Only one visitor enters Alejandro Iñárritu’s installation CARNE y ARENA at a time. If you’re lucky enough to get a ticket, you’ll begin in a startlingly cold room lit by hard fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Beat-up sneakers and water bottles lie underneath metal...
Broken Language
A black rain cloud hangs at the doorstep of Shulamit Nazarian’s compelling group show, "Broken Language." The rain cloud—No Pressure (2016) by Wendy White—is a flat, aluminum-composite cartoon of a cloud that hovers at waist-height from the ceiling by nylon rope and...
Steve Turner: Top Five Buddy Cop Films
One could argue that the buddy cop genre has been with us since well before In the Heat of the Night; that it's among the prototypical literary genres. With the birth of science fiction (Journey to the Center of the Earth) and horror (Dracula), came the original buddy...
OP-ED
A friend of mine spent election night serving drinks at a bar in Highland Park. During the day she worked in her studio—she was preparing for an upcoming gallery exhibition. In the evenings she makes a living bartending. Before the election results poured in, she...
Thomas Houseago
The first and most physically imposing work in Thomas Houseago’s exhibition, “The Ridge,” on view at Gagosian Gallery, is Open Wall (Beautiful Wall) (2016). According to his Instagram, Houseago built this wall in response to the election of Donald Trump. This alone is...
Central Park: All the Best
Artist-run gallery spaces perform a unique balancing act. They offer less established artists the chance to refine the nuances of exhibiting work, develop a reputation for reliability, court the other gallerists and curators, and occasionally receive feedback. They’re...
Mickalene Thomas
In 2008, Michelle Obama commissioned Mickalene Thomas to paint her official portrait, the first portrait of a First Lady who is a person of color. As a portraitist, Thomas knows that a pose is a performance—a deliberate, affected presentation of the sitter, their...
Night Gallery: Cara Benedetto and Christine Wang
“Please recall the name Medea,” asks the narrator in the opening minutes of Cara Benedetto’s video currently on view at Night Gallery. While conjuring the Greek mythological character who avenges her husband’s betrayal by killing their children, the video pans down...