#60 Summer 2019
This issue of Spike is a response to the widely held idea that art needs to be more moral. The world’s fucked up, and the art world is guilty too, so in some ways that makes sense. It’s brought art closer to politics and activism, given it a social and political function. We want a better world too. But art is also a place for (self-)doubt and risk and questioning. Freedom of thought and expression is art’s indispensable foundation; we shouldn’t let that idea be hijacked by the right so they can kill it off. Focusing on questions of right and wrong is a way to slip out from under the burden of critique that’s run out of steam; it offers the consolation of moral belonging. But without some exposure to danger there can be no moral development. What a magazine like Spike can do is to investigate and reflect the contemporary condition; sometimes that means pushing on its sore spots and giving room to its discontents.
Zhou Tao “The Ridge in A Bronze Mirror”at Guangdong Times Museum by Shanzhai Lyric.
Cameron Rowland “D37” at MOCA Grand Avenue and Barbara Kruger at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA by Patrick J. Reed.
Martin Kippenberger “The Museum of Modern Art Syros” at MAMCO by Yann Chateigné.
“Motions of This Kind: Propositions & Problems of Belatedness” at The Brunei Gallery, SOAS by Harry Burke; “I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker“at ICA by Ella Plevin.
Trisha Donnelly at The Shed by Allison Hewitt-Ward.
Sam Lipp “Incest” at Bonny Poon by Charles Teyssou.
Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg “A Journey Through Mud and Confusion with Small Glimpses of Air” at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt by Alexander Scrimgeour.
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz “Ongoing Experiments with Strangeness” at Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin by Kristian Vistrup Madsen; Frieda Toranzo Jaeger “Deep Adaptation” at Galerie Barbara Weiss by Dominikus Müller.
Krem's Donaufestival “New Society“ by Gianna Virginia Prein.
“Über Leben am Land” at Kunst Haus Wien by Klaus Speidel. Friedrich von Berzeviczy-Pallavicini: “Der Hausfreund” at Universitaetsgalerie im Heiligenkreuzer Hof by Maximilian Geymüller. “Peter Friedl: Teatro” at Kunsthalle Wien by Benjamin Hirte.
“Time, Forward!” at V-A-C Zattere. Eva Scharrer interviews Omar Kholeif.
“May You Live In Interesting Times” at the 58th Venice Biennial. By Jeppe Ugelvig
