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The Reliable Controvery of ARCOmadrid
Arco, Madrid's 29-year-old contemporary art fair opened its doors to the public February 18, amidst the uncertainty provoked by Spain's dismal economy and debates about the quality of participating exhibitors. Galleries like Marian Goodman, Hauser & Wirth, Lisson, and Sao Paulo-based Luisa Strina, one-time regular exhibitors at the fair, all absented this year's edition. The Spanish art fair retained the dubious title of "world's most crowded art fair," with 150,000 visitors in just five days. Reliable controversy might be the podium on which that laurel stands.Read More
More to Love: Another Guggenheim for Bilbao?
About a year ago, the General Deputy of the Biscay County Council, Jose Luis Bilbao announced his intention to build a new annex of the Guggenheim Museum in Urdaibai, a 220-square-kilometer Natural Reserve about 20 minutes from the museum's current location in Bilbao. Looking to repeat the effects of the iconic Gehry building, Mr. Bilbao presented the idea as the linchpin of an economic stimulus plan to boost the region's worsening economy. The Biscay County Council—Mr. Bilbao declared—would provide up to 100 million euros for the development. The Guggenheim Museum Director declined to add further information, and the news passed unnoticed for over a year outside Spain, perhaps regarded as an ephemeral campaign promise.Read More
Jasper Joffe Sells All
Auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's, have come to prefer "tightly edited" sales in order to maintain good sell-through rates this seasont. But cashing is not, according to British artist Jasper Joffe's recent statements, the reason why he decided to sell everything he owns in the "The Sale of a Lifetime," starting today at Idea Generation Gallery in London. (Christie's hosted the Sale of the Century earlier this year.) The 33 lots here start at £3,333, far more modest estimates than the YSL sale earlier this year. And with good reason! Joffe is selling some of his own artwork and a Tracy Emin monoprint he fetched at The Royal College of Art along with childhood teddy bears, books, photo albums, school reports, and love letters.Read More
Following Cortazar: Guido Van der Werve
In his 1962 collection Cronopios & Famas Argentine writer Julio Cortazar included a selection of witty, poignant how-to instructions for ordinary tasks such as singing, crying, climbing a staircase, and winding a clock. Somewhere between Situationist manifestos and self-help literature—though much more readable than both of these genres—these short pieces constitute a provocative invitation to introduce imagination into the everyday and question accepted rules (or rather, ignore them altogether). Read More
Unexpected Guests: Greta Alfaro
In Spain, major social get-togethers (such as weddings or holiday family meals, for example) can start shortly after noon and carry on way after dusk. In this long intermezzo, the table is refilled with an incessant succession of hors d'oeuvres, seafood, roasted lamb, pork, salads, abundant wine, seasonal sweets, liquor, and cigars. To ease digestion, the meal is often spiced up with juicy gossip and the laundering of family secrets, unsolicited medical updates, bad jokes, ill-intentioned puns and eventually blatant insults that in the worst cases leads to drama (domestic violence indeed spikes during the holiday season). The vibrant atmosphere at such social gatherings, which amateur photography has enabled us to shamelessly share with others, is the favorite subject of Greta Alfaro (born 1977, Pamplona, Spain). It also serves as an inspiration for her newest project at Marta Cervera gallery in Madrid. Included in Photoespana, Spain's most eminent photography festival which this year is articulated around the leitmotif of "the everyday," it marks the artist's successful gallery debut for which she's been awarded a prize by the Spanish publication El Cultural.Read More
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Mixed Media, 212 x 66 inches, Courtesy the artist.
Artist Kirstine Roepstorff was born and trained in Denmark, but lives and works in Berli
