Mark Rappolt

2 weeks ago | artreview.com | Mark Rappolt

While not without its flaws, this is brave writing that demands to be readOver the past two decades, Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra has positioned himself as one of the key thinkers in reimagining our world through the lens of decolonisation.

1 month ago | artreview.com | Mark Rappolt

The tenor of current cultural and critical exchanges among South Asian and Gulf countries points to the contortions required of those who would correct art historyIt was all going along so nicely. Just a bunch of people from London and Gulf-based American museums telling a rapt audience in Colombo about how they were going to make South Asian art great again. Until someone in the crowd declared that the Gulf is where South Asians “go to die”. And the talking stopped.

1 month ago | artreview.com | Mark Rappolt

How Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Nameless explores the convergence between the construction of identity and the fabrication of historyA quick look at a still from Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Nameless (2015) will tell you that its subject is one of Hong Kong’s most celebrated actors, Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Indeed, Ho’s film includes extracts from the greater part of the actor’s distinguished cinematic career, from A City of Sadness (1988) to The Grandmaster (2015).

1 month ago | artreview.com | Mark Rappolt

DANCING WITH ALL at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa toys with a tension between what’s ‘real’ and what’s artificeThere’s a moment, midway through this exhibition, when you’re looking at a video of a male eight-eyed Maratus jumping spider, so colourful it looks like it was designed by an artist, performing a dance designed to attract a mate. Against a stark white backdrop, it makes it seem that it is always and already in a gallery, like a work of art, a performance piece.

Jan 15, 2025 | artreview.com | Byung-Chul Han |Daniel Steuer. Polity |Mark Rappolt

The philosopher’s latest book – translated into English and illustrated by Anselm Kiefer – moves, surprisingly, into a more positive gear for our timesBurnout, depression, ADHD – not to mention the various ways in which we voluntarily enslave ourselves to capitalist culture by believing that we need, above all else, to be creative, productive citizens, all of the time: Byung-Chul Han’s reflections on these subjects have made him one of the most popular philosophers of the current era.