Alexander Scrimgeour

#59

View London

Rachel Rose at Pilar Corrias by Alex Scrimgeour

We would like to cast a spell on you that will only work if you read this whole issue from cover to cover. Along the way, you will battle monsters, fall in and out of love, perform rituals, believe or disbelieve the evangelists of new religions, and enter magic circles that protect you against evil and create a safe space for your own...

Mary Beth Edelson Bride of the Fire  (1973) Courtesy of the artist and David Lewis, New York

Mary Beth Edelson
Bride of the Fire (1973)

Courtesy of the artist and David Lewis, New York

Mary Beth Edelson at Kunsthalle Münster

By Alexander Scrimgeour

#58 Winter 2019

Views Germany

#58

Views Germany

Beatriz González at KW Institute for Contemporary Art by Federica Bueti, Henrike Naumann at Galerie im Turm and Irina Rastorgueva & Thomas Martin BQ by Penny Rafferty in Berlin; Cady Noland at MMK by Bob Nickas in Frankfurt; Jörg Immendorf at Haus der Kunst by Daniela Stöppel in Munich; Mary Beth Edelson at Kunsthalle Münster by Alex Scrimgeour

Arthur Jafa, Apex, 2013, Video, 8’22’’, colour, sound

Arthur Jafa
Apex (2013)
Installation view

Arthur Jafa at Julia Stoschek Collection

By Alexander Scrimgeour

Neïl Beloufa Exhibition view of "Global Agreement" (2018) Photo: Marc Krause

Neïl Beloufa
Exhibition view of "Neïl Beloufa. Global Agreement" (2018)
Photo: Marc Krause

Neïl Beloufa at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

By Alex Scrimgeour

Brands such as Y/Project, Telfar and Vetements have found new ways to pick up where the designers of the 90s left off. Aided by strategies borrowed from art, they are transforming the fashion system from within and widening its boundaries beyond recognition. Fashion is succeeding precisely where art is not, wresting autonomy out of...

#55

Symonds Pearmain; Haute Militaire, AW 2017; The Horse Hospital, London

Symonds Pearmain; Haute Militaire, AW 2017; The Horse Hospital, London

Talk: "Knowing the Now" with Emily Segal and Alessandro Bava

The contemporary has ousted the timeless in art today. Fashion, by contrast, has always operated in a different, tighter bond with the timely, anticipating the next season, channeling the zeitgeist.

#55 Spring 2018

Views Berlin

#55

Views Berlin

Arthur Jafa at Julia Stoschek Collection and "Left Performance Histories" at NGBK by Alexander Scrimgeour, Ellen Cantor at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi by Barbara Piwowarska, Guy Bourdin at Museum für Fotografie by Robert Schulte

We are in an interregnum, an in-between state where the old world is dying and the new struggles to be born. Colonies of bacteria are decomposing the white cube, automation will replace work, and a hope persists that digital space will produce a truly different art. The avant-garde is still alive, but as a stateless multitude that...

"Freedom is our religion" hoarding/billboard on Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square)

Hoarding on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square)

Signals in the Noise

Spike editor Alexander Scrimgeour visits Kyiv, capital of a nation working through its recent past, and tries make sense of its complicated present – through contemporary art.

#54 Winter 2018

Views Germany

#54

Views Germany

Isa Genzken at König Galerie by Dominikus Müller, Preis der Nationalgalerie by Chloe Stead, Parapolitics at HKW by Alexander Scrimgeour, Salvage Art Institute at BNKR in Munich by Daniela Stöppel, Alexander Kluge at Folkwang Museum in Essen by Moritz Scheper

#54

Marcel Broodthaers, Parle Ecrit Copie (1972–73)
Three typewriters, letterpress on canvas, each 34 x 31.5 x 38 cm, © Estate Marcel Broodthaers, Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery

Interview Contemporary Art Writing Daily

Contemporary Art Writing Daily write anonymous exhibition reviews. Their writing is curlicued, abbreviated, crisp – criticism is reduced to its essentials. By Alexander Scrimgeour

#52

Ibrahim Mahama Check Point Prosfygika. 1934-2034. 2016-2017  (2017) Photo: Mathias Völzke

Ibrahim Mahama
Check Point Prosfygika. 1934-2034. 2016-2017 (2017)
Photo: Mathias Voelzke

Bait and Switch

Alexander Scrimgeour gets to the bottom of the problem that is the Athens instalment of Documenta

What it means to be human is changing. Increasingly, human beings see themselves as part of bigger ecological, economic and technological systems. If consciousness can just as easily reside in plants and machines, the body becomes interesting again: as one material among others that can be sculpted and transformed. Digitalisation of the...

Christopher Williams, "Model-Nr.: 1740, Rotznasen - Kinder Model Agentur, Liesegangstr. 7A, 40211 Düsseldorf, Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf, January 28, 2016", 2016 © Christopher Williams, Courtesy Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Christopher Williams, Model-Nr.: 1740, Rotznasen - Kinder Model Agentur, Liesegangstr. 7A, 40211 Düsseldorf, Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf, January 28, 2016, 2016 © Christopher Williams, Courtesy Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Formations of the Meaningful

A walk around Berlin galleries by Alexander Scrimgeour

#47 Spring 2016

Portrait Hannah Perry

#47

Portrait Hannah Perry

The artist takes the sensory overload of contemporary culture head-on. Her works are melancholy excesses with echoes of British pub and rave culture. By Alexander Scrimgeour

#46

5000 Feet is the Best, 2011 Digitalfilm / Digital film, 30 min.

5000 Feet is the Best, 2011 Digitalfilm / Digital film, 30 min.

Portrait Omer Fast

The perfectly crafted, deeply unsettling films of Omer Fast revolve around the traumatic experiences of refugees, soldiers returning home from war and drone pilots. In a constant interplay of immersion and alienation, they turn filmic illusion against itself.

How does the digital, with its rapidly circulating images and high-resolution screens, influence the act of seeing? How is it changing the painted picture? Painting’s code is made and remade over long spans of time, in feedback loops, in dialogue with history. And again and again it stands in the way of progress. You have to dig deep to...

#39

Participate don’t dominate: An interview with curator and activist Ben Vickers

Alexander Scrimgeour talks to Ben Vickers about networks and institutions, new community-based social models, and the London post-Internet scene.

#44 Summer 2015

Music: Living with Machines

#44

Still from Home , 2014, by Metahaven & Mat Dryhurst

Still from Home, 2014, by Metahaven & Mat Dryhurst

Music: Living with Machines

If techno had its origins in the industrial sounds of Motor City, what sort of music corresponds to the screen-mediated environment we live and work in today? Maybe the haunting, radically anti-escapist collages that have brought Holly Herndon to fame since her debut album Movement in 2012. Listening to Herndon’s new album Platform, Alexander Scrimgeour considers our changing relationship with machines.