David Rimanelli focuses on the ambiguities of reception accorded to artworks both considered aesthetically and socio-politically, writing on historical topics (Richard Pousette-Dart and René Magritte) as well as contemporary practices (Josh Smith, Adam McEwen, Jacqueline Humphries). He aims to address art-world controversies in depth, as he did when discussing Occupy Wall Street and the Whitney’s institutional response in his review of the 2012 Biennial, “A Room of Their Own.” For the coming year, Rimanelli will finish an essay on the nineteenth-century Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler, while beginning research on an in-depth study of the paintings of Cecily Brown. In these instances, as in all others, he wishes to clarify the historicity of contemporary art and its public(s), addressing works of the past as if they were absolutely contemporary—the goal, traditionally, of art that is accorded “masterpiece” value.
David Rimanelli began writing about art in 1988 and has chronicled developments in the New York art world for over two decades. From 1993 to 1999, he was an editor and writer for the New Yorker and, since 1997, has been a contributing editor at Artforum, writing also forBookforum, Interview, Vogue Paris, frieze, Parkett, the New York Times, and Flash Art. He wrote some of the first articles on artists who are now influential figures, ranging from Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley, Thomas Ruff, and Matthew Barney to Carol Bove and Nate Lowman. His essays address Jeff Koons, Op Art, Damien Hirst, Tony Oursler, Philip Taaffe, Felix Gmelin, Roe Ethridge, and many others. As a corollary to his writing practice, he has curated exhibitions including “Bruce Nauman,” at pkm, Seoul (the first exhibition of Nauman’s work in Korea), “Murder Letters,” at Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, and “Survivor,” at Bortolami Dyan.