Chocolate Room

Installation view of Ed Ruscha’s Chocolate Room, 1970/2023, MoMA, photo by Jonathan Dorado

In 1970, for the US Pavilion at the 35th Venice Biennale, Ed Ruscha took an unconventional approach to printmaking by screen printing hundreds of sheets of paper with chocolate paste. He hung them, floor to ceiling, in a single room that has been the only installation work of his long career. The Chocolate Room is on view now in its seventh iteration in the retrospective exhibition ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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Banana Craze

Francois Bucher, United (edition of 3), 2004-2005, 12 RC photographs on aluminium
Francois Bucher, United (edition of 3), 2004-2005, 12 RC photographs on aluminium

In 1871 the American entrepreneur Minor Keith won a contract with the government of Costa Rica to build a railroad from the capital city of San José to the port city of Limón. The project would modernize the country and increase exports, like in Chile and Peru, following the industrial expansion of the U.S. But before the Costa Rican railroad was complete in 1890, the government defaulted on its payments and renegotiated a deal which gave Keith’s company 800,000 acres of tax-free land along the railway and a 99-year lease on its operation.

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Santiago Arau. Territorios

Santiago Arau, Puebla desde el Iztaccíhuatl, 2019, color digital print, image courtesy of Museo Amparo
Santiago Arau, Puebla desde el Iztaccíhuatl, 2016, color digital print, image courtesy of Museo Amparo

For seven years, a man explored the length, width, and height of the territory of Mexico. He traveled 33,302 kilometers, documenting the borders, cities, mountains, and volcanoes that shape the country. The explorer, Santiago Arau, is a photographer and filmmaker whose project, Territorios, is the subject of an exhibition at the Museo Amparo in Puebla.

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Orbital Reflector

Trevor Paglen, Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass, 2008, C-Print, 48 x 60 inches; courtesy of Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; © Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen, Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass, 2008, C-Print, 48 x 60 inches; courtesy of Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; © Trevor Paglen

At 10:34 a.m. on December 3, 2018, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Two hours later, 350 miles above Earth’s surface, it released 64 satellites into orbit for the largest satellite launch in US history. One of those, Orbital Reflector, will be the first “purely artistic” object in space.

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The Vertical Earth Kilometer

The Friedrichsplatz and Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, photo by Carroy via Wikimedia Commons
The Friedrichsplatz and Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, photo by Carroy via Wikimedia Commons

Every five years in Kassel, Germany, documenta is a contemporary art exhibition lasting 100 days. Each edition presents hundreds of works in and around the city, typically conceptual and frequently site-specific. Of the thousands of works shown since the first documenta in 1955, sixteen have become permanent installations in Kassel.

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Zeitz MOCAA

Zeitz MOCAA; photo © Iwan Baan, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA
Zeitz MOCAA; photo © Iwan Baan, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA

On September 22, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) opened in Cape Town, South Africa. It’s a major development, locally and globally, and is described in superlatives: the first major contemporary art museum in Africa; the largest museum to open in Africa in a century; and the largest contemporary African art museum in the world.

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Maurizio Cattelan, Not Afraid of Love

Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled (2001), installation view at the Monnaie de Paris, 2016; photo by Zeno Zotti, courtesy Monnaie de Paris
Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled, 2001, installation view at the Monnaie de Paris, 2016; photo by Zeno Zotti, courtesy of the Monnaie de Paris

Five years after Maurizio Cattelan announced his retirement, following a 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, a new exhibition at the Monnaie de Paris marks his return to the art world. Not Afraid of Love includes 44 artworks installed within the Monnaie’s 18th century salons and is Cattelan’s largest exhibition in Europe to date.

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Perception, České Budějovice

Jan Šépka, Perception, České Budějovice, Czech Republic, 2016; photo © Tomas Maly
Jan Šépka, Perception, České Budějovice, Czech Republic, 2016; photo © Tomas Maly

In České Budějovice, a historic capital in the south of the Czech Republic, the city’s public art gallery has temporarily appropriated a fountain within the town square. Designed by Jan Šépka Architects for the Domu umění města (House of Art), the project creates a site-specific experience to reconsider perceptions of public space.

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