Trevor Paglen. Untitled (Reaper Drone), 2010. Chromogenic print; 48 x 60 inches. © Trevor Paglen.
Trevor Paglen and Jenny Holzer investigate government operations, Kimsooja installs a needle upstate, Thomas Hirschhorn responds to the questions “Does it function?,” and more in this week’s roundup.
- Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns—organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Scottsdale, AZ)—brings together thirteen artists, including Trevor Paglen and Jenny Holzer, whose works “directly address citizens’ constitutional rights and the vast expansion of federal power.” The exhibition takes 9/11 as its starting point. Closes January 11, 2015.
- Holzer has a new suite of paintings on view at Cheim & Read (New York, NY). The compositions are based on government documents that “trace the political fallout and human wreckage in the global war on terror.” Closes October 25. Poet Henri Cole has contributed an essay to the accompanying catalogue.
- Cao Fei’s exhibition Theatrical Mirror: Living Between the Real and the Unreal features eight of the artist’s videos spanning 2004–2013, including Haze and Fog, a “zombie movie” set in modern China. On view at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (Adelaide) through October 20.
- Kimsooja’s needle-shaped sculpture, A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir, is included in the 2014 Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial (Ithaca, NY). Installed throughout the Cornell campus, the biennial explores “the cultural and human consequences of seeing the world at the micro and macro levels, through nanoscience and networked communications.” Closes December 22.
- Robert Adams’s exhibition A Road Through Shore Pine, now at Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco, CA), presents eighteen new photographs that foreground the artist’s own relationship, as a traveler and an interloper, with northern Oregon’s Nehalem Bay State Park. Closes November 15.
- Thomas Hirschhorn talked to The Miami Rail about his installation Flamme Éternelle at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France). “Everybody comes in and asks me, ‘Does it function? Does your work work?’,” said the artist. “Since that is what they want, I say, ‘Yes, it functions,’ but actually, this is a place for non-satisfaction.”