Lisa Le Feuvre, executive director, Holt/Smithson Foundation: “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More” at the Riga Biennial
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/most-memorable-show-2018-part-iii-1423663
Thinking of the best exhibition I saw this summer is a hard task—the filing cabinet of my brain is bursting with possibilities. More easy is to answer with the one I remember with greatest clarity. Without a doubt that is the first Riga Biennial: “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.” Curated by Katarina Gregos, the exhibition took over the Latvian capital with works by more than 100 artists, nearly 50 of which were new commissions. Erudite and timely, it studied the ways change creeps up on us slowly, then suddenly it is all too late to go back. Without exception, the selected artworks asked urgent questions for the present. There were many fantastic works—the one burned into my mind is Alexis Destoop’s film Phantom Sun (2017), a study of the Norwegian-Russian border. It looks to future utopian economic projections in the light of dystopian Cold War fears and the facts of climate change.