Ringing in the New Year, the Winkleman Gallery’s group exhibition Corporations Are People Too might prove that 2011’s artistic obsession with corporate power, the economic crisis, and abandoned office buildings with unintentionally ironic posters will continue into 2012. And I’m not entirely convinced that’s a good thing.
Emily Colucci
Emily Colucci is a recently graduated NYU interdisciplinary Master's student with a focus on art history and gender/sexuality studies. Her interests lie in graffiti, street art and New York-based art from the 1970's and 1980's.
Posted inOpinion
That Ugly Jeff Koons Stocking Stuffer You Always Wanted
Now you don’t even have to be a part of the 1% to make art enthusiasts with strong opinions wild with fury this holiday season — just buy them the scale model of Jeff Koon’s flashy car.
Posted inArt
If Gender Is a Performance, Can’t Artistic Importance Be Too?
Attending transgender singer, songwriter and performance artist Mx Justin Vivian Bond’s exhibition, The Fall of the House of Whimsy at Participant Inc., I left feeling horribly conflicted, so conflicted that it took me a few weeks to even approach the topic in writing. Even though I originally felt irritated by Bond’s self-mythologizing tenancy, I began to later wonder if Bond’s self-creation as an artistic icon is any different from any other art exhibition.
Posted inArt
First Lady of NY Graffiti Traces Her Evolution
While everyone even loosely connected to the art world is in Miami this week, I want to stick up for those of us still stuck in the cold by taking a look at an artist and medium that could not possibly be more quintessentially New York: Lady Pink.
Posted inArt
About Change, the Limits of Freedom and an Attack on Fear
Standing outside the Judson Memorial Church on Saturday night, two days after the Day of Action and the same week of the raid on Zuccotti Park, I, along with a group of art lovers, artists, Occupy Wall Street protesters and random passersby, watched people being turned into living art objects by artist Michael Alan in his film We Are All Living Installations: Occupy Yourself (2011) that was organized in conjunction with the OWS Art and Culture Committee.
Posted inArt
Always Here, Always Queer and Art History Is Starting to Get Used To It
While at the landmark exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Brooklyn Museum, I realized I had to start my review with a statement that will look simple and quite possibly stupid: Hide/Seek is more than David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire In My Belly.”
Posted inOpinion
NY Catholic Group Wants Brooklyn Museum to Cut Wojnarowicz Video from Show
Here we go again. Almost a year after the controversy at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Catholic groups in New York have started to raise alarm over David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire In My Belly” (1986-7) that will appear in the Brooklyn version of Hide/Seek.
Posted inArt
Graffiti Over Easy: Losing My Faith On Mercer Street
Last Sunday, I found myself sitting with my head in my hands on a tiny stoop on Mercer Street, wondering how to even begin to process witnessing Gallery 89’s exhibition of graffiti writer AVONE (Destroy & Rebuild), American Graffiti. Not a graffiti art show in a pop-up gallery as promised, it was an exhibition in a bar/restaurant and on Sunday, naturally, they were serving brunch. Let me repeat that: Graffiti art … at brunch … in Soho.
Posted inArt
Occupying the Walls: Graffiti As Political Protest
After happening on several graffiti statements by the writer FADE, I realized that graffiti may be one of the most long-lasting artistic and political protests.Occupying public space and asserting the power of the individual, every tag, piece, statement or other form of graffiti is a true demonstration.
Posted inOpinion
David Wojnarowicz’s Journals Make His Private World Very Public
Just in time for National Coming Out Day last Tuesday and the November opening of the controversial Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Brooklyn Museum, Triple Canopy has published a selection of visual artist and writer David Wojnarowicz’s journals online. Giving readers a brief and fascinating look into Wojnarowicz’s life and thoughts, the publication of the journals follow Wojnarowicz’s imploring to turn the private into something public as a political tactic.
Posted inOpinion
Before Occupy Wall Street, Artforum Remembers There Was Asco
Usually associated with long-winded art historical articles and page after page of gallery ads, Artforum made an unexpected but exciting move in their October issue by placing Asco, a politically radical Chicano artist collective from the 1970s on the cover. Perhaps igniting a real art historical interest in Asco, Artforum highlights Asco’s merging of art and protest, which could directly inspire Occupy Wall Street (and now, other cities)’s own art and culture committee.
Posted inArt
Instead Of Burning Down The House, David Byrne Turns to Cliche
Without knowing it, I stumbled onto David Byrne’s installation Tight Spot at the Pace Gallery two weeks ago while wandering through the many Chelsea gallery openings at the start of the September gallery shows.
