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2 months ago | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
In the age of AI deep fakes and disinformation, dissecting the context and influence of image production is more important than ever. ‘Typologien’, at Fondazione Prada, offers an inquisitive, non-hierarchical reading of 20th century German photography to highlight the similarities with and differences from our contemporary worldview. The exhibition assembles more than 600 photographs by 25 artists who examined nature and architecture, human presence and absence.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
In a contemporary culture undergirded by maximalism, the powerful symbolism of a modest object can easily be underestimated. Yet, even a simple depiction of a flute, a religious uniform or a facial outline can hold multiple meanings.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova |Cassie Packard |Lou Selfridge
In a year when AI has become an increasingly present part of our day-to-day lives, it’s no surprise that artists have been making use of technology to think about human experience: at Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, Rindon Johnson’s avatar swims across a body of water which changes in response to live weather data, whilst Ian Cheng’s exhibition at Gladstone Gallery in Seoul saw the artist present two unnerving AI-driven videos.
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Oct 27, 2024 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
A figure crouches between two vehicles in the evening dusk, her pale blue trousers rolled down to her knees, flip-flopped feet planted firmly on the ground. She doesn’t meet my gaze, yet I remain entranced by her silken blonde hair, which cascades down her shoulders towards the floor, curtaining a golden puddle so bright it becomes the primary light source in this urban snapshot.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
Part of the Curated by festival in Vienna, ‘Play It as It Lays’ toys with our desire for solace and escape from an increasingly uncertain world. Taking its title from Joan Didion’s 1970 bestseller, which traces 31-year-old actress Maria Wyeth’s descent into madness amid the existentialist ennui of the 1960s, the exhibition features a range of artists whose practices grapple with the ramifications of a hyper-capitalist society.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
Undergirding ‘Woe and Awe’, Agnes Scherer’s first solo show at Sadie Coles HQ, is an unfailing devotion to spectacle. Replete with angelic tales of genesis, whimsical puppets and their overzealous masters, the exhibition relishes in the panache of performance while also gesturing towards the often-hidden institutional mechanisms that determine who is allowed to produce art and how. In the multimedia installation tbc (all works 2024), a mammoth folio spreads its cardboard pages before us.
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Mar 3, 2024 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
Widely praised for her translations of Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft’s debut novel, The Extinction of Irena Rey (2024), is not for the faint of heart. Steeped in literary theory, meta-narratives and a plot filled with illusory staircases and ghostly doors that lead to nowhere, it operates in the enticing purgatory of autofiction.
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Dec 27, 2023 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
Even when we dare to meet their gaze, the women in Claudette Johnson’s monumental paintings – brought to life in fluid layers of vibrant gouache, pastel and acrylic set against abstract, often monochrome backgrounds – remain seemingly indifferent to our attention. The artist’s first monographic show in a major London institution, ‘Presence’ opens with a modest but impressive selection of Johnson’s early works, documenting her rise as a groundbreaking artist in the 1980s.
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Dec 11, 2023 | 
frieze.com | Andrew Durbin |Ivana Cholakova |Marko Gluhaich |Vanessa Peterson
Andrew Durbin, editor-in-chiefI loved Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station, which was published in English in 2020. Full of ghostly evocations of the past, it points towards a worrying future of climate crisis and displacement, and a disembodied time. So, I was thrilled by the publication of her latest novel, The End of August (2023), which develops these themes further in an epic family story of the Japanese colonization of Korea.
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Oct 23, 2023 | 
frieze.com | Ivana Cholakova
On a damp and dour morning in London last week, I met with American painter Anthony Cudahy for a lively discussion about his latest body of work, ‘Double Spar’, a dual exhibition at GRIMM and Hales Gallery, marking the artist’s first solo project in the UK.
