contemporary art – Page 47

September 26, 2022October 14, 2022, by Melissa Stern

Vanessa German – SAD RAPPER at Paul Kasmin

VG 15.jpg — Partial installation view of Sad Rapper

So much has happened in six years. It was six years ago that I last wrote about the work of Vanessa German for Hyperallergic. Donald Trump had just been elected, and the country was bracing itself for a trip down a new and dangerous path. Vanessa German, a poet, activist and visual artist, had mounted a powerful show at Pavel Zoubek Gallery entitled I am armed. I am an army. German filled the gallery with a fighting corps of women, armed with weaponry, poetry, history and power. It was a fierce exhibition, and one that both mourned and celebrated the power of women.

September 24, 2022December 1, 2022, by Etty Yaniv

Luscious Wasteland: Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader at Radiator Arts

In conversation with Patrick Neal, Cathy Diamond, and Laurie Fader

A hallway with art on the wall

Description automatically generated with low confidence — Installation of *Luscious Wasteland: Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader* at Radiator Arts (All images courtesy Radiator Arts).

The two-person exhibition Luscious Wasteland at Radiator Arts features landscape paintings by Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader. Both artists embed in their imagery elements from personal experience, nature, visual art, music, literature or science, to create intricate and imaginative landscapes. The exhibition opens Fri, September 16 and runs through October 23, 2022. Art Spiel invited the curator of the show, Patrick Neal, and the two artists, Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader to reflect on the featured paintings as separate bodies of work and in relation to each other.

September 23, 2022November 2, 2022, by Alexandra Israel

Natale Adgnot: What We Are Really Seeing

A person sitting at a desk

Description automatically generated — Portrait of Natale Adgnot in the studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.

What does Cognitive Bias and Fallacy Look Like? Natale Adgnot’s Work Tests What We Are Really Seeing. Natale Adgnot’s work explores the power of psychology and the impact that cognitive bias has on our everyday life, routines and choices. Her work incorporates patterns and systems to explore different cognitive biases such as stereotyping and pareidolia (seeing patterns in random information) to reflect on the elusiveness of truth. Best known for wall sculptures made of painted thermoplastic adhered perpendicularly onto birch panels, she challenges the viewer to consider her work from multiple perspectives. Her new series, Bird Brains, continues to delve into her exploration of bias and fallacy. Bird Brains matches entries in the cognitive bias codex with the birds that best exemplify them. From black swan theory to the duck test to the proverbial canary in the coal mine, she taps into this rich language to point out the stunning variety and sheer magnitude of ways we humans misconstrue the world.

September 16, 2022November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Ultralight Beam at Pelham Art Center

Featured Project with curator Rebecca Mills

Ultralight Beam, curated by Rebecca Mills at the Pelham Art Center, brings together paintings, sculptures, and installations by artists who focus on visionary methods and spirituality of all kinds. Featured artists: Sunny Allis, Angelica Bergamini, Claire Buckley, Susan Carr, Joan Di Lieto & Thunderfox, Ala Ebtekar, Gabriel Mills, Sarah Renzi-Sanders, Christina Saj, and Chris Watts. The show runs from September 15 to October 30, 2022.

September 7, 2022December 6, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas Re-enchanting the World – the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale

A picture containing text, indoor, bedroom, decorated

Description automatically generated — Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Re-enchanting the World, Polish Pavillion, 59^th Venice Art Biennale

As you enter the Polish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale 2022 you are surrounded by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’ stunning floor-to-ceiling hand-stitched tapestry panels, richly depicting mostly female protagonists in everyday life. If you had a lucky chance to visit the Renaissance Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy, you would most likely soon discover in Mirga-Tas’ images myriad allusions to the Palazzo’s splendid ‘Hall of the Months’ cycle of frescoes portraying Olympian gods, astrological figures, and scenes from court life in Ferrara. The name of the Ferara palazzo derives from the phrase ‘schivar la noia’, meaning ‘escape from boredom’, which accurately defines the purpose of this splendid architectural gem—built for the leisure of the powerful Este family over 500 years ago.

September 2, 2022November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

Lesley Bodzy’s Sculptural ‘Paint Skins’

Lesley Bodzy. *I knew better*, acrylic, 66” x 34” x 15”, 2022. All photographs are courtesy of the artist.

Wall sculptures by Lesley Bodzy will be on view during Armory Week 2022 at SPRING/BREAK in Leftover and Over curated by Giovanni Aloi and Erica Criss. Anna Mikaela Ekstrand interviewed the California-born Houston and New York City-based artist about her evolving practice.

September 1, 2022November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

ADJUSTED for Inflation at Kunstraum

Featured Project with curator Ashley Ouderkirk

ADJUSTED for Inflation, Part 1 installation image. (Artworks visible by Sandra Zanetti, Taisha Brehaut, Bartho Staalman, and Amir Hariri.) Photo by Jenna London.

ADJUSTED for Inflation, the group show curated by curator-in-residence Ashley Ouderkirk at Kunstraum LLC features eighteen works by fourteen members and artists in residence—Annette Back, Taisha Brehaut, Laura Clark, Aleksy Cisowski, Giacomo Colosi, Amir Hariri, Catherine Lewis, Rita Nannini, Olga Rabetskaya, Bartho Staalman, Sato Sugamoto, Dimana Zaharieva, Cassandra Zampini, and Sandra Zanetti. The title, ADJUSTED for Inflation, is based on the economic term referring to the “real” value of money, after considering how much the price of an average good or service has increased. The curator says that the exhibition, like the economic concept, aims to reveal how our emotions determine the “real” value of any situation—the more complex the hardship, the greater the emotional cost and more distorted the adjustment. It runs through September 10th, 2022.

August 29, 2022October 6, 2024, by Louisa Pancoast

The Summer Show at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Annika Tucksmith, Something, Somewhere, 2022, oil on panel, 40 x 30 inches (image courtesy of Carrie Haddad Gallery)

Carrie Haddad Gallery’s summer offering, The Summer Show, is a playful wink and a poke to bastion of every gallery’s yearly program: the month of August. Much like the title of the show, this selection of work is self-referential and effervescent. Modernities collide in depictions of leisure, wanderlust is shown as both fantastical and intimate, and universally bold palettes are a sucker punch to the senses. Though they span an array of media, each of the artists incorporate detail with nuance and ease, their pith and wit happily imbibable. The Summer Show features Robert Goldstrom, Hue Thi Hoffmaster, Louise Laplante, Andrea Moreau, Kahn & Selesnick, and Annika Tucksmith and includes painting, collage, and photography.

August 24, 2022August 24, 2022, by Saul Ostrow

Some last words on the Whitney Biennial as a cultural labyrinth

Opinion

I would hate to think I have become an old and conservative critic who believes our best days are behind us. I would rather believe that my structuralist perspective is capable of evaluating contemporary emerging practices and recognize the social, cultural and political value of these tendencies. What brought this on is having recently seen the 1962–64 exhibition at the Jewish Museum. This show examines how artists living and working in New York during this three-year period responded to rapidly changing social and cultural conditions, by questioning what was considered to be art’s normative forms and subjects. This post-AbEx generation was concerned with creating aesthetic configurations that would result in novel perceptual modes and political subjectivities.

August 20, 2022November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Sensing Woman at C24 Gallery

Featured Project with Curator Christina Massey

Jung Eun Park – In the Womb 13, 2003, pencil, thread, fabrics, watercolor on coffee-dyed Korean mulberry paper, 7” x 8”

Sensing Woman is a multisensory event taking place at C24 Gallery in Chelsea, New York City, for five days and four nights of Art by 50 contemporary visual artists, along with conversation, storytelling and music – altogether around the future of being female. All profits from this event will be donated to organizations working to protect autonomy over our bodies and improve maternal and sexual health, including the groundbreaking advocacy organization the Center for Reproductive Rights.