What is the lure of utopia for contemporary art? There has recently been a resurgence of interest in utopia, both as a subject for contemporary artists and as a strategy for making art. Whereas twenty, or perhaps even ten years ago, to call a work of art 'utopian' was to dismiss it as idealistic or naïve, even reactionary, the term seems to have recovered a certain respectability within the critical lexicon of contemporary art. Artists as varied as Tomas Hirschorn, Liam Gillick and Jeremy Deller are making works that are in significant respects utopian; while Goshka Mascuga, Nils Norman, Cary Young and Paul Chan are in various ways investigating utopia as both an impulse and as a legacy inherited from modernism. The utopian imulse is now finding regular embodiment in a great deal of visual art that purports to be critical of the social and political conditions we inhabit. (Excerpt, 1st paragraph)
