The veils are thin in “insomnia.”—¹ The Fall performs onstage in front of a superimposed Parliament Square, while the dancers parade on and around oversized props of fast food: an enormous Big Mac rolls onstage; a giant portion of french fries falls from the ceiling.—² Each visitor agrees to spend fifteen minutes locked in the small cube all by themselves.—³ Maximiliane: Do you offer some kind of resolution ? Melike: No, the exhibition only captures the here and now.—⁴ Polaroids show Rosemarie Castoro in action. —⁵ She dishes her satirical visions like dinner plates on the table, alongside newspaper cuts and cartographies.—⁶ “Direction, Direction?” is part influencer-speak, part inner monologue.—⁷ Katchadourian, meanwhile, fashioned life-size paper replicas of an orca, sea turtles, and dorados, which she occasionally mailed to Robertson in Barnet, North London; he answered with photographs.—⁸ So how is it that this self-professed architectural provocateur’s newest exhibition at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London is, at first glance, anything but eventful, momentous, or provocative—despite its rather promising title, Hell in its Heyday?!—⁹ “Phwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwht,” a long whistling sound travels through one of the pitch-black galleries in the third section on language and colonialism. —¹⁰ Like the verbs ‘to demonstrate’ and ‘to reveal’, the word ‘monster’ derives etymologically from the Latin ‘monstrare’.—¹¹ Althoff is arguably the last in a long line of German enfants terribles, whose provocations include staging a collector sale in a forest and urinating on the canvases during the install; rejecting exhibition invitations to prestigious venues; opening a temporary bar with fellow artist Cosima von Bonin at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; and leaving loans in crates during his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2016.—¹² What, if anything, caters to the experimental vocabulary which the institution prides itself in?—¹³ For John Latham, books were a form of protest.—¹⁴ Camouflaged as allegories, history paintings, and portraits, Sami’s works summon a return to painting as a conceptual medium, as opposed to a purely representational format or a mere means of producing memories slathered in pigments.—¹⁵ They seesaw between selfie and meme-formats: Penny as the mythical Queen Boudica (I was a Visionary for Boudica, 2015); Penny as a twenty-nine-year-old art student (Deth bone, 2014); Penny as Bianca Jagger in Studio 54 (Bone Dust Disco, 2014); or Penny as the moon (self as moon, 2013).—¹⁶ Unlike a leopard, Lutz Bacher (1943-2019) made changing spots her habit.—¹⁷ Matt’s Gallery became ‘MattFlix’.—¹⁸ How can sheepskin jackets – which perpetuate animal exploitation and cruelty – be deemed acceptable while cruelty-free, medicinal herbs in a hearty and nourishing stew are regarded as a threat to society?—¹⁹ Finding a Way is like a well-worn photograph kept in your wallet or diary—a fleeting snapshot in time that we cannot let go of. I will treasure mine forever.—²⁰

(all words by ML)

Sources:

1. Artforum
2. The Brooklyn Rail
3. Artforum
4. L’Essenziale Studio
5. Artforum
6. Texte zur Kunst
7. Artforum
8. Artforum
9. The Brooklyn Rail
10. ESPACE art actuel

11. Burlington Contemporary
12. Burlington Contemporary
13. Immediations
14. Artforum
15. Artforum
16. The Brooklyn Rail
17. The Brooklyn Rail
18. BURLINGTON CONTEMPORARY
19. Frieze
20. The Brooklyn Rail

MAXIMILIANE LEUSCHNER