With references that can be traced across diverse cultural contexts, from Disney to advertising to techno, the work of Berlin-based artist Michel Majerus was a monument to millennium aesthetics. His über-influential “painting in the expanded field” was post Internet in its essence—describing a world of visual overload, mass surveillance, and exponentially accelerating commodification.
Since they started out in 1968, celebrated artist duo Gilbert & George have situated themselves “outside,” challenging taboos and moralism in the art world and society alike. Here, they talk to pro skater and multi-hyphenate Blondey McCoy about Britishness, religion, the monarchy, happiness, drugs, gentrification, and how to stay normal and weird.
During the pandemic, legendary photographer Nan Goldin has done what she does best—turning to her personal life to make timeless, intimate portraits. As she did for over three decades, from 1972 to 2010, to pay homage to her transgender friends—photographing them daily to celebrate their courage, “gender euphoria,” and possibilities of transcendence.
Self-described as a “collaboration hound,” composer Fatima Al Qadiri is associated with Gulf Futurism, art collective DIS, fashion brand Telfar, and filmmaker Mati Diop. Having just released a new solo album which stems from an adolescent medieval fantasy, she talks about meshing ancient and modern sounds, melancholy as a space for spiritual growth, and unattainable romance.
Inspired by Edouard Glissant’s archipelagic thinking, Hans Ulrich Obrist has spent decades doing studio visits and interviews and “learning from artists.” In the past year, the epitome of the globetrotting curator has learnt from the pandemic how to keep doing just that without traveling at all, by prioritizing research and a decentralized approach.
As new exhibitions in the US prompt the opportunity to revisit his work and legacy, Mail Art pioneer Ray Johnson is unpacked from a new, more intimate perspective. Behind the obsessive notes scrawled on letters and postcards, what emerges is every artist’s eternal paradox—one between existential struggle and social anxiety, creative urgency and the desire to be seen.
Arguably the most innovative music producer to ever emerge out of Jamaica, Swiss-based cultural pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry invented the genre and methodology of dub, turning the studio into an instrument. In his musical legacy, eccentric persona, and visionary art, we experience a journey through outer and inner space, nature, and the complexities of the Afrodiasporic experience.
In his seminal 1967 book, French philosopher Paul Virilio documented the WW2 fortifications of the Atlantikwall, laying on the French coast like colossal fossils. Ominously resonant with present-day wall-building delusions, these surreal relics of war provide here the backdrop to interrogate the technical challenges of a dystopian future, as imagined by Virgil Abloh in the LV 2054 collection.
More concerned with reality than art world dynamics, Peter Sutherland makes largely autobiographical work around his life, family, peers, and travel. After twenty years in New York, during lockdown he decided to leave the city and move back to his native Colorado—resulting in a body of work brimming with nature, punctuated by hikes, camping, bike rides, and goat searching.
After decades of military history, camouflage was ironically borrowed by Vietnam War protesters and rebelliously worn by '90s youth tribes. Over time, it lost not only its mimetic functionality but also the countercultural cachet attached to it, becoming an increasingly amorphous, infuriatingly ambiguous floating signifier—equally sported by Hello Kitty tote bags, Andy Warhol paintings, and RNA rallies. A brief history of the quintessential pattern of outdoor clothing, from warfare to detournement to nonsense.
Feeling that city spaces were exclusionary and oppressive, New York artist Sean Vegezzi turned his attention to alternate geographies. After a decade-long engagement with a cavernous underground space, his recent explorations of NYC waterways reveal the city as a suppressed natural environment, with the specter of the security state lurking in the background.
An artist who makes a point of working outdoors, Tommy Malekoff favors field trips over studio visits. Departing from divine landscapes and monumental objects, he shifts the focus on shopping malls and parking lots—a celebration of the mundane, as he discusses with legendary architect James Wines, exploring nature’s revenge with a Gothic undertone.
In May 2021, Spazio Maiocchi reopens its doors with an exhibition and book by American artist and photographer Peter Sutherland, curated by KALEIDOSCOPE and supported by Carhartt WIP and Slam Jam.
Fueled by paranoia and the myth of self-actualization, a splurge of doomsday-prepping cults has emerged from the ashes of ’70s counterculture. Now, as the seduction of dystopia continues to spiral into apocalyptic narratives, a collection of unique garments designed by LA artist Sterling Ruby provides the inspiration to paint a picture of nihilistic survivalism.
Understanding the “outdoors” as a scalable term far beyond bucolic landscapes, AMO’s director Samir Bantal discusses their research into alternative farming practices in a post-pandemic landscape—stemming from the countryside to explore the relationship between nature and technology, ecological knowledge and ownership, corporate environmentalism and the future of space travel.
With the great outdoors increasingly becoming a place of respite away from fast-paced consumer behaviors, a burgeoning techwear industry caters to anyone from athletes to minimalist millennials. Instigated by Slam Jam’s angle on outdoor lifestyles, this visual essay brings together image bank Organiclab.zip and radical encyclopaedia General_Index—as we look into the phenomenon’s motives, perks and shortcomings.
Having survived the excess and voyeurism of New York’s last pre-Internet graduating class, Dan Colen continues to make work commenting the commercialism in the art world. In the last decade, in search of a way to engage with what’s happening in the universe, he created Sky High Farm—a communal place beyond cynicism, proposing a new relationship to food justice.
Asociated with Gulf Futurism, a movement of artists commenting on the accelerationist state of the Arabian Peninsula, Monira Al Qadiri creates work that addresses the tension between natural ecosystems and high technologies. Scored by her sister Fatima, her new video installation is set in the alien landscape of the Oman desert, chasing meteors, pearls and petroleum.
As we learn more about human DNA, how trees and plants function, and ecological failure, emerging knowledge about fungi is upsetting notions of consciousness and communication—suggesting a parallel with technological networks. The latest bible of mushroom lovers, Merlin Sheldrake’s debut book spills out of biology into philosophy, medicine, food, and psychedelics.
As legalization ushers in the corporatization of the marijuana industry, from PotCoin to NASDAQ-listed stocks, frictionless delivery services bring a variety of strains to your doorstep. The new big business co-opts stoner culture and refers to the product exclusively as “cannabis,” in an effort to foreground its medicinal qualities and sweep an ugly history of discrimination under the rug. But will the plant’s healing properties outdo even greed?
While she grew up, her family’s clothing line advertised itself as “Proudly Nigerian.” Mindful of that heritage, MOWALOLA has been advancing a fluid representation of the Black body, championing the individual. Now, she wants to destroy everything and start fresh—because when there’s destruction, there’s something new being rebuilt.
In the mid-1960s, the Swiss-born, Arizona-based artist began repeating the same painting over and over again—a provocation to the bourgeois ideal of the creative genius. Arriving in the US when postmodernism and Neo-Expressionism were all the rage, he cultivated his taste for abstraction and an interest in biker culture, anchoring his paintings in the reality of the street.
Four newly-commissioned essays by Caroline Busta, Taylore Scarabelli, Geoffrey Mak and Pierce Myers, offer four perspectives on influence as legacy, currency and agency—all the while examining art’s own influence on society, and vice versa.
A trained graphic designer, avid reader and incessant Internet consumer, coming from a long line of “psychotic tall women,” the Croatian artist plucks language from different sources into books, posters, videos and performances. Her main tool, her voice, is a bottomless pit of ephemeral possibilities—manifesting her need to connect, overcome shame and make mistakes.
Compositional, sculptural, performative and active, the American artist’s photographs emerge from a desire to connect to the prosaic and the everyday, juggling ideas of intimacy, fantasy and imperfection. In his latest book, hundreds of images of his mom, Kathleen McCain Engman, destabilize the idea of “mother,” lifting her from the baggage of the real.
Perfectly post-Fordist and multidisciplinary, the creative director is an emblem of our current cultural industry, balancing commercial and artistic spheres. This Venice Beach native—working for the Kardashian-West clan and Lady Gaga while launching his own brand—has left a distinct fingerprint on American pop aesthetics: a meditation on fame, glamour and mythology.
In February-March 2021, KALEIDOSCOPE and Farfetch team up to present a digital activation around the Off-White™ "Imaginary TV" live event in Milan, with exclusive KALEIDOSCOPE-created social content.
Afterimage is Spazio Maiocchi's new online platform dedicated to moving image works that leave a lasting impression.
What’s the red thread between the 1989 Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, the extras’ rebellion at the Cinecittà Studios in the ’50s, a Black Friday event, and social distancing measures? In his latest cycle of works, the German artist and filmmaker examines the power structures in group dynamics, social behavior, surveillance and mass manipulation.
The Italian composer who invented “pointillistic trance” owes the label of “Deconstructed Club Music” for putting him on the map amid an international network of experimental artists. Now, as he picks up his first love for photography through a collaboration with Californian artist John Divola, his newly launched album continues to vandalize the genre’s tradition.
