This discord has not been without its stresses for contemporary art. Catalan president Carles Puigdemont unilaterally conjured a republic, before central rule was inevitably imposed. ![]() The obstinate crescendo of the Catalan separatist drive and the stubborn indifference of the Madrid leadership came to a head in a blundering, violent crackdown from the government of Mariano Rajoy on 1 October. The August terrorist attacks on La Rambla and Cambrils were followed by the disputed October independence referendum. In Barcelona, contemporary politics loomed over cultural life. Algae, peafowl, algorithms, bees, an augmented reality app, carbon dioxide and cancer cells, were knit together in a manner that seemed to grasp at what Robert Smithson must have meant when he said in 1970 that he was ‘interested in the politics of the Triassic period’. It took place throughout an abandoned ice rink whose concrete floors had been excavated to host an evolving ecosystem. Pierre Huyghe’s masterful After ALife Ahead (2017) made a powerful case for being one of the most compelling projects in the 40-year history of Skulptur Projekte Münster, never mind this year alone. If Siegel’s Dynasty (2017) was a jinxed talisman for the rest of the year, it was because things frequently appeared to be torn-off, reckless, dismantled, botched or displaced, and because the most memorable exhibitions often revolved around non-human nature. Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead, 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. ![]() ![]() A small wedge of the same rock was flecked with white as if a fatty hunk of salami was presented in a display case, while an adjacent text and photographic footnote revealed it to be a kind of cursed relic for our times – a relic from the braggadocious lobby of Trump Tower. Two uncannily veracious photographs had been produced from scans of pinkish-orange Jurassic-era Italian marble. How about 199.6 to 145.5 million years ago? Amie Siegel’s remarkable and premonitory ‘Strata’, which opened in February at the South London Gallery, was a reflection on geology’s real estate that culminated in an unnerving new work. ‘Looking back’ in 2017 has frequently involved casting a critical eye much deeper into the past.
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