Pierre d’Alancaisez is a critic, curator, and researcher working with the multiple politics of the arts. His writing has appeared in outlets such as The Critic, ArtReview, The Spectator, and Compact. In 2024, he co-founded Verdurin, a space for experimentation in aesthetics, learning, and the difficult conversations which drive today’s culture.
Pierre previously directed waterside contemporary, a gallery that tested social and political questions in the art market. He curated exhibitions with artists who included Turner Prize nominee Oreet Ashery and has commissioned works with artists such as Mirza and Butler which traveled to Artes Mundi and Sydney Biennale.
Having trained in the sciences before coming to artistic practice, Pierre also worked on cultural exchange and engagement strategies in higher education and the charity sector and has held senior positions in publishing and financial services.
Featured work
Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual
Has the gay man — homosexual, queer, or inverted — rendered himself obsolete?
The Atonement Complex
The very purpose of remembrance is to facilitate the corruption of memory. We must wary of artists offering simplistic attributions of guilt.
Fear, Loathing, and Denunciation
The events sparked by the ArtForum open letter reveal an art world whose gangrenous goings-on threaten the social order.
Benevolent Edgelords
Knee-jerk accusations of fascist thought and the refusal to embrace aesthetic ambiguity have meant that that ‘the left can’t meme’. It’s all Walter Benjamin’s fault – but artist like Joshua Citarealla and Monira Al Qadiri offer alternatives.
Universal Basic Artist
Supporting artists to make art, or make-work for workless artists? The concept of state-provided incomes for artists may be hiding a whole bunch of consequences – unintended and otherwise.
The Dearth of the Clinic
The Monkeypox outbreak exposes the failings of the technocratic biopolitical rule and the erosion of our ability to act as moral agents that plagued the Covid pandemic.
Latest notes and notices
Short and curt exhibition reviews.
Felicity Powell
The Studio of Felicity Powell
Powell was a medallist, yet not a medal recipient.
Quentin James McCaffrey
McCaffrey fails to distinguish between the frame and what’s inside it.
Elisa Giardina Papa
She Flickered In and Out of History
Giardina Papa renders transhumanist dreams sharply. Their promise, alas, is imaginable only in uninhabitable abstract.
Zyad Menk
Scar Tissue
History’s scrapheap with no interpretative powers.
Yvonne Mabs Francis
Breakdown
Does an artist get to participate in the construction of her outsider status?
Marc-Aurèle Debut
ON REPEAT
The orgy is long over.
Say No to Art School
The art school is a special thing. It promises to take young people at the threshold of adulthood and turn them into lifelong dreamers, creators, and critical thinkers. But the art school is also big business, intimately involved in reproducing neoliberalism and its subjects. For many graduates, art school is the first step in a career of fierce competition, low earnings, and horrific work conditions. What can we do about this?
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