I’m not sure Lateralism, a small show curated by artist Matt Wycoff bares out by the premise put forth in the press release, which promised to assess “a slice of the ever-shifting boundaries and implications of post minimal painting and sculptural installation,” but the exhibition at The Hogar Collection is definitely a wonderful installation of six works by four artists that look great together.
Reviews
Posted inPerformance
Art of Video Games: “Theater of the Arcade: 5 Classic Video Games Adapted for the Stage”
Video games appear to be making oddly pervasive cameos across fields as varied as architecture, art, cinema, criticism, and now theater. Theater of the Arcade: Five Classic Video Games Adapted for the Stage is exactly that, a series of five plays that Jeff Lewonczyk wrote and Gyda Arber directed at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg through July 25.
The premise of Theater of the Arcade is to take the characters from an iconic video game — let’s say “Frogger” — and insert those characters into a world that operates according to the logic and stage vernacular of an equally iconic 20th century dramatist — let’s say Samuel Beckett à la Godot …
Posted inArt
Playing the Game at PS1’s Pole Dance
We perceive architecture, Walter Benjamin thought, in two ways: optical and tactile. There’s a progression over time in our optical perception of something that develops from looking at something into contemplating it. Black scratches to letters to a sign to an idea. But Benjamin didn’t think there was a tactile analog to contemplation when it came to perceiving something through touch.
Posted inArt
Two Must-see Sculpture Shows in Williamsburg: Barsamian at Pierogi, Mendelson at Sideshow
I attribute it to serendipity that there are currently two fantastic sculpture shows in the Williamsburg galleries. One is by Greg Barsamian, who creates simple sculptural forms filled with Eadward Muybridge-like animations out of metal, and the other by the masterful Shari Mendelson, who always finds a way to transform banal plastic refuse into beautiful things.
Posted inBooks
Review of Street Art New York, by Rojo and Harrington
Imagine a gallerist bringing new art works into the gallery. She pulls her truck up to the gallery curbside, gets out, and starts taking some paintings out of the truck bed. She takes one out just as she realizes that she hasn’t unlocked the gallery doors. So, she places the artwork on the curb and sets off to unlock the gallery. This person has intentionally placed art in the street. Is it street art? Obviously not. So what makes something street art if not the art’s being intentionally placed in the street? It might even seem that street art needn’t be literally in the street at all, so long as one accepts that Blu’s MUTO and similar works are street art — as a digital video it has no literal or direct connection to the street. Street artistic status must hinge on something else. So what is it?
Posted inArt
The Jersey City Mini-Golf Experiment: The Golden Door Is Now Open
The Golden Door is the anachronistic nickname of Jersey City, which acquired the moniker at the turn of the 20th century when it was a magnet for newly arrived Ellis Island immigrants. Today, it is the name of a new temporary mini golf course-cum-art exhibition organized by the Jersey City Museum as an innovative new summer fundraising idea that explores the idea of immigration and interactive “art.”
Posted inArt
Examining the Aesthetic Response to the BP Oil Spill
The BP Deepwater oil spill disaster has sparked a tremendous amount of creative outrage, some of which we’ve been exploring on Hyperallergic LABS all week. In addition to various protests and performances, not to mention some satirical Twitter feeds, there have been numerous attempts to critically appropriate BP’s logo.
Posted inArt
Warhol Keeps His Cool to the End
There is a constant dual narrative with Warhol between reality and fantasy, the physical and the mechanical, the life lived and the life watched on a screen, and Warhol, in the end, found it all to be one in the same. This exhibit of Warhol’s late work, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade, is no exception to the contradictions and in fact reveals just about as much as it obscures.
Posted inArt
Work of Art Episode 2: Recap and Tweet Digest!
This week on Work of Art, it’s the Garbage Project! Our artists have to make a sculpture … out of toss-offs. Wait, hasn’t this been done before? The same has been done on Project Runway and not to mention by John Chamberlain and countless others, but thankfully not Top Chef.
Posted inArt
Bravo’s Work of Art: Recap and Tweet Digest!
Last night marked a watershed moment for the art world: the first time that contemporary art was inducted in the burgeoning canon of reality TV. But the big question is: will it succeed in picking an artist the art world will accept or will the show turn out to be more of a Dadaist farce, too nonsensical to have any relevance?
Posted inArt
From Bushwick Open Studios: The Fauvist Tattoo
After a decade epitomized by airbrushed photographs that cast the face as a smooth, even and perfect plane of color, these artists are rebelling with wickedly raw and vibrantly colored skin. It was a welcome surprise … Matisse is back from the dead and training artists at an underground tattoo parlor in Bushwick.
Posted inArt
From Bushwick Open Studios: Old Masters Haunt Bushwick
What made the 2010 Bushwick Open Studios so phenomenal was the chance to stomp through hundreds of studios and draw connections. I was surprised by how various artists who have probably never met each other are all re-envisioning the Old Masters with a playful and lighthearted streak.