FAD Video: Samsung Art+ Prize at BFI Southbank

Here's a video I made for FAD at the opening of the Samsung Art+ Prize for new media artists at the BFI Southbank. I interviewed the curators and a few of the artists, including the eventual winner of the prize, Semiconductor. For more info on the prize and the nominees, see here.

(Originally published on FAD)

ArtSlant Review: Anschlüssel: London/Berlin at Centre for Recent Drawing

(Originally published on ArtSlant)

Most of us picked up a crayon to scribble before we could read or write. Whether we continue to draw or not, we’ve all experiences the primacy of that flow from brain, eye and hand into line onto a surface. Drawings are little windows into a person’s mind; as unique as a fingerprint, yet readable like a universal language.

 

C4RD’s new exhibition, Anschlüssel: London/Berlin, demonstrates how artists hailing from the artistic hotspots of London and Berlin (and, of course, within these cities from around the world) are interconnected by the practice of drawing in its various forms.

ArtSlant Review: Avner Ben-Gal at Sadie Coles

(Originally published on ArtSlant)

It’s a cruel world, according to Avner Ben-Gal. In his paintings and drawings the Israeli-born artist unveils an uncanny world of shaken-up dream logic in which human forms are melded with Swiss Army knives, faceless women appear in graphic anatomical detail, and figures both human and fantasy appear in confrontation with each other. It’s the bad dream that haunts our waking hours, the sinister side of life that we try to brush away.

Over two rooms, this exhibition at Sadie Coles takes in a selection of Ben-Gal’s drawings in blue pencil, graphite and black marker pen as well as a small selection of paintings. It’s fair to say that crudeness, in both the execution of the works and their unflinching themes and depiction of the human body, runs through all of the works.