Installation view, Stalking with Stories at apexart.
My latest review is up at the L magazine. It can be viewed in full on their site, but I’ve placed a teaser for you below.
I hate to sound boorish, but I don't always enjoy seeing the words “intellectually rich” attached to shows about conceptual art. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for challenging work, but I am not consistently interested in reading a press release to understand the art I'm looking at.
With that said, a thin but fairly consistent stream of challenging shows inspire attentive wall- and press release-reading every year, the most recent currently on display at apexart. Inspired by the desire for an imagined past or future, Stalking with Stories: The Pioneers of the Immemborable, an exhibition curated by Antonia Marjaca and Ivana Bago, brings together the macabre investigations of eight international artists.
Among the more visually dominant works in the show, Sanja Ivekovic's Ponos (Pride), a red neon sign from a former Yugoslavian textile shop, hangs near the entrance of the gallery. On its own, the piece reads as an empty mass- culture relic, though, as history documents, socialist-era banners such as this frequently employed words such as Freedom, Victory and Knowledge; politically charged words with emotionally invested ideology. In the post-communist economy these names were replaced with international counterparts; “Ponos,” or Pride, for example, might become the X Nation, Eldi International or Terranova. While these new signs do not appear in the exhibition, the historical reference coupled with the ambiguity of aesthetic interpretation underscore the uneasy transitional state of the country.
To read the full piece click here.
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