album covers – Art Spiel

October 15, 2025October 7, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

reMastered at Mana Contemporary

In Conversation

reMastered: Jac Lahav’s Record Paintings is a solo exhibition at Mana Contemporary featuring a selection of over two hundred intimate 12 x 12 inch paintings of iconic album covers celebrating the slow, tactile process of gouache on canvas. The project asks what painting can add to images that already live in our collective memory. This iteration of Lahav’s work opens a new line of inquiry into what artists listen to, drawing from record collections of artist icons Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keeffe, Francis Bacon, and Dan Flavin. Artist Jac Lahav and curator Michele Jaslow sat down to discuss the exhibition for Art Spiel.

February 6, 2024February 5, 2024, by Paul D'Agostino

Rapper’s Deluxe

Book Review

Even Greater Days: Rapper’s Deluxe: How Hip Hop Made the World

In the latter third of Dr. Todd Boyd’s highly anticipated new tome Rapper’s Deluxe is a “A Great Day in Hip Hop,” a subsection of a chapter called “It Was All a Dream: The 1990s,” which covers a broad range of shifts and trends in and around hip hop culture over the course of a decade that many longtime fans of rap music consider, for various reasons, the genre’s golden era.

December 21, 2022December 22, 2022, by Stan Klein

An Interview with Chicago Artist Vito Desalvo

Album cover- Duets For Confused Couples. 12 x 12. Colored pencil. 2022

By opening night the installation of Vito Desalvo’s rare public showing of his drawings was completed and the exhibition opened without a hitch. It will be showing, through December 31 at Greenkill Gallery in Kingston, NY. With the help of Mariah Karson, we were able to present his work in a manner that he found acceptable. My main task other than that was convincing him to attend the opening. After a great deal of bargaining, Vito not only showed up but was also surprisingly charitable in his conversations with guests. No one hurt, no foul. In the weeks following the opening, I was asked to interview Vito about his state of mind and thoughts about his work. Last Monday night after considerable liquid consumption, he responded to my inquiries. Our housemate Leo took the dogs—Tina, Louise, and Jack— out for an extended walk so we wouldn’t be distracted. Here are some excerpts of our chat, flaws and all.