THE ARTISTS’ ARTISTS
Twenty-three artists reflect on 2021
To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select a single exhibition or event that most memorably caught their attention in 2021.
ANNA UDDENBERG
H. R. Giger and Mire Lee (Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin)
South Korean artist Mire Lee’s sculptures—corporeal entities made from a system of tubes that pump viscous liquids colored a sickening shade of Kardashian “nude”—appear as though they are on permanent life support. Her objects are on display alongside H. R. Giger’s hypersexualized 2- and 3D depictions of alien beings, seemingly primed to simultaneously kill and fuck with their arched backs and sinewy bodies. (In fact, Giger’s extraterrestrials make me think of the surgically enhanced Croatian beauty blogger Neven Ciganovic, who aspires to look like a male Bratz doll.) Putting these artists together, as curator Agnes Gryczkowska did for this presentation, was a stroke of dark genius. In an age when swarmbots are ruling the internet and algorithms determine social norms, this exhibition feels more like a rendering of today than a sci-fi imagining of tomorrow.
