Issue 204
June - July - August 2019

Three novelists delve into the past to unearth the present. Lucy Ives considers the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, ‘What you needed to survive in 1969 was, apparently, not the straight and narrow. What you needed was fiction. And guilt’; César Aira recalls his childhood in Coronel Pringles and his mother’s overbearing fixation on cultural refinement; and Heike Geißler pens a new work of autobiographical fiction that reflects on our exasperated age of news cycles, scandal and movement.

Plus, 32 reviews from around the world, including reports on two New York shows that chart Lincoln Kirstein’s legacy. In London, two exhibitions showcase Channa Horwitz and Emma Kunz’s play with reason and repetition, at the Lisson Gallery and Serpentine Galleries.

Cover image: Buzz Aldrin deploys Apollo 11 experiments on the surface of the moon (detail), 1969, photograph taken by Neil Armstrong with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Courtesy: NASA

From this issue

On the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, we should take up the call of the women who fought on the front lines of the LGBTQ rights revolution

BY Evan Moffitt | 07 JUN 19

50 years since Apollo 11 and the Manson killings, Lucy Ives reflects on the guilt and male privilege that plagued the Summer of Love

BY Lucy Ives | 07 JUN 19

Contemplating deep space and ‘cosmic archaeology’, the artist reflects on her fascination with the universe beyond planet Earth

BY Katie Paterson | 06 JUN 19

Affect theory is a carefully constructed blind spot, writes Susanne von Falkenhausen, blind to its own ideologies

BY Susanne von Falkenhausen | 06 JUN 19

The duo’s latest installation at the Prada Foundation is an incomplete take on contemporary America

BY Andrew Durbin | 04 JUN 19

For more than 60 years the Tehran-born, Minneapolis-based artist has made work about community, coexistence and the experience of exile

BY Ian Bourland | 03 JUN 19

The leading Argentinian novelist recalls the cruelty of his hometown’s self-designated cultural curator: his mother

BY César Aira AND Ariel Cusnir | 02 JUN 19

After her celebrated book Seasonal Associate, author Heike Geissler presents a new story for frieze

BY Heike Geissler | 02 JUN 19

The artist’s work, on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, explores the historic and contemporary injustices that inscribe life in Brazil

BY Lilia Moritz Schwarcz | 02 JUN 19

The menswear designer discusses the writers, artists and spiritual traditions that have influenced her

BY Grace Wales Bonner | 02 JUN 19

In her new memoir, the poet asks whether art has a purpose beyond representation

BY Diana Hamilton | 02 JUN 19

Writer Jörg Scheller considers her practice in light of contemporary political debates and artist Juliette Blightman delves into Cahn’s recently published texts

BY Jörg Scheller AND Juliette Blightman | 02 JUN 19

With a recent show at Stephen Friedman Gallery, the Grenadian-born British artist talks to Osei Bonsu about painting, London's 1980s club scene and moving to Cornwall

BY Osei Bonsu | 01 JUN 19

Ian F. Martin traces the life and career of the pioneering Japanese musician, on the 50th anniversary of his first record

BY Ian F. Martin | 01 JUN 19

A survey show of the late artist’s restlessly inventive work at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris

BY William Davie | 01 JUN 19

At Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, the UAE-born artist pays homage to his local terrains

BY Evan Moffitt | 01 JUN 19

A show at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary asks whether to be a woman is always to be damaged goods

BY Jennifer Piejko | 01 JUN 19

At Shanghai’s Qiao Space, the artist’s ambitious new project raises more questions than it answers

BY Simon Frank | 01 JUN 19

‘Movies don’t change, and I do, and I don’t. Memory isn’t a choice and, like everyone, I forget way more than I can recall, necessarily.’

BY Lynne Tillman | 01 JUN 19

The Italian artist, who currently has a solo show at MAXXI in Rome, discusses her influences, her frustrations and her love of mozzarella

BY Paola Pivi | 01 JUN 19

The artist walks a fine line between nostalgic irreverence and wry critique

BY Fanny Singer | 01 JUN 19

In her compellingly off-kilter sculpture, Reaves imagines strange and dire futures

BY Chris Wiley | 01 JUN 19

At Nasher Sculpture Center, the prolific artist’s solo exhibition chafes at the history of Western modernism

BY Jonathan Griffin | 01 JUN 19

At Display, Prague, the Brazilian artist questions the insidious mechanisms that govern women’s reproductive health

BY Phoebe Blatton | 29 MAY 19

An exhibition at Swiss Institute, New York, reflects on the vulnerability of our bodies and our desire for intimacy

BY Orit Gat | 23 MAY 19

A new exhibition at BolteLang, Zurich, is as markedly sombre as it is delightful

BY Aoife Rosenmeyer | 21 MAY 19

Paul B. Preciado’s norm-defining show at WKV Stuttgart lays the groundwork for a crip-theoretical re-evaluation of art history

BY Saim Demircan | 21 MAY 19

An exhibition at Index, Stockholm, fuses activism, queer performance and pop music

BY Frida Sandström | 20 MAY 19

The Golden Lion-winning Lithuanian Pavilion, ‘Sun & Sea (Marina)’, crafts an endless pop song for the end times

BY En Liang Khong | 17 MAY 19

At Goldsmiths CCA, the group’s darkly comic grotesqueries reflect an unsettling age  

BY Patrick Langley | 17 MAY 19

With wit and gumption, the late artist broke with institutional proprietaries and pedigree to rethink art’s place in its community

BY Shiv Kotecha | 15 MAY 19

An epochal exhibition of the Ghanaian artist – the last curated by Okwui Enwezor – gives the Munich institution a new face

BY Jane Ure-Smith | 14 MAY 19

Two concurrent exhibitions in London use mark-making as a way to get at something beyond what we see

BY Harry Thorne | 13 MAY 19

Curated by Charlie Porter, ‘Palimpsest’ turns the attention back on the history of the neo-gothic estate

BY Mimi Chu | 13 MAY 19

The late US painter’s first European survey, at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, is a missed opportunity

BY Kito Nedo | 03 MAY 19

Family history, myth and geopolitics intertwine in the artist’s largest UK show to date

BY Cleo Roberts | 02 MAY 19

Two exhibitions, at MoMA and David Zwirner, reveal how the impresario and his milieu defied the rationalism of 20th-century art

BY Evan Moffitt | 01 MAY 19

At the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the French collective’s attack on the autonomy of art feels as prescient as it did 50 years ago

BY Jacob Korczynski | 29 APR 19

A new work by Beth Collar, commissioned by Matt’s Gallery and CGP London, pulls apart female hysteria

BY Izabella Scott | 29 APR 19

Beatriz Colomina’s latest book, X-Ray Architecture, argues that the spaces and technologies of the sanatorium gave rise to the modern movement’s iconic forms

BY Thomas McMullan | 25 APR 19

A show at Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, uses typeface to pay tribute to women artists 

BY Carina Bukuts | 24 APR 19

A long-overdue survey exhibition at the Villa Vassilieff in Paris highlights the depth and range of the films made by the late artist from 1977 until 1991

BY Rachel Valinsky | 16 APR 19

The second iteration of this dynamic biennial is a mix of poignant reflection and feverish energy 

BY Sophie Knezic | 15 APR 19

An exhibition at Peres Projects, Berlin, shows how society’s attitudes to sex have changed throughout the 86-year-old artist’s career

BY Chloe Stead | 12 APR 19

A glance at Gagliardi’s new paintings at Brussels’s Rodolphe Janssen Gallery

BY Ellen Mara De Wachter | 09 APR 19

The artist’s new show at White Cube combines structuralist filmmaking with the Green Cross Code, to dazzling effect

BY Thomas McMullan | 08 APR 19

In a lively group show at Petzel Gallery, the late Danish artist’s irreverent ‘modification paintings’ are presented alongside some of the many works they later inspired 

BY Ara H. Merjian | 05 APR 19

A survey at Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, shows an artist in constant dialogue with the world 

BY Oliver Osborne | 02 APR 19