For anyone who’s ever fantasized about smashing a plate against the wall, have we got a treat for you. Artist Zeger Reyers’s “Rotating Kitchen,” an installation on view at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany, revolves continuously on an axis, destroying everything in the vignette that isn’t nailed down. The Gordon-Matta-Clark-meets-Dieter-Roth piece is part of the exhibition Eating the Universe, whose name is taken from Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri’s Eat Art movement. Sounds good to us.

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Artist Jeanne-Claude (née Denat de Guillebo) died in New York Wednesday evening of complications from a brain aneurysm. Along with her husband and artistic partner Christo, whom she met in 1958, she undertook an international series of large-scale outdoor installations, modifying landscapes with industrial strength cloth ballooned, wrapped, and tied. In a tale that legends are made of, the pair were born on the same date, the 13th of June in 1935, and allegedly in the same hour. Of note is the fact that all of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s projects are self-financed — meaning a pretty significant initial outlay for, say, 1.076 million square feet of aluminum-coated fabric to cover the entire façade of the Reichstag in Berlin. In honor of Jeanne-Claude’s legacy in the realm of environmental art, we’ve compiled a visual primer of the duo’s oeuvre after the jump. Read More »

A solo show in the Mexican Pavilion is the unanimous nominee for darkest work included in the vast 2009 Venice Biennale. On view until November 22, Teresa Margolles‘s ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?) comments on the political division and rampant drug-related violence in Mexico. The artist’s own experience as a founding member of the country’s Forensic Medical Service allowed access to government morgues, giving her space to develop conceptual, socially-based art with bodily substances: cadavers, morgue water, and blood. Disturbing, perhaps, though genuinely thought-provoking. Details on Margolles’s installations at the Mexican Pavilion after the jump, including video. 

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