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ArCHITeCTure, DISPATCHES ArT, muSIC, ArCHITeCTure, FILm, SHOPPING, NeWS AND THINGS TO mAKe AND DO… ArT, muSIC, ArCHITeCTure, FILm, SHOPPING, NeWS AND THINGS TO mAKe AND DO…
Come to DaDDy: Larry SuLtan
.
‘I want to measure how a life was lived
m
c

against how a life was dreamed,’ Larry
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0
1
Sultan has said of his Pictures from Home

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series (1982–92), an extraordinarily
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1
nuanced stream of colour photographs a
, v
t e
of his retired parents in their well- n n
i e
appointed home in California’s San
r G
p
,
Fernando Valley. Practicing Golf Swing
r n
e o
v i
(1989) is typical of Sultan’s subtle
l t
i c
s e
anxiousness. The father who’d gone West,
l
n l
i o
jobless, in his youth, freezes with club
t C
a
l i
raised and bare feet tickling plush
e z
g z
o
carpet, while the television plays in
, g
3 i
6 P
the corner of the lounge. It’s something
9
1 e
h
he would do, but staged – neither quite , T
l
documentary nor fiction; neither a
e –
o
n C
straightforward avowal of the American
A
e A
d C
Dream nor a demolition of it.

t y
i s
u e
n t
r
That’s true too of The Valley, the later
a u
L o
C
series also included in Sultan’s current
,
é .
b t
show at Alexandre Pollazzon. Spurred by
i s
d i
i t
a 1998 magazine commission to photograph
S r
a
k
a day in the life of a pornographic film
c e
i h
l t
star, Sultan consequently spent five a
m ©
years in bourgeois tract houses like his
To continue to think about
parents’, rented from holidaying dentists
African contemporary art in
and lawyers by the ‘odd assembly of
terms of the patronage that
unrelated adults’ that puts together any
QueStion time:
supports and preserves it,
given porn film. Again it’s a kind of
Why afriCa?
however, can only serve to
fractured family portrait; again, though,
diminish the artists’
truth and fiction are blurred. Cabana
It is something of a shame
individual and very real
(2000), with its cluster of copulating
that Check List Luanda Pop,
contributions to a greater
nudes glimpsed through a rosebush, feels
the Venice biennale’s first
understanding of aesthetic
like a real shot of something artificial;
attempt at recognising sub-
meaning in the present.
Sharon Wild (2001) – where an underwear-
Saharan Africa’s unique
For that the art needs
clad starlet pauses between takes on
contributions to the
exposure. Which is why we
a bed – a fakery of an authentic mood.
increasingly globalised field
It’s less sociology than the
of contemporary art, became
should be thankful that there
autobiography of a perturbed sensibility
subject to a fray concerning
is veritably no overlap
reacting to the strange weightlessness of
its origins in the collection
between Check List and Why
what it perceives. Or as Sultan’s father
of Sindika Dokolo, a prominent
africa? Though the latter
apparently summarised it, ‘That’s you
Congolese businessman, some of
presents representative pieces
you’re photographing.’ Martin Herbert
whose family financial
by the esteemed Seydou Keita
dealings were the subject of
and Venice-darling Chéri Samba
Larry SuLTan: around THe HouSe
controversy. Perhaps it is as
(whose paintings hang in the
10 OCTOber – 24 NOVember,
a corrective, then, that this
Italian rather than the
ALexANDre POLLAzzON LTD, LONDON month a different Italian
African pavilion), Why africa?
WWW.ALex-POLLAzzON.COm venue, the Pinacoteca Giovanni
includes a host of other
e marella Agnelli, in Turin,
important works, such as Abu
is staging Why africa? The
bakarr mansaray’s
Pigozzi Collection, which will
mechanomorphic drawings,
feature holdings from Jean
richard Onyango’s Alexis
Pigozzi’s Contemporary African
rockman-esqe vision of a
Art Collection (CAAC), a
downed airliner and bodys Isek
Geneva-based enterprise
Kingelez’s large-scale
conceived of and built by
architectural reimagining
Pigozzi, an ‘Italian Harvard-
of Kinshasa, Congo.
educated venture capitalist’,
Why Africa then? Only the art
so the CAAC website tells us
can render it a rhetorical
(that Harvard plug no doubt
question. Jonathan T.d. neil
implying a background beyond
reproach), and his private
WHy afriCa? THe PiGozzi
CoLLeCTion, 6 OCTOber
curator, André magnin.
– 3 FebruAry, PINACOTeCA
GIOVANNI e mAreLLA
AGNeLLI, TurIN, WWW.
PINACOTeCA-AGNeLLI.IT,
WWW.CAACArT.COm
Sharon Wild, 2001 (from The Valley
series), c-print, 127 x 152, edition of 10
Artreview 36
Dispatches_OCTOBER.indd 2 6/9/07 09:04:10
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