The similarities between contemporary art and taxidermy are more numerous and more humorous than I realized, and thanks to a slightly too smart, vaguely discomforting show called Whitetail Deer, A to Z by Rebecca Lieberman at Anthony Greaney Gallery in Boston this similarity has been brought to my attention in great depth and detail.
Reviews
Posted inArt
Accidentally Forget your Weldon Kees?
Cambridge, MA — The first thing I wanted to see, for reasons that will become clear in a few days, was a Walter Gropius building. Instead, the first thing I came across was the most talented Nebraskan you’ve never heard of.
I passed Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge on my way to look at an old Walter Gropius building, and the name, taken from a Borges story I’ve read and love, drew me in.
Posted inArt
Tunneling Through Famous Accountants
Curator and artist Will Pappenheimer’s Tunneling at the underground Bushwick space Famous Accountants is a densely layered exhibition heavy on technology and illusion. While the group exhibition aligns perfectly with the gallery’s affection for mind-altering art, Pappenheimer’s curation fits perfectly into the long narrow space and brings together work that invites you to unpack them visually.
Posted inBooks
A Review of Designing Obama: The Book
By now, we all know that the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign was a great leap forward for the aesthetics of US election campaign, so it should come as no surprise that the director of the Obama campaign, Scott Thomas, decided to publish a book about the innovative Obama design brand and its impact on American pop and design cultures. The resulting book, titled Designing Obama: A Chronicle of Art & Design from the 2008 Presidential Campaign, is an attractive product that includes a short foreward by Pentagram partner Michael Bierut and an introduction by graphic design guru Steven Heller, who cleverly calls the brand “O Design.”
Posted inArt
5 Films For the Art World
The films I have chosen are not only incredible films, but also they are films I have loved for a very long time or they are films that I have grown to love after multiple viewings. A couple of them are stylish and cool, while others are extremely slow, difficult, and even tedious at times. However, they are all films that make the viewer think, and they are either films that comment upon film as an art form or are at the very least are aware of themselves as films. Hopefully people find the same joy in my recommendations as I do.
Posted inBooks
Who’s to Blame? The Office of Blame Accountability
Co-founded by Carla Repice and Geoff Cunningham in 2007, the Office of Blame Accountability (OBA) is, according to the pair, “not an office … it’s just life.” They have a new book, and they talked to Hyperallergic about their “Blame” project and how it continues to evolve.
Posted inArt
Touring Afghanistan’s National Gallery
Last June, artist Steve Mumford visited the National Gallery in Kabul to explore the artistic heritage of the war-torn nation. He has written a short account of his visit — along with a few dozen photographs of what he saw — for Artnet.
Posted inArt
At Prague’s Veletrzni Palac
Prague itself is like a museum, where contemporary architectural gems are situated next to old landmarks. It’s an embarrassment of riches. One day we walked through Prague’s 10th century castle district, then went down the hill a couple of blocks to find a Frank Gehry-designed office complex, and continued throughout the city to see Baroque, Gothic, Art Nouveau, and Cubist buildings. But if you had to visit just one Prague museum, it would have to be the Veletrzni Palac (Fair Trade Palace), a truly massive collection of Czech and European work originally built in 1925 for trade fairs.
Posted inArt
Why Am I Looking at “Pictures by Women”?
Over at MoMA, there are two big survey shows that focus on a single theme throughout the history of photography from the heyday of the daguerreotype through to the present. The first, Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, is an “installation that comprises more than 200 works by approximately 120 artists.” The second is an examination of photography’s relationship to sculpture titled The Original Copy: The Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, that “brings together over 300 photographs, magazines, and journals, by more than 100 artists” … A good exhibition is not a numbers game. And in Pictures by Women, which is a little diffuse, it shows.
Posted inArt
Does Cao Fei’s “Rabid Dogs” (2002) Age Well?
Everything that matters happens in an office these days. To survive in today’s world, one can’t help but burn with curiosity about why some rise to the top while others gets stuck at the bottom box of the organizational chart. The Office, Mad Men or The Devil Wears Prada all hit this nerve with verve. But what’s been missing for me is that spunkier imagery and wilder narrative that video art can get away with. Cao Fei fills this void in spades with her 2002 video “Rabid Dogs” on view till Sunday at the Asia Society.
Posted inArt
Minimalism’s Lateral Move at The Hogar Collection
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.
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 …
