Where Is Everyone?
Frieze|Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Built Environment: Minoru Nomata’s paintings ask why we obsess over unpeopled architecture
Juliet Jacques
Where Is Everyone?

AT FIRST GLANCE, Japanese artist Minoru Nomata’s paintings look like photographs, so realistic are his portrayals of concrete and steel structures. The backgrounds betray them first: unnaturally dramatic clouds covering densely coloured skies that complement their imposing architectural foregrounds a little too perfectly. Strangely timeless and yet clearly modernist, Nomata’s uncanny buildings are not the utopian fantasies of Italian futurist Antonio Sant’Elia or Russian constructivist Vladimir Tatlin. While they are reminiscent of the international style, they are not typical of it: they would not have integrated readily within the architecture of the Soviet bloc, nor of North America at the height of the World’s Fairs, nor of Oscar Niemeyer’s Brazil. Nor do they quite evoke Nomata’s homeland, although the Japanese have a specific name – haikyo – for the type of abandoned infrastructure the artist so eerily depicts. Apocryphal if not impossible, Nomata’s buildings raise an important, harrowing question: where are the people?

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 243 - June - August 2024 من Frieze.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 243 - June - August 2024 من Frieze.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'
Frieze

I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'

Conversation: Ahead of a solo show at London’s Cubitt Gallery, Marlene Smith speaks to Lubaina Himid about her time in the BLK Art Group, friendship and collaboration

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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Tell It Slant
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Built Environment: Giovanna Silva on photographing history through unexpected architectural interventions

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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Dean Sameshima
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What does it mean to be alone? In Dean Sameshima’s recent body of work – 25 monochrome photographs of queer men in Berlin porn theatres with sumptuous black negative spaces and blinding white cinema screens – ‘alone’ is a complicated term.

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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Nicole Wermers
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Nicole Wermers’s Reclining Female #6 (2024) looks out over Glasgow.

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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Echoes of the Brother Countries
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Echoes of the Brother Countries

In recent years, the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) has been the subject of a reappraisal that, while not seeking to redeem the stiflingly authoritarian state, has attempted to present a more nuanced overview of its social and cultural realities.

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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Inward Yearnings
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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
The Promise of the Past
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Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Where Is Everyone?
Frieze

Where Is Everyone?

Built Environment: Minoru Nomata’s paintings ask why we obsess over unpeopled architecture

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3 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024