Spike / 80

ISSUE 80 (SUMMER 2024): The State of the Arts

 

A sense of major flux is spreading in the art world – and not only among its pessimists. Under pressure from reactionary politics and its own “now more than ever” imperatives, so much in art is transforming: criticism into a flashy rubber stamp; art schools into trauma industries; fairs into 3D-PDFs; museums into everything for everybody; and art-making into a moral protocol. 

 

Some artists are responding by dropping out, going Web3, or protesting genocide; a few are launching their own galleries or wellness brands; plenty are still just painting painting painting.

 

This issue is point of reference so that the next time we go off road, we can find a way back to our last clear perspective – a bit jaded, a little dizzy, but faithful as ever that artists are finding our way forward.

 

With Travis Diehl on riskless art; Domenick Ammirati on getting ahead by getting hot; Anna Kornbluh on culture as pure vibe; Daniel Baumann on the impossibility of succeeding as a curator; an interview with painter and gallerist Jamian Juliano-Villani; Aodhan Madden on the trash girl art of Maggie Lee, Ser Serpas & K8 Hardy; Jaakko Pallasvuo and Kristian Vistrup Madsen talk trying (and failing) to drop out of the art world; a guide to decentralized social media; Marina Abramović’s secret to longevity; a postcard from Riyadh; Nicolas Bourriaud on this year’s Venice Biennale; and so much more.

 

____

 

Founded by the artist Rita Vitorelli in 2004, Spike is a bilingual English/German contemporary art magazine, online platform and event space. The flagship print magazine Spike Art Quarterly is aimed at sustaining a vigorous, independent and meaningful art criticism. Essays by leading critics and curators are complemented by other formats offering room for polemics, meditations, and short answers to urgent questions. Published four times a year, Spike offers its readers both intimacy and immediacy through an unusually open editorial approach that is not afraid of controversy and provocation.