In the gallery at Eberle Studios in Homestead, Pittsburgh, we find ourselves transported to the workshop of a modern-day alchemist, Paul Higham, who has been experimenting with the digital creation and manipulation of form for almost fifty years. This is a space in which D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (author of On Growth and Form) would be ecstatic, for everything flows teleologically through space and time: the flight pattern of a fly (Descartes Fly) intersects with the growth of a tobacco plant virus, and the Nike of Samothrace overlaps with segments of the program code for the video game Call of Duty.
Continue reading “Searching for the Philosopher’s Stone: Paul Higham’s Data Sculpture”Hew Locke at P.P.O.W Gallery
It’s hard to describe the magic of entering PPOW Gallery and seeing the flotilla of ships that Hew Locke has hung in the front room of the gallery. Gently moving in the air in response to the gesture of a visitor, these ships- all manner of sailing vessels- move through time, space, and history.
Continue reading “Hew Locke at P.P.O.W Gallery”Imagines Antiques, “Clocks” by Pablo Bronstein at Olney Gleason gallery
London-based Argentinian painter Pablo Bronstein draws a fantastic series of porcelain mantel clocks that he invents from period pieces and antiques. He renders each drawing meticulously, building it up with carved decorative extensions into a curious, fantastic object. In Emporium, for example, the pagoda roof ends in elongated curls, with four red dragons whose extremities are exaggerated. At the same time, he distorts these objects in space, partially flattening them into wide geometric projections that make them even more convoluted. The series is fascinating in its originality and in the many historical and contemporary interpretations it invites.
Continue reading “Imagines Antiques, “Clocks” by Pablo Bronstein at Olney Gleason gallery”The Prime of Your Life at Marc Straus
Aging is a paradox. Wisdom and clarity of purpose increase, while deterioration and physical impairments begin to ravage the body. The exhibition and panel, The Prime of Your Life, at Marc Straus Gallery, exemplifies that dichotomy, bringing to bear aging female artists’ dilemmas while celebrating their enduring passion, talent, and productivity.
Continue reading “The Prime of Your Life at Marc Straus”Confluence: A Synergetic Vision at UrbanGlass
Artists Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen met more than twenty-five years ago, and that serendipitous meeting grew into a lasting collaboration. Confluence, their current show at UrbanGlass, features their new body of work. It grew out of joint research and material studies they began in 2024 during a Creative Glass Fellowship at WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey, where they studied the region’s glassmaking history from the 18th century to the present, with emphasis on how the industry affected the local ecology, waterways, and inhabitants. As Dr. Ferris Olin notes in the exhibition essay, glassmakers settled along the Maurice River for the quality of its sand and its route to market. The industry grew alongside Philadelphia’s pharmaceutical companies and their need for glass containers, which helps explain why scientific glass is prominent in this work.
Continue reading “Confluence: A Synergetic Vision at UrbanGlass”This Candy Has Teeth: Can Nostalgia Really Comfort Us?
Is nostalgia really a safe space for us to process the uncertainty of the rapidly changing present? This Candy Has Teeth, curated by Shuhan Zhang, features five Chinese artists, Shengjie Jiang, Weican Wang, Jiaqi Mao, Yukun (Chloe) Ba, and Cindy (Zhaoyue) Chen, who move through childhood, memory, and nostalgia in different ways. Together, their works reflect our current desire for nostalgia, a desire that perhaps reveals just how uncertain the present feels. Yet the more we try to grasp onto the soft, safe, familiar places of the past, the more complicated those memories become. If you really delve back into them, they are also full of discomfort: moments of being forced to accept what happened, and the stiffness of a choke at the throat. As the curatorial text suggests, it is a “sensory misalignment”—an apple is sweet, yet hard to swallow.
Continue reading “This Candy Has Teeth: Can Nostalgia Really Comfort Us?”SPRING/BREAK highlights: Hide and Seek
This year’s theme for SPRING/BREAK Art Show was Hide and Seek. The fair was within this new and exciting office space that felt like a labyrinth at first, but then it evolved into a wonderful journey- meeting new artists and old friends. Full of amazing works and installations, the booths caught my attention through either a detail, a connection, or a wonderful conversation. The themes varied, from Peter Gynd’s focus on the joys of the everyday to Juan-Manuel Pinzon and Matthew Logsdon’s connections through material, action, and discovery. David Howe and Jesus Benavente’s team brings urgency and humor, showing how decisions from up high affect our everyday lives. My experience of the fair concluded with the works of Noa Charuvi and Shmuel Charuvi, exploring connections to a sense of place and ways of viewing the world, often influenced by the works of family, while Braden Bandel’s paintings and drawings bring us into another world entirely- allowing us a place to rest and contemplate.
Continue reading “SPRING/BREAK highlights: Hide and Seek”Pentimento: Danny Balgley at Wexler Gallery
The abstract paintings in Pentimento, the debut solo exhibition at Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia by New York artist Danny Balgley, live up to their title. Like geological strata, the urban palimpsest of peeling billboards and weathered facades, or memory itself, their layers let traces of earlier marks show through, revealing themselves gradually, the longer we look.
Continue reading “Pentimento: Danny Balgley at Wexler Gallery”Rebecca Morgan at Asya Geisberg Gallery: Traversing the Apocalypse
Rebecca Morgan’s exhibition Painting in the Age of Apocalypse is a bit of a roadmap for viewers. Morgan tackles the question of how to present images in the face of a raging political landscape, how to keep moving forward, and how to maintain oneself and some humor about it all. And most importantly to me, how to open up one’s painting style and allow both the work and the process to support you through this tumultuous and often unbelievable terrain we may find ourselves within. In this exhibition, Morgan engages potent themes from all her eras: sympathy for her rural background, feminist reappraisal of art history, and an unbridled excitement at infusing humor and technical prowess into her critique. Here, Morgan fuses all of these themes well, all the while showing us a fresh, looser style of painting that captures the frenetic energy of the moment.
Continue reading “Rebecca Morgan at Asya Geisberg Gallery: Traversing the Apocalypse “Tim Kent’s Sojourn Was Never Actually a Rest
Sojourn, a new body of work by Canadian-American painter Tim Kent, opened recently at Hollis Taggart’s Chelsea location runs through October 17. Ask Kent what the show is about. He gives you a clean, simple answer. The main idea is just taking a break from working too hard. It’s the kind of respite that chronically overworked New Yorkers rarely give themselves.
In Kent’s telling, rest isn’t relaxation. It’s rebellion.
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