Phaidon’s Vitamin V takes on the unenviable task of overviewing contemporary video and moving-image art
If you try to read this book cover to cover, you might experience a dizzying thrill. First you’ll find time compressed in the introduction by academic Erika Balsom, who impressively covers the history of moving image in just eight pages. Then you’ll find it stretched out over the remaining 265 pages, which introduce the work of more than 100 contemporary artists from around the globe in alphabetical order, most of whom – even relative ‘veterans’ such as John Akomfrah, William Kentridge or Lynn Hershman Leeson – have been active during the past year.
However, the best way to read it (and not experience dizziness) is like a dictionary, with entries vetted (or nominated) by high-profile curators, writers and institutional directors like MoMA’s Stuart Comer or the Rockbund’s X Zhu-Nowell. Each spread comes with a short artist statement and a couple of artwork descriptions, followed by artwork stills and installation shots that do their best to illustrate despite the obvious shortcomings of the static page when it comes to capturing animated form.
Overall, you’ll get a piecemeal understanding of the different ways in which moving image is made and used today – navigating high-res, low-res, found-footage, staged or AI-generated images, speculative futures or critical investigations of the past. It’s an overwhelmingly large and diverse medium to tackle, and this book, with its formulaic descriptions, is best taken as something to whet your appetite. Ever present is the vague sense you’re reading 100-plus exhibition texts threaded together with no exhibition attached. A reminder perhaps that there is only so much we can expect a book to do as a stand-in for art.
Among the artists who made it on the taster menu are the 2025 LG Guggenheim Award recipient Ayoung Kim and a healthy crop of participants in last year’s Venice Biennale, including Gabrielle Goliath, Bouchra Khalili, Zineb Sedira and Wael Shawky. Though it may not offer many new insights, Vitamin V is a nicely packaged snapshot of the trending artists in the field right now.
Vitamin V: Video and the Moving Image in Contemporary Art. Edited by Phaidon with an introduction by Erika Balsom. Phaidon, £49.95 (hardcover)
From the April 2025 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
