33 guide 14-20 Oct 2017 exhibitions
Alfredo Jaar nr Wakefi eld
Born in Santiago de Chile and
based in New York, a trained
magician and architect, Alfredo
Jaar is the artist our current
tensions ask for, and deserve. At
a time of information overload
and compassion fatigue, Jaar
upholds the contention that
pictures are never innocent, that
the images we tirelessly share
reinforce partial world views.
A metal bunker-like viewing
theatre focuses attention on
the plight of victims of the 1993
Sudanese famine. There is also
the monumental installationThe Sound of Silence, which
features a photograph taken by
Kevin Carter a year before the
photographer killed himself.
Outside the Underground Gallery,
the specially planted woodland
of The Garden of Good and Evil is
punctuated by sculptural replicas
of CIA “black site” steel-walled
detention cells. Jaar infiltrates
the fake news/true news mix-up
with art that is convincingly,
powerfully and even poetically
subtle. Robert Clark
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Sat to
15 AprShonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness Belfast
Artist-curator John Walter
sets the lo-fi scene with his
Shonky Bar, a garish Day-Glo
installation that you are advised
to avoid with a hangover.
There is documentation of
architectural duo Arakawa
and Gins’s higgledy-piggledy
postmodernism: sloping floors,
doors going nowhere, that kind
of thing. Andrew Logan’s statues
of Divine and Molly Parkin add
further to the suspicion that
the shonky aesthetic is another
name for kitsch, but puffed-
up cuddlies for overgrownkids from Cosima von Bonin
and the US painter Louise
Fishman’s bold abstractions
hint at the potential of art that
is good precisely because it is so
deceptively unsophisticated and
unashamedly ungainly. RC
The MAC, Fri to 14 JanOpening this week
What a curious case
Amedeo Modigliani is.
His portraits of Paris’s
bohemians, artists and
outsiders, estranged and
elegant with mask faces
and swan necks, have
long been recognisable
and beloved, breaking
art market records at
auction. Yet his only
exhibition – of nudes
whose body hair shocked
the copper living
opposite – was closed
by the police in 1917.
He died penniless, from
tuberculosis, at the
age of 35. In part, our
fascination with him is
as much to do with his
uproarious, tragic life.
He epitomised the
highs and lows of the
stereotypical wild and
ultimately doomed
Romantic artist: an
opium and hashish
addict who loved
many women and whose
fi nal young, heavily
pregnant lover Jeanne
Hébuterne killed herself
after his death. The
forthcoming Modigliani
(Tate Modern, SE1,
23 Nov to 2 Apr) will
emphasise his creative
circle with portraits of
friends such as Pablo
Picasso and Diego Rivera.
The bit that’s certain to
have galleries packed,
though, is his 12 nudes,
including the ones that
once made a policeman
blush. Skye SherwinBooking now