Three Quarterlies This Quarter
Without the pressure of a monthly deadline, art & culture quarterlies have freedom to produce something inspired. The best are like art objects disguised as magazines. This quarter I am reading Apartamento, Whitewall and Cabinet.
Apartamento is a challenge to classify: it's the Un-Interior Design, Interior Design journal exploring the way people appropriate spaces. Sterile living rooms and manicured gardens are avoided. Apartamento's spaces are admired for their innovation in "hominess," with interviews and contributions from international creatives. "Gardening" is a casual snapshot of an unusual plant with instructions for care. Photo essays are travel logs of hotel rooms. Poems and short stories are on spaces loved and places missed. All this is with an emphasis on ways inhabitants and design coexist. Somehow the small journal feels intensely personal like we've been invited past the doorstep and straight up to the bedroom.
If the white cube is the gallery than Whitewall is the magazine as the gallery. The sleek and stylish journal is a highly curated selection of reviews, profiles, new artists, artists to watch and an in-depth focus topic. Fashion and design as art are incorporated too. Whitewall is cutting edge (the current issue features an interview with the music and fashion exec Damon Dash on his new Tribeca gallery). Still, it's not afraid to be cutthroat (Jeff Koons' curatorial project "Skin Fruit" is ripped to shreds). This quarter performance art and artists are explored. This said, the $20 magazine contains $10 worth of ads. Be suspicious of the "too-cool" glossy format.
Cabinet consistently informs and inspires. Like a cabinet of curiosities, each issue explores peculiarities on a chosen topic. This quarter Cabinet takes on the idea of islands like Pulau Pejantan in the Indonesian archipelago. Zhao Renhui's photographs share some of Pulau Pejantan's wonders- a black geyser, white sand dunes, rare species of animals and fauna that aren't seen anywhere else in the world. The island's perpetual thick fog makes Renhui's photos of the exotic ghost hare, pejantan paradise birds and iromondi cat look dreamlike. Per usual, art, culture, science and history are an integral part of Cabinet's story telling.
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Find current issues of Cabinet and Whitewall at Hennessey + Ingalls. Check into Skylight Books for Apartamento.
Lauren is a photographer and writer. Follow her at The Holiday Buffet.
