The Art Room #12 by CURA. for Soho House Rome presents Current Affairs. A Conversation between Josh Kline and Simon Denny

Artists Josh Kline and Simon Denny met in 2013. Both were included in Susanne Pfeffer’s landmark group exhibition “Speculations on Anonymous Materials” in Kassel that year. Both Kline and Denny were at the forefront of a wave of artists in the early 2010s who began making work involving bleeding-edge technology and the architecture and design of twenty-first century capitalism. In their work, the two artists—Kline in New York City and Denny in Berlin—focused on technology’s relationship to the politics and economics of our time. In Rome, they will appear in conversation together for the first time. Their discussion will range widely across the topics shared in their work, discussion art made in response to disinformation, deepfakes, information security, as well as the question of “content” in artwork and its relationship to macroeconomics, the perils of political speech in the era of corporate social media and AI, and the possibilities of agitprop in our time. They will also screen some short videos.

Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia, USA) lives and works in New York, USA. In 2024 he had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and was included in the 24th Biennale of Sydney and the 8th Yokohama Triennial. In 2023 his work was the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York. Kline’s art has been widely exhibited internationally, in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and MoMA PS1 in New York; The Hirschhorn Museum and The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Louisiana Museum, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; KW, Berlin; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; and MCAD, Manila, among others.

Simon Denny, MNZM (b. 1982, Auckland, NZ) lives and works in Berlin. He serves as a Professor of Time-Based Media since 2018 at The Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg and co-founded the artist mentoring program BPA//Berlin Program for Artists in 2016. Denny represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. His work was also included in the 16th Sydney Biennale (2008), 1st Brussels Biennale (2008), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), BNLMTL Montréal Biennale (2014), 11th Lyon Biennale (2015), 9th Berlin Biennale (2016), Manifesta 11 (2016), 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018), 6th Guangzhou Triennial (2018), 34th Ljubljana Biennial (2021), 7th Athens Biennial (2021), 6th Ural Biennial (2021), and 1st Diriyah Biennial (2021) and other major international group exhibitions. Among his solo exhibitions: MoMA PS1, New York (2015), Kunstverein Aachen (2011), Aspen Art Museum (2012), Kunstverein Munich (2013), MUMOK, Vienna (2013), Portikus, Frankfurt (2014), Serpentine Galleries, London (2015), WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2016), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017), Hannover (2023). Denny has co-curated exhibitions in many international institutions and his works are represented in major institutional collections. He received the 14th Baloise Art Prize for his Statements presentation at Art Basel in 2012, was nominated for New Zealand’s Walters Prize in 2012 and 2014 and Berlin’s Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2013 and was awarded the Ars viva-Preis für Bildende Kunst in 2012. In 2025, Denny was recognised as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM).