Art Spiel – Page 25 – Contemporary Art and Culture

July 22, 2024October 6, 2024

Josh Kline’s Greatest Emergency
by Santiago Zabala

Josh Kline, Unemployment, installation view, 2016

This is part of a series of articles for the upcoming exhibition, The Greatest Emergency at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. The exhibition is based on Santiago Zabala’s book, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency. In this exhibition, ten contemporary artists rescue us into our greatest emergencies, that is, those we do not confront as we should. Each article in the series will contextualize these artists’ practices and explore how they are linked to Zabala’s aesthetic theory and the exhibition’s themes. The second article in this series highlights the work of American artist Josh Kline.

July 18, 2024October 6, 2024

Judith Braun’s, I’m Bad at Kiddie Pool is So Good
by Sara Farrell Okamura

Featured Exhibition

A poster on the wall

Description automatically generated — Judith Braun, I’m Bad, installation view, photo courtesy of Kiddie Pool and the artist

Veteran, age-defying, feminist artist Judith Braun’s exhibit, I’m Bad, opened on June 28 in a pristine, Victorian-era brownstone that doubles as Kiddie Pool, a residential project space in downtown Albany, NY. As contemporary contronym phrases go, I’m Bad conjures a sense that exemplifies Braun as a person and her body of work. Through decades whether it was as a generation-defining member of the lower east side collaborative Group Material, where she created Pussy Works, as part of the seminal 1988 show, Democracy: Cultural Participation to exquisitely painted angels to her current exhibit that includes new monumental collages at Kiddie Pool, Braun consistently challenges and baits the status quo with unbridled glee.

July 15, 2024September 22, 2024

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in July 2024
by Claire Haik

HIGHLIGHTS

*Wind Challenge III* at Fleisher Art Memorial, partial installation view, Alexis Granwell (left) and Brynn Hurlstone (right)

There are many thought-provoking shows in Philadelphia this July. Beginning at Fleisher Art Memorial, three innovative Philadelphia sculptors combine materials in unexpected ways to reflect on intimacy, vulnerability, and natural phenomena. At the Fabric Workshop in center city, artist John Jarboe brings her cabaret aesthetic to create a stunning immersive experience titled Rose Garden following her life and gender journey. In Kensington, at Peep Projects Todd Stong’s delicate drawings and wall-sized multi-panel monotype reflect on the complexities of history, contemporary life, and what the artist terms queer cultural production.

July 12, 2024July 12, 2024

Justin Natividad: Sweet Heat
by Tara Keny

A painting of a person's torso

Description automatically generated — Justin Natividad, *Match Point*, 2024

In Justin Natividad’s current exhibition Sweet Heat, carefully cropped studies of the male form serve as a pretext for the artist’s meticulous observations of light and shadow. More specifically, how they play across the delicate, vulnerable corners of the body in the peak of summer. Observed through a nostalgic lens for the golden hours of summer, sunlight bounces off the smooth surfaces of a pectoral muscle, a protruding rib, a collarbone, and ricochets across the figure towards the viewer.

July 11, 2024July 13, 2024

Tom Fitzgibbon: Icebox4
by Art Spiel

In Dialogue

Installation view, *Pull~Push*, Kylie Heidenheimer, Matt Blackwell, Dorothy Robinson, Jackie Shatz, Louise P. Sloane (left to right)

The rise of larger mega galleries and art fairs in NYC marks the end of the intimate, clubby world of established gallerists. Tom Fitzgibbon, artist and co-founder of the art hub Icebox4 in Brooklyn, reflects on this shift: “Back in the day, I could walk into OK Harris and watch Ivan Karp playing poker in a smoke-filled back room or meet Robert Miller’s family at their Manhattan residence. Now it’s big money all the time, except for some smaller galleries like Karma, Steven Harvey, James Fuentes, and others keeping it grounded.”

July 10, 2024July 10, 2024

Snubbing the Earth: Matías Duville’s Vertices of Time at Barro Gallery New York.
by Claudia Gottridge

*Caída del peñón, 2024, Acrylic and polyurethane on wood, 15 67/100 × 20 7/25 in*

In a recent conversation at Barro Gallery in New York, the Sue and Eugene Mercy assistant curator Ana Torok (MoMA, prints and drawings), likened Matías Duville’s artistic process to “throwing a lance” at the canvas. Indeed, Duville is not kind to his materials. His artistic oeuvre is replete with scratched metal and burned wood. For his paper works, charcoal is inflicted, not applied. When I had the good fortune to speak with the artist about his current exhibition at Barro Gallery, Vertices of Time, I asked what kinds of materials he had used for his paintings. One material stuck out as particularly harsh: “heat gun.”

July 7, 2024July 7, 2024

Rukh Art Hub
by Art Spiel

Featured Project

Merging with the Garden Art Show by Rukh Art Hub. Mriya Gallery, Tribeca, NYC. Photo by Lesia Dutchak

The word Rukh stands for Movement in Ukrainian. Rukh Art Hub, the creative initiative promoting Ukrainian contemporary art in New York City, focuses on giving Ukrainian art momentum and a voice to Ukrainian creatives and curators. Polina Kuznetsova, Mariia Manuilenko, and Olga Severina are leading Rukh Art Hub, a project dedicated to cultivating and promoting Ukrainian art and culture in New York City and beyond.

July 6, 2024July 7, 2024

Hesse Flatow East- Reverse Cascade
by Riad Miah

Reverse Cascade, Hesse Flatow, Installation View- Curated by Kirsten Deirup

As the season of exhibitions at commercial galleries winds down, the need for enriching visual engagement becomes more demanding over the thick heat of the summer months. Out of the way for viewers and gallery dwellers, there are some noteworthy exhibitions that take place outside the boroughs of New York City that are worth noting and can easily be missed if you were not looking or aware. A good point of example is Hesse Flatow East. Karen Hess-Flatow has launched a unique exhibition at their Amagansett space, nestled on the east end of Long Island in the Hamptons, a location that adds to its allure.

July 3, 2024July 3, 2024

All Tomorrow’s Parties: M. David & Co. at Art Cake
by Art Spiel

photo story

A room with art on the wall

Description automatically generated — Installation view

Lou Reed’s song All Tomorrow’s Parties, featured on the Velvet Underground & Nico’s debut studio album, was allegedly inspired by the musician’s observation of Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory,’ an epicenter where camp, craze, and creativity flowed in abundance. With a tangible sense of energetic exploration, M. David & Co.’s mega-scale group show at Art Cake echoes this creative exchange by articulating the dynamic intergenerational connections between emerging and established artists across media.

July 2, 2024July 1, 2024

Passing through Thin Places with Sun Young Kang
by susan Moon

photo story

A person standing behind a curtain

Description automatically generated — Sun Young Kang, *Memories, Veiled* installation view

If I could only choose one word to describe Sun Young Kang’s works, it would be inversion. Inversions are defined as the state of being reversed in position, changed to the contrary, or turned upside down, inside out, or inward. Experiencing Kang’s work does just that – it changes me to the contrary, beckons me to reorient from the inside out, and turns my receptors inward.