What I Loved Most from My Week in Los Angeles

2018 is almost done and I am writing from Belgium right now, where I am spending what remains of the year with my wife’s family. Around this time one usually goes for the best nine Instagram posts but I chose to sum up my recent trip to L.A. with a personal list of what I…

“Our future is a skeleton.” A conversation with Jan Fabre ahead of the “Glass and Bone Sculptures 1977-2017” exhibition in Venice

It took Jan Fabre over 40 years to conceive what I was about to see in April at the Abbey of San Gregorio in Venice. The Belgian artist’s fascination for the themes of metamorphosis, life and death is well documented, and on this specific occasion, a collateral event of the 57th International Art Exhibition –…

Christian Boltanski at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum

[Scroll down for the Italian version] Typhoons can be quite persuasive and at some point you have to give up. While the aftermath of a tropical storm was hitting Tokyo just as I was visiting the city last September, partially ruining my plans, I had to think of alternative indoors activities. If you have been…

CosmoGRAFIES

[Scroll down for the Italian version] I have always thought that there is a difference between being an artist and making art for a living. Each of us can create art and take the time we need to craft our skills when we’re off from work. But make a living out of art, and by…

The Man Who Bears the Cross

There is a peculiar contradiction at the heart of Belgian artist Jan Fabre‘s latest project, ‘The Man Who Bears the Cross’. As a reflection on the relationship between heaven and earth, it is first of all an intimate dialogue within the self and an unspeakable dimension. But being an installation hosted in the Cathedral of…

“Marco Lusini: The Colours of the Human Soul” Opens Tomorrow at Fiumano Fine Art Gallery

What immediately strikes you while going through Italian artist Marco Lusini’s biography (1936-1989), are the many art forms he experimented with before finding his ideal medium, painting. Photography, lithography, illustration, black ink drawing, not to mention sculpture and poetry, were all fertile ground in which the Siena-born “astronaut of inner space”, as Riccardo Belloni defined…

Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime

It’s cool, free, and the closest experience to a proper crime scene investigation that you can (legally) get. A few years ago, when I was researching the impact of death in the media for my Ph.D. project, Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime would have been a gold mine, given the fact that it provides really…

Joan Miró: “The Creative Impulse” Exhibition

Let’s face reality: your child does not draw like a conceptual artist or an abstract painter. Usually it’s the other way round: artists can replicate the childlike way of drawing. I say this because I was recently visiting a non-figurative exhibition and I heard the same old comment from a parent, pronounced with a dismissive…

In the Middle of Everything: Dennis Hopper and “The Lost Album”

An American photojournalist gone insane in the middle of the jungle, waiting for the crew of a boat with arms wide open: to me this character from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is still the most iconic among those Dennis Hopper portrayed onscreen. Coincidentally or not, besides being a director and a painter, the actor…

Gordon Parks’ “American History”, or Why Style Can’t Be Taught

Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Ingrid Bergman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Gould, Paul Newman: some of the most iconic portraits of celebrities, artists and human rights activists of the 20th century were taken by a self-taught photographer born into poverty and segregation in Kansas. Gordon Parks (1912-2006) is probably the most important African American photographer in the…

How Many Digital Revolutions? The Hottest Exhibition on Tech and Creativity at Barbican Centre Is the Right Place to Get the Answer

Videogames, interactive documentaries, VFX: whether you are a media archaeologist, a nostalgic lover of game consoles from the 1980s, a curious investigator of wearable technologies or a fan of the latest hi-tech blockbuster, there is only one place to be in London this summer: the Barbican Centre, home until 14 September to the Digital Revolution…

Does Future of Journalism Lie in Immersive Virtual Reality Experiences? A Close Look at “Project Syria”

Living conditions in a refugee camp or in a street devastated by a bomb sound abstract to the majority of us. What if technology allowed people to experience these scenarios in an immersive environment, reproducing real events through actual audio, video and photographs taken at the scene? Nonny de la Peña calls this technology-driven opportunity…

Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat

“In another time I guess I would have been content with filming girls and cats. But you don’t choose your time.” Chris Marker Judging by some of the works displayed at his first UK retrospective, not to mention the title of the exhibition itself, Chris Marker really loved felines. I think the French artist and…

Pink Is the Colour of War. Photographer Richard Mosse Documents the Congolese Conflict With Troubling Poetic Shade

When we’re asked about a colour to describe war, we hardly find ourselves thinking of bright pink. Yet this is the palette that Irish photographer Richard Mosse has chosen to describe the cycle of violence in Congo. His work on the topic is well known to the international public, at least since his exhibition The Enclave at the 2013…