EDITOR’S LETTER

This issue raises several questions with which contemporary artists are struggling, all revolving around the effective potential of art, its relationship to truth and illusion, and the extent to which its efficacy is simply a matter of faith. Drawing inspiration from very different sources and working with individual attitudes, the featured artists point to art’s ability to look at things in a different way, to tell stories that could otherwise be told. They examine the possibility of art to see through conventional notions, opening unexpected perspectives, bringing energy to things while reactivating situations.

In the cover story Tauba Auerbach talks about the inspiration that can come from science and physics, and how her questions about what might be the “grain of space” – the universe smallest unit – leads into an investigation of human perception. Sharing her views on science, consciousness and faith, she also explains the importance of mistakes and failure, as well as her idea of beauty which “involves some level of discomfort and ugliness.”

Mario Garcia Torres in conversation with Aram Moshayedi reveals the premises on which his first US survey “Illusion Brought Me Here” is grounded, questioning the boundaries between present and past, memory and truth, reality and fiction. With Anne Ellegood, Kevin Beasley retraces the experience – and its almost spiritual development – that led to his exhibition project at the Whitney Museum, which digs deeply into American history by way of his personal biography. Jesse Darling talks about figures such as Saint Jerome, Batman and Icarus to discuss epistemologies, beliefs and empirical truth, as well as how “certain forms of institutional study are just as unwieldy as faith objects.” In a conversation with Victoria Sung, Theaster Gates analyzes his complex and multifaceted practice, while Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti surveys Hito Steyerl’s production and its intertwining critique of reality, fiction and politics. Judy Chicago describes the transition from minimalist abstraction to figuration and her commitment to sustain the central role of women in the cultural debate. Choghakate Kazarian questions the ambiguity and contemporaneity of Balthus, while Ben Eastham examines the sculpture of Alina Szapocznikow and how it anticipates contemporary debates around the body and identity, the personal and the political.

This issue also features a focus on Arte Povera master Mario Merz, a conversation between LA artist Alex Israel and Frieze LA executive director Bettina Korek, interviews with artist Marianna Simnett and influential art dealer Chantal Crousel, a photo essay on Jonas Wood, and an artist project by New York-based Trisha Baga, inspired by her recent International Space Station. Lastly, we test the boundaries of design with Metahaven and its intersection with other practices in Formafantasma, whose collaborative approach challenges the limitations of design and the “excess of faith in what it can achieve independently.”