Louse Bonnet, “Reversal of Fortune” at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
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An image for the showcase module titled, "Spike #81/82 – The Post-Cool"
Spike #81/82 – The Post-Cool

Twenty years into Spike, what does it mean to do culture Post-Cool? Launching the same year as The Facebook (now an AI auto-spam singularity), Berghain (subject to boycott), and the first EP by Kanye West (need we say more?), how do we retrain the spotlight on art that deals productively with the world?

In our horizonless contemporary, it begins with shaking off crisis-y helplessness and reupping the magazine’s original wager: to be a space that’s generous to art. That also means trying to read the many forms of its Bruegelian Wimmelbild, this all-at-once variety show: choreography or slot machines in white cubes; Taylor Swift’s pop reign; literary fragments in the age of texting and paintings of flowers that never wither.

With Rita Vitorelli, Dean Kissick, Rose Wylie, Amalia Ulman, Martin Herbert, Milo Rau, Alex Mackin Dolan, Benjamin Hirte, Jeppe Ugelvig, Calla Henkel, Martti Kalliala, Adina Glickstein, Travis Diehl, Bibiza, Whitney Mallett, Steven Phillips-Horst, Tea Haċić-Vlahović, and more … PLUS! Best-of-Spike reprints by Chris Kraus, Bruce Hainley, Ella Plevin, Sean Monahan, Gavin Brown & Daniel Baumann

Rita Vitorelli on 20 Years of Spike
By Dean Kissick

Spike’s founding publisher unwinds the magazine’s history of making space for artists, critics, and the rest of the Kunstbetrieb to be generous to what art is – without conceding to its rules.

Post-Cool Berlin
By Calla Henkel, Gisela Gapitain, Robert Schulte, Jenny Schlenzka, and Ludwig Engel

Rent hike by rent hike, people are drifting to the city’s fringes, taking its “poor but sexy” promise with them. Five denizens reality-check Berlin’s latest in-between moment.

Love-Hate Vienna
By Bibiza, Frederike Sperling, Dawid Radziszewski, and Milo Rau

Stereotypes about a tasteful, pretty, if cranky city need a refresh. Four upstarts chime in with dirty Schickeria, the new free republic, and a legacy of live art that still bleeds.

What Happened to New York?
By Whitney Mallett

Everything’s expensive, it’s hot year-round, and even the art market is dipping – but a sense of being in Eric Adams’s CGI hell together still endures.

I Will Follow You Into the Dark
By Steven Phillips-Horst

Time was, consoles were button-mashing escapes from class or the 9-to-5. But as games increasingly mimic our lived experiences, can our digital avatars offer a way back into the real?

Simone Forti Is Still Red-Cheeked and Full of Energy
By Luca Lo Pinto

From her exhibition at Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, a pathbreaking choreographer of touch thrills to a transition into less embodied forms of poetry.

Going Out in Miami 2024
By Stephanie Seidel

Hurricane season’s over! Meaning: Art Basel is returning to a divided America. A longtime curator at ICA Miami re-ups her favorite haunts on both sides of Biscayne Bay.

Angels in America
By Travis Diehl

Following Trump’s slop-fueled, broligarchic triumph, one poll worker asks: How can art get back to turning clout into power?

Taro Masushio Folds the Fictional In on Itself
By Jaime Chu

Amid his exhibition at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, the Japanese bricolage photographer presents art as helping us sit with the discomfort of the unknown.

On Personal Style
By Joanna Walsh

If the personal is ultimately political, and fashion sways between self-expression and sameness, what does it really mean to have “personal style”?

Going Out In Cologne 2024
By Dennis W. Hochköppeler and Jakob Pürling

Looking for a cold Kölsch at the world’s oldest art fair? The founders of gallery Drei commend Cologne’s best potato pancakes and techno digs; plus: French Toast à la Martin Kippenberger.

An Ungrateful Guest
By Travis Diehl

Art tries to broaden your mind; food actually does. Travis Diehl’s new monthly column, “Libra Season,” chronicles the art world of the overwrought 2020s, starting with a salad.

Against Autofiction: Two Paths for the Internet Novel
By Conor Truax

The digital era is synonymous with flat, persona-driven fiction. How can literature transcend celebrified Tweets and respond innovatively to the web’s decentered form?

On Trophies
By Joanna Walsh

When does a fashion item become a trophy? If luxury is just aspirational consumption, then nobody can claim the prize.

Going Out In Paris
By Robbie Fitzpatrick

A corner of paradise on earth, sure – but what’s for lunch? The founder of Fitzpatrick Gallery waves adieu to his outpost in the Marais with a menu of pastry, bentō, and natural wine.

Do You Have to Be Hot to Get Ahead?
By Domenick Ammirati

If contemporary art had once come to believe it was the genre to subsume all others, it has since been outflanked by the art of just being – which is, ultimately, the art of being hot.

Learning at the Knee of Sigmar Polke
By Nina Pohl

The director of Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, revisits a childhood of higher beings and the painting that crowned the German contemporary art’s chief ironist.

Lily McMenamy at Cafe Theater Schalotte, Berlin
By Philipp Hindahl

In her latest theatrical work, the proudly histrionic Lily McMenamy scrambles all the idiosyncrasies that make up the performance of the self.

Wayne Koestenbaum Digresses
By Thomas (T.) Lax

The poet, critic, and factotum artist texts with MoMA’s performance curator about the slap-slap of montage in his new short films.

Philosophy of Nature 4.0
By Armen Avanessian and Daniel Falb

As climate change spawns rich-guy fantasies of colonizing space, a co-author of Thinking Planets excerpts a theory on Earth’s own potential in conversation with Spike.

The Erotic Pity of Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer”
By Nolan Kelly

A French auteur notorious for reenacting patriarchal sex fantasies flips the script post #MeToo by casting an older woman in the role of predator.

On Newness
By Joanna Walsh

Are we feeling nostalgia yet for nostalgia? Autumn’s fashion obsession with novelty may just veil our comfort fix.

Vaginal Davis at Moderna Museet
By james taylor-foster

Across six Stockholm institutions, an exhibition of tongue-in-cheek “terrorist drag” is vast, charmingly megalomaniacal, and spectacularly queer.

Cory Arcangel Thinks Michel Majerus Was a Space Invader
By Patrick Kurth

A puckish computer artist decodes salvaging the late painter’s last laptop and his long journey from hating its owner into awe.