Art Show: Insider Art

There is an urban myth that true art can only be achieved when minds and hearts are distressed, surpressed, and pushed to the limits. In the spirit of that stereotype (which is often devised by collectors and curators as a means to keep their artists poor) one should ask the question wether truth in art can be better accomplished by artists living in dodgy studios, or inmates of prisoners, mental clinics and immigration detention centres.

For all the different reasons of this world, their neccessity to think about the world is a result of the forced time they have available, timed with the pain of realising what they have lost, given up, traded in or fucked up. Hence, this summer show at the ICA displays some pieces where that pain punches you head on. For instance, somebody has painted hundres of ugly and menacing faces lurking behind him - victims that haunt him or other inmates that want to take revenge...for what?

Others are more subtle while some are even witty and funny: a game, devised to be played by new entrants in a prison as a means to learn the "the way we do things around here" is loosely based on Monopoly, but instead of expensive streets and landmarks you have different wings and visitor centres.

My favourite piece is a large embroidery work that has about hundred names with year tags next to it cluttered around the canvas (yes it does look a bit like copying Tracy's tent) but then these names are also accompanied by icons ranging from gothic faces, pigs, red lips, crosses, dolphins etc. Only when you see one sexually explicit depiction, you start to wonder what the story of this inside (or rather outside?) artist is all about - mind you the names are a mixture of female and male, and the artist is a woman.

Coincidently, I got a DVD today with little animation movies of ideas for future architecture - and one is called "Creative Prison" by Alsop. His idea to transform prisons into places where people unleash their creative potential is based on the statistic that the shocking number of 80% of ex prisoners fail after 2 years in this country. If prisons were more accomodating to inmates to be productive while serving a sentence, then they would better re-socialse and integrate afterwards, because they could apply for jobs with newly acquired skills and certificates.

Moreover, there are not many other places in this country for working class male (unfortunately the majority of inmates) to show any form of feminine emotion, and painting your hopes and fears as well as talking about it when you are awarded with one of the Koestler prizes (the basis for this exhibition). In this light, you should not focus on artistic craftsmanship, but the aspect of identity and possibility.

And never forget: there is always a - if admittably very small - number of inmates in prisons or mental clinics, that shouldn't really be there, not genuine criminals with a long history of violence, but people that somehow got onto the wrong track, did that one mistake and got caught, went to the wrong demonstration, or even got sentenced without any evidence of their guilt like so many in 21st century detention camps - and one of them could be you and me; and how could we possibly survive if not through artisitic expression, just like Koestler, a writer and the founder of this prize, who was wrongly imprisoned for three months during the Spanish Civil War - apparently for civil unrest.

Art Show: Tino Sehgal at the ICA

The Trilogy - Part Three

Yeah - he is back. Not as clever as last year. Therefore creating links to the upper floor piece of his phenomenal first appearance in 2005.

"I have decided that this artwork is called 'success'." As suggested by the image above, this year's performance (is it really performance art, or more like a Beuys' Social Plastic where everyone is an artist - I don't know...) involves children. That's as much I wish to reveal. You need to experience yourself what it is all about: just sit down somewhere in the corner and observe - you will find inspiration, guaranteed!

Until 4 March, 2007 at the ICA, Pall Mall

Art Show: Alien Nation

Happy New Year! After three weeks surfing and finding a wedding place in Spain, I felt the urgent need to consume art. With not much going on at the moment in the West End and being to having been too lazy to make the travel to Hackney, I decided to give it another try at the ICA despite moderate reviews. Well, pretty much everything WAS crap or at least confused, except one room, harbouring the space fleet of Hew Locke.

Remember Star Wars, Star Treck and all the others? To me, the most impressive moments were when a
massive fleet of hundreds of space ships showed up out of nowhere and headed towards a planetoid object to invade and crusade.

When you enter this upper gallery, you technically enter the Locke's space, however, his installation practically overwhelms you at a first glance and takes you as prisoner. To be perfectly honest, I had one of my rare moments, where I almost wanted surrender to the 7 tonnes (hello beuys...) of glint and twinkle amassed in this small room like left over Christmas decoration, and give up my room coordinates and beam me away. Boy, am I glad I didn't, but had a second, much closer inspection.

The fleet consists of 5 space ships, on average 5 foot long, 3 wide and 3 tall - they actually are quite big. More important is the materials they are made of: the applied plastic comes in almost every shape or form, mostly toys, often cut into pieces: dolls, swords, flowers, aliens, guns, insects, chains, dragons, crowns, golden pieces, silver shields, armour, hearts.

Not only is the concept great, referencing a "dystopian vision of the future, with its hint of colonial invasion and indiscriminate violence", but the craftmanship is SUPERP. Get this: every ship is let's say made of roughly 1000 individual plastic pieces, and Locke went to great pains of actually screwing them one by one - that is, well, 1000 holes drilled into plastic and screwing in onto each other. Once you realise that you are in awe. Those have taken months.

Above all, it's the eerie, cute, disturbing, fascinating and ridiculing combination of baby dolls steering spaceships while looking like Rambo-turned emissaries of the Spanish inquisition on their crusade to seize the abundant gold of Ankor Wat in the insect-infested jungle of 28th century Cambodia.

Really cool. I got mesmerised for almost 15 minutes, more time than I spent on the rest together.

Until 14 Jan 2007 at the ICA, Pall Mall

Art Show: Surprise, Surprise

There is this magic triangle in the art market between artist, collector and gallerist/dealer. In the spheres of not-for-sale exhibitions it respectively is artist-viewer-and-this odd thing called curator. Beuys gave birth to the famous mission statement of "everyone is an artist" but who on earth transplanted this motto into curation?

Contemporary, the magazine has recently published a special issue on 'Curators' and there are now even university diplomas to be obtained. Where the point my generic rant? To be frank, creative curating on the edge of contemporary taste and discourse incurs some risk, and the ICA had a couple of hit-and-miss attempts too much to my liking. The only outstanding shows in the last two years were by Tino Sehgal, and coincidently (or not) there was no involvement of a curator putting together random stuff, because there was simply nothing to hang, place or install.

Also, a curator can only be as good as the material at hand, and maby here lies the problem: this exhibition shows pieces from very well-known artists, but not the usual stuff and that iss supposed to be the trick here. In general, the show dissapoints, as it is only an assembly of mostly mediocre stuff of big names. It feels a bit like detecting that your favorite art house actress has commited some sitcom-sins or worse, advertising sell-outs back in the 80ies.

However, there are some pieces that charmingly stand out, even though the critical question remains how much 'unusual' these are.

This very cleverly engineered optical-effect sculpture does have some essential Matthew Barney features (think prosthetic plastic), while my favourite piece, a perpetual-through-the-wall & red-coloured-water installation of Anish Kapoor somehow instinctively reminded me to the Marsyas commision in Tate Modern before I checked the name in the leaflet provided.

Perhaps the best 'positive' surprise in terms of unusual+good was Jenny Holzer's "Lustmord": 312 animal bones arranged on a table with engraved silver rings that made me think how archaic this world still is, despite human accomplishments like culture and creative curating.

Until 10 September at the ICA

Art Show: Around the World in 80 Days

When Phileas Fogg and Passepartout committed their money and honor to this extraordinary bet starting in Victorian London, England was at the height of it's Empire. In 2006 more nationalities, ethnicities, languages and religions are found in London which (and not NYC) is the most exiting and challenging melting pot in the 21st century.

The ICA is playing with the outward gesture of Jule Verne's novel by taking an inward perspective into assessing the myriads of different backgrounds of London-based artists which is great as a curatory concept and commitment to diversity - unfortunately (to my taste) it doesn't deliver on the walls of both locations (ICA and South London Gallery).

I couldn't help but thinking that this was on of the more boring "theme" exhibitions of recent and the only piece that made me feel the entrance fee was well spent was Mona Hatoums admittedly fantastic marble floor installation making up the 5 continents with what must be tons of crystal clear marbles.

Once you dared to touch one marble in a lesser observed corner you realise that they are not glued to the floor or so but simply arranged according to the continent silhouettes and that one wrong move (you have to negotiate your way around) could shake up the formation. It made me think of the fragility of the temporary aspect of contemporary boarders with its sometimes massive geo-political implications.

Having seen her retrospective in Bonn last year I have to say it's still not even one of her best pieces though.

-> until 16 Jul at the ICA and South London Gallery

Art Show: Tino Sehgal at the ICA, London

This German hot talent is the best kept secret in contemporary art. Never seen his art? Don’t worry you can’t, you can only experience it!

“Coming from a background in choreography and political economy, Sehgal does not produce tangible objects or any form of material trace.” (ICA text).

If you are up for an instructed dialogue yet improvised human interaction that will leave you puzzled yet enlightened, the £2.50 ticket is a must for you. Somebody will pick you up at the entrance and from there on your pre-conceptions of what art is will be destroyed and re-built. For people who are looking for “progress” this show might be a link to a bigger picture.

Until 19 March, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH