Speaking after Ozzy Osbourne passed, art historian and curator Nicolas Ballet said it was actually listening to extreme metal that led him to discover early noise and industrial music. Industrial is a genre that continues to remain submerged away from the mainstream and thrived in that manner in the early ’70s and ’80s, as its…
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…
In Reggio Emilia, late spring announces itself through Fotografia Europea. The city quickly resembles a loosened shutter. Passersby thread the arcades with vintage cameras and weird gadgets hanging from their necks. This year, the festival title is Ghosts of the Moment, a formulation that suits photography well. Yet the picture that lodged in my mind…
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,…
Arriving in Marrakech, I was struck by how much had changed – and at the same time, how much hadn’t. My last visit had been in 2012, and while the medina still folds in on itself with the same familiar architecture, sounds and smells, Gueliz is now dense with international high‑street brands, ubiquitous coffee shops…
The approach to Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples is disarmingly ambiguous, a staircase that withholds any sense of what lies ahead. At the top, there is an unassuming door, a small sign, and a guestbook placed outside, as if the gallery is still deciding how visible it wants to be. Behind the door, the space…