Issue 171
May 2015

The May issue of frieze is out now, with a focus on international artists participating in the 56th Venice Biennale—including features on Simon Denny, Joan Jonas, Sarah Lucas, Olaf Nicolai and Danh Vo.

Also featuring: Co-editor Jörg Heiser traces relationships across time and place in the work of our cover artist, Danh Vo; how artists are collapsing the contemporary and archaeological to offer fresh political insights; Olaf Nicolai talks about his new work for the roof of the German pavilion in Venice.

From this issue

Q. What do you like the look of? A. The everyday world: grand and microscopic.

BY Joan Jonas |

The complicated idea of ‘home’

BY Dan Fox |

The fate of postwar murals in the UK

BY Brian Dillon |

Creating and contesting categories

BY Lynne Tillman |

What the case against Luc Tuymans reveals about the difference between US and EU copyright law

BY Daniel McClean |

Change is in the air at the city’s institutions

BY Eleanor Clayton |

Novelist Sarah Hall talks to Sarah Lucas about sculpture, sexual politics and representing Britain at the Venice Biennale

On the ruptures and restlessness of much contemporary art, and how this is reflected in the 56th Venice Biennale

BY Kaelen Wilson-Goldie |

Travis Jeppesen considers disruption and ambivalence in the work of Simon Denny, in the run-up to the artist’s major project for the Venice Biennale

BY Travis Jeppesen |

How a sense of the local shapes art in the US

BY Jennifer Kabat |

Connections across time and place in the work of Danh Vo

BY Jörg Heiser |

Imagining a world without humans

BY Ed Schad |

Rediscovering the late, great philosopher Henri Lefebvre, whose ideas are increasingly relevant to contemporary life

BY Timotheus Vermeulen |

From stick insects to rhombuses: working between the organic and the geometric

BY Sergio Delgado Moya |

Dominikus Müller talks to Olaf Nicolai about place, subjectivity and the artist’s project for the German pavilion in Venice

Spoken-word recordings can offer a liberating alternative, audibly melting text from the permafrost of print 

Design, architecture and optimism in postcolonial Africa

BY Sean O'Toole |

The personal process of exhibition-making

BY Isobel Harbison |

Revisiting Berlin Alexanderplatz on the 70th anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s birth

BY Tal Sterngast |

‘So shallow is this show that I left with the surprising sensation of knowing even less about Björk than I did when I entered’

BY Dan Fox |

Wiels, Brussel, Belgium

Budapest, Hungary

BY William Corwin |

Bortolami Gallery, New York, USA

BY Scott Roben |

Galerie Lelong, New York, USA

BY Ara H. Merjian |

Bureau, New York, USA

BY Orit Gat |

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, USA

BY Carmen Winant |

Human Resources, Los Angeles, USA

BY Evan Moffitt |

1301PE, Los Angeles, USA

BY Jonathan Griffin |

Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China

BY Francesca Tarocco |

Various venues, Kyoto, Japan

BY Christy Lange |

West Space, Melbourne, Australia

BY Sophie Knezic |

Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland, New Zealand

BY Anthony Byrt |

Żak | Branicka, Berlin, Germany

BY Keren Goldberg |

In his latest work, the artist unravels the complexity of identity within the art world 

 

BY Kirsty Bell |

Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria

BY Ben Eastham |

CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux

BY Max Andrews |

Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary

BY Chris Fite-Wassilak |

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

BY Vivian Sky Rehberg |

Malmö Konsthall, Sweden

BY Pablo Larios |

Francesca Minini, Milan, Italy

BY Federica Bueti |

the Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK

BY Luke Healey |

Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK

BY Matthew McLean |

Massimo de Carlo, London, UK

BY Alice Butler |

Campoli Presti, London, UK

BY Jonathan P. Watts |

Evelyn Yard, London, UK

David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK

BY Matthew McLean |