ESSAY: EXITS

by Joao Ribas

Some people want to escape into the art world, others want to escape from it. Art offers a refuge from the world as well as a way of engaging with it – politically, socially, aesthetically, philosophically. The challenge is to find a way to escape without escapism. By João Ribas

“Don’t we need a place of refuge from how tragic everything is, a site where we can confront the sinister absurdities and inequalities of the present, including those of the art world itself, while seeking solace from their domination? Contemporary art now suspends two opposing and seemingly contradictory impulses: towards being a refuge from evil and stupidity, and against being a zone for detached representation, for after-images of actual life.”

 

– This text appears in Spike #61. You can buy it in our online shop –

João Ribas
Bas Jan Ader
Ben Kinmont
Laurie Parsons
Adrian Piper
Christian Leigh
On Kawara

People
Marne Lucas and Pippa Garner, Get Out, Get Under , 2015, chromogenic print. Courtesy: artists

Marne Lucas and Pippa Garner, Get Out, Get Under, 2015, chromogenic print. Courtesy: the artists

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Pippa Garner modeling works from her series “Shirt Storm”, 2017

Pippa Garner modeling works from her series “Shirt Storm,” 2017

“I own my brain, I own my biceps, my knees, my toes”: Pippa Garner

Back when she was still called Phil, Garner worked as a combat artist in the Vietnam War, before returning home to design ironic products for an unreal future. Several decades and one transition later, she talked to Fiona Alison Duncan about living in willed alienation for Spike #57.

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View of Kyle Thurman, “Accumulator,” SOPHIE TAPPEINER, Vienna, 2023

View of Kyle Thurman, “Accumulator,” Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna, 2023

Five-Star Review: Kyle Thurman

Ramona Heinlein pokes her head into Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna to scope out Kyle Thurman’s neon pentimentos of Iron Man and Wilhelm Reich.

Spike Events
Skulpi Magazine, Issue V

Skulpi Magazine, Issue V

Spike Event: Release Party of Skulpi V

Join us at Spike Berlin at 7pm on Friday, 24 November for the release of the 5th installment of Roman Schramm’s occasional magazine Skulpi. With a live cello performance from Schloss Mirabell.

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Jonathan Lyndon Chase, The Shape Up , 2023. Installation view, Artists Space, New York, 2023. All images courtesy: the artist and Artists Space, New York. Photo: Filip Wolak

Jonathan Lyndon Chase, The Shape Up, 2023. Installation view, Artists Space, New York, 2023. All images courtesy: the artist and Artists Space, New York. Photo: Filip Wolak

Every Day’s Joys

In New York, lavish acrylics, plush sculptures, and soft-skinned poems by Jonathan Lyndon Chase re-style Artists Space as a neighborhood barbershop and the barber as a consummate artist.

Discourse

Phoebe Philo Fall/Winter 2023

Theory of Style: On Texture

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People
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Ligia Lewis, Water Will (in Melody) , Performance Space New York, 2019. Courtesy: the artist. Pgoro: Maria Baranova

Ligia Lewis, Water Will (in Melody), Performance Space New York, 2019. Courtesy: the artist. Photo: Maria Baranova

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Spike Events
Leyla Yenirce, Spcegrlsonacid , 2022, oil and silkscreen on canvas, 180 x 165 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Capitain Petzel, Berlin

Leyla Yenirce, Spcegrlsonacid, 2022, oil and silkscreen on canvas, 180 x 165 cm.

Artist Talk: Leyla Yenirce

On Tuesday 21 NOVEMBER at Soho House Berlin, artist Leyla Yenirce speaks to Elisa R. Linn and Lennart Wolff about the arts of archiving and appropriation. 

Views
Sarah Friend, Lifeform Display Surface #3 (first generation) , 2021, silicone, iphone, custom webapp, and NFT, 15 x 15 x 10cm, from Lifeforms , Photo: Sarah Friend, Courtesy: Nagel Draxler

Sarah Friend, Lifeform Display Surface #3 (first generation), 2021, silicone, iphone, custom webapp, and NFT, 15 x 15 x 10cm, from Lifeforms, Photo: Sarah Friend, Courtesy: Nagel Draxler

Imperfecting Forms

An exhibition of NFT art at HEK, Basel pilots a variety of materializations of code-based work while benchmarking how quickly the blockchain genre is changing. 

Discourse
View of Hito Steyerl, “This is the Future,” Portland Art Museum, 2023. Courtesy: the artist; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo: Mario Gallucci

View of Hito Steyerl, “This is the Future,” Portland Art Museum, 2023. Courtesy: the artist; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo: Mario Gallucci

Absence of Mind: The Nature Documentary in the Age of AI

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Discourse
© No Agency

© No Agency

39 East Broadway Suite #604

When is a modeling agency more than a modeling agency? When “it’s a feeling.” Cara Schacter meta-texts a first-anniversary newsletter anthology from No Agency, NYC’s cloutiest new logo.

"My works are the most sincere and tragic things I have done in life"

"If I tell you I have to kill you with my laser vision"