I have long admired John Walker’s work for its unique combination of tough materialism and romantic lyricism. I recently met him in his studio at Boston University, where he is the head of the MFA program. My visit with Walker happened to take place on the Thursday after the Boston Marathon tragedy, and I spent Friday’s citywide lockdown with painters Gideon Bok and Meghan Brady.
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This is an essay about communication and exchange between painters. It has to do with developing a shared language, and with exploring the nature and extent of our theoretical basis in painting.
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While the Metropolitan Museum of Art canonizes punk on the Upper East Side, A Gathering of the Tribes gallery is quietly celebrating its 20th anniversary on the Lower East Side. Across the street from the Nuyorican Poets Café and blocks from the former CBGB, Steve Cannon’s A Gathering of the Tribes brings together artists of all disciplines and backgrounds.
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Reuben Negron, an artist who lives and works in Connecticut and New York, is best known for his realistic watercolor depictions of intimate moments, ranging from the raw to the vulnerable. His scenes often give me the impression of looking in a mirror. Negron’s series This House of Glass, “an intimate exposé on what we keep hidden from others – and in many cases, what we hide from ourselves,” and Dirty Dirty Love, an exploration of “sex, sexuality and identity as concepts … [through] interactions with individuals and couples in domestic and private settings,” were both shown as separate solo exhibitions at Like the Spice Gallery in Brooklyn.
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In my screed from a few weeks ago, “When Artspeak Masks Oppression,” I cited the Guggenheim-Emirates partnership as an instance of contemporary art’s institutional culture operating in service of authoritarianism. One of the examples I mentioned of the propagandistic character of this primarily linguistic process was the Dubai-based artist UBIK’s description of an installation of his called “Tahrir Square” (2011). I am glad to have been recently able to catch up with UBIK and hear his frank and often biting perspective on the climate for contemporary art production in the United Arab Emirates.
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When I first made contact with Willie Cole it was to request that he submit a piece for an exhibition I curated, Art Enology. Here I was, a novice curator, reaching out to a living legend for an exhibition that was launching in a mere three months. I never expected him to say yes. I just wanted him to know that I existed, admired his work, and would hound him until he gave in to being part of one of my exhibitions.
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Have you ever met a Minotaur, believed you could draw with your voice, try to cut out your voice box, spoken to demons on the phone, or taken a few too many shrooms? Perhaps not, but you can experience all of the above at I am an Opera, a satirical one-person musical show written, composed, and performed by Joseph Keckler, who was awarded a month-long residency that premiered at Dixon Place on New York City’s Lower East Side for the month of April.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Since moving here with my family a couple of years ago, The Land of Tomorrow (LOT) has been on my mind. It is a provocative production and exhibition space established by Drura Parish and Dmitry “Dima” Strakovsky, first in Lexington (2009) and then in Louisville (2010), Kentucky.
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Oil on canvas. Evolving motifs. Line embedded in color. Compositions suspended between chaos and stability.
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In an email, a friend of mine mentioned a show taking place at the Kitchen next week: The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, created by the filmmaker Sam Green, with live music by indie rockers Yo La Tengo. The subject matter seemed like solid geeky/arty fare, but what stood out to me in the event description was the phrase “live documentary,” in quotes. Given the subject matter and the indie music, the first thing to come to mind when guessing what that might mean were the live, touring shows created in the past couple of years by the public radio programs RadioLab and This American Life. Then again, it was being presented at the Kitchen, a venue that has a history of presenting fairly aggressive work spanning visual, performance, and literary arts.
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