Xavier Hufkens presents its inaugural exhibition with the influential American artist Sherrie Levine. As one of the artists who are most often cited in relation to appropriation art, it has to be recognized this category is too narrow to contain all that Levine’s work achieves. The more it is looked at, the more depth and complexity her practice yields.
When a sardine can look back, when a piece of stone starts smiling at you, when a mute idol starts to speak, that is the moment when the object suddenly appears as something uncanny and transforms into something else, revealing it’s non-objectifiable depth, as W.J.T. Mitchell writes in his book ‘What Do Pictures Want?
The exhibition of Italian artist, curator and organiser operating also under the label 63rd-77th STEPS, opens up the theme of social origin in a resolute, but undogmatic way. Abstracted from cheap decorations typical for Southern Italy‘s lower classes, and often related to rituals dividing life between everyday misery and times of celebration, this iconography constitutes traditional gender and family roles, duties as well as vanishing privileges. Santacroce’s installation is an aestheticizing portrait, both critical and empathetic, underlining a certain sense of sentimentality and vulnerability, but always escaping romanticisation. Santacroce’s work is filled with working class ethos but also a certain courteous nihilism.
Bodies of Water exhibition departs from the work of posthumanist feminist thinker Astrida Neimanis, of which it takes the name and critical perspective. It features the works of geographer Sofia Gavrilova and artists Giovanni Vetere, and Maaike Anne Stevens curated by Sasha Burkhanova-Khabadze. The exhibition is proudly hosted by EXPOSED ARTS PROJECTS, a new art organisation in Kensington, set up to exhibit, promote and support the research-led artistic and curatorial practices.
Page 232 of 239