Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (Jan 2012)
Reviews of music by Bombino, Coldplay, Das Racist, Gang of Four, Fleet Foxes, Ruth Gerson, Paul Simon and Generation Bass Presents.
Reviews
Books
Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station
“I’m sure the people of Iraq are looking forward to your poem about Franco and his economy,” Isabel tells the main character, Adam Gordon. Since the death of the self, the author and painting, the desire for significance has led to a daily slew of preposterous claims and downright silly statements.
Art
Art and Social Impact in Manila: 3 Shows Worth a Look
MANILA, Philippines — Shortly before I left Manila, I saw three shows that I wanted to take time to review briefly. My own biases as an artist and arts writer lean toward art that engages in some sense with social issues and society, and I found that so much Philippine art really tackled social issu
Art
A Surreal View of Mid-20th C American Art
The Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s mission is to promote important movements within American art while also increasing the visibility of under-recognized artists. Otherworldliness, the gallery’s current exhibition, executes the institution’s objective with cool aplomb.
Performance
Even the Artist Disappears
Over the weekend, acclaimed and provocative Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué launched his first North American tour, giving the United States premiere of Looking for a Missing Employee as part of Performance Space 122's annual COIL festival.
Art
Good Art, Shame About the Written Statement
CHICAGO — There’s often a tug of war going in between what’s in a work of art and what you are told about it. So when I saw the exhibition Turnin’ the Tip at Chicago’s A+D gallery, my first response was to the work that I was looking at it, independent of catalogue essays or wall text: big black and
Art
A New Year, Same Type of Tired Corporate Critique
Ringing in the New Year, the Winkleman Gallery's group exhibition Corporations Are People Too might prove that 2011's artistic obsession with corporate power, the economic crisis, and abandoned office buildings with unintentionally ironic posters will continue into 2012. And I'm not entirely convinc
Art
Art, Science and the Bastardization of Nature
The Skybridge Art & Sound Space inside the Eugene Lang College currently has an installation on view until January 31, 2012. Artifix Mori, by John Ensor Parker and Jason Krugman, both visiting artists in the visual arts program at Eugene Lang, is paradoxically whimsical and ominous in its collision
Books
An Artobiography That is Personal, But Not Universal
Boulder bookstore owner David Bolduc said of artist and graphic designer Tina Collen’s “artobiography,” titled Storm of the i (2009) and published by Art Review Press, “I've been in the book business for thirty years and have seen a lot of books. But I've never seen anything like Storm of the i.” I
Art
Confused Clutter at the South African National Gallery
CAPE TOWN — What do Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, local Simonstown painter Peter Clarke, British superstar artist Richard Long and Russian World War II posters have in common? Aside from a show at the South African National Gallery, it seems nothing at all.
Art
Politics of Space and Belonging and the Right of Return
IRVINE, California – There is a call for Jews to return to Poland — and it’s coming out of Irvine. Well, actually it’s coming from Israeli artist Yael Bartana, whose trilogy … and Europe Will Be Stunned, which occupied the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, is currently having its Ame
Art
Why Are We Obsessed With The Way We Look?
Who decides what is and what is not beautiful? To address these questions, Berthold Ecker, Claude Grunitzky and Andreas Stadler, the curators of Beauty Contest at the Austrian Cultural Forum and MUSA, selected 20 internationally acclaimed artist who grapple with society’s obsession and fascination w