UDK RUNDGANG 2014

Mark Corfield-Moore (wall object) and Moritz Nehrkorn (sculpture), Klasse Neugebauer Andreas Foncerrada, Klasse Lewandowsky  Lisa Peters, Klasse Möbus Gary Schlingheider
all  works courtesy and © the artists // photo credit: artfridge.de

How does art reflect current politics? When are old trends replaced by new ones? What do young artists expect from the effect of their work on the spectatorship? Which art is, and which art will be interesting for the market? When hoping to find the slightest answer to any of these questions one of the best places to observe future tendencies are degree shows from art academies. The current Rundgang at UDK (Universität der Künste) in Berlin, for example, offers a pretty interesting overview on what young Berlin-based artists are interested in.

MANIFESTA 10, SAINT PETERSBURG

from the top: Thomas Hirschhorn, ABSCHLAG, 2014, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum // Klara Lidén, Warm up: State Hermitage Museum Theater , 2014, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum // Marlene Dumas The Trophy, 2013, Winter Palace, State Hermitage Museum, 2014. // all installation views MANIFESTA 10,  photos by Daria Kirsanova

The latest edition of Manifesta in Saint Petersburg caused a high degree of controversy, which was escalated by the Russian authorities who have certainly excelled in black PR for the event: The anti gay propaganda laws and the unstoppable campaign for the ‘traditional Orthodox values’ that was initiated by the lawmakers in the city have set an apocalyptic backdrop for the exhibition. This, combined with stiff museum policies of the State Hermitage* and an overwhelming amount of bureaucracy, created the intrigue around the exhibition. The main question was whether the show would actually take place. Meanwhile, the International media neither seemed to care about the conceptual core of the curatorial idea or the artist list, nor about the difficulties of building a contemporary art audience in Saint Petersburg – a city that is proud of being conservatively equipped with neo-classical architecture and post-imperialist nostalgic spirit.

PIERRE HUYGHE AT MUSEUM LUDWIG KÖLN

all images: Pierre Huyghe at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Courtesy the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris; Esther Schipper, Berlin, © Pierre Huyghe / photos by Anneli Botz // photo of the dog:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2014 /

Walking through Pierre Huyghe’s travelling retrospective at Museum Ludwig in Cologne resembles a journey through the topographical map of his complex oeuvre, which ranges from film to photography to sculpture and from architecture to living eco systems. Before leaving the rooms of Centre Pompidou in Paris, Huyghe had the exhibition’s walls cut into pieces and brought to Cologne where they were rearranged in the space of the museum. Thus the visitors are guided through the retrospective as if they were walking into a long tube of walls, where they are bound to lurk around corners and step into artificially constructed rooms. This architectural decision suggests a sense of how the artist is dealing with space: Rather than using the given or deconstructing it completely, the 1962 born Parisian deregulates allegedly deadlocked structures in both architecture but also in his single pieces.