Cui Xiuwen is known for her iconic pictures of defiled schoolgirls in lily-white dresses and red scarfs featured in front of Tiananmen-like structures. Miao Xiaochun uses themes of Western classic art and 3D graphics to produce phantasmagorias of Hieronymus Bosch-inspired splendor. Though both artists are thoroughly Chinese, Western interpretations of the body ricochet throughout their current exhibit.
Art
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Surrealist Visions and California Chic
LOS ANGELES — A visiting friend from New York afforded me the chance to check out two shows currently on view at LACMA. They’re quite different — disturbing surrealism and cool California chic — but as they’re in the same Resnick Pavilion, we had to see both. It’s a great combination.
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When New York Was Really Happening
Pace Gallery has mounted a world class mini-museum show on the art of the Happening using its vast holdings as well as supplemental gleanings loaned from the Whitney, MOMA and Getty museums.
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It’s the Political Economy, Stupid
“Artists do not necessarily have the solutions, but they ask the great questions” says Andreas Stadler, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in regards to their new convention-questioning show It’s the Political Economy, Stupid, a devastatingly harsh look at our political realities in the times of this financial crisis.
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An Artist Who Celebrates Miami Style
I spoke with Typoe, an artist who has a studio in his home and has lived and worked in Miami all his life, about his work and practice.
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Beautiful Dirt
The art in Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has some of the best material lists I’ve ever seen: city dust and pencil on silk; soot on organic cotton canvas; dryer lint and cotton; blown glass and ash from burned books. It’s label text that borders on poetry.
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Home Remedies
The large paintings in Glenn Goldberg’s recent exhibition are part of a series collectively titled Elixir. They are half as tall as they are wide. “Eighth Elixir” (2011) is less than four feet tall and over seven feet wide, but most are slightly less than three feet high and five feet wide. Done in acrylic and ink on pale gray, gessoed grounds, the paintings have an undulating visual hum to them — think Philip Glass and Terry Riley —which is both soothing and disconcerting. This is because Goldberg effectively meshes two palettes on a gray ground — one is black and white, while the other consists of muted, often transparent colors ranging from near primaries to turquoise and violet.
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Under the Sign of the Gnome
The central thing that distinguishes Chris Martin from his forebears (Forrest Bess, Alfred Jensen, and Simon Gouveneur) is his meshing of visionary symbols and images derived from mass culture, particularly from the world of popular music. He has paid homage to James Brown, “the hardest working man in show business,” in a number of collages and paintings, including, in this exhibition, “Reverend Al in Mourning” (1989 – 2011), which is a large painting made of industrial aluminum foil, which includes a photocopy of a tiny, grainy newspaper photograph of Al Sharpton mourning the legendary singer. The other distinguishing feature is his slyly anarchic humor. (It’s hard to imagine Forrest Bess telling a joke).
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Paper People and Rude Shocks
Some shows are designed to shock, and you’d expect that one sporting the title Extra Fucking Ordinary would be among them. And you’d be right.
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Want To See the Future of Sundance? Checkout the Abandoned Lumberyard
PARK CITY, Utah — Behind the shopping plaza location of the press-and-industry screening hub known as the Holiday Village Cinemas and tucked behind the celebrity favorite restaurant Blind Dog stands Park City’s shuttered Anderson’s Lumberyard. Recently remade by local businessman Mark Fisher as a music venue called The Yard, the sprawling warehouses turn into the trans-media exhibition space New Frontier The Yard for the 10-day Sundance Film Festival.
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Our Unexpected Downtime
Yesterday evening, while attempting some database maintenance, a corrupt table hosting all of our posts was damaged and led to what many saw as the Hyperallergic homepage with blank pages. SHIT!
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A View from the Easel, Part 4
CHICAGO — The fourth installment of a series in which artists send me a photo and a description of their workspace.
