Spring 2019
April 4, 2019
“Art does not consist in representing new things, but in representing them with novelties,” advised the Italian romantic poet Ugo Foscolo. Following his advice, Mousse has changed to capture the contemporary art world with greater timeliness. Redesigned, with new columns, approaches, formats, and offset-printed paper, it’s ready to meet new challenges and adventures.
In this issue:
Innocence Impossible: Bunny Rogers by Emily Watlington
The author depicts the impossibility of pure innocence in the work of Bunny Rogers, tracing the persistence of themes related to school shootings, agency of nonhuman animals, the sexualization of children, and the romanticization of dying young.
The Way Out: Listening to, and Looking at, New Age Now by Dieter Roelstraete
In a wide-ranging consideration of the critical revival of the long-maligned and ridiculed New Age phenomenon in music, Crystal Vibrations aficionado Dieter Roelstraete asks why the same hasn’t happened to New Age music’s visual pendant—the aesthetic scourge of Visionary art.
Let’s Get Physical: Vanessa Conte by Moritz Scheper
Vanessa Conte’s paintings and drawings burst with blows, kicks, and moaning flesh, depicting acts of humiliation carried out on young, curvy women. But Moritz Scheper points out how, behind the violence, lies a subtle, sometimes dirty irony that completely subverts that reading of the work.
And:
Louisa Gagliardi makes paintings without paint, enacted by machines without humans depicting things, objects, and perhaps people in worlds that seem real but fictional. Interviewed by Adam Carr.
For 24 hours, Jared Madere—from a van in Los Angeles—and Ross Simonini—from the Russian River Valley of California—exchanged messages while passing images through Instagram.
Anselm Franke on how the sense of and belief in progress are in crisis, even in the liberal milieu of the art world. Doubts about the otherwise largely unquestioned consensus of one’s own progressiveness are spreading, and positions must be redefined.
Conversing with Beatrix Ruf, Martine Syms reflects on her conceptual and visual production, addressing representations of blackness, historical and contemporary models, codings of identity, and body politics.
Chris Sharp considers why and how the work of Dike Blair feels especially relevant now. Is it the small certainties it offers in an unstable time, or more about the uncertainties generated by our social-media-saturated paradigm?
“What can Venice teach us? Does the city have a chance to save us before we destroy it?” Nick Currie reflects on his experiences in the lagoon.
Dora Budor analyzes Claire Denis’s science-fiction film High Life (2018), anatomizing themes of sustenance, (re)production, and biopower through a metabolic principle of image making.
“The palace gardens are empty and you are chasing after the wind. Everything is impossibly perfect—every stone in every wall, every broken Doric column, every staircase, every tree and leaf. The perfection and geometries unnerve in their emptiness.” Andrew Berardini on Mare Vint’s haunted (and haunting) drawings and prints.
Michelle Stuart speaks with Hans Ulrich Obrist of her artistic career, from her first interactions with landscape to her curiosity regarding anthropology, archaeology, biology, and botany.
Tidbits:
Dorothy Iannone by Kasia Redzisz; Deborah Roberts by Roxana Marcoci; Elizabeth Price by Andrew Hibbard; Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin by Francesco Spampinato; Vanessa Safavi by Yann Chateigné; Jacqueline de Jong by Frida Sandström; Rose English by Paul Clinton; Shuang Li by Alvin Li; Wang Guangle by Tianyuan Deng; Chris Martin by Attilia Fattori Franchini; Adrian Morris by Merlin James; Larry Achiampong and David Blandy by Robert Barry; Sung Tieu by Maurin Dietrich; Marcello Maloberti by Giovanna Manzotti; Liu Ye by Francesco Tenaglia; Ellen Gallagher by Vincent van Velsen; Alessandro Agudio by Isabella Zamboni; Swimming in a Sea of Data: Digital Technologies as the New Pharmakon by Aurélien Le Genissel; Babi Badalov by Alice Bucknell.
Buy Mousse #67
More reviews, interviews and essays on moussemagazine.it
Join our newsletter
Books by Mousse Publishing
Mousse Agency
