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.
Reviews
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
Books
Torn Curtain: Gombrowicz and the Europe That Used To Be
When I read Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke in the late 1980s the Soviet empire was beginning to totter and crack. An English version of the book, published in 1961 in the UK, had been re-issued in 1986 as part of Penguin’s Writers from the Other Europe series, edited by Philip Roth. The project aime
Art
Paint It Black, Blacker and Blackest
Joyce Pensato draws in charcoal and paints in enamel — dense, clinging soot and viscous liquid. For years her palette has been black, white and silver, though color is beginning to make an appearance in her recent paintings, mostly as splatters and drips. The drawing process is one of making marks,
Art
Stealing the Triennial and Other Neat Tricks
As good as the last Triennial was — and, all qualms, quibbles and philosophical differences aside, it was a pretty good survey of emergent art — what it didn’t have was a monster. Adrián Villar Rojas’ “A person loved me” (2012) has already achieved show-stealer status at The Ungovernables, the secon
Art
The Ungovernables Flips the Bird
Post-colonial studies, the legacy of 19th and 20th century colonialism and imperialism, a hit on the academic circuit, underlies the raisone d’etre of the New Museum’s Triennale, The Ungovernables, the second Triennial devoted to global contemporary art. Artists are presented as “actors in the world
Performance
A Thirst for the Conceptual
All I could think about was water. I was late and overdressed; the auditorium was ungodly hot, and I was thirsty. What is more, the Berlin-based artist, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, had, as though anticipating me, deliberately placed an empty water bottle on the seat next to the one I slipped into.
Art
LACMA Lets You Play Exquisite Corpse on Your iPhone
LOS ANGELES — Just a day after I reviewed LACMA's In Wonderland exhibition of surrealist female artists, I came across their new app. Designed by media artist Jody Zellen, Art Swipe starts you off with 16 images from the show. The images are cut in three and arranged with others on the screen, allow
Art
Artists and Their Ephemera
Have you ever wondered why it’s so intriguing to explore an artist’s studio? Aside from their work, we get a glimpse into not only their artistic process but their valued possessions, inspirations and snippets of their lives. Input/Output pairs artists’ work with their personal collections. Exhibite
Art
More Radical in China
Cui Xiuwen is known for her iconic pictures of defiled schoolgirls in lily-white dresses and red scarfs featured in front of Tiananmen-like structures. Miao Xiaochun uses themes of Western classic art and 3D graphics to produce phantasmagorias of Hieronymus Bosch-inspired splendor. Though both artis