RES NOVEMBER 2012 1 3 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION NOVEMBER 2012 RES ‘I don’t want people to walk out from a group exhibition wondering if there was one of my works in there or if they missed it’ once stated Chuck Close in regard to the gigantic size of his paintings. As many other goals in his career, visibility is one that Close has definitely accomplished. Tony Godfrey’s survey in this issue is respectfully critical, but there are no doubts on where on Close’s art stands today – a fact made even more remarkable by the combative spirit with whom he has faced adversities that would have broken the spirit of many other individuals. Close’s larger-than-life portraits might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but his passion and dedication are so inspirational that they deserve all the honours and accolades they have received over the years, last but not least the cover of this issue of RES. Arie Amaya-Akkermans’ deep insight into the ‘Art Cities of the Future’ is matched by Paco Barragán’s interview with German dealer Matthias Arndt, and his decision to celebrate the 15th anniversary of his gallery by opening a second branch in Singapore. Other conversations in this issue include Marc Glöde with Carsten Nicolai on his film work, Eugenio Viola with Marina Dacci, director of the Maramotti Foundation, and Hans Ulrich Obrist with Michael Druks, arguably one of the most influential and unjustly underrated artists from his generation, whereas Kaspar König casts a few lights on the tenth edition of Manifesta. Andrea Kroksnes, Senior Curator at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, tells of her working experience with Maja Bajevic; Finally Declan Long and Lilly Wei complete an already strong issue with their analysis on the work of Elizabeth Magill and Sean Scully. Enjoy the reading. Michele Robecchi RES NOVEMBER 2012 2 5 ART CITIES OF THE FUTURE NOVEMBER 2012 RES ARIE AMAYA-AKKERMANS IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN encyclopaedic, critical and historical discourse in the arts today? It would be difficult to tell. At a time when both ‘contemporary’ and ‘global’ have come to embody practices rooted in the rootlessness and liquidity of the modern world, the contemporary finds itself exhausted and its critical energy nearly depleted. Once a historical movement, the contemporary is said to have ‘gone too far’; having forgotten its origins at a turning point between art history, theory and praxis. It is seemly no longer aware of the presence of the past as their predecessors knew it. Two solutions have been proposed for this problem: Either melancholy or diversity. Antonio Caro, Colombia, 1976/2010 The first one is encompassed in the emergence of institutional Enamel on tin, 70 × 100 cm. Bogotá, Colombia discourses such as the motto of the Documenta 12 (2007) ‘Ist die Moderne unsere Antike?’ (Is Modernity our Antiquity?) And young market institutions with simultaneous educational and archaeological justifications such as Gigi Scaria Someone Left a Horse on the Shore, 2007 Frieze Masters and the new Dubai Modern. A gaze towards the ‘Other’ embodies the solution Digital print on archival paper, 109 × 164 cm. of diversity and inclusion. The ‘Other’ is not simply ‘foreign’ but a distinctly separate order Delhi, India ofrepresentation. While a number of artists from the ‘other territory’ have established themselves in the ranks of the so-called international art, such as Mona Hatoum, Doris Salcedo or Anish Kapoor, an imbalance still remains. Phaidon’s book ‘Art Cities of the Future: 21st Century Avant-Gardes’ is perhaps one of the first serious encyclopaedic surveys of the decentralization of the art world that has encouraged diversity. Taking the city as the basic unit of globalization, the book explores a number of cities that are home to a vibrant homegrown art scene. From Beirut to Bogota, Istanbul to Vancouver, Singapore to Lagos, the ten cities featured stand out for having developed autonomous institutional frameworks for art and from them, having catapulted many young artists into the ranks of international art. Before commenting on these institutional frameworks, the question begets itself: What is a city of the future? A recent report by a prestigious financial consulting firm, concluded that the distinguishing feature of a ‘city of the future’ is the seamless combination of global competition and local leadership. Nothing would suggest that this is not the case in the art world; paraphrasing the Colombian curator José Roca, a scene in these cities developed naturally and RES without the pressure of the art market. ‘Glocal’ art, however, does not necessarily point towards democratization in the art world, but to a number of overlapping paradoxes. NOVEMBER 2012 4 7 NOVEMBER 2012 RES Nilbar Güreş Aslı Çavuşoğlu The Living Room, from the series ‘çırçır’, 2010 Murder in Three Acts, 2012 C-print, 120 × 180 cm. Film and performance Istanbul, Turkey Istanbul, Turkey RES NOVEMBER 2012 6 9 NOVEMBER 2012 Expectations are placed on the normativity of representation of ‘foreignness’ that should always RES operate within the generic grammar of contemporary art. Accordingly, institutions derive their authority from the ‘contemporary’, whose authority in turn is self-referential. In Istanbul, for Jungho Oak example, grand institutions exist that while well-funded and staffed by cutting-edge professionals, Anyang City Rainbow: Anyang Stream, 2007 play the role of putting Turkey in the art map rather than truly nurturing a scene, for in the words Digital C-print, 70 × 47 cm. Seoul, South Korea of different art dealers from the city, there’s no conversation about art and not much of an audience either. A small group of local artists stand out internationally, but young artists complain about lack of opportunities and nepotism. A recent panel hosted in Beirut by leading contemporary artists from the city, addressed the question of what is an emerging artist, without reaching a consensus and one of the participants ironically noted: ‘Emerging artist is whoever writes in the applications for residencies that he is’. Although the city produced a prolific number of international artists, they tend to represent Hodeuk Kim Wave of Mind, Awakening Moment Between, 2011 abroad extreme narratives either of radical utopianism or cultural pessimism, hardly negotiating Ink on Korean paper and water, dimensions variable critical alternatives. The gallery scene remains very small and conservative, and young artists Seoul, South Korea feel the need to emigrate and succeed abroad in order to be exhibited back home later. The globalization of art, coeval with the emergence of art fairs all over the world and their accompanying biennials and academic conferences, play right into the hands of gentrification and the expansion of financial markets embodied in corporate collections and social responsibility. These phenomena often take place only to the advantage of dealers with international networks, and the impact on art schools on the margins of the centres of art, remains very slow and limited. A Turkish critic recently remarked how ‘expensive’ it is to be in the art world – the need for well paid business jobs to ‘survive in art’, finding money to travel, and securing VIP cards for art fairs and biennials and be seen in the ‘circles’. Year in and out, the trends significantly change. The post 9/11 period saw a curatorial craze to investigate artistic movements in the Middle East, and more recently the consolidation of a few Latin American artists in the grand halls of London and New York – a chain of events that sent shock waves to art advisers all too willing to update their portfolios with new ‘stuff’ from Colombia and Panama. Last year the African art fair in London, coeval with Frieze, made mid-size galleries take an interest in West African and Nigerian art (a curated pavilion on West African art debuted at Art Dubai 2013), which happens to coincide with the financial boom of Nigeria and Uganda. Art galleries, design shops and champagne vending machines are now a sight in the lush districts of highly impoverished cities. The centres of the art world (and the art market itself) are not decentralizing or being replaced anytime soon. The new art cities of the future, under the current realities of the market, will be the art cities of the future insofar as they will be showrooms for the centres of the art world expanding its reach towards a global aesthetics. The global often depoliticizes the agonistic character of these very urban practices reflecting the reality of social and economic conflict, if only by exaggerating them in such a way that the boundary between an imaginary and a document is blurred. Some of these cities will remain at the margins, while others already occupy intermediate spaces, but the major collecting and curating practices remain trends still monopolized from the very centre. Kevin Schmidt Prospect Point, 2007 RES LightJet print, 188 × 221 cm. Vancouver, Canada NOVEMBER 2012 Arie Amaya-Akkermans is a Beirut-based specialist in contemporary art from the Middle East with a focus on Lebanon and Turkey, as well as an assistant curator at Albareh Art Gallery, Bahrain. 8 11 NOVEMBER 2012 RES Peju Layiwola Runo Lagomarsino Oba Ghato Okper (Long Live the King), 2009 Against Times, 2010 installation with gourds, fishing line and acrylic paint, dimensions variable Dia projection loop of 27 original images in Kodak slide projection carousel with timer Lagos, Nigeria São Paulo, Brazil RES NOVEMBER 2012 10 13 CHUCK CLOSE NOVEMBER 2012 Mark, 1979 RES Acrylic on gessoed canvas, 274.3 x 213.4 cm. © Chuck Close. Courtesy Pace Gallery, New York. TONY GODFREY I HAVE A PROBLEM. There is no doubting the importance of the painter Chuck Close, but every time I go to a museum and see there is an exhibition of Chuck Close my heart sinks.