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Anna-Sophie Berger, Untitled, Alexander Berger 1979, 2023, c-print, 162.5 x 106.5 cm. All images courtesy: the artist and Emanuel Layr, Vienna. Photos: Kunstdokumentation
Is legibility in art a violent demand? During her latest solo show at Emanuel Layr, Vienna, Anna-Sophie Berger spoke about bad faith, harmful language, and fashion’s rapport with death.
Joanna Fiduccia’s portrait in Spike #33 of Nicole Eisenman, now the subject of a retrospective at Museum Brandhorst, Munich, snapshots her first forays into printmaking and her opening of the body unto intimacy.
The author of Art Monsters (2023), which takes up women artists whose works reflect the experiences and insights of their own bodies, historicizes the stakes of the unruly feminine.
Wiener Festwochen’s new artistic director unpacks Vienna’s relationship with being provoked, making grotesque demands onstage, and the theater as a total democracy.
Between performances at Vienna’s ImPulsTanz, the Argentinian choreographer of several confrontational autofictions recounts bringing diaries into her dramaturgy and learning to work within the limits of her own body.
A painter of urban brick abandonment, Chinatown merchants, and kissing inmates, Martin Wong is having a moment, kindled by an interest in intersectional figuration twenty years after his death. Yet his images of society’s margins are as enigmatic as they are empathetic: Hot yet held back, they reflect his desire to be both one with and apart from the worlds he drifted into.
As pre-orders roll in for her new memoir, Scammer, the disgraced influencer spills the beans to Adina Glickstein about grifting, gendered fame-seeking, and the it-girl as a startup.
On 6 July, ImPulsTanz opens with a free, 10th-anniversary performance of Doris Uhlich’s more than naked. Ahead of the opening, the Austrian choreographer speaks about the aesthetics and politics of nudity and trying to be faster than the beat.
Marking the debut of Factory International, the Manchester performing arts complex’s designer talks raving with her daughters to “get” young people’s needs, refusing 3D rendering to protect imaginative space, and unlearning that beauty is not an architectural ideal.
Marking her debut solo exhibition at Deli Gallery, Mexico City, collage painter Aurel Haize Odogbo discusses Black womanhood in fantasy and having angels one can look like.
Louise Lawler, (Stevie Wonder) Living Room Corner Arranged by Mr. & Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Sr., New York City, 1984/1985, silver dye bleach print with printed text on mat, 46.5 x 60.5 cm. All images courtesy: the artist and Sprüth Magers
Espying 20th-century icons in all their public guises and moments of uncanny repose, Louise Lawler’s photographs convey that how we look is as formative as what we’re meant to see.
Ahead of the Alpine extravaganza, Vincenzo de Bellis talks his Peep-Hole origins, sickness as an artistic thematic, and viewing the fairs as curatorial snapshots of the right now.
In memory of Kenneth Anger (1927–2023), we’re republishing our 2006 interview with the iconoclastic filmmaker on silk flowers, vindictive scientologists, and his refusal to hustle for production money.
Ahead of his first-ever pool performance at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, Ei Arakawa walks through the changing infrastructure for artist-parents, the integrality of surprise to humor, and modelling queer fatherhood.
Occasioned by a retrospective at JSF Berlin, the polymathic video artist talks to Harry Gamboa Jr. about self-love and technological liberation, LA’s ethos of inclusion, and finding humor in the struggle for change.
“Nicolas Moufarrege, National Studio Artist,” at “Nicolas Moufarrege's Room,” an unofficial exhibition installed in the artist’s studio, 1982. Courtesy: The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York
In a brief and internationally mythologized career, Nicolas Moufarrege, subject of a compact retrospective at CCA Berlin, threaded together feminized house craft, spray-can Pop, and an urge to find the all within.
In memory of Michel Würthle (1943–2023), we’re resurfacing his Autumn 2006 conversation with Roberto Ohrt and Harald Fricke on unoccupied spaces and Würthle’s unquenchable desire to make books.
Mid-way through Monica Bonvicini’s exhibition “I do You” at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, we’re resurfacing an interview with the artist from the very first issue of Spike.
Still from Will Benedict and Steffen Jørgensen, The Restaurant, Season 2(detail), 2022, HD video, 39:05 min. Courtesy: Will Benedict, Steffen Jørgensen, and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève
Fresh off a retrospective at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, the artist speaks to Mitchell Anderson about trying to prove the hard materiality of time.
Rhea Dillon, A Caribbean Ossuary, 2022, wooden cabinet and cut crystal, 42 × 208 × 161.5 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Soft Opening, London. Photo: Theo Christelis
The Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan moved into a bunker at the war's beginning. There, he spoke to Hans Ulrich Obrist and Sebastian Clark about how the past remains in the subjunctive and why we need a new anti-fascism.
The glamor of the Cannes Film Festival feels impenetrable to most mortals. But what if it’s not? What if you just had to learn how to fake your way in? By Nolan Kelly
Still from Wong Ping, Crumbling Earwax, 2022, 3-channel video installation, 13 min.Installation view at “Wong Ping: Ear Wax”, Times Art Center Berlin, 2022. Photo: Jens Ziehe, Berlin
Tea Hacic-Vlahovic has written Spike’s society column, “Gesellschaft am Ende”, since the summer of 2021. It’s time it gets from the paper to the World Wide Web. We start from the start, Spike #68.
R.U. Sirius, who shaped digital culture since its inception, dishes to Lydia Sviatoslavsky about (what’s left of) cyberpunk, stoner-inflected French theory, and the drab cruelty of American politics.
Sobbing dolls, Tarkovsky remakes, and in-flight sushi served in air ambulances: Jordan Strafer’s films are equal parts haunted, heartbreaking, and hilarious. The artist talks truth with Jeppe Ugelvig on the occasion of her first major solo show.
Rafaël Rozendaal has been making digital art for two decades, and he’s unfazed by the rise of Web3. In this conversation with Spike, he explores how websites are like poetry, dishes some lessons in exhibiting digital work, and argues in favour of keeping the punk spirit alive in NFTs.
Performance artist Deborah Hazler elevates grumbling – about everything from cruel politicians to cat videos – to the level of fine art at ImPulsTanz 2021.
Artwork elucidates, suggests, deconstructs, and elides, but first it’s hung, framed, shipped and downloaded. In our new series,“Production Line”, Spike talks to the people who do just that: the brains (and brawn) behind the operation. First up is Matthew Tully Dugan – simply “Tully” to those in the know. Got a situation? He can handle it.
Ditching the strictures of sports in favour of going pro in performance art, Yuki Kobayashi adopts athletics as a lens to reveal our reductive assumptions about sexuality and gender.
Spike Berlin has been host to a collaborative show between Ivan Gallery, Bucharest, and Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Tallinn. Before the final days of the group show, we spoke to the gallerists about the situation in their home countries, and how the show “On Adornments” came together.
As the 7th edition of the Yokohama Triennale is set to open in Japan, Francesca Ceccherini sat down with Raqs Media Collective to discuss their curatorial strategy, and how the exhibition has developed online, in print, and elsewhere.
Bianca Heuser talks with Dan Bodan about his work for Google and the premiere performance of “A Flow of Serosities”, an algorithmic composition made in collaboration with programmer and sound artist Scott Carver
One of the leading figures of 1990s conceptual dance reflects on how memory, conflict and attention have shaped his ongoing project “Retrospective”, recently presented in Berlin
A Summer Chronicle, part 4: NATASHA STAGG watches Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and reflects on the culture that engendered Sharon Tate and Marilyn Monroe's tragic stardom.
Director Hedi Slimane’s new Celine Art Project enlists contemporary artists to design work for stores around the world. Charles Teyssou discusses Slimane’s artistic imaginary through Americana cultural landscapes, and poses ten questions to two of Slimane’s collaborators, David Kramer and Shawn Kuruneru.
Spike attended the finger food VIP breakfast at the NetJets Art Basel lounge to talk to the American artist about the moon and the dark side of humanity’s favourite planet.
A Summer Chronicle, part 1: NATASHA STAGG is back with her summer column and draws the connections between consumerism, waste, sustainability, and the intangibility of identity
Three important protagonists of the Bangkok Art Scene, Unchalee “Lee” Anantawat, Gridthiya “Jeab” Gaweewong, and Narawan “Kyo” Pathomvat, on the impacts their spaces have had, and how they have navigated Thailand’s complex political reality. By Abhijan Toto
Back when artist Pippa Garner was still called Phil, she worked as a combat artist in the Vietnam War. After that she studied automobile design and designed ironic functional products for a future that was never to come. A conversation about living in willed alienation. By Fiona Duncan.
A Summer Chronicle, part 6. NATASHA STAGG on the pressure to keep up with body trends, makeup masks in the sheets, and why we need to to stop talking about going to the gym
A Summer Chronicle, part 5. NATASHA STAGG on the conflicting worlds of the art scene and her garbage man boyfriend, and the economies of attraction between writers and fans
An interview with dance and choreography artist Meg Stuart who is receiving a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award during the Venice Biennale Danza 2018. By Astrid Kaminski
An interview with Margaret Burton, an ex-artist who found her way into the fringes of fashion to criticise the industry from within. By Ché Zara Blomfield
Choreographer Trajal Harrell talks to Astrid Kaminski about his conceptual runway dances, Butoh and Rei Kawakubo just before the German premiere of his performance In the Mood for Frankie
The Austrian-born choreographer talks to Victoria Dejaco about the paradoxes of sexual harassment in dance and her latest work Apollon Musagète, which was recently staged at Tanzquartier Wien
Roger Federer has become the first player ever to win 20 Grand Slam titles. Asad Raza wrote an ode to him and his sport, bringing some light to a dark time.
The power of Verena Dengler's art does not lie in individual objects but in the polyphonic stories they invoke. She finds the weak spots in the dominant view of reality and authoritarian discourses and puts them under strain in the hope of breaking authoritarian discourses once and for all.By Tenzing Barshee
A Summer Chronicle, part 3: Natasha Stagg observes the day to day life of New York's Upper East Side while sitting in a coffee shop offering 26$ wedge salads
There is something enigmatic about her theatrical installations. With paintings, readymades, sculptures, drawings and videos, they draw the viewer into a world of glitter, horror, stars and victims, but we never know who it belongs to. By Barry Schwabsky
The choreographer spoke to Asad Raza about dance and exhibitions, the process of “de-hearsal”, and how Metallica and Shakespeare shook up his sense of time and space.
The sculptures the artist started making in 1980s Vienna stand in stark contrast to Actionism and monumental sculpture. Her medium is light, and in her most recent neon works the digital plays an increasingly important role. By Maximilian Geymüller
Dancers of the Cullberg Ballet: In the front: Unn Faleide, Eleanor Campbell, Samuel Draper. In the back: Barry Brannum, Eszter Czédulás, Paolo Mangiola Photo: Urban Jörén
With the collective Memphis she defined in the 80s postmodernism in design. Then she started painting. Timo Feldhaus talked with the self-taught artist on her enormous oeuvre
What does it mean today to have a life with kids, to have a life in art, and to live a life? Why are children and the artist's life so hard to unite? Or is this a false assumption? Spike Art Daily dedicates a series of interviews to the problematic relationship that the art industry has with its offspring. In this interview Lauren Boyle and Marco Roso, two of the four members of DIS, talk about why the concept of family is just "too much for the art world" and the differences between raising kids in Berlin and New York.
Swiss artist Hannah Weinberger has no studio, and if she started to want one, she says she would rather "stop doing art and open up a bakery". Here, the artist describes her itinerant practice, objects that inspire her, and the influence the birth of her kids has had on her work.
M.I.A's campaign to help greenwash H&M is a catastrophe. Edward Snowden is collaborating with Jean-Michel Jarre on a techno track. Lady Gaga visited Assange when he was first on the lam. All of this is totally horrible and wrong. Dean Kissick explains why and asks: How powerful is soft power? And what does it mean to be "radical chic" today?
New York-based artist Sanya Kantarovsky gives us a view of his industrial studio and shows us some things which inspire him. Finding the right balance between isolation and collaboration, and between Taylor Swift and Bulgarian choir music isn’t always easy. But Kantarovsky makes it work. Here's how:
No art without alcohol. The artists' bar has a rich history in Vienna, more than perhaps anywhere else. Why do artists not only build but also go so far as to run bars themselves? Why do we give in again and again to the dubious charms of bars? With an introduction by Thomas Miessgang.
Dean Kissick discusses the shifting value of the term “artist” in our current state of global affairs and the complicity between Comedien Nathan Fielder and political figures from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.
In Zürich Mathis Altmann was involved in founding a number of artist-run spaces, such as Paloma Presents and New Jersyy, whose influence spread far beyond Switzerland. From his temporary home in sunny California, and before his upcoming presentation at Paramount Ranch 3, he reminisces about studios past and shows us his cement-covered current space in Los Angeles.
Helena Papadopoulos gazes out of the window at the project space Radio Athènes and thinks looping thoughts about fashion and design objects, the banality of evil and a long, hot Greek summer.
1857 is an artist-run space in Oslo tackling the genres and conventions of exhibition making head on. Founders Stian Eide Kluge and Steffen Håndlykken talk with Esperanza Rosales about placeholders, ugly bastards, and steering ship.
A low murmur passed through the
crowd when I entered the room. Then
everyone fell silent and all you could
hear was quiet whispering: “He’s arrived!” By Rafael Horzon
What does it mean today to have a life with kids, to have a life in art, and to live a life? Why are children and the artist's life so hard to unite? Or is this a false assumption? Spike Art Daily dedicates a series of interviews to the problematic relationship that the art industry has with its offspring. In this interview, curator and theorist Chus Martínez talks about shared realities, competitive situations and why children always open us up.
If the art world has the image of a non-transparent, nepotistic closed circle, what happens when hackers claim their place in it? And more importantly why go into art when you could hack the system?
Jacob Appelbaum, internet activist and journalist, played an important role in the publication of the Snowden documents and the revelation of the spied-on mobile phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The 33-years-old hacker talks with us about his first solo art exhibition in Berlin and why this city is a magnet for freedom fighters.
Since this summer everybody knows that Yanis Varoufakis is a principled idealist, that his wife is an artist, and that he drives a motorbike very fast.
After a night on the town, Dean Kissick takes a stroll through Las Vegas. He comes across hope and misery, Mike Tyson and a stripper with a real bullet wound.
The buzz in the build-up had all been about Caitlyn Jenner — attending, or possibly walking the catwalk. In the end she didn't come to the show — this Givenchy show, where fashion and art would celebrate their latest reunion. The BFF‘s Marina Abramović and designer Ricardo Tisci constructed a favela-inspired setting to combine runway show and art performance. Our writer Dean Kissick was not amused.
One month ago the French Minister of Culture dismissed Nicolas Bourriaud from his post as director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in an astonishing decision that caused a storm in French - and international - media, replete with rumors of high-level intrigue and allegations of nepotism.
Now Bourriaud tells his version of events. What did the renowned curator and theorist's dismissal have to do with Ralph Lauren? How come the students couldn't work in their studios for six days beforehand? And what are his hopes for the future of the institution?
Filmmaker Joe Gibbons robbed a bank. That was just a performance, he said after his arrest. Now he is going to prison. The question remains: Was this a very bad robbery or really good art?
Of course you've already seen the pictures Juergen Teller took of himself with the rapper Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian, the Inventress of Selfie. Our author explains why it takes an age of the grotesque to make Kim's posterior into a work of art.
Of course I like art. “It’s my wife and it’s my life”, as Lou Reed would say. But to name favorite artists like the names of Ninja Turtles – it’s like saying that Mozart is great or that Marx or Freud were important. You can’t say that, these are facts. To name some “third of May”, “raft”, “burial”, “barricade”, “luncheon”, “water lilies”, or “apples” doesn’t make sense either. They might be favourites, but they’re everybody’s favourites. If someone says Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is a good painting … yeah, it’s a great painting.
Photo of Martin Soto Climent, Lulu (the owner of the local juice bar Climent and Sharp named their space after) and Chris Sharp, taken on the day of Lulu's two year anniversary.
Yesterday we published an interview in which Marina Abramović accuses the rapper Jay-Z of breaking an agreement. Abramović gave Jay-Z permission to adapt her piece “The Artist is Present” (originally performed as part of her 2010 retrospective at MoMA) for a music video of
It was one of the biggest meetings of art and pop culture in the last ten years. But was it also a game changer? And what were the consequences for the participants? When Jay-Z adapted Marina Abramović's performance "The Artist is Present" (2010) for his video "Picasso Baby" at New York's Pace Gallery in 2013, many wondered: how did Abramović end up here? New York’s art scene was the audience, with Abramović herself as the star. Looking back, Marina wonders this too. At her recent retrospective at SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, she openly discussed the drawbacks of having replaced the physical, face-to-face encounter with the camera, and having become a brand.
What does it mean today to lead a life with a child, a life in art and a life as such? Why are children and life as an artist so difficult to reconcile? Or is that perhaps not true at all? In a series of interviews, Spike Art Daily is dedicating itself to the problematic relationship that the art world has with its children. We start with Isabelle Graw. The critic, professor, and editor of Texte zur Kunst explains why children sometimes even make it easier to oppose the logic of an economy that has it in for our lives.
Mai Ueda, Tea Ceremony with Ready Mades, 2014, photograph by Adrianna Glaviano Artwork: Anne Speier, Identity Entity, Broken Glass Pudding 1 and 2, 2013 Collage, 150 x 165cm each INSTALLED: 29.04 - 15.09.2014
I have so many favorites ... a mountain of favorites ... well so here is the peak of my mountain of favorites ... things I’m living and breathing, very inspired by, and grateful to be on the same earth as .... None of them may be “new” but perhaps they are new to you or nice to be reminded of ... so many artworks can be felt completely anew, depending on the moment one collides with them ...
About A B order, 2013 Diverse Materialien / Mixed media 8-teilig / 8 parts 280 x 520 x 274 cm Courtesy Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Wien Photos: Markus Wörgötter
Though Austrian artist Heinrich Dunst is au fait with the ins and outs of painting and performance, his true medium is »discourse«. One must therefore assess his conceptual work with retrospect to its origins in the Viennese scene of the 80s. If today, the discursiveness of art has become brittle, Dunst is the man to dissolve its final binding ties.
Affective affinities and the works of friends influence me. Dialogues and life inform my thinking. I love for works to explore new territories. I believe, naïvely, in the power of art to change society. This belief is growing stronger by the day. Here is a small sample of works and artists who open doors in my head.
![Tobias Spichtig, "Good OK Great Fantastic Perfect Grand Thank You". Installation view from Swiss Institute, New York. Courtesy of the artist.](https://spikeartmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/users/shared/articles/images/tobias-spichtig_swiss_institute_ny_dp2m0914_spike.jpeg?itok=b48by-4S "Tobias Spichtig, "Good OK Great Fantastic Perfect Grand Thank You". Installation view from Swiss Institute, New York. Courtesy of the artist.")
![Geoffrey Mak in front of "Avery Singer: Reality Ender" at Hauser & Wirth, New York.](https://spikeartmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/medium_square_400/public/users/shared/articles/images/geoffmak_averysinger.jpg?itok=lBunYztR "Geoffrey Mak in front of "Avery Singer: Reality Ender" at Hauser & Wirth, New York.")
