For its most recent exhibition in the US, curated by Udo Kittelmann, the Stoschek Foundation brought back to life the Variety Arts Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. Built in the 1920s in Renaissance style and used as an event location after having ceased its original operations, the building blends different eras – and thus seems like an apt choice of location for the show, which juxtaposed contemporary video works from the collection with historical silent films. As Tim Griffin highlights in his review, the almost archaeological site provided a perfect backdrop for a somewhat hauntological viewing experience, invoking a present that is poised between what is, what has been, and the uncertainty of what is yet to come.

Bruce Hainley’s response to Annette Weisser’s last letter spans a surprising spectrum, from the absurd grandeur and vamped up villains of the latest Met Gala all the way to the subtle watercolor compositions of dancers by Silke Otto-Knapp, currently exhibited in LA. Can the latter – with their light graphic lines, gestural alignments, gradual transitions, and soft grisaille – serve as an effective counterpoint to the first? “Dance just to dance,” sings Aldous Harding in “Train on the Island,” which Hainley listens to while writing to Weisser. The figures in Otto-Knapp’s drawings certainly do.

Annette Weisser and Bruce Hainley, in their correspondence published here as the column “Supertramps,” frequently reference titles by the band of the same name. Given the way the world keeps turning despite all sorts of disasters, it is particularly apt that “Crisis? What Crisis?” – the moniker of Supertramp’s fourth studio album – is now being cited by Weisser. It came to her mind when visiting the most recent Gallery Weekend Berlin, where a series of photographs by Pippa Garner elicited a bout of black humor. Taking Garner’s photos as a starting point, Weisser reflects on the omnipresence of pornography in the wake of the current patriarchal backlash – a crisis that may be going on for too long to even be called one at all.

Die sprichwörtlich gewordenen „Lichter der Großstadt“ beleuchten nur selten jene, die in ihren Maschinenräumen deren Puls am Leben halten. In seiner ersten Einzelausstellung in der Schweiz setzt sich Amol K Patil mit Arbeitsmigration und Prekarität am Beispiel der Dalits, der Menschen am untersten Ende des traditionellen indischen Kastensystems auseinander, wobei der Fokus auf Narrativen und Funktionen von Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit liegt. Wie Philip Ursprung in seiner Rezension herausstellt, wirft Patil so Fragen nach den Bedingungen moderner kapitalistischer Gesellschaften auf.

Like the world outside – whether in Berlin, Houston, or LA – the scenes in Richard Hawkins’s recent paintings are in full bloom. As Bruce Hainley notes, his friend’s floral hues have come to feel Bonnard-esque, but Hawkins likes to contrast this flowery vitality with decay and a good dash of horror. In her last letter to Hainley, Annette Weisser highlighted how the handsome and oftentimes famous young men in Hawkins’s works appear zombie-like, as if caught in a limbo between their maker’s libidinous and murderous desires. Hainley’s reply adds a few new shades to Hawkins’s colorful compositions by loading them with possible references and associations.

Spring brings many things: besides blooming nature, also fresh “Supertramps” installments. In her letter to Bruce Hainley, Annette Weisser admits to longing to live in an environment where the sun shines more often, plants bloom year-round, and there’s less litter lying around than in Berlin. She has, at least, recently visited Vienna – just in time to see the Richard Hawkins retrospective, “Potentialities.” Many of Hawkins’s recent paintings feature idyllic floral backgrounds yet are populated by zombified male beauties and their severed heads. Weisser wonders why the artist takes such delight in beheading the objects of his desire. Who better to ask than her friend Bruce Hainley, who also happens to be a friend and frequent collaborator of Hawkins.

Up until the beginning of this year, Melvin Edwards’s work – which includes sculptures, wall objects, installations, and drawings – was on display at the Fridericianum in Kassel as part of the artist’s first major institutional solo exhibition in Europe. Just a few weeks after the comprehensive retrospective ended, the artist passed away. Here, Zoé Whitley provides insight into the social contexts in which Edwards worked and reflects on his remarkable oeuvre and its roots in civil rights activism, American football, and jazz.

The rapid expansion of neoliberalism in the 1980s marked a turning point in the capitalist economy, and the art world was not spared from the resulting ascendancy of commercialization. This transformation coincided with the active years of the exhibition space Nature Morte in New York. Today, while the art world is once more undergoing fundamental change, an exhibition has been dedicated to the legacy of that alternative gallery – not in New York, but in a part of Los Angeles under the new name Melrose Hill, which in recent years has been making headlines due to reckless real estate development and an influx of blue-chip galleries. This context prompts Paul Sietsema to approach “Nature Morte 1982–1988” through the lens of gentrification and commercialization. It also raises the question of whether the group show taking up Nature Morte’s historical program can – true to that gallery’s name – be understood as a memento mori for art as we know it today.