Parkett No. 77: Trisha Donnelly, Carsten Holler, Rudolf Stingel

Parkett's explorations of important international contemporary artists by acclaimed writers and critics continues in Volume 77, which features Trisha Donnelly, Carsten Holler and Rudolf Stingel. Donnelly's videos, sound pieces, photographs and pencil drawings all possess a cunning Jasper Johnsian precision, blending whimsy, restraint and a certain preternatural gamesmanship, while her "live" interventions, rarely witnessed by others in real life, have a way of spreading into culture like folklore. Carsten Holler was a scientist prior to becoming an artist, and his work reflects the duality of both fields. His optical devices, flying machines, flashing lights and happiness pills all possess the jury-rigged inventiveness of laboratory experiments: "body invaders that latch onto the user's senses," as one Parkett author puts it. Rudolf Stingel, speaking of his recent photo-realistic self-portraits--somber, tonal ruminations in oil--claims that "the only activity is self-doubt." Writing on Stingel's past serial "silver" canvases, Francesco Bonami compares their cool blankness to "cottage paintings" in their "ambush of aura over the artificiality of the picturesque." Writers in this issue include Bonami, Bruce Hainley, Jorg Heiser, Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, Chantal Mouffe, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Christian Rattemeyer, Beatrix Ruf, Ali Subotnick and Tirdad Zolghadr.