Keith Coventry's work representative of Pope Benedict XVI's recent controversial visit

 There's definitely been a re-ignition of religious intrigue and contemplation recently.Combined with Pope Benedict XVI's controversial return to the United Kingdom after almost twenty years we see Keith Coventry awarded the creme-de-la-creme of British painting, the John Moores Painting Prize, with his current, pious themed, 'Spectrum Jesus', 2009. His work is a copy of the most famous 20th Century fraudster Han van Meeregen's 'Vermeer' paintings. Coventry confesses a focus on art history and tends to shift our notions of 'time-specific' art, playing with the combination and interspersion of different, mostly contrasting periods, styles, subjects fusing them together smoothly into one new artwork that goes against the typical grain appearing eccentric/odd at first. We're left stunted by the attack on our definition of Modernism, Realism, Russian Suprematism or Pop Art by his works and our left to contemplate the message and value from this. His previous works no doubt draw influence from such legends as Hogarth, Walter Sickert, Auerbach, Malevich and such as Picasso's Blue Period, Fauvism. He visualises a critique of art history via the way he puts his works together, this may explain why there is no common style in the history of his works. Although his themes do repeat themselves, for instance he has an inclination to combine the questioning of morals within society with the 'success' of modernism representative within his say his Estate paintings.He combines kitchen-sink with kitsch which is an achievement in itself, he doesn't like to take the 'grit' too far if you will, lightening the load by representing his subjects within a monochrome modernist/suprematist style. 'Spectrum Jesus' is part of a series of paintings of the same subject within a 'colour spectrum', 40-50 different  coloured paintings of a 'fake Vermeer monochrome flat Jesus image'. Such a visualisation couldn't be more relevant in conjuring up many issues towards Jesus and the church within this present time. It questions originality within 'the artwork' and within the religious world. It questions truth in the artworld and in the religious world. With the representation of a 'fake representation of a conceived imagined representation of the hero of the most popular unproven (not everyone's opinion I know) theological text in the world' there are all sorts of readings you can take and think about in your interpretation of this work. It represents some people's yearn for the church and religious institutions to move into the modern world, depicting this age. The spectrum it's part of could also relate to the different ways or emotions with which Jesus and religion are understood, seen and interpreted within the worldly cultural spectrum. It denies past visualisations of ecclesiastical subjects, though in it's repetition holds on to some aspects linked to diptychs or triptychs for example. Like Tracey Emin changes the presentation of women and the female nude within art history through such as, 'My Bed', 1998, Coventry has triggered this within the art history of Jesus's representation. He denies a background of biblical narrative or 'descent from the cross' and instead makes him appear almost 'everyday',a modernised, simplified version of Christ the Saviour. The modernisation of a fraudulent image of Christ no doubt could provide a multitude of catalysts for atheists today which Pope Benedict XVI addressed, it also could ask: is the modern presentation of Jesus and the church working? Or do we need a new period in art 'of the context of what religion is today' for future civilisations  'Spectrum Jesus' is currently showing as part of Liverpool Biennial at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool as part of the John Moore painting Prize Exhibition including 45 shortlisters works.

Sense of abandonment and invisibility takes theme for Great Britain in this Venice Biennale

The more and more read about Great Britain's entries for the Venice Biennale a sense of familiarity in theme crops up. That it seems is an overall focus on abandonment and invisibility. Scotland's representative Martin Boyce on visiting the site initially for his proposed work at a 15th Century 'Palazzo Pisani', states, ' There was something in the atmosphere and the journey through the different rooms that stayed with me...It had a sense of abandonment.....For some reason I kept imagining the Palazzo as an abandoned garden'.1 His sculptural/installation, 'No Reflections' disrupts the dichotomy between constructed space and real/natural space together with displacing the original building's solidarity or roots reinterpreting your perception of the space. It's the perceived abandonment of the Palazzo that led Boyce to envision the exterior natural space re-entering and re-gaining or sweeping in on the lost space. Boyce's use of, chain made bins and bits of furniture and bedframes adds a sad sense of abandonment to the space. However then there are deconstructed letters on the wall and Boyce has replaced the Venetian chandeliers with Constructivist sculpture in black aluminium which begins to stir up Boyce's previous preoccupation with constructed space, it's interesting that he's deconstructed the letters? Any sense of the living/history, natural elements or resources he sucks the life out of or turns into the functional/constructed. The main piece includes two for one, 'A River in the Trees' and 'Evaporated Pools'. The use of concrete stepping stones together with fake leaves and a dryed up or 'marble pool' again restates his theme of constructed, superficial space. Such abandonment of nature leads to the title, 'No Reflections'. Amazingly this was Boyce's first visit to Venice and clearly it had a huge impact, he commented on the lack of traffic and a general sense of abandonment throughout the city, interesting that he takes Venice's central feature water and drains the life out of it so as to refuse reflection. The piece is quite powerful in the sense that he dares to take the 'majestic beauty' out of Venice, naturally and historically and instead replace it with the irony of a new re-interpreted/ fake 'natural beauty' constructed for you, nature becoming invisible. It raises many questions within the context of one of the places in the World valued so much for it's natural beauty and light together with it's position as forefronter in the creation of constructed artistic beauty. Is it about loss of respect for nature, natural beauty, abandonment of nature/invisibility of its value, the power of the man- made to control and overpower nature and beauty?
What's very strange is that Brit representative Steve McQueen in his video, 'Giardini' takes an almost too simalar approach to that of Boyce, his two screen film piece revolving around Venice mid-winter, post Biennale, post season, post peak life or presence. He again breaks away from conventional views or perceptions of Venetian life but rather than reconstructing nature McQueen presents the winter wildlife of Venice as eerie minimalistic vision of the area around Giardini. What both Boyce and McQueen do take from Venice however, that seeps into their work is a feeling of the gothic,the British Pavilion as the 'haunted castle on the hill'. The 'invisibility' of unseen aspects of Venice or the 'everyday', wild dogs, rain, bells chiming in the background become elevated in importance visually in his minimalist approach. A work very different from his other politically rooted works such as Camera D'Or winner Hunger, 2008 based on the 1981 IRA hunger strikes, focused on Bobby Sands and the British governments treatment of him or his ongoing Queen and Country project which juxtaposes the images of soldiers who've lost their lives in Iraq with the Queen's head on individual stamps as commemorations.
As mentioned in an earlier post the Wales representative this year is Velvet Underground's John Cale with his audio-visual work, 'Dark Days'. Here Cale looks back to his roots and produces a work which expresses the struggle between the disbanding of his homeland and reasons for doing so expressed in the title and respect for his beginnings in the Welsh Youth Orchestra and family. Cale bears resemblance to the above works also in his approach to filming adding a ghostly gothic feel to the piece through his audio/visual autobiographical journey through his old house, focusing on everyday features and his phantom piano playing within the spiritual Welsh chapel, at one point he sits, gets up, sits but never once ends up playing the piano. Its almost a ghostlike travelling back through his past, a past thats there, that made him but was abandoned due to its 'darkness'. He also combines narration, Welsh rugby anthems and the violin one note humming creating ambient edgy moods throughout enhancing artistic experience.However the darkness appears again in the contrasting of this with images of waterboarding, highlighting how the nostalgia contrasts with torture, he himself has claimed he abandoned his home as he felt there was more out there. He wanted to be visible.
Finally the last artist is an extremely interesting up and coming one, Northern Ireland's representative, Susan MacWilliam. She is known for her focus on the paranormal and psychic perception and investigation, focusing on the laboratorial and scientific processes involved. The work is titled, 'Remote Viewing' and involves three works, there is Dermo Optics, 2006 in which she travels to the Dermo Optical Laboratory of Dr Yvonne Duplessis in Paris, where she becomes involved in experiments testing ‘fingertip vision' or a sensory technique in which the eye vision/visiblity is denied as proof. An example of this is an ability to say visualise the colour of something just by touching it say blindfolded. Of course there's a fine art approach to filming, enhancing the experience of the event.The next work is 'Eileen', a fine art biography of the famous Irish medium, Eileen J. Garrett. It features interviews with family and friends and so takes a personal subjective approach studying the social interaction in her life combined with the objective relationship between camera and psychic both portals of exposure, one of life and one of the afterlife.Both exposing a sense of invisibility or the 'unknown', one the scientific depth of parapsychology and the parapsychic scientific process in life many of us don't have a clue about and the other a connection or interaction with a possible afterlife/afterworld.
Finally a series of photographs by Thomas Glendinning Hamilton takes place in the work, F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N, 2009.The title references French astronomer and psychical researcher Camille Flammarion and also includes a redevelopment of TG Hamilton’s séance cabinet, the Belfast poet/writer Ciaran Carson together with poltergeist researcher Dr. William G Roll.

1 Boyce,M., 'Visual Arts Review: Martin Boyce', 2009, 05/06/09, http://www.scotlandandvenice.com/news/visual-arts-review-martin-boyce

First British showing of Luke Fowler's films at Serpentine

Winner of the Jarman Award 2008 for filmakers and having gained international success it's now time for the Glaswegian to showcase in Britain at the Serpentine until the 14th June. The Jarman Award recognises filmakers who move outside of the filmaking box, pushing boundaries and refreshing perception, Fowler has been compared by critics to the 50s New Wave of British filmakers who broke the mould with their kitchen-sink realism and gritty filming, idealism flushed down the toilet.Fowler produced four 3 minute wonders for Channel Four which involved taking 'everyday life' as a subject. He documents flat tenants, Anna, Helen, David and Lester, in the Victorian house Fowler he used to live in in the West End of Glasgow, some being his neighbours whom he never met previously. Fowler claims he's interested mostly in the relationships of people and between them but approaches filming in his own unconventional way. He takes his work one step further when he moves from everyday subject-matter to individuals who too break with convention in their lives, biographies of unconvention represented unconventionally.For example their is Pilgrimage From Scattered Points, 2006, which covers Cornelius Cardew, an English composer who broke tradition with his alternative, experimental Scratch Orchestra. In The Nine Monads of David Bell, 2006, the life of David, a patient at Kingsley Hall, a centre set up by rebel psychiatrist R.D. Laing. This is a personal project for Fowler who experienced the treatment of mental illness within his own family. Laing believed madness was a product of family and society nothing else and used radical techniques and experimented with LSD in his treatments. Fowler follows Bell’s psychological journey within this context together with including a film that recreates his dreams. Works on paper, including newspapers, which Bell wrote and expressed on are also included.

The depth of Raqib Shaw at White Cube

Raqib Shaw is one fascinating artist with a depth of character and expression that is overwhelming, just viewing his studio within an interview on White Cube's website you get a grasp of his intensity. The gallery appears more of a florists or botanists dream swarmed by rainbows of colour that radiate from the varied flower arrangements invading clusters of his working space, fit for a small wedding. His gallery emanates the vivid palette his works portray highlighting the Persian miniature influence and Indian/Kasmir heritage. The many flowers highlight the importance of nature and a connection to it's flora, fauna, behaviour, power and good and bad forces to him and his work. The title to this show, 'Abscence of God' relates personally to his exposure to Muslim, Hindu and Christian doctrines providing him with a multicultural interpretation of 'God' and 'his' representation. Shaw's work pays definite and clear reference to Persian miniatures that began in the 13th Century but peaked in the 15th and 16th Century.For example you can see a clear parallel in the work of Sultan Muhammed, in works such as "Miraj" (Muhammad's ascent), 1539-43 which like Raqib obtains a depth of intricacy that constantly tickles and tintilates the senses while holding gaze through it's depth of discovery or tale. Raqib's depth is constantly penetrable allowing reinterpretation after reinterpretation but provides a fantasising escapism unlike any other works. Raqib's work are by no means miniature, they take that concept and multiply it repeatedly, he has seven paintings on show here the biggest reaching seven metres. Also featured is his first large sculptural installation titled, 'Adam'. On coming to England Shaw became influenced by Hans Holbein the Younger and in the paintings references his 'Dance of Death' a series of wood engravings. Holbeins miniature or book design and other works are of definite influence and a reproduction of some works aids his own. As with many artists there is a clear interest for Shaw in life and death, mother nature, heaven and hell, Bosch's style relates. In 'Abscence of God VII' its shown how in this exhibition Shaw interveaves classical architecture into his fantasyland integrating West and East. What is most interesting about these works however are the narratives they create, mixing fictional grotesque hybrids with the purity of intricate butterflies, portraying himself as a butterfly catcher hybrid with a broken net. Added to the spectacle of the fantasy is his expansion of palette, a bit like an Indian dish filled with depth of flavour and spice his works involve enamel, acryclic and are transported into fiction via the use of glitter and rhinestones. The vivid palette of colours used projects like an indian spice rack, powerful and bold yet fragmented into a world of fantasy via the use of a scroll to manipulate the surface and create many characters within nature's beauty.
His works have so much to them they can tell a hundred stories time and time again, his liking to Rimbaud is very apparent. While his works portray a rainbow of beauty they also take you to a darker side as does Rimbaud:

'For Hurrah! the wind whistles at the skeletons' grand ball!
The black gallows moans like an organ of iron !
The wolves howl back from the violet forests:
And on the horizon the sky is hell-red...'1

While the paintings take a calmer stance in this exhibition his sculpture, 'Adam' creates an uncomforting disturbing very life-like vision, Adam's head is replaced with that of a bald-like bird, a more crow- like one who is being wrestled by a human-sized highly detailed lobster. There is no surrealism to this though, here fantasy is brought alive, almost as if you were reading Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett and the characters suddenly appeared, dark fictional hybrids within your reality.

1 Arthur Rimbaud, 'Dance of the Hanged Men', Document from site Arthur Rimbaud, http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Dance.html, 30th May 2009, from site http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/index-en.php

New Sculpture park, 'Jupiter Artland' opens in West Lothian, Scotland set to add 'alternative twist' to artworld

Jupiter Artland is the mystical name appointed to an exciting privately funded new sculptural park found within 80 acres of the grounds of the chairman of the firm that owns Bach remedies, a 17th-century house in West Lothian. The park is commissioning major pieces by the likes of Antony Gormley, Marc Quinn, Anish Kapoor and Andy Goldsworthy. Cornelia Parker added to the opening events by firing a moon rock spectacle into the air. On their website they promote, 'The garden is a garden of discovery - an earthwork here, a copse of cradled rocks there, the entrance to a fathomless burrow right before your feet. We provide a map but no set routes. There are pathways, in places, but no path. Come and discover, contemplate and delight. '1

1 JupiterArtland, 29 May, 2009, http://www.jupiterartland.org/the_unfolding_story/

What's at the heart of our art in England now? Art and it's anthropological reminder

Funny but while reading through various art news today two different art exhibitions in different locations created a synthesis around the same core questions. It started while reading about Tim Crouch's new play at the Whitechapel Gallery, 'England'. It narrates a mini-exchange between a Western art dealer and non-Western heart donor's widow, both who are connected solely through survival, an art piece is exchanged for a second chance at life. Various dichotomies arise from the work via symbolism intended within subject such as West/non-West, Heart/heartless, Art/Life, Art/Heart, Art with a heart/Art without a heart, Life/Death, Art as financial object/Art without financial value. Then you have to centre all of this within the title 'England', how is our art valued all over the world? How do we value our art? Has England's art lost value? Have we lost the heart in our art? Does art matter more to us as financial object or heart gripping power?
From this the next article read came as sad disappointment in terms of capitalism, globalisation and financial power within the world. Western Australia's Burrup peninsula contains aboriginal carvings that are believed to pre-date present art historical carving recordation.However it is shockingly at present under threat from a liquid natural gas plant. Those who live there are said to be devastated understandably so as it can be said areas of the non- Western world have a connection with nature that some would say we in the West have lost, developed over or left behind in our numbing of our natural instincts and sensuality. A touring festival, 'Origins-Festival of First Nations' around London at present covers theatrical performances, shamanistic expression and healing, films from Canada, Australia,New Zealand and America. Named because all nations involve people indigenous to countries of colonisation with events such as a theatre piece about the Maori Battalion in Second World War Italy. It sounds like the festival will be a great eye-opener to what Bourriard would call translation expressing the relativism and deconstruction taking place as our world becomes more interconnected dialetically. Unheard opinions, expressions and understandings of the West and other nations history and understanding of them will be expressed.Together with a reminder of how spirituality, art, nature and healing interact in relation to our artificial made 'gallery space' controlled by market power. Will non-Western art be more powerful to the heart of humans, more representative of real life, spirituality or is this being eurocentric in itself, though if you think how much Hirst's collection raised not long ago you could say not. He himself as many artists challenges life and death, nature and art in fact he turns the reality of nature into a huge commodity?You could say he tries to control nature/life, 'preserve it'?

Saatchi Middle East Exhibition

Right just got through looking at the Middle East exhibition presently at the Saatchi and was really interesting to see areas of the world's thoughts expressed that have been really hidden from us before or not focused on anyway.In a way it was also very refreshing and inspiring to see different cultural expressions and opinions together with style and skill. What struck me the most in fact which put a different spin on the viewers experience was how strong the presence and impact the metaphysical played in producing and in the end designing or developing these works. It made it clear how important it is to have a multiplicity of cultural influence in our lives and also to be witness to the process of cultural 'creolisation' and translation as Bourriard would say. To see how different people and cultures deal with their situations and struggles together with the development of our interactive global world at present is really fascinating. I kept reflecting back to reading 'A World History of Art' and thinking how beautiful some of the intricacy of Umayyad palaces are, the Great Mosque, Cordoba and then later Moors influence of Alhambra and such. But what was missed out on here was the presence of figures, banned from using holy images or visual symbols focusing on inscriptions if anything.Still with such abscence such beauty was produced in their work.But how great it is to see now Middle Eastern images and figures together with opinions which have somehow escaped the shadow of religious control.
It's obviously interesting that the show starts with 'Unveiled' in it's title, 'Unveiled:New Art From the Middle East' referencing obviously the presence of the female veils worn within Islamic culture together with a long awaited exposure of Middle Eastern cultural expression for so long 'veiled' beneath dedication to Allah. Diana Al-Hadid's works undoubtedly highlight the presence still however of the influence of older Middle Eastern art and its focus on intricate forms and patterns to create beauty over the use of images. Her sculptures or 'Towers of Infinite Problems' play metaphor to many interpretations but rest between a mystical and yet very realistic interpretation of the present context. In 'Self-Melt' the towers are not finished solid wholes but are instead in a process of morphosis, its funny but Bourriards reference to the 'AlterModern' and creolisation versus deconstruction as a state of affairs at present seems to fit well with what these sculptures express. You could say they are 'time-specific', in a process or state of metamorphosis yet while resting within a magical, mystical parallel.The towers look as if they are melting, turned upside into egg-timer like forms not quite sure what their outcome is.There are many references that can be made here to housing regeneration, development, deonstruction and renewal via war, destruction of historical land, culture and really a change in the spirituality of homeland as destruction through war takes place. In 'The Tower of Infinite Problems' she creates more solid sculptures yet they are still fractured broken into pictures and rearranged like jigsaws to create spiral type structures with many layers and jagged edges. References to global capital developments, the effect of capitalism, etc. can all be made. Al-Hadid reanimates the ordered, coldness or brick of many a tower and reinterprets it in a metaphysical sense with infinite possibilities that affect the global and spiritual world.
The theme of the 'unveiled' plays throughout this whole exhibition in an almost cathartic process.Halim Al-Karim's works leaves a very haunting imprint in which the presence of the metaphysical plays a huge part. His photographs all bare titles wrapped around a 'hidden' theme: 'Hidden Prisoner','Hidden Victims', 'Hidden Themes'. The photographs take on a intended blurry feel or vision in which interpretation is denied reflecting the way some would interpret Middle Eastern culture and you could say the masked veils worn by women.What's fascinating is how this cultural aspect filtrates into the artists actual presentations formatically, for example in some works the photographs are presented beneath a tightly bound white silk fabric, humanising the work almost. Al-Karim's work reflects almost directly personal experience during the Gulf War in which he fled and hid in a hole. He gives metaphysial statues the same priority as human presence using both as 'hidden' themes or presences behind the blurry veil. Sufi tradition and reference occurring here, still it seems hard to pin down exactly his spiritual path or opinion on Islam tradition. The 'blurry' indeterminate' style of his photographs brings photographs of ancient statues to life, the lack of detail diminishing the reality of their stone/clay structure and instead animating them onto a level of the other human prisoners he uses. There becomes a conflict with spirituality as it is involved in the 'hidden' aspect of human 'oppression' yet its presence is still very powerful and important to some.Nadia Ayari takes a simalar approach yet with a different medium of painting, her works are a lot more direct or simple yet powerful in message.Large paintings of eyes behind prison fences or over the top of womens veils highlight lost vision or voices behind the veil. When this exhibition gets interesting is when you get a simple yet ingenious idea by Kader Attia to convert perception of the veil via the use of a fittingly domestically used product as foil. There are so many connotations that can arise from this usage, as said the domestic reference is there for one.There is also the fact that dark veils suppress light where as foil reflects it, projects it, expresses it. Theres also the fact it's usually used to contain and cook an animal which an be interpreted anyway you like.What's most interesting to me though again is the 'metaphysical' presence that is created by using foil.For me seeing so many of the figures which are made to appear a lot more squatted and smaller than human versions brings up links to an almost 'alien' or E.T. type theme, 'foreign entity' or masses, foreign to this world. From here so many links can be made, women feeling alien beneath the veil or 'outsiders', then there is the fact Americans call immigrant or those of non-American entity or anti-American 'aliens' in visa application.This is no direct statement obviously but creates a very interesting outlook.Ahmad Morshedloo's works possess the haunting emotional draw of Al-Karim's work with a near perfect rendering of foreshortening and artistic skill. The haunting picture head first of a women laid out flat on a table appearing inhumane, non-present and dainty and presented in an almost monotone palette creates a daunting effect. We are left wondering what she's doing there, it almost feels like she's on a butchers table but I don't want to go too far with that. Her face is hidden almost no real visible features can be determined and she seems determinate of her fate almost.
The mixing of ancient traditions with modern mediums becomes expressed in Ramin Haerizadeh's, 'Men of Allah'. The reference to ancient Persian style is present in the intricacy and detail/style of his figures however he fuses this within the CGI age using graphic effects to bring it into the here and now. Doing this helps with the projection of the regeneration of issues of gender, sexuality and ancient attitudes that he challenges by re-enacting the historical theatre of the Qajar Dynasty.For one he brings theatre into digital age through graphic effects but he also casts himself as every part in the play which raises issues surrounding this male-dominated theatrical past in which female roles were also played by men. It's interesting how the organic forms of Persian art become graphic or flatter, 2-dimensional in a way, not sure how good a move forward this is though as some quality/depth is lost in intricacy.Exposure of tradition is unveiled in the work of Rokni Haerizadeh who exposes to the world aspects of the Iranian wedding. Again the intricate, organic style of ancient Islamic or Persian work seeps through in her style of painting which contains many different forms which weave and melt into each other, creating really the 'wedding' dynamacy. Shes highlights to the outside world the rituals of Iranian weddings though in which women and men are divided and the male experience seems a lot more pleasured or spoilted in constrast to the more stagnant women.It's interesting again how Middle Eastern culture is projected more by formal arrangement via the use of a diptych in which the female interpretation is on one and the mens experience at the wedding on another.Men and women not even united in art, producing fragmented art forms.

Nicolas Bourriaud and the new 'Altermodernism'?

So I thought I would do my first post on Tate Britain's upcoming debate that will focus around Nicolas Bourriaud's 'Altermodernism'. It's a term that's entering the art consciousness as representative of the 'new age' in art or context. It was bound to happen soon the term postmodern and contemporary were starting to get old and don't really encapsulate the multidimensional interactive ways art is expanding and growing at present.
To understand 'Altermodernism', 'Postmodernism' can first be attempted to define? Thinking of Greenberg, Fried and TJ Clark there seem a lot more clear boundaries for an art historical critic of its former 'Modernism', starting some would say around the 1860s. For example you had those who focused on art for arts sake and development or expansion of the boundaries of different mediums in art i.e. Abstract Expressionists, Expressionism then you had those who believed art to be a socio-political tool with a clear societal role i.e. Constructivists, Realists/Social Realism, and of course there were those that both experimented with composition/style yet involved subject matter, sometimes with socio-functional message i.e. Futurists, Cubists, Surrealism, Pop Art. With 'Postmodernism' some say it's description is less defined due to a shift in ideology and interpretation of artwork compared to those of the 'Modernist' era. The majority seem to agree postmodernism begins around the 1980s with a focus on conceptual art taking control, although you could throw that back to Duchamp and Dada/Surrealist artists or even possibly the Land Art of the sixties, Smithson's, 'Spiral Jetty ' say, all involving conceptual experimentation and manipulation, with installation, intermedia, pastiche, or bricolage, etc. With the development of globalisation, the internet and cheaper travel  cultural fusion or interaction became a more complex, interactive and interpretive part of our lives. Identity becomes challenged, new cultural influences take hold and a wide variety of knowledge is made available via the interweb and so emotions change and develop. Frederic Jameson believes the postmodern rejects fixed, straight interpretation and instead pastiche and discontinuance become popular. A new hybrid type artwork develops, such as that of Louise Bourgeois becoming very multi-dimensional in terms of interpretation and message. However you could say that 'Modernism' is still present in some work of say Anish Kapoor in which medium is experimented with and expanded solely creating illusion, fantasy and escapism. There's definitely a sense of instability or insecurity that develops with global expansion however as nationalist borders open up in terms of cheap travel and the internet in particular. Rasheed Araeen's work particularly highlights the attempt to develop a 'hybridity' of East and West art. Really modernism as it's written about is the modernism of the Western world, in some ways postmodernism expresses a more global artworld formation, expression and influence.Developments in technology and an increase in availability of technology increases experimentation with a variety of media, even though others have experimented in the past, photography developing at the start of modernism, the increased access to it and development of the media world increases its importance to context.
There is also the development of art theory, the disintegration of the influence of Barr's direct timeline of art, one movement influencing and developing the next in linear progression has been replaced by looking at all movements as interactive really, old art being regenerated into again new hybrids, for example Grayson Perry's ceramics with contemporary subject-matter. Nicolas Serota for example puts different artworks from different periods into 'clusters' to encourage new multidimensional interpretations in the Tate Modern. In terms of ideology there could be said to have been a definite reduction in painting as popular artwork in the 'postmodernist' era, some theorists have talked of the 'anti-presence' as 'postmodern' in terms of conceptual art and in comparison to the 'god-like' presence of 'modernists' art such as Rothko and the importance placed on originality of hand with painting. Brit Art took hold and conceptual art has been popular since with a focus on the idea and theory, however rather than just the one painting as in 'modernism', artists such as Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois,Tracey Emin use many different objects in arrangement which create multiple meaning and interpretation. However many of the Dada performances could be said to have done this and Duchamp plus others and other cultures have used alternative mediums than painting with 'avant-garde' approaches. It's interesting to wonder how countries outside the Western world become integrated into 'modern/postmodern' art, for example the 'Nok' /Nigerian culture's sculptures could be read as abstract and conceptual yet are thousands of years earlier? With the development of media and a change in our perception or sense of time and space developing with globalisation video, photography and performance become great representative mediums. Bill Viola however could be seen to be quite 'modernist' in the way he slows down video to unseen speeds to produce new visual affects and perceptions. Others challenge the influence of metanarratives and issues such as gender, race, sexuality...you could say grand institutions and their theories are being challenged, questioned, researched and the power their hold has had. Artists changed your outlook on race in 'Victorian Dandy' say by Yinka Shonibare or approach to gender by Emin by challenging conventional visual representations or perceptions and institutional or metanarrative control and how it influenced such representations. Lyotard defines such challenges as essentially 'postmodern', for example Emin's 'Unmade Bed' changes the whole history of women's representation of art in books, galleries, etc . This can be combined with the idea that as nationalism is losing some hold and identity becomes expanded and cultures interact global society looks towards 'metanarratives' for a common challenge or areas to relate to. You could say therefore some modernism focused on challenging national ideology/politics i.e. Constructivism, Futurism, etc. whereas postmodernism might be seen more to challenge metanarrative ideologies and use a multitude of approaches to do this mixing/using many different mediums, particularly due to technological developments in media and moving 'outside' the art gallery. This then leading to multiple interpretations rather than one political stance say. Again however Dada and Constructivists could be said to do this.

So how does 'Altermodernism' fit into all this? Nicolas Bourriard believes theres a new art movement developing focusing on confronting standardisation and commercialism.It seems quite straight forward when approached like that however it comes across repetitive of 'postmodern/modern' artwork which has challenged materialism, commercialism and standardisation, for example Andy Warhol, Constructivists, etc. 'Altermodernism' also talks of new translations taking place in the new age, new interconnections of time with space, text with image, the affect of travel and interaction but as said a lot of it seems repetitive of 'postmodernism' and the effect of 'globalisation'.Where it starts to become clarified is when you consider postmodernism as having jumped a level towards what some are calling 'creolisation' of cultures in which there becomes a struggle for identity and autonomy or singularity.Bourriard talks of art as now 'time-specific' as the world interacts and artists try to translate the 'creolisation' taking place, new interactions of text and image taking place in a world under deconstructivism teamed with cultural relativism.It seems that Bourriard is saying that such a situation is producing a new age in which standardisation and commercialisation are being challenged via the many translations taking place in time and space due to 'creolisation', travel, cultural relativity combined with deconstruction. He believes new 'time-specific' works are expressed in 'trajectory' like forms or expressions, transitory and unfixed.Bourriard also associates 'Altermodernism' with the decreasing importance of a focused Western model of art.

Many believe Bourriard takes on simalar thoughts to some of Foucault. Foucault considers a switch from 'knowledge is power' to 'power is knowledge' involving the power the media has over our development of knowledge in society. Also considered by some is the loss of value in 'real experienced-developed/experimental knowledge' in exchange for increased accessibility and speed of knowledge attainable on the internet as such. When related to the power knowledge on the interweb you can see a development from postmodernism .Wrapped in this is the power the media has on imprinting knowledge in the psyche, is this not what Barbara Kruger approaches or Cindy Sherman as well as a multitude of others. It's hard to identify what the 'alter' is in altermodernism?
So it seems that there's a struggle for autonomy and singularity in the creolisation of cultures together with the power and influence the media has on new forms of knowledge being created, new ways to access this and new ways that knowledge is being interpreted via such as inter-web.The later could be labelled as standardisation and a focus on the commercial.