Highlights 2013 – Kirsty Bell

By Kirsty Bell

1. Artist’s Choice: Trisha Donnelly, MOMA NY

Technicolour computer chip diagrams, turn of the century fantasy by Czech artist František Kupka, Odilon Redon’s painting of a rock, and many other wild, unexpected gems, in a closely-packed hang in which art and thought felt suddenly urgent, and the 4th dimension close at hand.

2. Hilma af Klint, A Pioneer of Abstraction, Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
The complete body of work of this visionary artist, presented fully formed as if had lain dormant for a century, which was not exactly the case but not far from the truth: when she died in 1944, she stipulated that her work was not to be exhibited until 20 years after her death. Even now almost 60 years later, it feels uncannily fresh and prescient.

3. Textiles Shows in Monchengladbach, Wolfsburg and Bielefeld

Sofie Dawo, Untitled, 1965

A glut of shows devoted to textiles provided the opportunity to luxuriate in surface texture: rarely exhibited works by Bauhaus weavers Gunta Stölzl and Annie Albers; three dimensional yarn sculptures by ‘fibre artists’ like Sheila Hicks; exuberant, experimental hangings by the Sofie Dawo, a Professor from Saarbrucken who never exhibited during her lifetime; and Beryl Korot’s ‘Text and Commentary’, an unlikely juncture between weaving and video art that baffled fans of both when shown by Leo Castelli in 1977. See also Nick Relph’s recent show of weavings at the Chisenhale Gallery. There is something in the air.

4. The Encyclopedic Palace, Venice Biennale
This year’s generally lackluster national pavilions were countered by Massimiliano Gioni’s smoothly articulated exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace: the Biennial as Pleasure Dome. So many unusual things to marvel at, so many old favourites to enjoy again, so many new players to discover, their works presented to their best advantage. A gliding sweep from the mind of the outsider to the age of hyper-connectivity.

5. Loretta Fahrenholz’s Ditch Plains

Ditch Plains Teaser from vitakuben on Vimeo.

Robotic blank eyed zombie dancers in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in Redhook picture exactly the digital fracturing and environmental violence that seems to be simmering away beneath our trusted screens and surfaces.

6. Janet Malcolm, Forty-One False Starts. Essays on Artists and Writers.
Apart from the hilarious 1994 title essay on the enigma that is David Salle, the essay ‘A Girl of the Zeitgeist’ on Ingrid Sischy and the politics of Artforum offers a fascinating insight into art criticism in the eighties. All night editing sessions with petulant writers seem a world away from today’s fast-as-you-can, edit-free blogosphere.

7. Resin works by Michaela Eichwald in ‘Some End of Things’ at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, and Silberkuppe, Berlin

An amputated hand cast in clear resin contains the floating debris of the working day: pins and needles, bottle caps, scraps of food. Haunting and compelling counterparts to Eichwald’s ever vaster and denser paintings. Her internet site, uhutrust.com, is one to visit regularly.

8. Wolfgang Tillmans’ ‘Central Nervous System’ at Maureen Paley, London, and ‘Silver’ at Galerie Buchholz, Berlin
After an interim period of global roaming and surface scanning, Tillmans has come to a stand still again and sharpened his focus to its utmost intensity. In this pair of pendant exhibitions he devotes each to a single theme for the first time, and the results shine with an almost religious conviction. In London, the all-consuming love of an individual in two floors of intimate portraits; and in Berlin, an equally passionate love of color, accident, process and technique in the abstract ‘Silver’ works.

9. ‘Not Yet Titled. New and Forever at Museum Ludwig’, Cologne

Clear, erudite and invigorating, Philip Kaiser’s rehang of the Ludwig Museum collection was a majestic emancipation in which the exhibited works scored an effortless victory over the usually overwhelming 1980s architecture. With a Louise Lawler retrospective expertly woven into it, it must make the new director’s departure after just one year even bitterer for the Rheinland.

10. 2013 Carnegie International

As I won’t make it to Pittsburgh to see the show, I’ve contented myself with reading the catalogue instead. The introduction by curators Daniel Baumann, Dan Byers and Tina Kukielski had me hooked with its heartfelt eulogy on art as troublemaker: ‘Contemporary art is more than trophies on the wall, assets in a portfolio, or a conquest stored away in a safe. It takes a high form of troublemaking to transform our thinking, if not our lives.’

Image may be NSFW.
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