Marianna Simnett
Hyena and Swan in the Midst of Sexual Congress
2019
Silk, velvet, wool, pewter, glass, steel, toy stuffing and polystyrene
230 × 150 × 230 cm
Installation view
Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ
Photo credit: Tim Bowditch

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH MARIANNA SIMNETT

cloaca
clack clack
lackaday
clever clit
pseudo-dick
androgens
estrogens
and her
great bust
thrusting
and her
velvet coat
shimmering
and her
silver teeth
glistening
psycho screams
passed
between
two queens

Sarah Faux
Sleeping Arrangements
2019
Oil on canvas
80 x 70 inches
Courtesy of the artist and M+B
Photo credit: Brad Farwell

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH SARAH FAUX

How to avoid painting a face:

Paint the head turned away.
Just paint a different body part.
Cut the body off at the shoulders.
Cut it off at the legs too, make it seem more natural, so it’s not just the head missing.

A torso can be a face.
A face can be a landscape.
Throw an arm over that face.
Draw a cartoon face where the face should be.
Only paint shadows.
Leave it blank.

Alice Tippit
Dress
2019
Oil on canvas
18 x 22 inches
Photo credit: Evan Jenkins

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ALICE TIPPIT

I often think about the physicality of a painting as akin to that of a seashell. Both are composed of layers of thin liquid that hardens with time. Consider the Xenophoridae, a class of sea snail that attaches objects, mostly other shells, to its own at regular intervals. The effect is not unlike a crown, with spikes that are unappealing to predators. Paintings have no such need to deter. Instead they extend an invitation, though what you’ll get out of it depends on what you bring with you. The attachments are of our own making.

Giovanni Kronenberg
Untitled
2019
Starfish, 22 k gold leaf
Courtesy the artist, Renata Fabbri Arte Contemporanea, Milan and Z2o Sara Zanin gallery, Rome
Photo credits: Cosimo Filippini

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH GIOVANNI KRONENBERG

The problem is preventing art from becoming a promotion for anything other than its own surprising existence. The problem is to keep it indigestible as long as possible, to delay its use as a critical formulation. The problem is to leave art alone, to slow down its transmutation into rhetoric. Art aimed to break categories bus it finds itself establishing new ones quickly. Art is transformed into argumentation. It gets tamed, it loses its potential for disorientation; it reprojects us towards certainty, it reinforces certainty.

Sarah Faux
Sleeping Arrangements
2019
Oil on canvas
80 x 70 inches
Courtesy of the artist and M+B
Photo credit: Brad Farwell

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH SARAH FAUX

How to avoid painting a face:

Paint the head turned away.
Just paint a different body part.
Cut the body off at the shoulders.
Cut it off at the legs too, make it seem more natural, so it’s not just the head missing.

A torso can be a face.
A face can be a landscape.
Throw an arm over that face.
Draw a cartoon face where the face should be.
Only paint shadows.
Leave it blank.

Violet Dennison
Chapter Four: Disappointment
2019
Installation view, Kunstverein Freiburg
Courtesy of Kunstverein Freiburg and the artist
Photo credit: Marc Doradzillo

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH VIOLET DENNISON

The sculpture “Disappointment Epilogue” (2019) is an open vessel. Its knotted structure has been created by translating my memoir into a binary code. The sculpture functions as both a cipher and the actualization of the artist. It is a liberated notion of body where the copy exists as aura.

Beyond the sculpture is the work “Divination 2” (2019). This piece transmits encrypted audio, via data-over-sound technology, through a network of iPhone Loudspeakers. The content of the audio is a divination of the artist life by a spiritual medium.

Noel McKenna
Road by Sea
2019
Oil on plywood
42 x 44 cm
Courtesy the artist and
mother’s tankstation Dublin | London

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH NOEL MCKENNA

The painting is about where the land meets the sea which as a location lends itself to drama but not always. In Road by Sea the sea is flat, road is empty. I enjoy looking at the sea, but do not enjoy being in or on it that much.
The painting went through many stages, alterations, a sail boat was once on the horizon, a directional sign on the road and a bicycle rider once on the road.

Chernobyl “Lava” – stream called “Elephant Foot”
1990
Source: Khlopin Radium Institute

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH VEIT LAURENT KURZ

Ghosts

The ghosts I see are of a different Nature.

Its not the imprint of a passed away spirit

Of human or animal

Its the gathering of particles

into Invisible shapes and bodies.

Those bodies find life through my thoughts

They come of a sudden

and leave when they decide.

I am told they are inventions

But they are logic

Universal logic.

I feel their traces, existents of various kind.

I communicate through my fear,

And Protect myself through repetition.

At the beginning the ghosts were nostalgic

until they morphed into nature

Turned into milk, mushroom or dairy

they abandoned those

and turned into universal matter

molecules of each kind

New ghosts were created

and met with fear

Maya Zack
Black and White Rule
HD video, 17:45 min
2011
Courtesy the artist and
Marie-Laure Fleisch Gallery, Brussels

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH MAYA ZACK

The video Black and White Rule by Artist Maya Zack is the 2nd part of her Memory-Trilogy. It deals with the human attempt to impose order and form onto reality through training and discipline procedures.
On an oversized chess-board two poodle dogs submit to the orders of their trainer while through the use of a Camera-Obscura their actions are being monitored and registered by a clerk in her office located alongside the chess-board. At a certain moment the orderly routine is disrupted…
Black and White Rule is a visual experience and a homage to the art of drawing.

Dafna Maimon
Video still and dialogue from “Indigestibles: And Then There’s Today / Can Us Hear Us”
4K Video and immersive installation
2020
Courtesy of the artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH DAFNA MAIMON

The protagonist is watching a nonstop report on the death of the last orangutan. She is also upset about having had to get up twice from the couch to answer the phone, both times to her mother calling by accident. Her fridge is stocked full with processed meats that she devours all day with no pause, while her intestines send up S.O.S. burps containing the following urgent messages:

us don’t understand us? do us understand us?
can us hear us?
uh, us.. let us tell us.. that, us like us..
hello? hi. hi?
can us stop us?