Simon Castets: Curating Generation X
The young curator behind 89plus takes on new challenges as the director of the Swiss Institute.
The French curator Simon Castets, who is 30 but could be easily mistaken for a cast member of Glee, is part of the new generation of artists, filmmakers, writers, and other creative types emerging in the age of social media. 89plus, the Web platform he cofounded last year with Hans Ulrich Obrist, is for those talents born in or after 1989. “We’re curious about the Internet’s effect on their creative undertakings,” Castets says. Not content to work only within the digital domain, Castets recently accepted the position of director of the Swiss Institute, a nonprofit fixture in the New York art world for almost three decades. He will shepherd the institution’s Swiss-centric cosmopolitan programming while expanding its exploration into architecture, design, film, and other areas. (Later this year will see the inauguration of an annual design series, the first of which will be organized by the Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis.) “I’m interested in collaboration and bringing in all these different voices,” Castets says. “The more the merrier.”
Next In Line
In the wake of a critically acclaimed survey at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, in 2011, and a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York, in 2012, Matt Connors has been garnering some serious attention.
Read more about the artist here.
Photograph by Thomas Dozol.
“It’s a creative zone where people can brainstorm ideas.” – Lena Ott
Read more about the make-up artist here.
Photograph by Taea Thale.
Michele Abeles stole MoMA’s 2012 “New Photography” show with her seductive, sharply lit photomontages that incorporated wild prints, domestic objects, and nude male models.
Read more about the artist here.
Photograph by Taea Thale.
Twelve years ago, the director Richard Linklater began filming Ellar Coltrane, who was then 7 years old, for his movie Boyhood, a year-by-year dramatization of how a child gradually ages into adulthood.
Read more about the actor here.
Photograph courtesy of IFC Films.
“My work can be read as traditional painting, but it’s really these two mediums put together.” – Wyatt Kahn
Read more about the artist here.
“Embracing discovery and accidents is what I really like about glass.” – Flavie Audi
Read more about the artist here.
Photograph by Billal Taright.
Kathryn Andrews gets some of her best ideas driving around Los Angeles, where the visual contradictions she sees every day find their way into her art.
Read more about the artist here.
Photograph by Columbine Goldsmith.
“I say, ‘I’m your sister, trust me!’ I don’t do that with the other girls. But with Léa, I can say, ‘You need to wear it.’ ” – Camille Seydoux
Read more about the stylist here.
The 23-year-old Swiss-born, Paris-based designer Julie Richoz makes elegant objects from glass and porcelain.
Read more about the designer here.
Photograph by Estelle Hanania.
GEMS, the Washington, D.C., duo composed of Lindsay Pitts, 28, and Clifford John Usher, 29, has a romantic-pop sound with plenty of ebb and flow.
Read more about this musical duo here.
Photograph by Holly Burnham.
Twigs, or FKA Twigs, grew up in the English countryside, and her hypnotic, bare electro-pop is powerful in the way that a whisper, delivered confidently, can be louder than a shout.
Read more about the singer here.
Photograph by Jaime James Medina.
Austria-based producer and electronic solo artist Sohn, whose new album drops this month, is mournful and moody, stripping down his raw heartbreak to a post-dubstep beat.
Read more about the singer here.
Photograph by Andreas Waldschuetz.
The 19-year-old London singer-songwriter Laurel Arnell-Cullen, who goes simply by Laurel, sets off her storytelling against a restrained backdrop of sharp drumming and hand-clapping.
Read more about the singer here.
Courtesy of Pip
Born in Kentucky, Boyd Holbrook, 32, who got his start as a model, has all-American good looks and star quality that first became evident in Behind the Candelabra.
Read more about the actor here.
Photograph by Katie Fischer.
“The Internet has been internalized by the art world.” -Lauren Cornell
Read more about the curator here.
Photograph by Taea Thale.
“Jewelry lives in the way it’s passed on.” – Hollie Bonneville-Barden
Read more about the jewelry designer here.
Photograph by Josh Shinner.
“I’m interested in collaboration and bringing in all these different voices.” – Simon Castets
Read more about the curator here.
