Constituent Parts at Boston University Art Galleries, Boston, MA
February is the depth of winter in Boston, but there are still many ways to stay warm, including seeing some great art that thaws the senses and pleases the soul. Several exhibitions are in full swing at various galleries, museums, and university galleries across the city. These highlights focus on a few of the university gallery shows and a gorgeous new exhibition at the MFA in Boston featuring the late John Wilson, a Boston native whose work celebrates fatherhood and the rich tapestry of Black life in Boston and beyond.
Installation view of Pat Lay’s exhibition at the Lemmerman Gallery, NJCU
At first sight, Pat Lay’s vertical scrolls sit comfortably within the soaring Gothic-style Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University. Their mosaic or tapestry-like forms, in glowing red, blue, and gold, echo the tall grided window panes and the elaborate ceiling. Yet once it becomes clear that these scrolls are entirely digital, the contrast generates a sense of fertile dualities.
Hassan Sharif, Gathering at Alexander Gray Associates
Alternative worlds abound, collide, and gravitate in a transfixing lineup that is circumspect of the new year and ruminations of what lies ahead. Unique in presentation, yet united in exploring the vulnerabilities of coexistence amidst a delicate balance, their clandestine orbits intersect and align around the precarity of humanity. Shape-shifting, portals, relics, and worlds collide and mystify in alchemical formulations. As our planet spins on an axis beyond human capacity, one can find solace and pleasure in the mystery and adventure that awaits through these masterful and delightful odysseys of discovery. Michael Brennan and Matthew Deleget create pathways of knowledge through otherworldly means. David Dixon melds stories seamlessly that serve as portals into realms that might exist in such a world.
Prayer / Pattern / Prayer at Morgan Lehman offers a mesmerizing view of patterns as a deeply seated human instinct. Fittingly, a radial symmetry unfolds from the vertex of the L-shaped room. Yet curator Jan Dickey balances this evenness with a syncopated rhythm of paired artworks and bold standalone pieces. In creating a pattern of patterns, this show offers a metonymic view of artists running with different strands from the fabric of a species-wide impulse toward order and adornment.
Naoko Serino’s Generating 9, in Japandi Revisited: shared aesthetics and influences at Wayne Art Center, photograph courtesy of Wayne Art Center
Out on the Main Line, the world of craft takes center stage at Wayne Art Center in two distinct but complementary shows. CraftForms 2024, 29th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft and Japandi Revisited: shared aesthetics and influences, together invite viewers to contemplate the power of form, material, and cultural aesthetics. In Old City, at the Museum for Art in Wood, Mark Sfirri explores the many definitions of family through his exquisite woodworking in La Famiglia. Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio in Center City pairs the dreamy drawings and paintings of two Philadelphia artists, Gary Grissom and Louise Vinueza, in A Day in The Life. Together, these four exhibitions offer a diverse range of artistic viewpoints from the global scope of contemporary craft to the exploration of family and nostalgia.
Hugh Hayden: Home Work at Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA.
In the aftermath of the Presidential election, I feel inspired to visit galleries and museums more than ever. Not only am I feeling a conviction to support these now-endangered organizations, but I am finding respite in their halls and holdings. Regardless of your political leanings, this is a tender time for artists and art institutions, as well as for the curators and Directors who organize exhibitions. Obviously, what’s on view this month was curated before Election Day, but now that we’re in a new world, all of it seems singed by the results and potently relevant for the time. Hugh Hayden’s exploration of public education reminds us that the Department of Education may be gutted, and J Rowen O’Dwyer’s portraits of Trans people show us a vulnerable population that’s now even more susceptible to the threats of an angry and fearful nation. It’s a sobering time, but one that calls for art and artists to persevere.
Installation view at Alexander Gray Associates. Photo courtesy of the gallery.
Carrie Moyer’s solo show Timber! is her debut with the renowned Alexander Gray Associates gallery in New York City. Her signature vibrant abstractions shine in the airy rooms of the Tribeca gallery space. Centering around “social and environmental instability,” this new body of work offers greater complexity and a more somber tone than Moyer’s previous work.
June 2015- Seth Shostak. Pen and ink on Bristol board 161/2 x 171/8
Martin Wilner’s compelling new show at BravinLee Projects is both conceptually and visually complex, the work of an intellect working on several intersecting planes. Wilner is a practicing Freudian psychoanalyst, a scholar, and mentor to analysts in training. He is a self-taught artist whose work reflects his involvement with the human psyche, popular culture, and comic strip art. His artistic practice is intertwined deeply with his psychoanalytic work and comes with an interesting twist; Wilner the therapist invites the public to engage deeply with the world of Wilner the artist via social media.
Thread and Fiber: Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva
Lilian Shtereva. Samovila, 2023. Yarn, thread, batting, cochineal, and indigo dye on canvas. 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.
As noted by Julia Halperin in a September T Magazine article, “[l]ong caught in the liminal space between craft and something more prestigious, works of thread and fabric are reaching newfound institutional recognition.” With the advent of AI spurring a complicated mix of overwhelm, anxiety, and curiosity, an increasing interest in fiber art seems to stem from its tactility and materiality, generating a contrasting tension with what’s available in the virtual world. Fiber art is also welcomed by the art-loving public as a medium supporting marginalized communities and their traditions. As participating artists of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023, Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva discuss how their fiber-based practice relates to heritage, empowerment, technology, and dimensionality.
In Dialogue with Linnéa Gad, Magdalena Dukiewicz, and Anna Ting Möller
Linnéa Gad. Detail from Shoal II. Photographed by David Schulze. Courtesy of The Immigrant Artist Biennial.
Instead of transcribing a previously established set of ideologies through scholastic mediums, Linnéa Gad, Magdalena Dukiewicz, and Anna Ting Möller engage with materials that “breathe”—materials whose lives and afterlives warrant separate biographies.
Presented within the context of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone, Swedish artist Gad creates sculptures with limestone, oysters, lapis lazuli, and other materials profoundly connected to the Earth’s carbon cycle. On Governors Island, her sculptures, Shoals I-II, evoke humanity’s resonance with and reliance upon nature. Polish-born artist Dukiewicz juxtaposes industrial components with provocative, organic materials such as hair and blood. In the group show, Enmeshed, Dreams of Water, at NARS Foundation, Dukiewicz’s Object #6 (2023) contains decay, regeneration, and fluidity elements into beautifully translucent and sculptural artwork. Chinese-born Swedish artist Möller, whose work will be presented in Parasites and Vessels at Accent Sisters, unpacks the convoluted social history of kinship via kombucha cultures. The oysters, hair, and kombucha are not subjected to manipulating the artists’ hands; instead, the materials are collaborators in these projects, bringing their subjectivities, histories, and sociological implications into the creative process.
Together with TIAB’s co-curator, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, the artists speak about their work about technology, materiality, and ecosystems.
