Art Spiel – Page 104 – Contemporary Art and Culture

Exhibition Review by Riad Miah

Museum as Muse at the Flatiron Project Space

A favorite experience of mine is to visit the Metropolitan Museum without a show or work of art in mind to see. I enjoy wondering the galleries until I come across something I had not noticed before and then spend the time looking and analyzing the work. This experience is likened to one I have recently had at “Museum as Muse”, a show curated by Leigh Behnke, consisting of works by the artist herself, Joe Fig and Peter Hristoff. The show is not at a sprawling Chelsea gallery or at a small, but relevant Lower East Side venue. It is tucked away within the confines of an academic institution, School of Visual Art, located on 21^st Street in the SVA Flatiron Gallery Project Space. As the title suggests, all three artists have used the museum in some capacity as a starting point for their work.

Exhibition Review by Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen

Magdalena Dukiewicz at Stand4 – In Every Dream Home a Heartache

A former medical office located in the heart of Bayridge Brooklyn, hosts Magdalena Dukiewicz solo exhibition “In Every Dream Home a Heartache“, a visual, physical and poetical exercise in which the artist revisits particular objects and memories from her childhood in Poland to explore an idea of “home” that has been inoculated in her mind from an early age. For Dukiewicz, the thought of a home brings a cumulus of anxieties related to social expectations, which calls into question the preconceived ideas of how things are supposed to be in life: motherhood, marriage, work, living in a place other than your birthplace, fulfilling certain obligations.

Artist Interview by Peiyue Wu

Controlled Entropy, Taher Jaoui at 81 Leonard Gallery

One might find Taher Jaoui introverted the moment meeting him. It might be less about an aloof temperament commonly found in an artist than a reserved and prudent character often associated with a science person. The way in which Jaoui’s artworks act out follows a similar interpersonal pattern. Those scratchy mathematics signs and formulas are the most prominent elements of the new series of monochrome paintings featured in Taher’s current solo exhibition Controlled Entropy at 81 Leonard Gallery, co-hosted by Uncommon Beauty Gallery. The juxtaposition of the handwritings of mathematical formulas and the gestural brushwork in an abstract expressionist manner not only prompts questions about Jaoui’s background, but also problematizes the hostile split between art and mathematics. Reminding viewers of a lecturer running a mathematical calculation across the blackboard with chalk, this series of paintings highlights the performative elements in mathematics, as well as the craft aspects of labor invested in this intellectual activity.

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Zac Hacmon at the Border

Eva Mayhabal Davis in dialogue with Art Spiel – Beyond the Pale

Zac Hacmon‘s sound sculptures at the intimate Border project space are overpowering in size, as if cutting the air with their sharp diagonal tiled lines to create a sense of suffocating sterility. Their oddity is intriguing and repelling simultaneously, and their placement in the room forces the visitor to navigate around with considerate effort. The sound consists of a series of stories recorded at the Arizona-Mexico border, and adds another layer of urgency, creating altogether an inspired fusion of sound/form. Eva Mayhabal Davis, the curator of Beyond the Pale , elaborates on the premise behind the show.

In Dialogue by Noa Ginzburg and Kristen Clevenson

Catchat, following an Interview With a Cat

Kristen Clevenson in conversation with Noa Ginzburg, February 2020

“This is an interview recorded at the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles, 12 Burgplatz Düsseldorf,” announces the interviewer. “MIAOW! MIAOW!” replies the interviewee.” In 1970, the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) conducted and recorded an Interview With a Cat. In Catchat, a trans-Atlantic collaboration between Hannah Bruckmüller, Michal Ron, and Noa Ginzburg which was recently published on PROTOCOLS, the three listen carefully to the protagonist cat and transcribe French and Cat tongues into Hebrew and Latin letters. Kristen Clevenson and Noa Ginzburg share with Art Spiel their conversation about cats, collaborating while in different time zones, transcribing illegible languages, and using deep listening to assert agency.

Exhibition Review by Catherine Kirkpatrick

Surface and Sky: Jeffrey Morabito at SFA Projects

Jeffrey Morabito’s show “Birds and Flowers, Vases and Windows” is beautiful and lush and draws you in. There are vibrant colors and wandering lines, rich passages that feel like small works unto themselves–secret gardens waiting to be discovered within each larger piece. But if there are elements that delight the eye, there are ideas that tease the mind. For running through his art and practice is a sense of duality and contradiction where opposites collide and play, posing gentle questions as they merge into new concepts and forms.

In Dialogue by Markella K

Michael Alan is New York’s Past, Present and Future

Michael Alan In conversation with Markella K

It’s time to question the nature of a city when everything you loved or heard about it has changed so much. NYC now has changed into a huge playground with high end food prices, fancy cell phones and luxury condos. I came here full of dreams just like everyone else, hoping to fit in and to see what Warhol left behind.

Artist Interview by Etty Yaniv

Kit Warren – Moments of Recognition

Kit Warren‘s works on paper present complex and elaborate visual cryptography – patterns of lines, dots, and bold colorful shapes. They evoke layered associations ranging from microcosmic to cosmic. Kit Warren shares with Art Spiel some of her ideas and work process.

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Susan Luss at the Museum of Art & Culture in New Rochelle

Artist in Residence Susan Luss highlights her installation in House 4 MAC Gallery and windows.

In 2019 Artist Susan Luss was invited by the New Rochelle High School to be their first visiting artist working on site responsive installations. The school has its own museum and cultural center on its campus, called The Museum of Arts & Culture, which is the only Regents-chartered museum inside of a school in the state of New York. This collaborative project became a formative experience for the artist. Susan Luss describes the ways she formed her ideas, her collaborative work with students and faculty, as well as her takeaway from this multi layered project overall. The exhibition runs through Feb 13th.

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Intermediate Geochromatic Studies at Nars

In dialogue with Jason Urban & Leslie Mutchler on their collaborative project at Nars Foundation

Artists Jason Urban and Leslie Muchler who have been collaborating on art projects since 2012, share with Art Spiel their ideas, process, and ways of collaborating on their current exhibition, Geochromatic Studies, at NARS.