Is it possible to grasp a large-scale group exhibition based on a single artwork? This is the question posed by curator and critic Julia Moritz in her series of experimental reviews titled “Pick a Piece.” To Moritz, responding to the mushrooming of mega-exhibitions with the sturdy format of the art review means radical choice: to (en)counter the explosion of exhibitions with the implosion of inspection, with the selection of just one piece – this time from this summer’s art fairs and biennials in Basel, Palermo, and Berlin.

In April, the Kunstmuseum Basel opened its new building. More recently, the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur followed suit, and in Zürich construction on the extension of the Kunsthaus is well underway. These building projects suggest long-term confidence in publicly funded art museums. But what understanding of “public” is conveyed here? An inspection in Basel.

It has been a long time since as many people took to the streets in the cause of feminism as did for the Women’s March on Washington. Protesters wore the hand-knitted pussyhats in such large numbers that they colored the crowds pink. The hats became a striking visual signature feature of the protest against the Trump administration. They stand for a feminism that has majority appeal, albeit with questionable references.

In digitized, interconnected, post- and trans-human times, judgment becomes ‘justment.’ Once online, criticism diffuses into the channels of the social networks, it is commented on, ironized, parodied, corrected. Individual criticism has turned into dividual criticism. A response to Engaged Art Criticism — 7 Propositions by Ines Kleesattel and Pablo Müller.

On February 13, an anonymous petition called for the reinstatement of Beatrix Ruf as director of the Stedelijk Museum. The petition comes at a time when further investigations into the affair have not yet yielded any results that could shed some light on the current level of autonomy of public institutions in general—an issue that, in fact, begs debate.

In his long-term artistic project Theatrum Botanicum, Uriel Orlow considers plants as actors on a political stage: protagonists of colonial trade, flower diplomacy, or bio-piracy. As such, they serve as a prism through which environmental colonial history can be re-negotiated. Theatrum Botanicum can be read as an attempt to decolonize both, history and nature. And for decolonizing nature, it is crucial how plants are considered as acting and living beings. If they tell stories about colonialism, how are they brought to speak?

It is an odd interview alright that Barbara Preisig conducted on Brand-New-Life with Mareike Dittmer in light of the fact that Frieze d/e is being discontinued—odd above all, because Barbara Preisig all too politely failed to ask the co-publisher of Frieze d/e, who was long responsible mainly for selling advertising space, the most obvious question: whether there are, perhaps, also economic reasons for the discontinuation after a five-year, seemingly successful operation.

After a five-year run, the magazine Frieze d/e will be discontinued. As a result of this, the German-speaking world is losing an influential art critical voice. Barbara Preisig talked to Mareike Dittmer, co-publisher of Frieze d/e, about Frieze’s consequential decision to from now on confine itself to English-language reporting.

For the past five years the paintings of Vittorio Brodmann have relied on a commitment to small-scale canvases and surrealistic animated figuration. In his first major institutional solo, Water Under the Bridge, Brodmann keeps the latter while adding monumentality to the scale of his artistic ambitions. It’s an invigorating and generous slam dunk, breaking open new and exciting avenues for his work.

The wave of protests brought about by the Black Lives Matter movement, coming after the lockdown imposed by the spread of the coronavirus, invites a comparison between this political and epidemical moment and the context that prevailed in the late 1980s, when AIDS was causing so much death in Western countries. The art and activism of the period have been thoroughly revisited over the past few years by art institutions. In the following text, I have freely adapted the disidentification methodology of the American artist Bradley Kronz to navigate recent works, exhibitions, and institutional trends. The aim is to create ...

A small field, roughly 1760 miles as the crow flies from Zürich, in Shindisi, a village in Georgia. This is where the Tbilisi 16 project took place on September 1–4, 2016. “Extra muros”! — this is how the website of the Kunsthalle Zürich announced Tbilisi 16 during its occupation by Manifesta 11 What People Do For Money. Away from the institution, away from capital, “off to hear, see and feel what people do for no money…!”

“Criticality” is important in the art world, maybe even indispensable. “Criticism”, not so much. The days in which a Clement Greenberg could canonize or curse an artist’s career are long gone. Could it be that it’s time for journals to go back to publishing anonymous criticism?