Joel Kuennen

Joel Kuennen an art critic, curator, editor, and artist. Their work has been published in Art in America, ArtSlant, Elephant, Mutual Art, THE SEEN and many others.

A small group of strangers and I were led down concrete stairs to a hallway. An industrial light in a metal cage illuminated a set of doors, and we stopped. The guide told us to “follow the lights” and “stay together, you can’t get lost if you stay together.” He opened the door to a dark hallway in the basement of Tresor / Kraftwerk Berlin, the former East Berlin power plant turned storied venue run by Dimitri Hegemann on the southern shore of the Spree, and motioned us to enter, “just head towards the light”. We entered carefully, in twos, stepping slowly into the dark.
Liliane Lijn in Metabolic Rift, Kraftwerk, Berlin, 2021.
Prélude, as the name suggests, is one of the inaugural exhibitions of collector Maja Hoffmann’s long-standing project in Arles, LUMA. A secondary meaning of the word, to warm up, is appropriate as the work exhibited finds ways of accessing a growing feeling, that something disastrous is coming, things are heating up and this is just the beginning of our collective discombobulation.
Installation view: Prélude, La Mécanique Générale, LUMA Arles, Parc des Ateliers, France. © Marc Domage. Courtesy LUMA Arles.
Radical empathy has emerged as a strategy to reorient a culture of systemic disaffection created by the alienation of capitalism.
Morehshin Allahyari, She Who Sees The Unknown: The Laughing Snake, MacKenzie Gallery, Regina, 2019. Installation with 3D printed plastic sculpture, mirrored room, and interactive hypertextual narrative, 2019. Photo: Don Hall.
Comprised of three sections, Abu Hamdan’s exhibition lays out, methodically, how sound can be used to reconstruct the invisible and what crimes against humanity exist in these unmonitored places.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Earwitness Theatre, installation view. Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, May 17-August 18, 2019. Photo: Izaiah Johnson.
Our very existence, a tower built of cells amassed, jostling, exchanging, is a war with intruders to determine the information that will write the next generation of who we are.
Installation view: Heather Dewey-Hagborg: At the Temperature of My Body, Fridman Gallery, New York, 2019. Courtesy Fridman Gallery.
The spirit of the jaguar welcomes you to her home; nestled in a lush surrounding of jungle and maize fields at the foot of a volcano. This pneuma appears as a small girl with a glowing mask, inspired by Mayan depictions of the jaguar gods.
Dreams of the Jaguar's Daughter. Courtesy of Alfredo Salazar-Caro.

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