Issue 163
May 2014

In the May issue of frieze: Colin Chinnery charts the ingenious career of Xu Zhen and his cultural production organization, MadeIn Company and Paloma Varga Weisz discusses the evolution of her pictorial language, from her father’s illustrations of Jean Cocteau’s poetry to Lucas Cranach, Giorgio de Chirico and Gerhard Merz.

Also featured: Dan Fox visits Michael Smith in New York, as the master of tragicomedy prepares for his first UK solo show at Glasgow’s Tramway. Accompanying a specially commissioned project by the artist, Alice Butler explores the work of Cally Spooner to discover how new media is making performers of us all. On the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death, Simon Fisher Turner talks about composing the music for his films. 

From this issue

Q. What should stay the same? A. A moratorium on gentrification would be good.

BY Julie Ault | 05 DEC 14

303 Gallery, New York, USA

BY Brienne Walsh | 01 MAY 14

What makes a war story true?

BY Christy Lange | 01 MAY 14

The myth of the ‘Great American Novel’

BY Lynne Tillman | 01 MAY 14

Can art survive a civil war?

BY Kaelen Wilson-Goldie | 01 MAY 14

Africa’s first mega-museum to open in Cape Town

BY Sean O'Toole | 01 MAY 14

Jordan Wolfson discusses his influences

BY Jordan Wolfson | 01 MAY 14

Combustion and digestion in Matthew Barney’s latest work

BY Ross Simonini | 01 MAY 14

Why so many musicians are discouraging the use of smartphones at shows

BY Damon Krukowski | 01 MAY 14

Radical filmmaking at the Sensory Ethnography Lab

BY Agnieszka Gratza | 01 MAY 14

Re-evaluating modernist housing at Tensta Konsthall

BY Mark Fisher | 01 MAY 14

Machiavellian scheming and political drama

BY Timotheus Vermeulen | 01 MAY 14

Two recent publications examine conflict and collaboration in public art projects

BY David Crowley | 01 MAY 14

From her father’s illustrations of Jean Cocteau’s poetry to Lucas Cranach, Giorgio de Chirico and Gerhard Merz, the German artist discusses the evolution of her pictorial language and Jennifer Higgie responds to her ‘heart-breaking hallucinations’

BY Jennifer Higgie | 01 MAY 14

On the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death, Paul Schütze speaks to Simon Fisher Turner about composing music for his friend’s movies

BY Paul Schütze AND Simon Fisher Turner | 30 APR 14

Ken Okiishi: painting in the age of Instagram

BY David Everitt Howe | 29 APR 14

Home and where the heart is

BY Joseph Akel | 29 APR 14

Puncturing fantasies: exhausted images and the ‘me’ generation

BY Nathaniel Budzinski | 29 APR 14

Xu Zhen and his cultural production organization, MadeIn Company

Chinese Translation

BY Colin Siyuan Chinnery | 28 APR 14

Dan Fox talks to Michael Smith about minimalism, comedy and failure

BY Dan Fox | 23 APR 14

Cally Spooner’s work explores how technology and new media are making performers of us all

BY Alice Butler | 23 APR 14

The merging of politics, materials and metaphysics

BY Wes Hill | 23 APR 14

Films crafted from complexity, complicity and contradiction

BY Kirsty Bell | 23 APR 14

‘What does it mean to make queer art now?’ Paul Clinton asks artists and writers Catherine Lord, Carlos Motta, Charlotte Prodger, James Richards, Prem Sahib and A.L. Steiner to respond

23 APR 14

Luca Vitone and the contemporary Italian landscape

BY Barbara Casavecchia | 23 APR 14

The wonders of Croydon's Beaver Water World Zoological Gardens & Animal Rescue Centre

BY Aaron Angell | 22 APR 14