Joana Escoval, exhibition view. Courtesy Galería Vera Cortês.
The September 2025 issue of Artforum (vol 64, num. 1) includes a review by Max Andrews of Joana Escoval’s exhibition “Tones of the Spine” (15 May–1 June 2025), seen at Galería Vera Cortês, Lisbon, back in May during a press trip organised on the occasion of ARCOLisboa.
“Joana Escoval’s work often demands precise attention to almost imperceptible details. Her sculpture pulse (all works 2025) consists of two dun-colored boulders—one relatively smooth, the other rougher. Each is just large enough to seem barely liftable. In its recent installation at Galeria Vera Cortês, a gracefully curling brass wire flowed out and back from a pristine white wall, perforating and connecting the two paired rocks so that they seemed plugged into the wall—one could almost imagine a hum of electrical current coursing through them.”
On September 13, Danish artist John Kørner (Århus, 1967) opened his solo exhibition “Venice Lido Light” at Victoria Miro gallery in Venice, Italy (on view until 25 October 2025).
The exhibition is accompanied by a new essay by Max Andrews on Kørner's recent paintings and sculptures created during his residency at the gallery’s Venice studio. Evoking the water, light and horizons of Venice, while distorting them into dreamlike forms, the exhibition reveals a world that is both familiar and enigmatic.
As Max Andrews writes, Kørner is “a painter of problems that take shape, in reality finds himself painting in a city literally sinking under the weight of intractable troubles. Cocoon-like problems continue to manifest — a row is posing on a horizon, look — but never as a reaction to something gone wrong. On the beach, his mental clouds are precipitating doubt about how to picture a place that is already so saturated. No masks. No vedute. No Death in Venice. No Jeff in Venice.”
→ More infoRELATED CONTENT:
July-August 2025 cover story on www.lttds.org. Frame video: Latitudes.
ABOUT LAIA ESTRUCH
Laia Estruch (Barcelona, 1981) has had solo exhibitions at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona (2023); Spiritvessel, Espinavessa (2022); Fundació Joan Brossa, Barcelona (2020); Capella de Sant Roc, Valls (2019); and at Espai 13, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2019).
Recent group exhibitions include “After Paradise”, Kortrijk Triennial, Belgium (2024); “Topalekuak”, Tabakalera, Donostia (2024); Patio by ZONAMACO, ABC Art Baja, San José del Cabo, Mexico (2024); “I drank words submerged in dreams”, 23 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala (2023); “After the Mediterranean”, Hauser & Wirth, Menorca (2023); “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”, MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2021) and “La cuestión es ir tirando”, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City (2020).
Estruch has performed in numerous public events within the framework of exhibitions, biennials and festivals, including “Segar i cantar”, Lo Pati, Amposta (2024); “The Listening Affect”, Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto (2023); “Passat / Present”, Centre d’Interpretació d’Art Rupestre de la Roca dels Moros del Cogul, Lleida (2022); 10th Deleste Festival, Bombas Gens, Valencia (2022); “The Journeying Stream”, TBA21, Sotos de la Albolafia, Córdoba (2022), Bianyal 2021, Vall de Bianya (2021) or “Plataforma. Festival de Artes Performativas”, Parque de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela (2021), amongst other.
In 2022 Estruch won the 6th Premio Cervezas Alhambra de Arte Emergente (Alhambra Beer Award for Emerging Art) with the work “Zócalo”, and was awarded the 2021 Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (City of Barcelona Prize) in the category of Visual Arts.
Works in public space include “Moat-2 / Playground Scene” (2017–18) at Fabra i Coats Fàbrica de Creació, Barcelona; and the recently completed Concomitentes public commission “Aguas Vivas”, at Llanos de Penagos, Cantabria (2024).
Estruch has a BA in Fine Arts from the Universitat de Barcelona (2010) and studied Performance Art and Sound Art at The Cooper Union, New York (2010). She regularly lectures at the Facultat de Belles Arts, Universitat de Barcelona.
Her work is represented by Galería Ehrhardt Flórez, Madrid.
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The Scholarly Text Program regularly commissions thinkers from various disciplines to write 1,200 words on single artworks by Nancy Holt and/or Robert Smithson. These essays explore how Holt and Smithson’s ideas resonate through contemporary artistic and cultural production, covering topics ranging from geology to ecology, poetry, and beyond.
Read Mariana Cánepa Luna’s recently published essay on Nancy Holt’s site-responsive installation “Ventilation System” (1985–1992) also part of the Scholarly Text Programme’s Chapter 7.
Thank you to Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, for the kind invitation to contribute to the foundation’s growing archive, and to William T. Carson, Program Manager and Assistant Curator, for the research assistance.
Abstract:
Max Andrews’ essay delves into Robert Smithson's seminal article "Aerial Art" (1969), which outlines his earthworks proposals for the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport and those of Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt. Andrews examines the historical context, including the growth of air travel and global art networks. Importantly, the essay underscores the sustained multi-decade increase in CO2 emissions from air travel and its significant contribution to the climate crisis.
Keywords:
Robert Smithson, Aerial Art, 1969, Studio International, Artforum, Anthropocene, Charles Jencks, postmodernism, Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport, Tippetts–Abbett–McCarthy–Stratton, earthworks, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt, site-specificity, Boing 747, Spiral Jetty, CO2 emissions, frequent flying, transnational art world, contemporary art, decarbonization, exhibition-making, curatorial hypermobility, Harald Szeemann, air travel, global mobility, low-carbon footprint art production, multinational museum brands, biennial model, Fernand Braudel, Gustav Metzger, Reduce Art Flights, Paris Agreement, 2030, global warming.
How to cite:
Andrews, Max, “Frequent Flyers: Robert Smithson’s “Aerial Art,” 1969”, Holt/Smithson Foundation: Scholarly Texts Chapter 7 (October 2024). ISBN: 978-1-952603-36-5
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The exhibition catalogue “Futuros Abundantes / Abundant Futures” is now available. The book will be launched in ARCOmadrid’s section of ArtsLibris, on February 23rd, 2023, at 5pm.
With contributions from Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey and Juanita Sundberg; Beatrice Forchini; Macarena Gómez-Barris; Berta Gutiérrez Casaos; Soledad Gutiérrez Rodríguez; Latitudes; Regina de Miguel; Plata; Matthew Ritchie; Jess Saxby; and Daniela Zyman. Poems by Ibn Zaydun and an artistic intervention by Abraham Cruzvillegas.
Essay keywords: Ecology, Daniel D. Richter, environmental art histories, Art History, abundance, temporalities of soil, “human forcing”, Environmental collapse, exhibition-making, Dipesh Chakrabarty, diagrams, Earth system, Miguel Covarrubias, Alfred H. Barr Jr., MoMA, tree genealogy, Porphyrian trees, environmental history, rewilding art history, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Jason W. Moore, Web of Life, soil, landscape, farming, agricultural intensification, Aldo Leopold, “to think like a mountain”, Julie Cruikshank, soil-attentive ethos, humanity-in-nature, nature-in-humanity, Caroline Levine, overlapping rhythms of art institutions.
April 2021 cover story on www.lttds.org
The April 2021 monthly Cover Story ‘Lara Almarcegui at La Panera’ is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org
“Latitudes participated in a roundtable and wrote the exhibition text for Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Graves’ (Gravels), currently on view at the Centre d'art la Panera, Lleida, until 30 May. “What possibilities begin to emerge when the excavation at a quarry is stopped?”, the text wonders.”
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