Susan Silas is a visual artist and occasional writer living in Brooklyn.
Most of us are somewhat conscious of the way in which the technological tools both create and limit what is possible visually, and how that evolves over time. Leslie Thornton’s new video work, “Luna,” is a tour de force exploration of these possibilities.
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Two billion cells make up the skin encasing our bodies, and 300 million of them are replaced every day. We need a sense of bodily integrity so much that if we lose a limb, we imagine it’s still there, itching and aching, and yet our skin, that exterior layer actually holding us together, is constantly dying off and renewing itself, sloughing off and repairing.
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Claudia Joskowicz is the master of the tracking shot. In her video “Music to Watch Dead Girls By” (2006), the camera moves seamlessly for 20 minutes through an endless interior, entering into and departing from rooms, discovering and leaving dead girls in its wake. In her next series, the camera moves outdoors and away from directly pop cultural source material, but never far from pop culture, beginning its examination of historical events and “real spaces” based on anecdotal histories and actual historical events, for the most part focused on her home country of Bolivia.
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HUE, Vietnam — Brothers Thanh and Hai Le are at the center of the contemporary art scene in Hue, the Imperial City, located on the coast midway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. They have a frenetic and positive energy, and everyone in Hue seems to know who they are. They have relationships with established artists in Hue, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City, as well as with young students and artists who have just completed their studies. I learned about them from the artist Morgan O’Hara and contacted them because I planned to travel to Vietnam. They invited me to stay at their residency at the New Space Arts Foundation.
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I was standing with a female painter friend in the Metropolitan Museum recently, in front of work by Van Gogh, when she said, “There are no rules.” Then, after a beat, she added, “Or he was hallucinating all the time and painted exactly what he saw.” For women, rules define a set of social expectations that are meant to keep them under control. In the arts, purportedly so much more liberal than the rest of society, this problem is acutely magnified, since culture tells us who we are, both literally and imaginatively.
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The impetus for the Bushwick Open Studios weekend is the concept of the “open studio.” It’s an opportunity for artists, curators and dealers to visit and talk to artists about their work in their spaces. But this past weekend, 56 Bogart Street served as a microcosm of the new Bushwick, where dealers with commercial galleries and artists with studios were presenting work to the public together, creating a larger event in which artists and dealers were functioning both in concert and at cross purposes at the same time.
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Don't You Understand, I'm an Artist!
The Whitney Museum's New Logo Goes Nowhere
Watch an Artist Have a Meltdown and Destroy a Canvas With Panache
Dolphins Rape People?
Watch Out, Art World: Amazon Is About to Start Selling Art
Can Rectal Realism (and Other 1970s Art) Inspire?
The Bermuda Triangle of Art
Overheard in the Art World
Beer with a Painter: John Walker
No Supper for You! Ai Weiwei Goes Heavy Metal
Skewering the Egos of Male Artists at Dia:Beacon
The Nazi Ties of Joseph Beuys
