Julien Creuzet’s polymorphous installations consist of sculptures, sound, and video work, whose content is culled from the artist’s biography. Creuzet grew up between France and the Caribbean island of Martinique, which is also the birthplace of the scholars Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant, who the artist references as a major source of intellectual inspiration. Engaged with the embodied experience of the African-diaspora and the resistance of form, Creuzet’s work has been the subject of presentations at LUMA Arles, Camden Art Centre, Palais de Tokyo, and – most recently – a solo exhibition at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. Mark Pieterson spoke with the artist on Zoom to talk about his practice, the value of opacity, and the importance of resisting interpretive violence.

Mit ihrer Videoinstallation UNICA erteilt Anja Kirschner der linearen Verbindung von Vergangenheit und Zukunft ebenso eine Absage, wie der Individualität des Subjekts. Schon in früheren Arbeiten dehnte die Künstlerin und Filmemacherin die Grenzen von Körper, Raum und Zeit, zuletzt in ihrem (Horror-)Spielfilm Moderation. In ihrer jüngsten Ausstellung bedient sich Kirschner einer Bildsprache, die zwischen analogen und digitalen Medien oszilliert. Dabei bindet sie ihre Narration nicht an eine Chronologie, sondern an historische wie virtuelle Orte. Die Kunstwissenschaftlerin Steph Holl-Trieu verhandelt in ihrem Text, wie Kirschner mittels eines komplexen Geflechts aus visuellen und literarischen Referenzen ein neues Menschenbild entwirft.

Representations of sunsets abound both in the arts and on social media. Charged with symbolic as well as emotional meaning, these images recall the concept of the Jungian archetype, which has been criticized for reducing and romanticizing complex realities into something simple and collectively agreeable. Not least due to their archetypal allure, sunsets are trending on Instagram, where their presence is boosted by algorithms. Orit Gat looks into the popular postcard motif and its multimedia applications for the latest iteration of our “Current Attractions” column, which expands on the theme of our current issue, “Resortization.”

Both the inversion of gender norms and the drastically exaggerated performance of those norms have the potential for subversion, as a recent show at Human Resources in LA demonstrates. While Casey Kauffmann’s digital collages revolve around media representations of hyperbolic "femininity," John de Leon Martin’s installation investigates queerness through speculative scenarios and monstrous figurations from the realm of fantastic imaginations. Art historian Susanne Huber analyzes the juxtaposition of these two positions, which differ greatly in their materiality yet share the aesthetic of an abundant compilation of fragments.

Freudian theory continues to be a productive, ever-present reference for artists and art historians alike. A recent exhibition at the Lower Belvedere presented the psychoanalyst’s work once again – this time in relation to Salvador Dalí. Jaime Brihuega Sierra curated the Surrealist’s art in chronological order, highlighting its borrowings and reworkings from Freud’s theories. In their close examination of the show, Lisa Moravec and Hong Zeiss address the art historical references accentuated by Margula Architects’ distinctive exhibition design. According to the authors, the show coincided with a surge of interest in Surrealist art and reconfirmed Freud’s central role in Austria’s cultural industry.

With the release of our new issue, our “Current Attractions” column enters the second phase. For the first iteration that picks up on the issue’s theme of “Resortization,” writer and novelist Stephanie LaCava has chosen Terry Allen’s country ballad “Truckload of Art” as a point of departure. Follow her on a short journey, on which Allen’s truck becomes a vehicle for reflections on the long distances art often travels, on cultural bubbles, on dueling art scenes, and on corresponding battles.

The gallery space is never just an empty void that functions merely to display works of art independent of its visitors. At Merlin Carpenter’s recent exhibition in Cologne, visitors are initially denied viewing the paintings at eye level and thus grow increasingly aware of their corporeal relationality. The painter Valentina Liernur walks us through the latest of Carpenter’s so-called Room Based exhibitions and reflects on how the show’s eventful vernissage relates to the mode of signification in his work. In her own practice, Liernur explores the physical qualities of materials in her paintings, be it oil on canvas or on less conventional surfaces like denim. Much like Carpenter’s, her work relies on the potentials of seriality.

Big, shiny sculptures of bellicose men – emperors, kings, or confederate soldiers – on the back of vigorous stallions are a fixture of the urban environment. A performance by the Swedish duo Byström Källblad that was part of this year’s Tanz im August, Berlin’s international festival for contemporary dance, was determined to challenge this monumental male supremacy through artistic horse play by female dancers in Berlin’s reconstructed historical Mitte. However, as the art historian Jules Pelta Feldman argues, the choreography of City Horses did not so much reclaim a female presence in the contemporary cityscape through dance, but instead undermined the very logic of public monuments, drawing fresh attention to the question of who owns the city.