I can hear the Peruvian Pavilion before seeing it. Descending the stairs at Gwangju’s Yangnim Art Museum, there is a grinding, an almost animalistic sound, something between a creak and a moan, the kind of noise you associate with whales more than with ceramics. I arrived in Gwangju a day earlier, after five days in…
The air hangs heavy, wet against my skin. It’s July and it’s 40 degrees in Shanghai. As I take a few more steps in this city-sized sauna, the vast concrete architecture of the Long Museum rises into view. Designed by Liu Yichun of Atelier Deshaus on the site of a former coal transportation wharf, its…
The drive from Riga to Pāvilosta takes just over two hours, meandering through forests, farmland and bucolic villages where countless white storks nest. Their enormous homes perch precariously on telephone poles, some so large they appear to outweigh the structures beneath them. In Latvia, the majestic bird is known as svētelis, meaning “saint” or “blesser.”…
Inside Jasper Johns: Night Driver at the Guggenheim Bilbao, a film of Walkaround Time (1968) flickers alongside the translucent set pieces Johns designed for American choreographer Merce Cunningham’s dance. Based on Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass, the structures appear improbably light within Frank Gehry’s titanium landmark. Visitors drift among them, becoming performers of a sort…
Built in 1876 to the designs of Józef Huss, the neo-Renaissance palace Villa Róż has lived several lives, from private residence and diplomatic outpost to bureaucratic machine. For decades it housed the British Embassy, and traces of that existence remain embedded in its architecture. Heavy vault doors stand guard over rooms once used to protect…
Rainclouds hang over Venice all morning, flattening the light around the Arsenale into shades of silver and grey as crowds move between pavilions clutching umbrellas and damp press releases. By the time I arrive at the Kazakhstan Pavilion inside the Museo Storico Navale, the vernissage has already thickened into its usual frenzy. “When I first…
A few days before the Biennale vernissage officially begins, Venice already feels overtaken by the art world, thanks to the wave of collateral openings and private foundation dinners unfolding across the city. Arriving at Palazzo Rota Ivancich, carefully dodging spiky umbrellas and lit cigarettes, the narrow calli outside are dense with visitors moving between events….
Near Belém’s waterfront, hundreds of eggs form a square on the ground, their presence quietly unsettling, as if something could go wrong at any moment. There is already a small crowd when I arrive. I hear two women talking about Anna Maria Maiolino, recalling past performances, as others linger at the edges, pulled in mid-commute,…