Agenda

1.Robert Lazzarini, brass knuckles (v), 2010

"Lush Life: An Exhibition in Nine Chapters," New York

June 17 – August 13, 2010

The premise is a nine-part exhibition inspired by an edgy crime thriller, promising equal parts complexity and intertextuality. The results, however, aren't quite as involved. "Lush Life: An Exhibition in Nine Chapters" is grouping of a nine loosely-themed summer shows scattered throughout New York's Lower East Side.

1.MadeIn, The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting, 2010

"MadeIn: Don't Hang Your Faith on the Wall," Long March Space, Beijing

30 May – 8 August

MadeIn is a cultural production company founded a year ago by the Chinese experimental artist Xu Zhen. He founded the company in an attempt to define and combine his various outputs beyond his own artwork, such as the non-profit space BizArt, China's leading online contemporary art forum Art-Ba-Ba (which translates as "art daddy" or "art shit" depending on the tones of "ba-ba"), and his curatorial work.

1.View of "Jill Magid: A Reasonable Man in a Box," 2010.

"Jill Magid: A Reasonable Man in a Box," the Whitney Museum, New York

July 1 – September 12, 2010

When Jill Magid wrote "What is a reasonable man in a box?" on the Whitney's wall I suspect she already knew the answer. The text references the "Bybee Memo," a leaked 2004 memorandum from the US Justice Department prescribing legal means for the CIA to employ illegal torture techniques such as confinement with insects.

1.Nashashibi / Skaer, Our Magnolia, 2009.

Nashashibi/Skaer at Murray Guy,
New York

25 June – 6 August 2010

Respected artists in their own right, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer have also led a fruitful collaboration since 2005, pairing their unique temperaments in taut, reflexive films and installations.

Johann König Photo: Ulrike Kuschel

Grilling the gallerist:
Johann König interviewed by
Jordan Wolfson

When Johann König opened his first gallery space, not only was he the youngest kid on the block, but he also faced another challenge: he was nearly blind. "How much I see is a myth!" he told me recently.

1.Mario Garcia Torres, Time to Piece, 2010.

Mario Garcia Torres'
"I Will Be with You Shortly" at Peep-Hole, Milan

2 June – 24 July 2010

Mario Garcia Torres is well acquainted with the past of Peep-Hole, one the newest non-profit spaces run by three curators in Milan. In fact, he not only alluded to it, but he also enhanced its weight. In a letter given to the visitor, the artist stated his wish to "create a certain atmosphere (…) an overall parenthesis, a space between time."

1.Fiona Banner, Harrier and Jaguar (detail), 2010.

Fiona Banner's "Harrier and Jaguar" at Tate Britain

28 June 2010 – 3 January 2011

Plucked from the sky, a Sea Harrier and a Sepecat Jaguar jet have fallen to earth in Tate Britain. It's the work of Fiona Banner, and in an average summer critics would be busy drawing tidy parallels between the work and the UK's ongoing military involvement in overseas conflicts.

1.Liang Shuo, Fit, 2010.

Liang Shuo’s "Fit" at C5 Gallery, Beijing

June 12 – July 25, 2010

Containing objects copiously collected over the past two years and assembled on-site over a month, "Fit" is a monument to the plastic, gaudy, and jerry-rigged aesthetic that permeates contemporary China.

1.View of "1848!!!," 2010.

Liam Gillick's "1848!!!" at Esther Schipper, Berlin

June 12 – Aug 31, 2010

With an exhaustive monographic exhibition currently on show in Bonn, a lengthy touring retrospective recently over, and last year's opinion-dividing outing in the Venice Biennale's German Pavilion, not to mention the reams of printed matter and symposia that make up the productive phenomenon that is Liam Gillick, what can a small-scale gallery show have to offer?

1.Rodney Graham, Paradoxical Western Scene, 2006.

Rodney Graham's "Painter, Poet, Lighthouse Keeper" at Lisson Gallery, London

June 23 – July 31, 2010

Since first stepping onto the other side of the lens in the mid-90s, Rodney Graham has fashioned himself as all color of amateur and outlaw in a wry game of wish fulfillment for an artist of inescapable renown.

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