The Global Art Compass: New Directions in 21st‑century Art

In Global Art Compass, Alistair Hicks demonstrates his belief that no single curator, critic, or dealer should monopolize our view of what is happening in the art world today, but that by listening to the artists themselves, we can gradually make out an ever‑evolving web of patterns, relationships, and themes. Organized by continent and including extracts from interviews with artists from around the world, the book offers a fresh view of the contemporary art world through artists from France, Albania, Slovakia, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, The United States, China, India, and beyond. The range of artists whose work is explored includes Laure Prouvost, Anri Sala, Roman Ondak, Gabriel Orozco, Sandra Gamarra, Cai Guo‑Qiang, and Nandan Ghiya, among many others. The results of Hicks’s approach clearly show that the preoccupations of artists in the 21st century are largely universal: that ever‑faster communications are balanced by a resistance to globalization; that an awareness of the unprecedented complexity of our world is equaled by a rising skepticism of the systems that impose order on our lives; and that while art is seen by many as a commodity, it also has the power to be a regenerative tool.