Art
For Kaari Upson, the Abject and Grotesque Were a Wealth of Inspiration
To see Upson's memorial exhibition at Sprüth Magers is to absorb the full intensity of the artist’s explorations of trauma, vulnerability, and abjection.
Review
Books
These Photographs Were Made in Protest
The camera became the center of Chauncey Hare's life, and a tool for awakening his political consciousness.
Art
In Salt Lake City, Air Is a Concern and an Artistic Medium
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts presents artworks that make visible the quality and inequality of what we breathe.
Art
Alberto Aguilar Becomes the National Museum of Mexican Art
What’s an artifact, what’s an artwork, what’s a prop, what’s decoration, what’s disposable — these are questions that Aguilar has taken up with great enthusiasm.
Art
A Missed Opportunity to Bring an Eccentric Museum to Life With VR
In Space Popular's presentation at the Sir John Soane's Museum the VR content does not complement the physical, but widens the gulf between art history and contemporary art making.
Art
Penny Goring's Emotional Body Horror
The interplay between bodies and emotions in Goring’s work, and their potential to be transformative, reveals the politics that pump through the artist’s ever-exposed heart.
Art
Jean Painlevé Revealed the Otherworldliness Beneath the Water’s Surface
His detailed images of microscopic aquatic creatures suggest a version of Surrealism’s dream realities.
Books
New Book Asks, Why Do Artists Make Art?
In no small feat, Why I Make Art condenses artists’ multifaceted, meandering spoken stories into lively, relatable narratives that draw the reader in.
Art
Painting Against the Tyranny of Flatness
Korea's Dansaekhwa artists eschewed the idea of art-about-art and commodity culture in favor of an abstract art imbued with traces of the struggle for liberation and cultural identity.
Film
The Enigma at the Heart of Patricia Highsmith's Story
From her personal writings, along with fragments of her work and recollections of friends and family, Loving Highsmith constructs a view of the author that is more intimate than most.
Books
Miami, Chonga Girls, and Claiming an Aesthetics of Excess
Author Jillian Hernandez theorizes the intersecting formations of gender, class, and race in relation to the self-presentation of Black and Latina women and girls.
Art
Fred Wilson Summons Ghosts of the Past to Confront the Racism of the Present
Wilson's installation challenges not just outwardly violent historical figures but subtle colonial aesthetics still embedded in the city’s more liberal public monuments.