The Contemporary, the Common: Art in a Globalizing World

The essays in this collection were written in the first decade of the new millennium by the critic, editor, and curator Chantal Pontbriand. Pontbriand examines themes of being-in-common in today’s world and their relation to the development of art practices. As these practices are implemented, other ways of seeing, understanding, and making appear. Contemporaneity functions as a flow, a space-time being that cannot be fixated. The body is in the forefront—a thermometer of the world lived in and with, marked by dynamics of change and sharing.
The work of Claire Fontaine, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Ion Grigorescu, Carsten Höller, Mike Kelley, Sigalit Landau, Rabih Mroué, Yvonne Rainer, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Jeff Wall, among other artists, is examined in this book, together with Pontbriand’s insights into the seminal issues stirring the field of contemporary art.