Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

How is an Artist Like TV’s Columbo?

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Publicity photo of Peter Falk from the television program “Columbo,” NBC Television

Do you remember how people were bingeing TV shows like The Sopranos or Mad Men during those long pandemic days and nights? Well, I was also bingeing–but on that old television chestnut, Columbo. If you’ve never watched it, Columbo is a detective murder mystery show, but…it’s an anti-whodunnit. The show always opens with all of us witnessing the villain committing the crime (off-camera—which is much appreciated by the squeamish). It’s a unique formula for a detective show because we know right from the get-go who the killer is. The audience watches Peter Falk as Detective Lt. Columbo, guilelessly but cunningly noticing clues, making connections, and solving the case, all the while hilariously pestering the murderer to distraction.

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Field Notes at Metaphor Projects


Art Spiel Photo Story

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Scherezade Garcia, Paradise According to the Tropics/Sunburnt Jesus,  Acrylic, Charcoal on Linen, 72 x 48 inches

Metaphor Projects is an artists-run space for contemporary art and culture founded in 2001 by two working artists. Directors/ Curators: Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch have mounted more than 100 solo and group exhibitions presenting the work of hundreds of artists and spent two decades developing what they call “the social sculpture that is Metaphor.”

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Myth Catchers: Manju Shandler, Rithika Merchant and Jacqueline Shatz

Manju Shandler, Wonder Whale 1, 2018, mixed media, 23×19 inch

Luckily, or to many art-mavens’ chagrin, our 21st century art world—in line with the global techno-culture and socio-political processes—seems to have abandoned crusades of “right” or “wrong” related to artistic form (though sometimes that does not apply to content). We are experiencing a dizzying array of aesthetic expressions, where often fast-pace visual trends replace ideologies of form. Unlike some passing trends, visual narratives based on mythological iconography have been central in all art forms since archaic ages, except for the early-mid half of the 20th century when narrative impetus was largely downplayed in most of what was called the “Avant Garde” art of the time.

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The Interaction of Light and Shadow: Susan English at Kathryn Markel

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Susan English, Still Light, 2022, tinted polymer on Dibond panel, 34 x 35 in. Courtesy of Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light.

– Carl Jung

In her current exhibition at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Light to Light, Susan English explores the vagaries of light as it penetrates layers of polymer and pigment. Subtle gradations in color are infused with radiant light, recalling the sfumato in Van Eyck’s translucent skies or Cimabue’s blushing Virgins. The seamless transitions are achieved through the artist’s unorthodox technique of pouring thin layers of tinted polymer onto panels, then tilting the panels while the pigments settle and dry. The multiple layers interact with light to create varying effects – sometimes luminous, sometimes opaque – which are punctuated by cracks and blemishes in the medium as it dries. These accidents are essential to the piece, as they provide a counterbalance to the exquisite surfaces and tight control of their execution. Indeed, English manipulates the panel in such a way that crackling is anticipated, and she views the result as a simulation of the fissures and fractures found in nature.

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Feminist Connect

Curator Sally Brown in conversation with artists Marie Bergstedt, Amy Chaiklin and Laurence de Valmy

In conversation with the artists

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Marie Bergstedt: Fading, Hand embroidery on cotton fabric, 2017, 22”H x20”W x 1.25”D

Marie Bergstedt, Amy Chaiklin and Laurence de Valmy were featured artists in Feminist Connect, on view at Charles Adam Studio Project in Lubbock, Texas, in March, 2022 and as part of a larger online exhibition by the same name, running through February 2023. The artists Bergstedt (fabric), Chaiklin (drawing/painting) and deValmy (painting) discuss their processes, concepts and relations with the co-curator, Sally Brown, expanding on the discussion the exhibition provokes around the feminist lineage of art.

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Arden Bendler Browning at Bridgette Mayer Gallery

Featured Artist

Image from the opening reception of Wayfinding at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, photo courtesy of the artist

Wayfinding, Arden Bendler Browning’s solo exhibition at Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia, follows the artist’s recent completion of a major public art project, Elastic Geography, a 25 by 140 foot mural on the side of Yards Brewery, commissioned by Mural Arts Philadelphia. The show includes 21 new paintings, a Vault installation of over 50 mixed media works on panel, and a custom interactive virtual reality. It runs through October 22nd.

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Luscious Wasteland: Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader at Radiator Arts

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

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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.

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Ultralight Beam at Pelham Art Center

Featured Project with curator Rebecca Mills

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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.

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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.

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What’s Your Golden Spike?

Diagram from the United States Geological Survey, Harvard.edu

What’s Your Golden Spike is the third in a series of three interrelated experimental pieces that combine graphics, text, and hyperlinks based on themes coming out of my Crazy River project, for which I gave an interview on this website on May 16th. Crazy River takes a wide-angle view of the climate crisis, ranging from my own climate grief to an in-depth focus on the many causes and effects of rapid environmental changes on the West Branch of the Neversink in Ulster County. In this piece I investigate the idea of the Catskills as a region, and an incongruous bundle of contradictions and coincidences. The Lands of Kats Kill weaves three timelines together: the geologic, the historical, and the personal. This structure repeats throughout my Crazy River project. The previous piece in this series, Invaders, took apart the idea of invasive species. The following will explore the concept of the Golden Spike in stratigraphy as fact and metaphor.

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