Fall 2004 preview: three times a year Artforum looks ahead to the coming season. The following survey previews fifty shows opening around the world between September and December

ArtForum, Sept, 2004

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PARIS

Rineke Dijkstra

Jeu de Paume

December 13-February 27, 2005

Curated by Hripsime Visser

Rineke Dijkstra's beautiful and unsettling portraits of individuals in transition--early adolescence, childbirth, and initiation into military life--are brought together for the first time in this show of seventy photographs and two video pieces. The exhibition starts with Dijkstra's beach pictures of teenagers from the early '90s and climaxes with her recent studies of a young Frenchman entering the Foreign Legion and Israeli teens turned soldiers. These portraits, for some of which Dijkstra followed her subjects for several years, convey a poignancy that is mirrored in her video portraits of young club-goers dancing for the camera. Travels to the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Mar. 11, 2005-May 22, 2005; Fundacio "la Caixa," Barcelona, June 4, 2005-Aug. 21, 2005; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, fall 2005.--Andy Grundberg

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Xavier Veilhan

Centre Georges Pompidou

September 15-November 15

Curated by Christine Macel

As in his Projet Hyperrealiste presented at the 2003 Biennale de Lyon, the work of Xavier Veilhan revisits modernity through visual adventures that heighten the experience of perception. For his first solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, one of the best French artists to come out of the '90s fills Espace 315 with a "total work of art": A distorted pattern of squares covering the walls manipulates the perceptual dimensions of the room, and a monumental sculpture of a boat is lifted off the ground by a polyester wake. Also on view are a new Light Machine (a cross between a movie screen and a "luminous painting") and pixelated digital landscapes on aluminum. And in October, Veilhan will install a spectacular mobile in the Pompidou's forum space.--Jean-Max Colard

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Translated from French by Jeanine Herman.

BILBAO

Jorge Oteiza

Guggenheim Bilbao

October 8-January 9, 2005

Curated by Margit Rowell

Although not well known outside Spain, Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza is highly regarded in his native country. The Guggenheim Bilbao, perhaps paying a debt to the region, is mounting a retrospective of the late artist's work. The show positions Oteiza's sculptures, drawings, and collages, mainly from the '50s, as precursors to Minimalism, particularly the cubic structures through which he created spatial "desocupaciones" (his term). While this is a temptation that no art historian dealing with geometric abstraction of the period can resist, the work actually has less to do with the literalness and bluntness of Judd's boxes than with the sculptural experiments influenced by Malevich and Russian Constructivism that took place in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela at the time.--Monica Amor

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

Nancy Spero

Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea

September 24-January 6, 2005

Curated by Susan Harris

For more than five decades, Nancy Spero has paired an array of fragmented, totemic figures (from serpent-tongued harpies to sperm-engorged bombs) with fragmented, coded language (from writings by Artaud to descriptions of torture techniques). This show includes both new work and highlights from Spero's oeuvre, such as selections from the "War Series 1966-70" and Hours of the Night II, 2001. The accompanying catalogue comprises essays by independent curator Susan Harris as well as Juan Vicente Aliaga, Jo Anna Isaak, and Diana Nemiroff. The artist's lifelong feminist project of plumbing the depths of human cruelty and subjugation while pointing up unexpected moments of grace couldn't feel more timely.--Johanna Burton