Issue 106
April 2007

In the April issue of frieze, Martin Herbert is captivated by the work of Paola Pivi, an artist who uses art as an experiential playground.

Steven Stern is intrigued by Dana Schutzs paintings, which use diverse subject matter to explore what it means to be a painter.

Tom Morton looks back at the career of Stephen Willats, who, since the 1960s, has explored social networks and systems of community, while The Otolith Group reflects on the work of the Black Audio Film Collective, whose collaborative films, essays and slide-tape texts opened up new space in British art, film and theory through the 1980s and 1990s.

In other features, Melissa Gronlund discusses the evocative films, photographs and installations of artist Matthew Buckingham, and Lars Bang Larsen investigates the art worlds current fascination in the occult. 

From this issue

Writing reviews is a complex business

BY Tom Morton |

On being an American in Europe

From photographing every house in America, to putting every book online, complete databases are all the rage

BY George Pendle |

What’s with the art world’s fascination with ‘bad boys’?

BY Nancy Spector |

Bamako, a new film from Mali, stages a fictitious trial of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

An interview with Raimundas Malašauskas about the TV show programmed by the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

BY Aaron Schuster |

In an ongoing series, frieze asks artists and filmmakers to list the movies that have influenced their practice

From logs to light-fittings, leopards, cream and alligators, Milan-born artist Paola Pivi uses art as an experiential playground

Occult art has come a long way since the manipulation of photographic plates and painters responding to supposed dictates from the spirit world. Many contemporary artists are turning to the unseen to evoke a sense of historical space

Matthew Buckingham’s films, photographs and installations explore the present by examining representations of – and subjects from – the past

Since the early 1960s, Stephen Willats has investigated the idea of art as something that might motivate people to renegotiate their perceptions of reality

Referencing such wildly disparate subjects as Google, ‘self-eating’, headless dogs and imaginary births, Dana Schutz examines what it means to be a painter

From 1982 until 1998 the Black Audio Film Collective’s essays, films and ‘slide-tape texts’ opened up a new aesthetic and discursive space within the worlds of British art, experimental film, television and critical theory. A new exhibition celebrates their achievements

BY The Otolith Group |

Mark Wallinger lives and works in London. His solo show ‘State Britain’ at Tate Britain runs until August 2007. This year he will also have solo shows at Kunstverein Braunschweig and Donald Young Gallery, Chicago. His work is also included in Muenster Sculpture Projects.

Big business, sculpture and the machinations of cultural production

BY Andrew Bonacina |

Disparate models; abstraction and mysticism, curiosity and scepticism

BY Peter Eleey |

Careers, critics, money and music