Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (January 2013, Part 1)
This month, reviews of Pink, Macklemore, Bruce Springsteen, The Coup and Grimes.
Reviews
Art
Skirting the Nether Regions: Black Cake at Team Gallery
Currently at Team Gallery’s two venues, on Grand Street and Wooster Street in Soho, there is an exhibition simply titled Black Cake. Curated by Alex Gartenfeld, it includes only two artists from Team’s roster (Massimo Grimaldi and Ryan McGinley) out of sixteen participants, which puts it outside the
Art
Scraps and Squares: Cordy Ryman's Subversive Formalism
What’s the difference between the lackadaisical and the slapdash? Apparently, a great deal. Although he is employing the same strategies and materials that he used in his 2010 solo exhibition at DCKT Contemporary on the Lower East Side, I found the just-opened Cordy Ryman: Shuffle / Scrap / Echo at
Performance
Enduring Meaning in an Old Medium
Despite cold, rainy weather, a large audience turned out for “… towards meaning in a plural painting world,” a panel discussion moderated by Katy Siegel at Hunter College’s MFA building. The room was filled with young artists and MFA candidates eager to participate, and the place swelled to standing
Art
Somewhere Beyond Nowhere and a Sugar Carpet
After sustaining significant damage from Hurricane Sandy, Smack Mellon has reopened with two installations that seem frozen in time. Quebec artist Aude Moreau coated the floor of the front gallery in a blanket of sugar laced with charcoal designs, and Brooklyn-based Janet Biggs' two-channel video in
Art
The Refrigerator as a Window onto the Soul
To peer into one’s refrigerator is to peer into one’s soul — at least, that’s the premise of You Are What You Eat, a photography series by San Antonio–based photographer Mark Menjivar, on view at Boerum Hill’s delightful micro gallery 0.00156 acres. The seven photographs featured in the exhibition d
Art
The Relationship Between Science and Art, Explored Through Laboratory Architecture
BRIGHTON, UK — Tucked behind an aging mews of terraced houses in the historic city of Cambridge is a hidden modernist science facility. Negotiating tight security and an immaculate grey gravel drive, expectations climb as you approach an understated entrance in a warm yet sleek façade. The straight
Art
Looking at Colonial Africa in Black and White
CINCINNATI — Meet Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes, who may be one of the last people to create a black-and-white movie. In order to make his art-house drama Tabu the way he wanted, Gomes searched and found one of the remaining labs in Europe capable of processing black and white 35mm film stock, r
Art
Mickalene Thomas and the Seduction of Beauty
Mickalene Thomas's current exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is a visual marvel. Bright colors, shimmering rhinestones, chaotic patterns, and bold-faced women abound. And not separately, mind you — Thomas has a proclivity for mashing up up into exquisitely rendered wholes that take the cut-and-paste
Music
Mic Drop: 2012 Hip-Hop Faves
2012 was a good year for hip-hop heads not least because it was a year that saw the emergence of Joey Bada$$, a preternaturally-gifted rapper from Flatbush who (incredibly) turns just eighteen later this month.
Art
The World According to Charles Ginnever
For those weary souls who claim that there is nothing new under the sun, especially in the realm of art, where everything has already been done, I offer this observation by Kenneth Baker, which appeared without fanfare in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle …
Art
The Last of the True Believers
Just the other day, I was deep in the bowels of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I thought of Paul Resika. I had met him briefly many years ago, when I was a graduate student and he was a guest critic. In the middle of a group critique he mentioned that he visited the