The Contemporary, the Common: Art in a Globalizing World

The essays in this collection were written in the first decade of the new millennium by critic, editor and curator Chantal Pontbriand. Pontbriand examines themes of being-in-common in today s world and their relation to the development of art practices. As these practices are implemented, other ways of seeing, understanding and making appear. Contemporaneity functions as a flow, a space-time being that cannot be fixated. The body is in the forefront a thermometer of the world lived in and with, marked by dynamics of change and sharing. The work of Claire Fontaine, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Ion Grigorescu, Mike Kelley, Yvonne Rainer, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Jeff Wall, among other artists, is examined in this book, together with insights into the seminal issues of contemporary art.

Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin