Caroline Kent’s installation practically vibrates with the energy of near-connection and near-signification.

Robert Archambeau
Robert Archambeau is a poet and critic whose books include The Kafka Sutra, The Poet Resigns: Poetry in a Difficult Time, Inventions of a Barbarous Age: Poetry from Conceptualism to Rhyme Home and Variations, Laureates and Heretics, and others. He teaches at Lake Forest College.
Theaster Gates Finds Community in Labor
Gates joins ideas of labor, function, and property with aesthetic and art historical concerns.
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan on Their Surreal Soundscapes for Man Ray’s Silent Films
Jarmusch and Logan’s SQÜRL — which they describe as an “enthusiastically marginal rock band” — weaves a trippy musical accompaniment to four silent films by Man Ray.
The Eternal Glow of Tiffany’s Sacred Glass
The term “stained glass” hardly gets at the vast variety of techniques and range of effects achieved by Tiffany and his peers. It can almost be called sculpted light.
A Refreshing Vision of the Future
Inka Essenhigh’s futuristic Uchronia is a pastoral place where what was once work is now play.
Imagining the Western Other in 19th-Century Japanese Prints
Images of Americans in these prints tell us a great deal about the local culture as it met the West. They tell us, specifically, about what many Japanese feared, and desired, from the encounter of cultures.
A Vision of Mass Media Compromised and Revised
A fan of chance and the lucky find, Robert Heinecken took every possible advantage of living in a media-saturated environment.
Entering Art’s Unknown
A sense of mystery pervades Enrico David’s art, in which a rich language of symbols suggests paths of possible interpretation.
Jessica Campbell and the Ghost of Emily Carr
Campbell implies that there has been one constant in the experiences of women across generations: the sexual aggression of men.
Dreams of Beauty in Japanese Ukiyo-e Paintings
The figures in The Floating World indicate the new direction Japanese art was about to take over the next two centuries, its growing emphasis on daily life.
The Wild World of the Hairy Who
The Chicago version of Pop Art, embodied in the work of the Hairy Who, is sweaty, nervous, sometimes giggly or goofy.
The Politics of the Gallery Display
Gaylen Gerber’s Supports, on view at the Arts Club of Chicago, continues to raise questions about what happens to an object when we place it in a gallery.