Art
Mind Your Awareness
LOS ANGELES — As I made my way to the Hammer Museum, I was very aware of the fact that I would arrive late to the event — but something told me to go anyway.
Reviews
Books
The Sick World of Kim Hyesoon
The body is a sick place. Its reality is viscera. Kim Hyesoon’s poems are composed of these unsightly and unpleasant viscera. They squirm, blind and deaf like newborn puppies, then grow up and live in a dog-eat-dog world. This world is called Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream.
Art
Late Bloomer: Philip Hanson’s Recent Paintings
Initially I was skeptical, but Philip Hanson’s three paintings on the fourth floor of the Whitney Biennial got me to look and think again. The twelve paintings in his exhibition, I am a child of the Light, student of the Dark, at Corbett vs. Dempsey (March 21–April 19, 2014) convinced me.
Art
Down in Jungleland: Laura Sharp Wilson’s Crystalline Delirium
Irresistibly baffling, Laura Sharp Wilson’s paintings ensnare us inside a post-industrial jungle of tangled cables and serpentine vines, blinding yellow days and blacker than black nights. Her crisply articulated forms thrust, loop, spiral, dangle, cluster, zigzag, and coil edge-to-edge with a singu
Art
Arles Well That Ends Well
ARLES, France — It first looked to be cold, gray, and rainy on the first April weekend in Arles, somewhat in stride with the general dour spirit of the French these days.
Art
Art Before Images
When you come across a mirror it’s nearly impossible not to look in it. But what happens when the reflective surface is an artwork — when looking at yourself precludes looking at it, and vice versa? Carrie Yamaoka’s exhibition at PK Shop, titled after the Jimi Hendrix song "Are You Experienced?," is
Art
When Depression Strikes
LOS ANGELES — It was 4:20pm when I walked into Depression and encountered Andrea Ursuta’s piece “Stoner” (2013). A batting-cage ball-throwing machine creaked on, spun once, and died before it could eject anything from its quarantined-off belly.
Books
Hundreds of Years of Data Growing on Trees
While data visualization can seem like a modern design focus, it really has its roots in the High Middle Ages when a sudden rise in information and population resulted in the need to convey ideas in an accessible way.
Art
The Failures of 1970s Suburban Life
In the film Over the Edge (1979), the worst fears of a suburban planned community come true when the teenage residents of the fictional town of New Granada attack a town meeting being held to discuss just exactly what went wrong with the violent, angst-filled youth of their town.
Art
The Cold War in Florida's Wetlands
MIAMI — Consider, for a moment, the hole-in-the-donut: a confectionary absence that signifies a presence, a sort of vortex of meaning, potentially a Rorschach test.
Art
Searching for the Iconic Amid Post-Industrial Waste
Compared to the wonders of the ancient world, urban sprawl is devastatingly mundane. But what if a mass-produced monument sprang from its overdeveloped terrain?
Art
Muriel Cooper, 'Messages and Means' at Columbia University
By Muriel Cooper's hand, a charismatic, digitally transmuted Bauhaus aesthetic came to grace the covers of some of the twentieth century's most influential scholarly books on design, architecture, economics, biology, computer science, and sociology.