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.
Continue Reading →
Up in a hallway off the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library is a small exhibition of prints from one of Impressionism’s iconic artists. Created between 1878 and 1898 by Mary Cassatt, the quiet depictions of women in repose with family pets or viewing the opera might not immediately catch the eye of those who happen to pass by, but they represent not just the early experimentations of Cassatt, but one of New York’s greatest overlooked art collections.
Continue Reading →
HONG KONG — The staging of Lygia Pape’s 1968 performance “Divisor” on the streets of Hong Kong was a fantasy I never knew I had, but witnessing it was a dream nonetheless. Presented as part of the current exhibition A Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, Ghosts, Rebels. Sars, Leslie and the Hong Kong Story (May 17–July 20 2013) at the nonprofit space Para Site, this current staging of “Divisor” channels the potency of the seminal work into another context, one defined by the effects of colonialism, plagues, politics, contagion, sterilization, and segregation.
Continue Reading →
This may sound like the world’s most overwrought art gag. And, certainly, there is no small irony in critiquing the creative numbness of the art market with pieces that will be sold on that very same market. But William Powhida’s artistic spoofs are so spot on, and his critiques so incisive, it’s hard not to get sucked in by the whole exercise.
Continue Reading →
Of the 25 artists whose work is currently on view at Dia:Beacon, four of them are women. (And one of those women is half of a husband-and-wife team.) The open, spacious museum just up the river from New York City is beautiful, staid, and a bit, well, male. Even a fantastic three-room installation of wry Louise Bourgeois sculptures can’t undercut the machismo you get from wandering through a hall full of John Chamberlain pieces (crushed steel), while knowing that under your feet there’s another hall full of Richard Serras (sculpted steel). The male pieces just loom so large — they take up an enormous amount of space, both physically and emotionally.
Continue Reading →
Beneath our sheath of skin is an internal world both vast and complex. While most of us rarely get to see it, these workings of our systems and organs are the daily viewing of pathologists, particularly when it comes to disease. A new book of photography takes us into our own interiors, and shows that even with their horrid ravaging of our bodies, there is some beauty in these afflictions.
Continue Reading →
In part 1 of this month, reviews of She & Him, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Satinder Sartaaj, and Lady Antebellum.
Continue Reading →
Don Voisine’s oil paintings on wood brim with all kinds of tensions: between flatness and spatiality; stasis and torque; containment and expansion; light and dark; tonal gradations and sharp contrasts; matte and glossy surfaces; transparency and solidity. Once you begin noticing the variety of stresses animating these paintings, more start to emerge — that’s how finely and tightly tuned they are.
Continue Reading →
Anselm Kiefer has scaled back, way back, from his preposterously overproduced previous solo at Gagosian, but with Kiefer we are always talking about relative degrees of gigantism.
Continue Reading →
After a year of absence, the annual video_dumbo festival has returned with a week of screenings and installations that have video art reflecting on itself. Last night, the central exhibition, Re-Return to Sender, opened at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in Chelsea. While it’s now extracted from its former Brooklyn home, there is an ongoing installation running alongside at the Front Street gallery space of Dumbo Arts Center, which is continuing its participation in the event as a co-presenter this year.
Continue Reading →Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads
Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads
Don't You Understand, I'm an Artist!
Watch an Artist Have a Meltdown and Destroy a Canvas With Panache
The Whitney Museum's New Logo Goes Nowhere
Watch Out, Art World: Amazon Is About to Start Selling Art
Can Rectal Realism (and Other 1970s Art) Inspire?
The Bermuda Triangle of Art
Skewering the Egos of Male Artists at Dia:Beacon
Creative Success vs. Personal Relationships — Who Wins?
Overheard in the Art World
Beer with a Painter: John Walker
The Hidden Beauty of Disease Under Our Skin
The Nazi Ties of Joseph Beuys
