Contemporary Art and Culture
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.
Continue reading “Some last words on the Whitney Biennial as a cultural labyrinth”
Hrriet Salmon is an artist, gallerist, as well as a podcast host and producer. Her engagement in art is deep and wide—in her own art she makes sculpture, drawing, photo, installation, and weaving; in Heroes, the gallery she co-founded with her partner, Jesse Penridge, they create vibrant visual dialogues between contemporary artists and historical art; in her Craftsmanship podcast she discusses technical skill in the contemporary artworld told through oral history of fabricators.
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The Baroness at Mimosa House in London is a group exhibition dedicated to Dada artist, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927). The exhibition manifests the ongoing influence of the Baroness on contemporary artists and poets, showcasing artworks and performative contributions created in homage to Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven or influenced by her radical work and effervescent personality. The show questions the legacy of Dada poetry and performance today, in a feminist and queer dimension in particular. How can artists navigate the art world, politics and society while creating a work which resists and disrupts the conventional canon? Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven becomes a role model and inspiration for international artists of different generations and media of work.
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A new show at Night Gallery in L.A. explores feminine conventions in painting. Large cardboard assemblages counter the traditional stretched canvas by repurposing a commonplace consumerist material. The Find is Jodi Hays’s first solo show in L.A. and a poetic contemplation on space, landscape, and material. Working in layered and dyed cardboard, Hays creates subtle landscapes reminiscent of long drives down winding roads. These works are odes to the quotidian, evoking both nostalgia and references to femininity, while straddling the line between painting and assemblage. Contributor Jac Lahav sat down with artist Jodi Hays and Night Gallery to talk about the show.
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The exhibition, At Home with Scallywags and Raspcallions, brings together Daniel Wiener’s work from the past 12 years. It focuses on his sculptures which also have a practical domestic use. As he says—the tables, stool, benches and bowl are familiar objects but in my hands, as with all of my work, they still uncover subconscious inner demons.
Continue reading “Daniel Wiener: At Home With Scallywags and Rapscallions at Pamela Salisbury”
The two-person exhibition Shuffling Liminal Episodes at Project: ARTspace features drawings by artists Leslie Kerby and Michelle Weinberg, whose works on paper and vellum resemble snapshots of settings, some of specific places, some imagined, capturing an arrested moment from daily life. Both storytellers at heart, the two artists draw objects as protagonists in their visual tales. A desolate bench, a studio table with a lamp, a tiny figure stepping out of a big house —random belongings, furniture, activities of daily life come to the forefront, projecting an inner life while also hinting at human life outside their inanimate existence—always with a lingering whiff of humor. Kerby and Weinberg also share a collage aesthetic which works well to unify their fragmented narratives.
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Featured Project: with curators Anna Shukeylo and Yasmeen Abdallah
The group show To Have and to Hold at the Abrazo Interno Gallery at the Clemente brings together work by Maria de Los Angeles, Julia Justo, Jeff Kasper, Michela Martello, Patricia Miranda and Jean Carla Rodea, who explore in their work notions of beauty and soulful trajectories through the potency of heirloom-like objects. Co-curators Yasmeen Abdallah and Anna Shukeylo share their thoughts on their collaborative curatorial experience.
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The artworks featured in the group show The Sky is higher here at Transmitter in Brooklyn reference the subtle boundaries between what is free of the physical and what is not—how can we mirror what we find in the sky and what does it reveal in us? Through a variety of mediums such as painting, textile, photography, textile weaving, and mixed media, Hedwig Brouckaert, Simone Couto, Edi Dai, Saba Farhoudnia, Victoria Martinez, and Ingrid Tremblay explore the vastness of the sky and find refuge in this great space with no borders. The curator of the show, Leila Seyedzadeh sheds some light on the curatorial vision and process.
Continue reading “The sky is higher here at Transmitter”Featured Artist
Vigil, Ellen Kozak’s first solo painting exhibition with David Richard Gallery, featured two fully realized series of abstract oil paintings on panel. The painter, with studios in New York City and beside the Hudson River in Greene County, explores the relationship between the fluidity of paint and river surfaces affected by the intersection of natural and manmade phenomena. Altogether the paintings activated the gallery space into a cohesive site-responsive installation.
Continue reading “Ellen Kozak – Vigil”