Issue 7
Winter 2012

The Winter issue of frieze d/e features Édouard Glissant‘s final statement on Opacity – in the first English and German translations, taken from his last book of essays Philosophie de la Relation (Philosophy of the Relation, 2009).  

Curator and critic Ulrich Loock takes stock of Glissant’s legacy in contemporary art theories and practices.

Critic Jan Verwoert considers the implications of opacity for communication while tracing a history of art works that resist interpretation.

From this issue

In a show at Badischer Kunstverein, the artist emerges in the wake of feminist performance art pioneers with a different method

BY Jörg Scheller |

Andreas Slominski has turned traps into sculptures, jokes into performances and, most recently, Polystyrene into paintings. Despite almost three decades of work, Slominski’s art remains based on absence.

BY Dominikus Müller |

Should difference be hidden or visible?

BY Jennifer Allen |

Galerie Crone

BY Astrid Mania |

Jessica Warboys works with film, painting, sculpture and stained glass. But her main medium may be our ability to recognize resemblances

BY Philipp Ekardt |

In this new series, frieze d/e invites an artist to talk about their working process. Swiss artist Peter Regli gets the ball rolling.

BY Peter Regli |

Today the choice between ‘opacity’ and ‘transparency’ has become the subject of increasing critical engagement in the realms of both contemporary art and politics. Should art works reveal their cultural origins and references or should they hide them? Do political claims still depend upon making identities visible?

In his last collection of essays Philosophie de la Relation (Philosophy of the Relation, 2009), the late Martiniquan writer and poet Édouard Glissant presented his final statement on opacity. A response to the text by the critic and curator Ulrich Loock.

BY Ulrich Loock |

How Berlin’s Times Bar became a legend in no time at all

BY Ulrich Gutmair |

How sophisticated is popular culture? A new book by Nadja Geer tries to find out

BY Thomas Hübener |

Kölnischer Kunstverein

BY Timotheus Vermeulen |

How does Édouard Glissant’s demand for opacity translate into art? Jan Verwoert explores opacity as a model for open communication – and outlines a history, which runs from Lygia Clark’s sculptures to Trisha Donnelly’s enigmatic films

BY Jan Verwoert |

The artist rebuilds a former cabaret theatre at Gartenstraße 6, Berlin, into a labyrinth of dust and spotlight, in his new workshop space that saw (platform for a performance in two parts)

BY Cara Cotner |

Korpys/Löffler document the rituals of political power that take place, not behind the scenes, but in plain sight

BY Christy Lange |

Hauser & Wirth

BY Max Glauner |

Posters, pots and fingerprints

BY Burkhard Meltzer |

How Rainald Goetz turned his new novel into a performance piece

BY Jan Kedves |

In this regular series, frieze d/e picks out favourites from the ebb and flow of culture

BY frieze d/e |

Deserts, ideologies and relics

BY Quinn Latimer |

In this regular series, we ask artists, curators and writers to think about the meaning and impact of a word – however dreaded it may be …

BY Gabriela Jiga-Boy |

In this regular series, frieze d/e asks artists, curators and writers to think about the meaning and impact of a word – however dreaded it may be .

BY Thilo Knott |

Kunsthaus Dresden

BY Sarah Alberti |

Mathew Gallery

BY Timo Feldhaus |

50 years of Fluxus in Wiesbaden: How collector Michael Berger turned the movement’s ‘anti-art’ philosophy into museums for toilets and tat

BY Jörg Scheller |

Smoking, kissing and storing data

BY Thibaut de Ruyter |

Kunstverein in Hamburg

BY Jens Asthoff |

Surveying recent exhibitions, Kito Nedo considers the history of the carpet as an artistic medium

BY Kito Nedo |

Verschiedene Orte, Berlin & Kunstverein Arnsberg

BY Kolja Reichert |

In her videos and installations, Gitte Villesen uses simple methods to create compelling biographical portraits

BY Melanie Ohnemus |

The private photographs of Siegfried and Lili Kracauer

BY Maria Zinfert |

‘When it fills up at the end of the week, you think, “Okay, I have done something!”’

BY Lawrence Weiner |

Galerie Tanja Wagner

BY Göksu Kunak |