Explore ArtReview’s selection of artists from around the world who are making work that will be setting the agenda in years to come
Welcome to the one issue of ArtReview in which the artists do all the work. What? Oh yes. Sure. What ArtReview means is that, of course, while they do ‘the work’ normally – the work as in the stuff that ArtReview critics write about – they don’t do all of the labour that goes into the magazine. The criticising bit. But for this issue they do. Most of it anyway. Or something like that. So welcome to Future Greats.
But – hey – it’s also the time of year (the beginning of one – whether it’s a lunar or calendar version; ArtReview’s partial to the Gregorian, but that might be a result of conditioning and the language of publishing schedules) when one’s supposed to be looking to the future, what with having recently got rid of the past. Although obviously that’s just an illusion. Or a convention. The past never leaves us. Ever. Even once you’ve tossed last year’s calendar in the trash. And while ArtReview’s at it, perhaps the real point, besides the work and the looking forward, is that convention is, in a way, the one thing in which this issue is uninterested. At least that’s what ArtReview likes to think. In the interests of newness. Of futurology. Of progress. Whatever that is.
So, yeah, for this issue ArtReview invited a bunch of artists and writers you’ve probably heard of to nominate artists that you likely haven’t heard of who are worthy of our (that’s ArtReview and you – we’re in this together) attention. But haven’t got it as yet. The attention, that is. It’s a list of artists who are inspiring other artists, or of work that will be setting agendas in the years to come. An invitation to pay attention to something you didn’t know you should be paying attention to. Even though paying attention is the duty of every art lover all of the time.
Of course, there’s no way this Future Greats stuff is a science. There’s no formula for success (there’d be no need for ArtReview or any other magazine then, and where’s the fun in that?); but neither is it completely a gut feeling. At least ArtReview believes that if you ask people who are doing interesting things about interesting things, there’s a chance you might be speaking to their sphere of expertise. After all, the whole art business (not literally the business side of art, mind you, the art thing) is about a willingness to let yourself be engaged. To enter another person’s or nonperson’s way (gotta be careful these days) of thinking and being. To be taken someplace else. To dump your shit and wallow in someone else’s.
So, in the pages that follow you’ll meet people who grow plants in their tear ducts. People who tip glasses of milk off staircases that double-up as hats. Two-headed hermaphrodites. Tigers hanging out on hook-up apps. Hedge-witch nostalgia. People who make things that you might never consciously describe as artworks, that might not even be artworks, but that cause you to dwell on the question of what an artwork might actually be. Or what you think it should be.
Future Greats 2023
Renan Marcondes, selected by Ana Mazzei
Ava Woo Kaufman, selected by Buck Ellison
Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, selected by Pierre Huyghe
Mayank Austen Soofi, selected by Dayanita Singh
Hyogen no Genba Chosadan, selected by Koki Tanaka
Esteban Jefferson, selected by Martin Herbert
Sun Kuixing, selected by Lu Yang
Sofya Shpurova, selected by Aaron Angell
Mataio Austin Dean, selected by Larry Achiampong
Eimear Walshe, selected by Chris Fite-Wassilak
Tanis S’eiltin, selected by Wendy Red Star
Ingrid Hora, selected by Bani Abidi
Julieta Gil, selected by Casey Reas
Ana María Gómez López, selected by Shen Xin
Natasha Tontey, selected by Adeline Chia
