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Questionable Roots: Mag Gabbert’s Sex Depression Animals

book review

With Sex Depression Animals, Mag Gabbert gives form to figment, credence to the mythic, substance to shadow, visibility to the unseeable, sacrality to the profane, and fertile grounding to the errant roots of language the poet jostles loose in various ways, transplanting them into revivified metaphors and ranging contexts.

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In Case of Sam Spillman at Ulterior Gallery

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Installation view, courtesy of Ulterior Gallery

Far from the palatial white cubes of Chelsea or the intimate townhouse spaces of the Upper East Side is a different type of gallery space – one that serves as a reminder of an earlier moment in the art world, and yet persists into the present – the SoHo loft. In his debut solo exhibition, Sam Spillman has created work that probes at this history in In Case Of Sam Spillman at Ulterior Gallery. 

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Becky Yazdan: Finding the Edge of Experience

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Becky Yazdan in studio, 2021

Becky Yazdan’s paintings are based on things she encounters in her daily life as well as her memory of events, feelings, and colors. For her the painting process is an active dialogue with the nature of things around her. “The paintings are like dreams—the events of the day reorganized and combined with other events and memories until a new, often surprising reality has taken shape,” she says.

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The Process of Weaving the Intentionally Fragmented at Transmitter


Installation of Patchwork at Transmitter, image courtesy of the gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2021)

The Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire speaks on the essential character of dialogue for revolution. Seen as the thread that connects communities to revolutionary ideas and actions, dialogue is a continual process. A continuum revolves visually and semiotically within the walls of Transmitter gallery these days with the new exhibition Patchwork. Time is of central significance as the theme of fragmentation provides illuminative access through each of the three artists in the show, highlighting complex pasts that beget the enormous project of both appreciation and reconciliation via understanding the significance of each layered memory.

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Katrina Bello – Non Human Expressivity


In the studio in Newark, NJ, 2018. Photo courtesy of the artist.

New Jersey and Manilla based artist Katrina Bello draws on memories of her childhood experiences in the Philippines. Ranging from small to large scales. her drawings depict geological layers as vast fields of textures and colors – alluring us to sense the awe in vastness while also inviting us to get close and sense the fragility and tenderness in each detail.

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Artists on Coping: Liz Jaff

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Liz on the street

Liz Jaff creates installations, objects, outdoor interventions and drawings using formal structures, pattern and repetition to talk about permanence and impermanence, perceptions of time and the role of memory in shaping experience. Poetry, storytelling, Flamenco, Butoh theater and personal narrative are important influences. She lives and works in New York City.

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Ground Histories at PS122

Installation view of the East room: (right) david Goodman, (mid) Will Crowin, (left) Heidi Lau, photo credit Tommy Mintz

The grouping of mostly floor-bound sculptures in “Ground Histories”, the current group show curated by Will Corwin at PS122 Gallery, not only pulls our attention to the ground, but also makes us aware of what is underneath its surface – archaeological artifacts, graves, excavated memories. In the east room a triangular layout consisting of Will Corwin’s altar-like sculpture, Heidi Lau’s arched-shape ceramic sculpture sprawling, and David Goodman’s forte-like structure, create a sense of both tension and connectivity. Made of plaster and sand, painted with terra cotta and white tempera hues, and tied with rough ropes, Corwin’s “Jaw” is a rectangular free-standing sculpture that draws literally upon teeth and invokes the idea of the archaic – an architectural ruin from an unidentified culture, or an archaeological artifact with an enigmatic ritual significance. The tooth, a pivotal element in both forensics and bioarcheology, can be read in Corwin’s sculptures as a loaded metaphor for what it means to be human.

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