Reviews in Brief | Frankfurt

Yuki Kishino
1822 - Forum Gallery // November 10—December 19
On my first visit to this show I left immediately, as I thought they were still installing. The space is empty indeed, but its minimalist adjacent frame structures deserve a closer look. The young Japanese artist (who studies at the celebrated Städelschule) based the structure of his frames on the programming term of the logical OR operator, which is used to create logical expressions in which only one of the two values has to be true for the overall expression to be valid. The architectural and conceptual signature of his professor Peter Fischli is omnipresent, but Kishino’s career will stand on it's own.

Ade Darmawan
Portikus // September 19—November 15
The work of Ade Darmawan and his artist collective ruangrupa is closely entwined with the political, cultural, and social issues present in contemporary Indonesia. “Magic Centre” focuses on an Indonesian publisher from the 1960s by the same name. Its books, with titles such as Hipnotism Praktis, about practical hypnotism, or Menik Mati, about enjoying life fully, promised to enhance the reader’s intellectual abilities in a time when Indonesian politics were marked by nationalism and the development of capitalism. This colorful patchwork of a show, with the titles presented in glass vitrines and the walls showcasing picturesque paddy-images and banners depicting reproductions without text, is a visual and critical survey in ode to a country in transformation where form and color prevail.

William Forsythe
MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst // October 10—January 31
Around 200 pendulums hang from the ceiling and swing slowly in a rhythmic, almost meditative state. Forsythe, a choreographer who produces site-specific installations for dancers to interact with, has made an environment where ideas and experiences are prioritized over authorship or ego. Here, he enters into a dialogue, about the boundaries of the body and art, engaging with pieces from the collection by the likes of Bruce Nauman, Gregor Schneider and Teresa Margolles. Forsythe’s work offers a way of thinking: a medium with which to shape, analyze and transform existing contexts.

Published in Modern Painters #February 2016