As we did last year, M-KOS invited several art professionals to list their most memorable exhibitions of 2012. Although, to mix it up a bit, we approached a different lot of experts as last year, each one selecting up to five shows and an optional bit of comments. Do you agree with their selection? Did they miss out on any really great show? Share with us what your memorable exhibition was for 2012.
Maria Stenfors | London UK | mariastenfors.com
Director, Maria Stenfors Gallery, London UK
– dOCUMENTA (13)
Kassel, Germany (9 Jun – 16 Sept 2012) Artistic Director: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
“Was really good overall and gave a good burst of energy when I saw it at the end of my summer holidays. Tino Segal’s performance work was the highlight; the darkness of the room slowly revealing the vibrations of beatboxing and dancing… this work has stayed with me the most.”
– Chekhov’s Gun
at g39 in Cardiff, Wales, (29 Sept – 15 Dec 2012)
“An exhibition of mainly moving-image work, and possibly one of the best installed and curated that I saw this year, where each video or screen was given its own space and integrity, with little concern given to the venue’s architecture. The art was the focus, as it should be.”
– Alejandro Cesarco: The Early Years
at Tanya Leighton, Berlin (27 Apr – 23 Jun 2012)
“Saw this during the Gallery Weekend in Berlin, wish I had time to go back and spend longer with the exhibition.”
– Dennis McNulty: Precast
Preston Road Roundabout Pedestrian Subway, adjacent to Blackwall DLR station,
London E14 9QB, (15 Sep – 7 Oct 2012) Curator: Chris Fite-Wassilak
“Precast was a new work developed in response to a particularly complex urban situation in East London. It was the most surreal, futuristic and historically correct walkabout tour of post-Olympic London.”
Claudine Khelil | Montreal | clarkplaza.org
Strategic Development Officer at Centre Clark
– Valérie Blass
at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
(2 Feb – 22 Apr 2012) Curator: Lesley Johnstone
“I chose this partly for her mastery of forms and materials and partly her corpus brought us to the other side of the mirror, as Lewis Carroll once did.”
– Chronicles of a Disppearance
at DHC/ART (19 Jan – 13 May 2012) Curator: John Zeppetelli
“Great choice of artists and works that raised political and social issues at the same time as staying sensible to forms and contexts”
– Nicolas Baier: Transmission
at Galerie René Blouin (18 Feb – 24 Mar 2012)
“A magnificent work of art that sublimated the narcissism of western society”
– Cynthia Girard: Pierre Vallières et Josée Yvon
at Optica, Montreal (12 May – 16 Jun 2012)
“The uniqueness of her poetic universe at once committed social and political issues beneath quite a naive and festive aesthetic.”
– Pierre Bourgault
at Centre Clark, (19 Jan – 25 Feb 2012)
“The formal quality of this vessel blurred the limits between real and unreal.”
Michal Kaczynski | Warsaw, Poland | raster.art.pl
Director of Raster Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
– the new presentation of Boros Sammlung
in Bunker Berlin (2008 – present)
“I know this is not a real exhibition, but it was exactly something that i would describe as ‘memorable’.”
– New National Art
at Warsaw MoMA, (2 Jun – 16 Aug 2012) Curators: Sebastian Cichocki, Łukasz Ronduda
“It’s the freakiest exhibition I saw in Warsaw (maybe without meaning to be freakish)”
– A Disagreeable Object
at Sculpture Center, New York (15 Sept – 26 Nov 2012) Curator: Ruba Katrib
– William Klein + Daido Moriyama
at Tate Modern, London UK (10 Oct 2012 – 20 Jan 2013)
“I know, its extremely mainstream, but still – just great.”
– Sounding the Body Electric – Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984
at Muzeum Sztuki, Lotz, Poland (25 My – 19 Aug 2012)
Edward Allington | London, UK | edallington.net
Artist, Head of Graduate Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London
– Bronze
at the Royal Academy, London UK (15 Sept – 9 Dec 2012)
– Morellet & von Graevenitz: Moving Spirits
at the Mayor Gallery, London UK (31 Oct – 30 Nov 2012)
– Simon Patterson: Under Cartel
at Haunch of Venison, London, UK (31 Jul – 31 Aug 2012)
Kevin Rodgers | Kingston, ON | kevinrodgers.ca
Artist and Writer; Artistic Director of Modern Fuel artist-run centre
– Christian Marclay: The Clock
at The Power Plant, Toronto (14 Sep – 25 Nov 2012)
“Disarmingly populist and hypnotic: it was a pleasurable sight to see so many people line up and clamor for any available seat. To lounge on sofas, and be–just as I was–mesmerized for hours.”
– Jon Knowles: Mixed Misuse
at The Darling Foundry, Montreal (14 Jun – 2 Sept 2012)
“A thoughtful artist and installation that left me completely satisfied. Knowles’ exhibition was one of two in Montreal during the summer (the second “Blood Oranges” at Laroche/Joncas) that put on display his idiosyncratic approach to site and sculpture.”
– Cynthia Girard: Pierre Vallières et Josée Yvon
at Optica, Montreal (12 May – 16 Jun 2012)
“A sprawling installation of works placed firmly within the boisterous history of Quebecois identity and politics. I’m still thinking about this exhibition today, and will be tomorrow.”
– Erin Shirreff: Available Light
at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON (22 Sep 2012 – 27 Jan 2013)
“The second stop on a three venue exhibition of this Kelowna born, Brooklyn based artist, Available Light is meticulously installed, and wonderfully polished. Next stop Vancouver: you’re in for a treat.”
– Raymond Boisjoly: The Work That Work Leaves Undone
at Forest City Gallery, London, ON (11 May – 9 June 2012)
“Low-key, but resounding. Perhaps a tangent in his work, or one he’ll come back to at some point, but this installation of simple office paper spoke intelligently to issues of phenomena, bureaucracy and action.”
Sebastian Kaempf | New York |
Architect
– Cindy Sherman
at MoMA, NY (26 Feb – 11 Jun 2012)
– Nils Karsten: Suburbia Hamburg 1983
at Churner and Chrner, NY (20 Dec 2012 – 2 Feb 2013)
– John Chamberlain: Choices
at Guggenheim Museum, NY (24 Feb – 13 May 2012)
– Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan
at MoMA, NY (1 July – 1 October 2012)
Yuki Miyake | London, UK | open-draw.com
Director of Open-Draw Gallery, London UK
– Shezad Daood: Piercing Brightness
at Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK (5 Apr – 10 Jun 2012)
“Daood’s work goes beyond the limited realm of art, speaking about our culture with a sense of humour”
– Keith Arnatt
at Maureen Paley, London, UK (23 Nov 2012 – 27 Jan 2013)
“Don’t underestimate the power of an English photographer”
– Masakatsu Kondo: Whenever I am Silent
at All Visual Art, London UK (4–31 May 2012)
“Kondo’s work showed the enduring power of awe of painting.”
– The Seven Lamps
at Lubomirov–Easton, London UK (16 Jun – 12 Aug 2012)
“The exhibition brought us back to the basics of art making, revisited the importance of drawing. It was refreshing to see such a show contrast with idea-based works that often dominate the mainstream.”
– Darren O’Brien: 100 Paintings (GR11)
at ASC Gallery, London UK (15 Sept – 3 Nov 2012)
“Based on the artist’s own experimentations, O’Brien transformed paintings into three dimensional forms.”
Dominique Fontaine | Montreal | dominiquefontaine.com
Curator, Researcher, Cultural advisor, Founding Director of aPOSteRIORI
– Resisting the Present, Mexico 2000/2012
at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris
(9 Mar – 8 Jul 2012)
– Mauro Pinto (winner of BES Photo 2012)
at BES Photo 2012, Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (14 Mar – 27 May 2012)
– Migrations, Journeys into British Art
at Tate Britain, UK (31 Jan – 11 Aug 2012)
– Rosângela Rennó: Strange Fruits
CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
(17 Feb – 6 May 2012) Curator: Isabel Carlos
– Chronicles of a Disppearance
at DHC/ART (19 Jan – 13 May 2012) Curator: John Zeppetelli
– Yayoi Kusama
at Tate Modern, London UK (9 Feb – 5 Jun 2012) Curator : Frances Morris
– La Triennale : Intense Proximity
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. (20 Apr – 26 Aug 2012) Artistic Director : Okwui Enwezor
– Raymond Gervais 3 x 1
VOX Centre of Contemporary Image, Montreal (7 Sept – 1 Dec 2012) Curator: Nicole Gingras
N-mark | Nagoya, Japan | n-mark.com
Independent curators/art project organizers, Directors of independent art space N-mark
– Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger: Power Sources
at Art Tower Mito, Mito-city, Japan (11 Feb – 6 May 2012)
“Using collected objects and the passage of time as the material to the unique environment of their work, the site specific installations of Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger continue to change during the exhibition. Because the work is in flux, it cannot be experienced more than once the same, even though all the bric-a-brac seems to have some kind of inherent consistence.”
– Atsuko Tanaka: The Art of Connecting
at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan (4 Feb – 6 May 2012)
“Atsuko Tanaka has lately been significantly re-discovered outside of Japan. Her retrospective show, “Bell” (1955) brilliantly echoed in a space dead of silence.”
– To Wander a Garden – the 10th Anniversary Exhibition
at the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Shizuoka, Japan (21 Apr – 31 Aug 2012)
“Under the theme of “Garden” as a microcosm within a vast ecosystem, many artists in the exhibition showed their unique interpretation of this organic relationship.”
– Hiroshi Sugimoto: From Naked to Clothed
at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (31 Mar – 1 Jul 2012)
“The exhibition focuses on “The Fashion” of Sugimoto’s large body of work showing images from primitive dress to new haute couture. It was very enjoyable.”
– Noe Aoki: All That Floats Down
at Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Nagoya City Museum, Japan(13 Oct – 24 Dec 2012)
“Aoki employs iron as her main material and creates small hand made objects that manage to relate to larger scale architectural work. The large scale work was especially interesting for the way it dominated the entire exhibition space.”
Alexandra Buchanan | Ottawa | gallery.ca
Educator, Education and Public Programs, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
– Christian Marclay: The Clock
at National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (30 Mar – 6 Aug 2012)
“I was stunned by how much this impacted me. Not only in its breadth of content, but also in the playfulness of the editing and, for me, in the shared experience it created for those viewing it. It made me laugh and touched me more than I thought it would.”
– Frida and Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting
at Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (20 Oct 2012 – 20 Jan 2013)
“It felt like an intimate portrait of the artists as people and as a couple, which made the experience of looking at their work that much more intense and enjoyable.”
Marie Roux | London, UK | marieroux.info
Photographer, Writer
– Jeremy Dellar: Joy in People
at the Hayward Gallery, London (22 Feb – 13 May 2012)
“An adventurous survey of Dellar’s work and an enthusiastic insight on British Popular culture.”
– Jonas Mekas
at Serpentine Gallery, London (5 Dec 2012 – 27 Jan 2013)
– “I want to celebrate the small forms of cinema, the lyrical forms, the poem, watercolour, étude, sketch, postcard, arabesque, bagatelle and little 8mm songs..” Jonas Mekas –
“Another beautiful festival of life and people through the liberated vision of one of the most influential experimental filmmaker.”
– Spiders from Mars
at Belltable Gallery Space, Limerick, Ireland. (6 Apr – 11 May 2012) Curator: Michele Horrigan
“This exhibition contemplates environments from a series of positions taken from David Bowie’s 1972 album.”
– Rie Nakajima: A bit…
at Void+, Tokyo, Japan (12 Sep 2012)
– Le Silence – Une Fiction
at Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (2 Feb – 3 Apr 2012)
Curators: Simone Menegoi, Cristiano Raimondi
“With this exhibition, the NMNM continues its tradition of supporting exploratory missions, part scientific experiment, part fictional narrative. The exhibition invites the visitor to use his imagination and depict a story.”
M-KOS (Oli Sorenson) | Montreal | olisorenson.com
Artist, Editor-in-chief of M-KOS
– Vadim FiÅ¡kin: Light Matters 2/3
at Galleria Gregor Podnar Project Space, Ljubljana, Slovenia (21 Nov – 07 Dec 2012)
“There are times when an exhibition hits you just because you wish you had thought of doing it first. As an artist, admitting envy towards someone else’s work is the best compliment one can give. Certainly FiÅ¡kin’s shadow casting of an invisible palm tree, growing out of a paint bucket, entitled “miss Christmas” (2012) did that for me.”
– Yoko Ono: Light
at Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (10 Dec 2011 – 28 Jan 2012)
“In memory of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Yoko Ono collected household items from a torn down house and surrounded it with wall-to-wall canvases of calligraphy, perhaps to metonymically protect the people that once inhabited the neibourhoods most affected by these events.”
– Anselm Reyle
solo presentation at Almine Rech Gallery, Frieze New York (10-13 May 2012)
“Within the frenzy of attention seeking art props at Frieze New York, stood Almine Rech’s central kiosk of bling paintings by Anselm Reyle, confidently hovering between kitsch and sumptuous appeal, to perfectly encapsulate the spirit of the fair.”
– Trevor Gould: Philosophy’s Self Image
at VOX Centre of Contemporary Image, Montreal (7 Sep – 13 Oct 2012)
“Vox is probably one of the few exhibition centers in Montreal where I consistently enjoy the shows they put on. However Trevor Gould’s contribution most stood out for its irreverent confrontation of so-called high art with animal behavior; by placing his sculptures in an orangutan cage, within the documentary video for his Balancing Act installation.”
– Sharon Hayes: There’s so much I want to say to you
at Whitney Museum, New York (21 Jun – 9 Sep 2012)
“Sharon Hayes’ multi-layered installation covered an entire floor of the Whitney museum, to seamlessly blend protest footage and memorabilia spanning from the golden age of civil rights movements to the more recent Occupy Wall St phenomenon. A rare scene in the wake of the present bubbling art markets, this show brings to the fore a telling reminder that the struggles for the streets to be heard by policy-makers are far from over.”
M-KOS (Miwa Kojima) | Montreal | m-kos.net
Managing editor, M-KOS
– Rineke Dijkstra
at Guggenheim Museum, NY (29 Jun – 8 Oct 2012)
“In her series of video portraits of children, adolescents and young adults, Dijkstra manages to capture both their vulnerability and strength, awkwardness and comfort, familiarity and distance. It was a powerful and magnetic show.”
– Lara Favaretto, Just Knocked Out
at MoMA PS1, NY (3 May – 10 Sept 2012) Curator: Peter Eleey
“Favaretto’s mid-career survey show was interactive, playful and whimsical, as well it contained underlying elements of tragic and cynical narrative. A thoroughly enjoyable show.”
– Ecstatic Alphabet/Heap of Language
at MoMA, NY (6 May – 27 Aug 2012) Curators: Laura Hoptman, Eleonore Hugendubel
“From Dada to contemporary works, the exhibition bridged the gaps between art, design, in addition to language; words and texts visually materialized to create new entities with the same alphabet.”
– Art Histories
at VOX Centre of Contemporary Image, Montreal (16 Mar – 19 May 2012)
Curator: Marie-Josée Jean
“Artists take on art history as a subject matter, re-examining the official version and trying to re-write an alternative, suggesting a new approach to the historical recording of art.”
– Chronicles of a Disppearance
at DHC/ART (19 Jan – 13 May 2012) Curator: John Zeppetelli
“The exhibition was provocative and unsettling yet aesthetically powerful and compelling – I was irresistibly intrigued.”
Image credit from thr top left: Anette Messager, installation view, La Triennale “Intense Proximité”, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Photo: André Morin; MASK (played by Houda Echouafni) giving orders to the aliens. Credit: Piercing Brightness by Shezad Dawood. Production Still, 2011. Courtesy of UBIK Productions Ltd. Photo: Richard Harrowing; Sharon Hayes: There’s so much I want to say to you, Installation view at Whitney Museum, 2012; Phillip Parreno, June 8, 1968, film still, 2009 © Phillip Parreno; Geoffrey Farmer, Leaves of Grass, 2012 at Documenta 13. Photo: Ralph Orlowski/Reuters; Jonas Mekas, Jonas Mekas
As I was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty 2000. 16mm film © Jonas Mekas; Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978. Courtesy MoMA, NY. © Cindy Sherman; Lara Favaretto, Just Knocked Out, installation view at MoMA PS1, 2012. Photo:Matthew Septimus © MoMA PS1; Cynthia Girard, Victoire sur la barricade, detail. © Cynthia Girard; Nicholas Baier, Vanité, 2012. Detail. Courtesy Galerie René Blouin. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay; Carlos Reygadas, Revolution – This Is My Kingdom, 2009. Film still. © Carlos Reygadas; Christian Marclay, The Clock, 2010. video still. © Christian Marclay; Erin Shirreff, Monograph (no. 1) (detail), 2011. Six archival pigment prints. Courtesy Lisa Cooley, NY © Erin Shirreff; Simon Patterson, Under Cartel, installation view at Haunch of Venison, London, UK. Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison; Michelle Deignan, Journey to an Absolute Vantage Point, 2011. Film Still. Courtesy the artist and Maria Stenfors; Jeremy Deller, Joy in People banner (made by Ed Hall). Photographed in London, November 9, 2011, by Linda Nylind; Masakatsu Kondo, Rooted Blue Boat, 2008. Courtesy the artist and All Visual Arts; Aneta Grzeszykowska, Headache, 2008. Courtesy the artist; Nils Karsten, Hard Position Standing Up Hands Too, 2011. Courtesy the artist and Churner and Churner; Atsuko Tanaka, Electric Dress, 1956 (refabricated in 1986) courtesy Takamatsu City Museum, Japan; Vadim FiÅ¡kin, Tower (detail), projection, eraser, 2012. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Gregor Podnar; Rineke Dijkstra, Hilton Head Island, S.C., USA, June 24, 1992 (1992) Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery