To commemorate the year that was, we invited artists, designers, and thinkers across disciplines — from multimedia artist Ralph Lemon and photographer JoAnn Verburg to designer Martine Syms and musician Greg Tate — to share their most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects of 2013.
The last day of 2012 was also the last day of Matt Connors’ first solo museum exhibition, Impressionism at MoMA PS1. This momentum combined with his award-winning artist book A Bell is a Cup propelled him into 2013, a year when he participated in two important contemporary painting shows, Painter Painter at the Walker and Painting: A Love Story at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The focus on painting in both show titles might obscure the rich influences that go into Connors’ work, as assistant curator Eric Crosby noted in his introduction of Connors at a recent Walker talk: “He freely borrows structures and ideas from design, poetry, writing, music, and the history of painting; but his marks aren’t derivative in any way. They’re removed, distilled, and recontextualized so that a poetic sense of things borrowed or overheard pervades the work.”
Reflecting on 2013, Connors shares some of these ideas in a top-10 list focused almost exclusively on musicians, from King Krule to Richard Youngs, and exhibitions, from Michel Auder to Ettore Sottsass. The only exception is a bookstore — where he gets his ephemera.
Marlow Moss
Discovering the previously unknown to me work of Marlow Moss (1889–1958) at the group exhibition last summer at Tate St. Ives. A queer/transgendered constructivist/neo plasticist Mondrian protégé? YES.
Ettore Sottsass: Important Works from a Private Collection | Christie’s Private Sales
I stumbled upon this micro show because I found someone selling the catalog for it on eBay as I was conducting my daily Sottsass eBay search. I showed up on the opening day and received a private tour from the curator, who led me through an immaculate collection of ceramics, furniture, and printed ephemera from the collection of Sottsass’ wife. It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Franz Erhard Walther’s Die Modellierung des Innenraums Werkzeichnungen 1963–1974
Gigantic cluster of these strange and compelling ideagrammatic drawings that I stumbled upon after seeing a small flyer advertising it on a tram in Basel. This exhibition in a bank lobby (ah, Europe!) was maybe better than anything I saw at the entire Art Basel.
Mykki Blanco’s Instagram Feed
Essentially, GOOD VIBES.
Richard Youngs and Luke Fowler
Richard Youngs and Luke Fowler at Cafe Oto in London. I could just as well add Cafe Oto to the list, as their schedule will inevitably induce glee if I happen to be in London or anguish if I’m not. But the rare synchronicity that occurred in order to allow me to be in London when one one of my heroes, Richard Youngs, was playing could not be beat.
Mast Books
As I go through my receipts at tax time I inevitably come face to face with how important MAST BOOKS has become to me. Somehow or other my daily dog walks always end up bringing me here. Part of a larger, exciting trend that heralds the return of the independent book and record store (fingers crossed).
The Emergence of King Krule
King Krule: His unannounced secret appearance at Mercury Lounge to an audience of 40 or so, his super great takeover of RINSEFM, as we well as his album released this year, 6 Feet Beneath the Moon. Chops and swagger!
Arp’s More
More — an album that I find to be really undeniable, that felt like an instant classic on first listen — and “Golden Teacher” both burned serious holes in my brain this year.
Michel Auder at Kunsthalle Basel
I was already very familiar with Auder’s work as he was a teacher and became a friend, but knowing his work also means knowing that it is essentially inexhaustible, and this beautifully installed show felt like a succession of wormholes into the many different layers of this traveler’s past and future. I was obsessed with the exhibition design that finished in a dead-end, forcing visitors to reencounter, in reverse order, these multifaceted, durational pieces. Beautiful, gross, scary, embarrassing, sexy, stupid, fun, sad, joyous.
Trisha Donnelly at Eva Presenhuber
There was a video projected high up on the wall that consistently tricked my mind into thinking that it was actually a window, projecting daylight back into the space, and that somehow people were walking by outside despite the fact that we were on something like the fifth floor. Somehow I could not un-see it this way — even after finding the projector (I also continued to see this “image” in my head long after leaving the show). This belief inducing reversal seems to me somehow key in Trisha’s work and maybe in most artwork I respond to these days. Her reconstituting of the holdings of MOMA this same year will most likely end up on a lifetime top-ten list, but the experience of looking at it, and then afterwords, looking at the world through its/her lens, was an important event for me this year.
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