Books
Monster In My Head
Ever wondered what your childhood nightmares would look like if they met your adult nightmares? Well, take a peek at Monster, the latest installation of Providence, Rhode Island’s giant, horror-themed comic book.
Review
Art
Where Psychogeography Meets Mobile Phones
LOS ANGELES — We use our phones increasingly for getting around, taking pictures and finding the next place to eat. It's not quite accurate to call them phones anymore — they're really mini computers and GPS tracking devices, with all your friends tagging along. LA Re.Play, an exhibition of "mobile
Art
A Visit to Mike Kelley's Last Show
The beginning of January marked the opening of Hoodwinked, a two-man show featuring Richard Prince and Mike Kelley at Nyehaus gallery in Chelsea. I had the pleasure of visiting the exhibition several times and the unnerving but positive opportunity to revisit it after the artist’s death, as the gall
Art
Attack of the Heads or Os Gêmeos in LA
LOS ANGELES — Perched atop the Prism Gallery is a giant, yellow face with slender eyelashes, narrow eyes and prominent nose. It competes for attention against the many billboards and vehicles along this stretch of Sunset Blvd. The squinty eyes and yellow complexion are outlandishly drawn, but the po
Art
Poets and Popcorn
America, says Charlie Citrine in Saul Bellow’s novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975), is proud of its dead poets. Especially the mad ones: the bridge-leapers, the drink-guzzlers, the pill-snackers. Robert Lowell thought everyone was tired of his turmoil, but he obviously wasn’t thinking ahead to the possibil
Books
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Once when I was breaking up with a girlfriend, she told me, “You act like a nice guy, but really you’re not.” Or maybe she said, “You pretend to be a nice guy,” I can’t quite remember. Anyway, I was taken aback. Would it be better to just habitually act like an asshole, rather than trying to do so a
Art
No Names Allowed Beyond Here
At the far end of the main gallery Thomas Scheibitz mounted the painting "Untitled (No. 632)" on a slant within an inset in the wall of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Its four rectangles, thinly painted in rose and violet washes or a combination of violet, green and brown, with varying densities of white b
Art
Risky Business
A liver shot in boxing is a short, quick body punch delivered to the liver with a left hook. The effect can be devastating. (Bernard Hopkins knocked out Oscar De La Hoya with such a shot.) Unfortunately, the tool is often overlooked in today's prizefights, as boxers prefer headhunting with right-han
Art
Planned Obsolescence or Our Smartphone Leashes
Ben Bunch’s new show, Twenty-First Century Freemasonry, is a riotous amalgamation of computer part entrails, circuit boards and wires in overclocked colors.
Art
Saudi Arabia Needs to Talk
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Contemporary art is not the first thing you might think about whenever Saudi Arabia is mentioned. But if you decide to look beyond the veil of political media and stereotypes you will be quite surprised at what you might discover.
Art
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Pandemic Scorned
The slogan “Silence=Death” remains one of the most recognizable images from the art produced during the AIDS crisis in America. Created by the activist art collective Gran Fury, it complemented a movement of creativity that held social change as its core. Now, over 30 years since the term “AIDS” was
Art
Three Points Make a Triangle at the Queens International
At the beginning of the 2012 Queens International, the fifth biennial of Queens artists to be staged by the Queens Museum of Art, you are asked to take a journey. The exhibit's subtitle, Three Points Make a Triangle, was inspired by the French surrealist René Daumal's unfinished 1944 work Le Mont An