Adriano Pedrosa

This monumental new book explores the recent history of exhibition-making, looking at the radical shifts that have taken place in the practice of curating contemporary art over the last 20 years. Tracing a history of curating through its most innovative shows, renowned curator Jens Hoffmann selects the 50 key exhibitions that have most significantly shaped the practice of both artists and curators. Chosen from the plethora of exhibitions, biennials and art events that have sprung up across the world since the 1990s, each exhibition reviewed here has triggered profound changes in curatorial practice, and reanimated the potential of contemporary art. The book includes an international roster of curators, and exhibition venues that span the globe, from the USA, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey and Spain. It is comprised of nine themed sections, including: "New Lands" (on shows such as Magiciens de la Terre, The Short Century and After the Wall); "Biennial Years" (which documents influential biennials such as the Documentas [10, 11, 13] and the Berlin and São Paulo Biennials); "New Forms" (including experiments in exhibition-making such as Do It and NowHere); "Others Everywhere" (on ‘identity politics’ shows such as In a Different Light, Phantom Sightings and the 1993 Whitney Biennial); "Tomorrow’s Talents Today" (on influential group exhibitions of emerging artists such as Helter Skelter and Sensation); and "History" (on historical surveys such as Inside the Visible, Global Conceptualism and WACK!). A bold proposition for the future of exhibition culture as well as a means of making the recent past accessible, Show Time is essential reading for any student of curating or museum studies, for professional curators and for all those interested in one of today’s most dynamic forms of cultural production.

Jens Hoffmann is an exhibition maker and writer based in New York. He is Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and Public Programs at The Jewish Museum, New York. He has curated and co-curated a number of large-scale exhibitions, including the 2nd San Juan Triennial (2009), the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011) and the 9th Shanghai Biennial (2012).

The first retrospective monograph on internationally acclaimed Danish artist's collective Superflex, An Artist with 6 Legs catalogues the group's work from 1993 to 2013. The first major museum retrospective for this group--known for their participatory, politically engaged projects which they call "tools"--is appropriately unconventional, comprised of eight individual retrospectives curated by Eungie Joo, Yuko Hasegawa, Toke Lykkeberg, Daniel McClean and Lisa Rosendahl, Adriano Pedrosa, Agustín Pérez Rubio, Hilde Teerlinck and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Kunsthal Charlottenborg also signed a contract prohibiting the institution, the artists or the curators from mentioning the group by name during the exhibition's run--hence the replacement of the name "Superflex" with a black bar or the characters "XXXXXXX throughout the catalogue. An Artist with 6 Legs is both conceptual provocation and an essential reference.

It has become almost obligatory to introduce a book on curating by noting the plethora of recent publications on the subject. How, in just a few short years, did we reach this point of saturation? What questions, exactly, do all these books address? Many attempt to offer an overview of the curatorial field as it exists today, or attempt to map its historical trajectory. Others propose a series of case studies under a common curatorial theme. All are hoping to contribute to this relatively new discipline and its accompanying canon. Edited by Jens Hoffmann, Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating offers a real critique of existing publications and modes of thinking by explicitly asking the questions that others have missed, ignored or deemed already answered: What is a curator? What is the public? What is art? What about collecting? What is an exhibition? Why mediate art? What to do with the contemporary? What about responsibility? What is the process? How about pleasure? Here, Peter Eleey, Elena Filipovic, Juan A. Gaitán, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Maria Lind, Chus Martínez, Jessica Morgan, Adriano Pedrosa, João Ribas and Dieter Roelstraete each propose and then address one question. Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating takes a back-to-basics approach--a return to a kind of zero-degree state--at a time when a recalibration of what a curator is and does seems both necessary and urgent.

This is the first comprehensive monograph on the young Brazilian artist Marepe, who lives and works in Santo Antônio de Jesus in Bahia Province in northwestern Brazil. The cosmos of this location--Marepe's birthplace--provides the stimuli for his art. His works, exhibited worldwide at Biennale festivals and museums such as London's Tate Modern or Paris' Centre Pompidou, evolve from the region's history, the daily lives of its people and the creativity that helps them to survive. As Jens Hoffmann writes in his essay: "Marepe's world is fairly unique and his works of art are not just objects representing an idea or concept, they are witnesses of his life and the condensation of his experiences and his dreams. His interpretation of his surroundings is rendered into multifaceted, poetic and frequently beautiful works of art, which speak profoundly about some of the most relevant and even existential questions of our lives." Adriano Pedrosa analyzes the transformative impact of placing rows of water filters or replica market stalls in an art context. Statements, notes and poetry from the artist himself shed further light on the background of his pieces.