by younger emerging artists, Prime that focused on more established artists from modern to contemporary and Rediscovery that focused on work made from 1917 – 1987 by under-recognized or forgotten / deceased artists. Parallel to these sections was SOLO that, as the name indicates, gave one artist the opportunity of showing in an entire booth.

Fair Ground “Tour & Taxis”

Art fairs only work if work is sold. Without an airport terrorist attack this year, both visitor numbers and sales were better than in 2016: Galerie Lelong (Paris, NY) sold paintings by Günther Förg. Galerie Krinzinger made several important sales including a work of Gavin Turk during the preview. Axel Vervoordt (Antwerp, Hong Kong) sold all three editions of an Angel Vergara LED wall, a Michel Mouffe painting for around €50,000, and a cast glass sculpture by Ann Veronica Janssens for around €30,000.

One of the few Asian galleries this year was Pearl Lam Galleries (based in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore). Pearl Lam participated for the first time and reported very satisfying sales from their booth, which included works by Gonkar Gyatso and Chun Kwang Young (see images below). Other galleries from Asia were Gallery 55 from Shanghai and HDM Gallery from Beijing. Despite a still modest amount of galleries from Asia, exhibitors reported that there had been more collectors this year than usually coming from Asia and especially from Hong Kong.

Fair director Anne Vierstraat’s said during her opening-speech, “we are known as a discovery fair”, which indeed has become Art Brussels trademark. Cramped into the overly packed art-agenda this spring with Art Cologne less then a week after (the world’s longest established art fair) and Berlin Gallery Weekend just around the corner, Art Brussels indeed thrives on having a “specialty” of its own, while the competition world-wide is getting harder each year (Art Düsseldorf launches this Autumn, following a 25% acquisition by MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd., owner of Art Basel, with an option to buy a majority stake later).

At Discovery the young artist Micah Hesse (b. 1991, New Mexico) was represented by Berlin gallery Neumeister Bar-Am. The gallery showed a video animation by Hesse called ‘Shampaigne’ referring to the cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine, shortly after the shooting at their office. They declared: “Ils ont les armes, on les emmerde, on a le champagne!” (They have weapons, fuck them, we have champagne), below a comic of a man riddled with bullet holes with champagne flowing out… In the video animation Hesse linked US gun lobbyists that are notorious for claiming that: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, with the notion of a gun as an independent entity, a so-called “bad gun” (just like a “bad guy”). The animation brings you into a fetishized, surreal world where objects have their own agency and the psychological aspects of harming someone and being harmed are explored in an intriguing and original way.

In the prime section at Nathalie Obadia, Laure Provoust had a solo booth which was an immersive installation consisting of video, sculptures and wall-pieces. Complex layered narratives, dark surreal humour, word games and exploring the boundaries between reality and fiction, often characterize Prouvost’s work. In 2013 she was also the surprise-winner of the prestigious British Turner Prize for the work “Wantee”, a video piece about the relationship between her own fictional grandfather and deceased German artist Kurt Schwitters. The work was according to Prouvost called “Wantee” because Kurt Schwitter’s wife would always ask him and his visitors “do you want tea?”

As a nod to “Wantee” Laure Prouvost showed dried teabags at the exhibition “Mementos: Artists’ Souvenirs, Artifacts and other Curiosities” that was part of Art Brussels landmark 35^th edition. “Mementos” that was curated by Jens Hoffmann and Piper Marshall brought together personal objects, relics, souvenirs, and artefacts of 73 different artists that were all represented at the fair.

Each year during Art Brussels there are many other must-see art events to explore elsewhere in the city. An exhibition that really stood out this year was at WIELS, located in a former brewery and is one of the most significant centres for contemporary art in Europe. During the fair WIELS marked its 10^th anniversary with the opening of a vast exhibition titled “The Absent Museum”. WIELS, which still does not have the status of a museum but is none-the-less commonly referred to as one, asked in the exhibition questions about which absences in museum collections should be addressed? Which and whose histories should be told? And whose identities should be represented, shaped, or confirmed? Featuring works by artists such as Francis Alÿs, Isa Genzken, Wolfgang Tillmans and Thomas Hirschhorn, the exhibition was a compelling tour de force through art history as well as the present asking what content or knowledge a museum should have in the future?

Art Brussels 2017, Tour and Taxis. Photo David Plas

Paul McCarthy, SC Western John Wayne, Pink, 2016

Gonkar Gyatso, 4,314 Prayers, Pearl Lam Galleries

Chun Kwang Young b. 1944, Aggregation 08-F001, Pearl Lam Galleries

Gallery 55, Drawings by Yu Aijun, trees in the art zone

HDM Gallery. Painting on the left by Zhao Xuebing. Painting on the right by Zhu Rixin

Mementos. Artists Souvenirs, Artefacts and other Curiosities. 2017. Art Brussels. Photo David Plas

Mementos. Artists Souvenirs, Artefacts and other Curiosities. 2017. Art Brussels. Photo David Plas

Mementos. Artists Souvenirs, Artefacts and other Curiosities. 2017. Art Brussels. Photo David Plas

Mementos. Artists Souvenirs, Artefacts and other Curiosities. 2017. Art Brussels. Photo David Plas

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler ll, David Zwirner, Independent

Performance by Eszter Salamon and Boglàrka Börksök, “The Valeska Gert Museum”, Boghossian Foundation, Brussels

Foulkes’s singular oeuvre has inhabited and excavated the remains of the American West and its attendant promise of freedom and prosperity. Probing a once wondrous frontier, now rendered a wasteland, Foulkes exposes the American Dream as co-opted by an increasingly commercialized, corporatized, and militarized society. The landscape of the American West features prominently throughout his works, signifying both the once-cherished myth and subsequent failure of the American Dream.

Llyn Foulkes, The Splash, 1984
Mixed media, 72 x 96 inches, 182.9 x 243.8 cm
Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Inspired by old touristic postcards, Foulkes’s “postcard paintings” of mountains and rocks turn towards Pop, incorporating standardized imagery and serial elements. Death Valley, Calif. (1964) depicts a mountainous expanse, modeled by soaking rags in pigment and applying them directly onto the surface of the work to create a subtle texture and shading, thus attaining a nearly photorealistic quality. The work is anchored at its left and bottom edges by a yellow and black striped border, recalling cautionary road signs. Underneath five stamp-like bald eagles lies an inscription copied from a book by Ulysses S. Grant: “This painting is dedicated to the American.” Is this dedication a sincere statement of gratitude or allegiance, or does it evoke a heavy-handed patriotism or claim of entitlement? The various framing devices surrounding the seemingly untouched terrain remind viewers that this is a representation, a fragmentation of the frontier that has been commoditized for cursory enjoyment.

Foulkes’s “bloody head” portraits—depicting deformed or obstructed faces—began with a self-portrait, Who’s on Third (1971-1973). After encountering an autopsied corpse at a mortuary, he concealed the portrait’s recognizable features with a flow of lurid-red blood and a cloth-like mask. Subsequent bloody head paintings exemplify an increasingly critical view of American politics and popular culture, taking up presidents, military figures, corporate businessmen, and the entertainment industry as subjects. In the 1980s, Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, and other comic characters became recurring figures in his narrative paintings—now sinister intrusions representing disillusionment with the wholesome agenda proffered by the Disney Empire.

Another group of portraits integrates photographs, painted over with oil, as well as found materials that extend out of the wooden frame. With these tableaux works, Foulkes sought to attain an even greater illusion of depth. In addition to utilizing found materials, the artist’s distinctive technique involves carving directly into wood to create real shadows; some of his works expand to immersive size, taking several years to finish. Old Glory (1996/2001-2003) sardonically portrays a barren landscape made of rough-carved wood and various recycled materials. At center, the American flag hangs limply over a pile of burning rubble, and in the background stands the only lasting monument: a yellow arched McDonalds sign. In Where Did I Go Wrong? (1991) Foulkes’s pop cultural critique meets his earlier landscape paintings and—as with many of the works presented here—expresses a personal and collective anxiety.

Born in 1934 Yakima, Washington, Llyn Foulkes studied at University of Washington, Seattle (1953-1954); Central Washington College, Ellensburg (1954); and Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles (1957-1959). Between 1954 and 1956, he was a member of the U.S. Army in Germany.

Since the 1960s, Foulkes’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide. He had his first solo presentation at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles (founded by Walter Hopps and Edward Keinholz) in 1961, which exhibited artists such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Irwin, Wallace Berman, and Bruce Conner. Subsequent museum solo shows were held at Pasadena Art Museum (1962 [now Norton Simon Museum]); Oakland Museum of California (1964); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1978); Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California (1996). Most recently in 2013, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles hosted a major retrospective of the artist’s work. The show traveled to the New Museum, New York and Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany.

Foulkes has participated in significant group exhibitions including those held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1992); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (1997); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2006); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2008); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2011); and François Pinault Foundation, Venice (2013). In 2011, the artist’s work was included in the 54th Venice Biennale and in 2012 his work was featured in documenta 12, Kassel, Germany.

The artist’s work is held in numerous public collections internationally, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Foulkes lives and works in Los Angeles.

On May 6 at 4 PM, Margot Norton will be leading a guided tour of the exhibition. Norton is Associate Curator at the New Museum, New York, where she has recently curated and co-curated exhibitions with artists Judith Bernstein, Pia Camil, Sarah Charlesworth, Ragnar Kjartansson, Chris Ofili, Goshka Macuga, Laure Prouvost, Pipilotti Rist, and Anri Sala, and group exhibitions The Keeper (2016), and Here and Elsewhere (2014). In 2013, she organized Llyn Foulkes’ retrospective exhibition at the New Museum, which traveled from the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Norton is currently working on the exhibition, Kaari Upson: Good thing you are not alone, which will open at the New Museum on May 3, 2017. Before she joined the New Museum, she was Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Norton has lectured and published on contemporary art and holds an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.

For all press inquiries, contact
Kim Donica at David Zwirner +1 212 727 2070 kim@davidzwirner.com

To RSVP for the May 6 guided tour, contact
Emma Macdonald at David Zwirner +1 212 727 2070 rsvp@davidzwirner.com

Above: Art Official, 1985. Mixed media, 55 x 46 inches (139.7 x 116.8 cm)

Unlike New York, where art fairs are simply unnecessary, Frieze is an inimitable part of London’s success. The early nineties witnessed more than a handful artists with the talent and determination to stake a claim on history; they were led by Damien Hirst, who curated a show called Freeze (in a meat storage warehouse). Along with a handful of dedicated local galleries (notably White Cube, Lisson and Victoria Miro), a museum (Tate Modern), a clutch of collectors (oh, Charles, how we have fallen), a renewed internationalism and optimism following the fall of the Eastern Bloc, and a magazine run by a couple of graduates which made seemingly obscure art debates cool and popular, London became the place in Europe to see new art by living artists. Eventually, the founders of Frieze, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, also founded a fair. The brilliant idea of putting a fair in a tent in Regent’s Park tricked the English into thinking it was a like a bucolic countryside fair. And it was in Regent’s Park—this wasn’t a commercial flea market, but royal entertainment! (The English like games). The trick still works in London, whereas in New York it doesn’t really (in Miami it does). The addition of Frieze Masters, in another tent, threatened to upset the jest by creating unfair comparisons—the quality of Masters was simply better. However, that problem appears to have been solved. This year, the two shows were much more balanced.

Hauser & Wirth reiterated their London group show from 2014. It impressed one German editor as a “power display”. Not me. In their Saville Row gallery, it was a finely measured display of curatorial formalism. At Frieze, it was just a display. All that was missing were the shopping trollies.

Camille Henrot at Kamel Mennour, Paris

Camille Henrot at Kamel Mennour (Paris) and König Gallery (Berlin). Henrot is a prodigious talent in the art of curatorial installation whose orbit is just coming into alignment with the art world. But she really isn’t good at drawing. Does that matter? No, because the drawings are not to be taken at face value (unlike, say, with Glenn Brown at Gagosian or even Anri Sala at Marian Goodman) but as comments in relation to her curatorial scenography.

The emerging gallery section was a hotch-potch—was this really the best selection possible? Here, the limits of Frieze were most obvious. Most works looked like aimless variations on most other works. Two of the exceptions however, despite being tucked away in a corner together, were the Chinese contenders, Antenna Space, with a booth devoted to Guan Xiao, and Leo Xu Projects with a mini-version of a 2014 exhibition curated by artist Guo Hongwei at his non-profit Beijing Space. Both deserved more space. Clearly they would put it to good use. In the same corner was Roman Stanczak at Stereo Warsaw, playing with vacuum verve on Duchamp and Koons.

Guan Xiao at Antenna Space

Guo Hongwei at Leo Xu Projects

China was also represented by Yan Pei-Ming at Taddaeus Ropac and a solo show of paintings and sculptures by Xu Qu at Almine Rech Gallery. Very nearby, ShanghART showed works by Ding Yi and Zhang Enli, of course, but other works caught my eye, including an impressive monochrome painting by Ouyang Chun (enough to prod me to reevaluate my previous skepticism), fascinating biological abstract photography by Jiang Pengyi, and a humming black factory by Zhang Ding.

Yan Pei-Ming “Chien hurlant” (2015) at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Tom Friedman “Cocktail Party”

Tom Friedan’s “Cocktail Party” provided light art fair relief, but we know that was precisely the plan. Anyhow, it was not competition for a lubricious Allen Jones at Michael Werner.

Isa Genzken’s wall work at Buchholz Galerie was far weightier, as was Inge Mahn’s “Stuhlkreis” 2000 at Galerie Max Hetzler (what an artist! I definitely need to learn more about her). Simon Lee Gallery took the opportunity to present a series of solo shows each day (Heimo Zoberig was on Wednesday).

Other works that caught my attention were a Laure Prouvost wall-work at MOT International, Dominique Gonzalez-Forster’s pair of Siamese telephones at Esther Schipper, Anri Sala drawings at Marian Goodman and a bewitching mini-exhibition of works by Xavier Veilhan at Galerie Perrotin.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Siamese telephones strike up a conversation at Esther Schipper

Frieze London was, despite minor quibbles, a great show of why London became and remains the modern and contemporary art capital of Europe (speaking selfishly, the Reading Room was a great improvement on boring magazine stands). The London art scene is fun, diverse and open (more so than Berlin). It is not always the most intellectual place for art but—like New York—year-round it has a full calendar of striking museum and gallery exhibitions, just not as many collectors. Central St. Martin’s may not be as strong or free as Frankfurt’s Städelschule, but for now, the international English language gives it a free pass. Subtlety and intellectualism are overrated anyway. Still, London is too expensive for most artists (remember them?—they’re the ones who make the art). And with the rising threat that the UK will leave the European Union, one must wonder whether London will become an island in an island, or itself be engulfed by inwardness and smallness.

London needs Frieze and what it stands for, now more than ever, and even more than Frieze needs London.

Ji Wenyu & Zhu Weibing at ShanghART

Glenn Brown at Gagosian Gallery

Allen Jones “The Visitor” (1985) at Michael Werner was apparently sold to someone from Ibiza. Who’d have thought it?

Xavier Veilhan “Les Meuble des Productuers / Producer’s Cabinet” (2015) at Galerie Perrotin

Ouyang Chun “The Tiger” (2014) at ShanghART. Also notable were a small monotype photograph, “Inconsolable Memories No.14” (2015) by Jiang Pengyi and the thrumming “OM-2” by Zhang Ding.

Ettore Spalletti “Trittico azzuro” (2013) at Marian Goodman Gallery

Art Basel in Miami Beach. General Impression. © Art Basel
巴塞尔艺术展迈阿密海滩展会© 巴塞尔艺术展

Art Basel in Miami Beach. General Impression. © Art Basel
巴塞尔艺术展迈阿密海滩展会© 巴塞尔艺术展

Visitors will be privy to 500,000 square feet of exhibition space in the Miami Beach Convention Center (which, it has been decided, is soon going to be re-modeled, not replaced). Nine sectors aim to punctuate the content: Survey, Galleries, Nova, Positions, Edition, Kabinett, Public, Film, and Magazines. Survey is new for 2014, and will present so-called “precise” projects by individual artists or group shows which in some way reference art history. The main Galleries section will feature 200+ booths from around the world. From China, big hitters ShanghART and Long March Space will be there. Nova is the section for wet paint, featuring new works made within the last three years (among these will be Beijing Commune). Positions and Kabinett aim to generate a closer focus; the former asks each participating gallery to bring just one major artist project, where the latter requires that a curated show is presented within a separate area inside the gallery booth—from Beijing, Galerie Urs Meile will present Yan Xing’s “The History of Reception” (2012) in this section. Public is held each year in collaboration with Bass Art Museum (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year) at Collins Park, and will include sculptures and outdoor installations. Film, too, goes beyond the walls of the convention center, with a 7,000-square-foot projection wall to showcase video art in SoundScape Park, designed by Frank Gehry. Talks at the fair are split into daily Conversations and the Salon events which require a ticket or VIP card.

Xiaoyuan Hu, “Wood/Thing/No.2″, 2012 (Beijing Commune)(Courtesy the artist and the gallery)

Li Gang, “2nd August”, 2014 (Courtesy Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing – Lucerne)

Alfredo Jaar, “Culture = Capital”, 2012/2014 (Galerie Lelong, Goodman Gallery, Galerie Thomas Schulte)(Courtesy the artist and the gallery)

Olaf Metzel, “Untitled”, 2014 (Wentrup)(Courtesy of the artist and Wentrup, Berlin)

Hank Willis Thomas, Ryan Alexiev and Jim Ricks ,”In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth)”, 2011 (Goodman Gallery, Jack Shainman Gallery)(Courtesy of the Cause Collective)

Beyond Basel, a host of satellite fairs, dubbed “indie” in relation to the main event will also open around town (expect smaller scale, less-well-known artists and galleries and lower prices, and perhaps fewer “glitterati” visitors). Bringing the Miami Art Week total up to some 20 events are, in Miami Beach: Aqua, Ink Miami (both hotel-based), Art Miami, Design Miami (held adjacent to Art Basel), NADA Art Fair, Pulse Miami, Select, Scope Miami and Untitled. In Miami, there are Art Miami, ArtSpot, Concept (new for 2014, held on a downtown mega-yacht), Context, Fridge Art Fair (which started in New York’s Lower East Side last year by Eric Ginsburg, who says “People should not be afraid to go and see art, and it should not cost a fortune.”), Miami Photo Salon, Miami Project, Miami River Art Fair, Pinta, Prizm, Red Dot Miami, Sculpt Miami and Spectrum.

Among the museum highlights in 2014 is the Rubell Family Collection, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. Commissioned solo exhibits by Will Boone, Lucy Dodd, Mark Flood, David Ostroski, Aaron Curry and Kaari Upson (the last two of whose work has just been shown as part of “The LA Project” at UCCA in Beijing) open there on the 3rd of December. But the main event is “To Have and To Hold”—major works from the collection accompanied by a 700-page catalog called “Highlights and Artists’ Writings”. Included in this will be the Chinese artists Ai Weiwei, He Xiangyu, Li Shurui, Li Songsong, Liu Wei, Qiu Zhijie, Xu Zhen, Zhang Enli, Zhang Huan and Zhu Jinshi. Also on the Asian radar is “ADinfinitum”, a show of huge photographic works by Beijing-based artist Wang Qingsong at Frost Art Museum. This year marks the first anniversary of the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed Perez Art Museum with multiple exhibitions. Also worth a visit should be 15th anniversary show at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse—a non-profit institution inside a retro-fitted warehouse in the Wynwood Arts District of Miami (formerly a run-down area, but now host to many galleries and some impressive public murals), showing works from the collection Martin Z. Margulies. CIFO (the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation) will stage a group exhibition of abstract art entitled “Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict.” At the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space is “Beneath the Surface”, a large group exhibition addressing, in its own words, “our new American landscape.”

As is true every year, Miami Art Week 2014 will hover between the label “art with parties attached” and its reverse; every night has a round of social events whilst pop-ups, promotions, breakfasts, openings, tours, screenings, talks—and, of course, art fairs—during the day are bound to keep a buying majority of well-and high-heeled visitors tired. The question for Art Basel will most simply be whether last year’s record sales are matched, or outdone.

Tatiana Trouvé, “Waterfall”, 2013 (Gagosian Gallery)(© Tatiana Trouvé; Courtesy Gagosian Gallery; Photography by Leonie Felle)

Laure Prouvost, “For Forgetting”, 2014 (MOT International)(Photo: Benoit Pailley; Courtesy of the artist and MOT International)

Tania Candiani, “Telar”, 2012 (Instituto de visión)(Courtesy of the artist)

Xu Zhen by MadeIn Company, “Under Heaven-2632JP1403″, 2014 (Courtesy the artist and Long March Space)

Hrair Sarkissian, “HOMESICK”, 2014 (Kalfayan Galleries)(Courtesy Kalfayan Galleries, Athens – Thessaloniki)

Ernesto Neto, “nós sonhando [spacebodyship]“, 2014 (Tanya Bonakdar Gallery)(Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York)

Gina Pane / Sand, humus, rake, 1969 (Photo credit: Courtesy of BROADWAY 1602 and Kamel Mennour Paris)

Lydia Okumura / PS1, New York, 1981 (Copyright: Lydia Okumura; Photocredit: Courtesy of the Artist and BROADWAY 1602, New York)

Georg Baselitz, “Louise Fuller”, 2013 (Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac)(Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Marais ∙ Paris Pantin ∙ Salzburg; photographer Jochen Littkemann)

Jack Early, “Yokos”, 2012 (Courtesy Fergus McCaffrey Gallery)

Taipei Biennial 2014 is pleased to announce the list of participating artists for The Great Acceleration. Curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Taipei Biennial 2014 is expected to present a wide spectacle consisting of an exhibition, film screenings, live performances, talks, readings, conferences, publications and other special events at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and at other art spaces and public spaces throughout the city.

51 artists and collectives will appear on the scene: Harold Ancart (Belgium); Charles Avery (UK);Gilles Barbier (France); Alisa Baremboym (Russia); Neil Beloufa (Algeria and France); Peter Buggenhout (Belgium); Roberto Cabot (Brazil); En-Man Chang (Taiwan); Ian Cheng (USA);Ching-Hui Chou (Taiwan); Chun-Teng Chu (Taiwan); Shezad Dawood (UK); David Douard(France); Camille Henrot (France); Roger Hiorns (UK); Xiao-Yuan Hu (China); Po-Chih Huang(Taiwan); Joan Jonas (USA); Hudinilson Júnior (Brazil); Tetsumi Kudo (Japan); Surasi Kusolwong (Thailand); An-My Lê (Vietnam and USA); Kuo-Wei Lin (Taiwan); Maria Loboda(Poland); Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe (USA); Jr-Shih Luo (Taiwan); Tala Madani (Iran and USA); Abu-Bakarr Mansaray (Sierra Leone and Netherlands); Josephine Meckseper (Germany and USA); Nathaniel Mellors (UK); Marlie Mul (Netherlands); Henrik Olesen(Denmark) OPAVIVARA! (Brazil); Ola Pehrson (Sweden); Hung-Chih Peng (Taiwan); Laure Prouvost (France and UK); Matheus Rocha Pitta (Brazil); Rachel Rose (USA); Pamela Rosenkranz (Switzerland); Mika Rottenberg (Argentina); Sterling Ruby (USA); Timur Si-Qin(Germany); Shimabuku (Japan); Peter Stämpfli (Switzerland); Nicolás Uriburu (Argentina);Patrick Van Caeckenbergh (Belgium); Chien-Ying Wu (Taiwan); Chuan-Lun Wu (Taiwan); Yu-Chen Wang (Taiwan); Haegue Yang (Korea); Anicka Yi (Korea); and other selected works in the Anthropocene room.

The list covers different nationalities from Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and USA. Taipei Biennial 2014 tends to take a wider, more overall view of the curatorial concept for the biennial around the topic Art and Its New Ecosystem: A Global Set of Relations.

The extent and the acceleration of the industrialization process on the planet have led some scientists to hypothesize a new geophysical era, the Anthropocene. The emergence of this new era, after ten thousand years of the Holocene, refers to the effect of human activities on the earth’s biosphere: global warming, deforestation, soil pollution.

But the concept of the Anthropocene also points to a paradox: the more powerful the collective impact of the species is, the less contemporary individuals feel capable of influencing their surrounding reality. The collapse of the “human scale”: helpless in the face of a computerized economic system whose decisions are derived from algorithms capable of performing operations at the speed of light, human beings have become both spectators and victims of their own infrastructure. Thus, we are witnessing the emergence of an unprecedented political coalition between the individual/citizen and a new subordinate class: animals, plants, minerals and the atmosphere, all attacked by a techno-industrial system now clearly detached from civil society.

Since the 1990s, art has highlighted the social sphere and held inter-human relations, whether individual or social, friendly or antagonistic, to be the main domain of reference. The French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux raises a fundamental question: how can one grasp the meaning of a statement on data prior to any human form of relationship to the world, prior to the existence of any subject/object relationship? In short, how can one think about something that exists completely outside of human thought? Human consciousness is actually a universal measure. In this context, we can compare it to currency, which Marx defined as an “abstract general equivalent” used in the economy.

Art also plays host to an entanglement between the human and nonhuman, a presentation of coactivity as such: Multiple energies are at work, and logical organic growth machines are everywhere. All relations between different regimes of the living and the inert are alive with tension. Contemporary art is a gateway between the human and the nonhuman, where the binary opposition between subject and object dissolves in multiplicitous images: the reified speaking, the living petrified, illusions of life, illusions of the inert, biological maps redistributing constantly.

The Great Acceleration is presented as a tribute to this coactivity, the assumed parallelism between the different kingdoms and their negotiations. This exhibition is organized around the cohabitation of human consciousness with swarming animals, data processing, the rapid growth of plants and the slow movements of matter. So we find ancestrality (the world before human consciousness) and its landscape of minerals, alongside vegetable transplants or couplings between humans, machines and beasts. At the center is this reality: human beings are only one element among others in a wide-area network, which is why we need to rethink our relational universe to include new partners.

In the light, a new generation of artists is exploring the intrinsic properties of materials “informed” by human activity, including polymers (Roger Hiorns, Marlie Mul, Sterling Ruby, Alisa Barenboym, Neil Beloufa, Pamela Rosenkranz) or the critical states of materials (the nebulizations of Peter Buggenhout, Harold Ancart or Hiorns). But polymerization has become a principle of composition, with the invention of flexible and artificial alloys of heterogeneous elements—as can be seen in the videos of Laure Prouvost, Ian Cheng, Rachel Rose or Camille Henrot, the installations of Mika Rottenberg, Nathaniel Mellors or Charles Avery, the paintings of Roberto Cabot or Tala Madani. Others explore weight, transposing the lightness of pixels onto monumental objects (David Douard, Neil Beloufa, Matheus Rocha Pitta…).