Greatest Piece of Art in the Last 20 Years
25 Tacita Dean
Antigone (2018)
Almost an 60 minutes long, Tacita Dean's film is a summation of her piece of work to appointment. Poet Anne Carson and actor Stephen Dillane move through the world on an imaginary solar day, as the sun is eclipsed. Set in multiple locations and weathers (Bodmin Moor, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming and Illinois), and with innovative technical manipulations (the entire film was edited in-camera), atmospheres and startling imagery, the whole matter is a delight. AS
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24 Andreas Gursky
Amazon (2016)
Andreas Gursky makes photographs but not every bit we know them. The scale of his composite digital images is vast, their detail hyperreal. He is the photographic artist of our fourth dimension, whether capturing the frenzied activity of the Chicago stock exchange or a painterly vista of the Rhine – a manipulated mural that does not exist in real life. The extraordinary Amazon offers a glimpse of a single twenty-four hours'southward orders stacked in a giant warehouse. A glimpse of the scale, if non the labour, of 21st-century global commerce. SOH
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23 Tanja Ostojić
Looking for a Husband with EU Passport (2000-05)
Built-in in the former Yugoslavia, Tanja Ostojić refuses to merits a nationality. In 2000, she advertised online – using a brutal, shaven-headed and naked photograph of herself – for a married man with an EU Passport. Somewhen she met and married a German language in a functioning in Belgrade. With him, she moved to Düsseldorf. Afterward, the couple celebrated their divorce. A prescient exploration of how human transactions are conducted online, and using European union law as an creative medium. AS
22 Steve McQueen
Illuminer (2001)
Lit only by the flickering light of a television programme well-nigh US navy seals deployed in Aghanistan, McQueen thrashes on his hotel bed, illuminated by violence, the soundtrack erupting with dissonance. His photographic camera, on acme of the telly, watches him struggling in the gloom. Little more than than a filmed sketch, a state of affairs grasped, Illuminer withal has everything, and is a lesson in existence able to make work anywhere, anytime. AS
21 Wolfgang Tillmans
Freischwimmer (2003-present)
Humans have made pictures for millennia – why go hung up on how they are fabricated? And then asks Wolfgang Tillmans. Soon after becoming the offset photographer to win the Turner prize in 2000, Tillmans started experimenting with picture-making that skipped camera, negative and subject, produced past exposing photographic paper to handheld low-cal sources in the darkroom. The Freischwimmer series has a cool liquid quality: vast prints apparently depicting tiny dots of coloured liquid tumbling and trailing through water. In fact they are images of nothing more their own product: oddly honest for an age in which you can seldom trust your eyes. HJ
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20 Tania Bruguera
Tatlin'south Whisper #v (2008)
Ii uniformed mounted policemen and their horses move among the audience, using crowd-command techniques. An exercise in power, this work is as much sculptural as it is a performance, or an equestrian ballet. The odor of the horses, their scale in a contained space, the often unspoken marshalling, the uncertainty of whether yous are audience or subject: the Cuban artist regards this 2008 performance as a vignette, merely it is so much more. Every bit
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19 Sarah Lucas
God Is Dad (2005)
A snaking cable, some small lightbulbs and a distorted, dangling pair of stake tights hang from a bent coathanger suspended by spindly wire from the ceiling. The pantyhose anxiety droop, midair. The lights are a sign of life. Whether hanged or floating, dangling or soaring, Lucas'south figure is full of desolation and humor, both miserable and transcendent. Her sense of materiality, and fragility, is pitch-perfect here. As
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18 Arthur Jafa
The White Album (2018)
Oneohtrix Betoken Never and Iggy Pop; CCTV footage of Dylann Roof calmly entering the Charleston church where he killed 9 worshippers; American drone strikes in Iraq and helicopter footage of a blackness man being beaten past cops during the 1992 LA riots; former redneck racist YouTuber Dixon White discussing white fear and guilt; and a immature woman tying herself in knots every bit she denies her ain racism … with its shocking juxtapositions, Arthur Jafa'south gut-wrenching montage deals in contradiction, a kind of call and response of dissimilar voices and different tempos. AS
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17 Ai Weiwei
Fairytale (2007)
Once upon a time, Beijing's mighty Prince of Protest was invited by the burghers of Kassel to brandish his art at a quinquennial exhibition thought the finest in any land. This prince, well versed in new philosophies, set aside painting and video fine art and decreed the exhibition a social laboratory. K and ane citizens of Communist china would travel by his side equally both audience and showroom. And the prince constructed a great dormitory, matching wheelie suitcases and coloured bracelets, that by these tokens the citizens of Kassel might know the citizens of Mainland china, and welcome them. And all lived happily ever afterward (apart from the Prince of Protestation, who was arrested four years afterwards and imprisoned for 81 days by his ain government). HJ
xvi Chris Ofili
The Upper Room (2002)
This cycle of xiv paintings, all based on an Andy Warhol sketch of a monkey, and assembled in a specially synthetic and lit room in collaboration with builder David Adjaye, was a breakthrough work for Chris Ofili. Tate's purchase of the work proved controversial, only information technology would probably have been split upward otherwise. With its drifts of glitter, its gorgeous color and detail, its sense of humour and elephant dung, it pointed the way to an expansive, immersive narrative approach Ofili has continued to develop. I was astonished. AS
xv Hito Steyerl
How Non to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013)
Starting with the basic, pressing question of how to evade surveillance in a world read through moving images, Hito Steyerl'due south influential video picks apart what it means to disappear. If surveillance feels grossly invasive, how do nosotros feel about the invisibility afforded to the vastly wealthy? What near the invisibility bestowed by a burqa, systemic discrimination, or extraordinary rendition? Shot on an abandoned satellite "resolution target" in the California desert, How Not to Be Seen is conceptually intense, but retains the daffiness of the Monty Python sketch that inspired it. An creative person and theorist both, Steyerl beguiles usa into contemplating uncomfortable questions with wit and charm. HJ
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fourteen Tino Sehgal
This Variation (2012)
"This variation, 2012" says a voice in a pitch-black room. Tino Sehgal's magnificent performance piece takes place in near total darkness. Performers stamp and sing, whisper, holler and trip the light fantastic toe. They go through little routines, songs and riffs equally the viewer stumbles among and between them. Sometimes there is a confrontation and sometimes unnerving quiet. Wildly exhilarating, This Variation concerns presence and presentness, and what it means to be a spectator. AS
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thirteen Susan Hiller
J Street Project (2002-05)
While living in Berlin, Susan Hiller travelled Deutschland, photographing and filming every street sign and location still prefixed by the discussion Juden (Jew), finding 303 Judenstrasses and Judengrasses. Birds sing, cars go by, people fold washing as she tramps back alleys and land lanes, city streets and unmade paths. Nothing happens in the film. It has already happened, in bucolic villages and urban center side-streets. The film lasts a long time, dwelling on the by's persistence in the present. The camera is unwavering every bit the world turns, oblivious. AS
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12 John Akomfrah
The Unfinished Conversation (2012)
A moving, cute, mournful and uplifting 3-channel portrait of the lives and times of Stuart Hall. Talent meets talent, words encounter images and postwar England meets its wisest cultural thinker in this wonderfully deft work. Using more than 800 hours of audio and Tv set fabric from Hall'south own archive, Akomfrah takes u.s. from Hall'south Jamaican childhood to a grey postwar London. Just the real concern is the malleability of identities, how we are formed and the countless job of reinventing ourselves. AS
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eleven Olafur Eliasson
The Weather Project (2003)
The lord's day indoors ... what'due south not to like? Eliasson's hallucinatory installation in the Tate Turbine Hall had people lying on the floor, mellowing out to his shimmering recreation of a Turneresque sky within the museum. He would exist very good at staging a Pink Floyd reunion. But in fact he is a very thoughtful artist, fascinated by colour, light and the frail state of nature. This unforgettable spectacle was the nigh over-the-top in a string of dazzling installations and interventions that have proved Elisasson 1 of the century'south nigh significant artists. JJ
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ten Gerhard Richter
September (2005)
Based on a photograph in Der Spiegel, Richter's small painting depicts the moment the 2nd passenger jet flew into the Twin Towers on eleven September 2001, consuming the edifice in a fireball. The painting is equally pocket-sized every bit the Boob tube screens people were glued to that day. The image is interrupted, near swiped abroad by paint, recognising the impossibility of comprehending the enormity of the moment. As
9 Yael Bartana
And Europe Volition Exist Stunned (2007-11)
Taking as its premise a call for more than three 1000000 Jews to return to Poland, land of their forefathers, to save the land from being only for "Shine Poles in Poland", Yael Bartana'south pic trilogy plays on and inverts nationalist sentiment, European union and onetime-manner Communist political party rhetoric, Zionist dreams, the holocaust and the Palestinian correct to render. With escalating irony, daze and pithy humour, Bartana takes on the world. AS
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viii Doris Salcedo
Shibboleth (2007)
Having been cutting into the floor of Tate Modernistic'south Turbine Hall, the Colombian artist's 2007 piece of work is still partly visible in the physical, like an one-time scar. It zigzagged down the ramp like a modest coulee, or the remains of an convulsion. Shibboleth evoked sectionalisation, a flaw. "It represents borders, the feel of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred," Salcedo said. "The space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space." How of our moment Shibboleth remains. AS
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7 Wael Shawky
Cabaret Crusades (2010-15)
Loosely inspired by Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf's The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky's moving picture trilogy is a bike of plotting and betrayal, slaughter and poetry. Using puppets – some extremely old, many made in clay or Murano drinking glass – Shawky delights, ravishes and informs at every plow. It is hard to keep upwardly with all the shenanigans betwixt Shia and Sunni, and the duplicitous divisions and squabbles of the Christian invaders, regarded past Arab commentators of the time as uncivilised barbarians. AS
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6 Christian Marclay
The Clock (2010)
Christian Marclay has described his 24-hour video montage equally an boundness, which is peradventure the artist's loss and our gain. But few volition have seen the entire work, with its approximately 12,000 movie house clips spanning its 24-hour entirety. A tour-de-strength of borrowed movie footage, The Clock is movie theatre'southward great timepiece, always synchronised to the real time wherever information technology is shown. Following the diurnal rhythms of everyday life, information technology is past turns perky, sexy, conspiratorial, manic, wearied and sullen. Knowing information technology is there is well-nigh enough. As
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five Teresa Margolles
What Else Could We Talk Almost? (2009)
In one case a 24-hour interval, a young human mopped the floors and steps of a Venetian Palazzo with rags soaked in the blood of victims of Mexican violence and murder. Teresa Margolles's Limpieza (Cleaning), part of her larger piece of work at the Mexico Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale, was both an everyday routine and a bleak response to both country and criminal violence. Both washing and sullying the floors, Limpieza was emphatic, unforgettable, tragic and tender. AS
iv Pussy Anarchism
Punk Prayer (2012)
In that location'south a lot of weak political fine art out there: sophisticated, modish, after-the-factish art that broadcasts liberal values to a liberal audience. Pussy Riot'south performance of Punk Prayer occupies the opposite pole: feminist, explicitly anti-Putin, protesting the banning of gay pride and the Orthodox church'southward support of the president. Staged by the brightly masked punk collective in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, it got members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina arrested and imprisoned. The after-epitome of their operation however lingers equally a powerful – and immaculately constructed – symbol of disobedience in the face of freedoms lost. HJ
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3 Pierre Huyghe
Untilled (2011-12)
Garden, wilderness, installation and operation, Pierre Huyghe'south work for Documenta in 2011 felt like an elegy for a dying world. Among peachy stands of nettles, strange plants of all descriptions flourished: nightshade and Afghan poppies, aphrodisiacs, poisons and psychotropic plants. In a immigration beside a pond sabbatum a statuary statue of a reclining woman whose head was a living nest of bees. Ii lithe greyhounds, 1 of whom had a leg that had been dyed pinkish, wandered about. "Alive things and inanimate things, made and not made," read Huyghe's description of this wondrous piece of work. Every bit
2 Jeremy Deller
The Battle of Orgreave (2001)
History isn't only written past the winners – it is too woven into magnificent battle tapestries for their baronial walls, and painted large and heroic on sheet for their palaces. In portraying a brutal clash between pickets and police in Southward Yorkshire during the miners' strikes in 1984-five, Deller instead chose to arroyo this horrifying confrontation from the field up. Battle of Orgreave, described by the artist as "a g-person crime re-enactment", was staged by 800 historical re-enacters and 200 former miners. For all of them, the event was in living retentivity. A monument of sorts, the performance was at once participatory ritual, spectacle, living archive and a infinite to mourn. HJ
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ane Ragnar Kjartansson
The Visitors (2012)
Filmed at Rokeby Farm, a grand battered firm once endemic past the Astor family in upstate New York, The Visitors is a nine-channel video in which the Icelandic artist and his friends, including members of Sigur Rós, sing and play a song whose lyrics were written by Kjartansson's ex-wife, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir. Ragnar understood her lyrics equally a commentary on what he calls the "common defeat" of their marriage. The music was co-written by Kjartansson and his frequent collaborator Davíð Þór Jónsson.
The artist'south friends play unlike parts of the same vocal, which repeats over and over, for more than an hour. A pair of twins play concertina and cello in different rooms – all the musicians were aural to one another through headphones. There are two pianists, a guitarist, drums. The Visitors is a alive performance, each musician visible on a dissimilar screen. Outside, at that place is a party on the porch, where the house's current occupants have in the early on evening. Captured in real fourth dimension, 1 evening at sunset, the music builds and dies and builds once again. The song repeats and develops, reaches fake crescendos and plateaus. Ragnar, in the bath, is nigh submerged in soap bubbles equally he sings, "Once over again I'm falling into my feminine ways." "At that place are stars exploding around you / And in that location is nothing / Nothing you can do," goes another refrain, in this idyllic aging retreat. You get sucked in.
You feel like a guest yourself in this marvellous, immersive multiscreen pic. The more oftentimes I see information technology, the more I come to inhabit its rooms. Why is information technology so compelling and, with its repetitions, so watchable multiple times? The fragility of friendship and honey, communality and miscommunication all accept a function here.
The title of the piece of work is taken from Abba'due south final album, when the ring were falling apart. The film'due south absurdities and longeurs, the light, and the concentration of all the performers and the repetition of the song is utterly compelling and hypnotic. Youthfulness and idealism feel like a fading dream in the evening's low-cal. The Visitors is a kind of extended farewell to romanticism, to which Ragnar is both drawn and deeply suspicious of. Writing this, I want to see The Visitors again, immediately. As
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/sep/17/the-best-visual-art-of-the-21st-century
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