Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail, an exhibition curated by ArtReview and ArtReview Asia, sponsored by Mercedes-Benz
Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail was an exhibition drawn from the 70-year archives of ArtReview and the six-year archives of ArtReview Asia, reflecting on the status of an art magazine as a site for invention as well as critique. Curated by ArtReview and ArtReview Asia, with the support of Modern Art Base, it was sponsored by Mercedes-Benz.
The exhibition centred on artist collaborations both inside and outside of the magazines’ pages, featuring artists such as Ming Wong, Heman Chong, Michael Lin, Superflex, Paul McCarthy, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elmgreen & Dragset, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Philippe Parreno, and extracts from ArtReview and ArtReview Asia’s extensive comic-strip publications.
13 images
The ground floor of MAB was configured as a domestic interior featuring Domestique (2017), a wallpaper work by Michael Lin produced for ArtReview Asia, offering visitors an opportunity to take a seat and engage with archive copies reflecting on 70 years of ArtReview and artist collaborations in the pages of the magazine, beginning in the very first issue, in 1949, and continuing through to the present day.
On the gallery’s first floor, between Heman Chong’s text installation, The Forer Effect (2008), and a performance video by Ming Wong and Alexander Geist, That Girl (2016), the diverse collaborations of both magazines unfold through their pages in the form of photography, comic strips, artist publications and interventions, commissioned covers, an extensive collaboration with Superflex and a series of tongue-in-cheek subscription advertisements. The exhibition offers the concept of an art magazine as balanced between reacting to the world around it and shaping it too.
Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail at Modern Art Base, Shanghai, 9 November 2019 – 29 February 2020
