Articles
Desert X, we love the name of this art biennial out in the Coachella Valley—“X” as the unknown, the sexy, the je-ne-sais-quoi factor. There is something mysterious and alluring about the desert, with its sere, sparse, wide-open expanses and its promise of...
Jami Porter Lara stumbled upon both the subject and the medium of her current exhibition “Border Crossing” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., while walking in the arroyos along the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona four years ago. Little did...
Most customers at Trader Joe’s have food on their minds. Not Ann Weber. While others grab favorite items off the shelves, the intrepid artist heads for the dumpsters. Perpetually on the lookout for cardboard boxes to transform into sculpture, she has an eye for...
This Spring, for the first time in the US, spectators can engage directly with the art and performance of the Berlin-based collective Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Kim Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel) in City as Stage, a multidisciplinary work in two parts: 100%...
Maybe every gesture that you make can birth a fresh way of living. Perhaps by merely looking over your shoulder, or touching the ground, you can create a brand new philosophy or a radical break with reality. So argued the dancers in the Trisha Brown Dance Company at...
It’s cold. He looks even larger in his winter coat. He is a large man. Tall and broad-shouldered. In football, he might be a tight end; I’ve stood next to several players for the Bears. He would not seem out of place among such large men except that the hair on his...
If there is anybody more unpopular in Mexico at the moment than President Enrique Peña Nieto, it is, of course, Donald J. Trump. After a long list of aggressions, rudeness and even “jokes” by Trump, and in the middle of a big domestic crisis—both political and...
Five years ago, San Francisco–based painter, sculptor and performance artist Ana Teresa Fernández woke from a long night’s sleep with a sudden inspiration: She would erase the border fence that divides the United States and Mexico. It was June, 2011. That October,...
Kim Abeles’ studio doesn’t have enough chairs, so we have to sit in the adjacent gallery space at the front entrance of the building. Even though it’s glaringly sunny outside, it’s freezing inside the space as attendees spill into the room and sit down on rolling...
Nan Goldin, to borrow a phrase from her friend and fellow-artist David Wojnarowicz, has always lived and worked “close to the knives.” Her most recent published collection, Diving for Pearls, can only intensify our appreciation for her images of that pain and that...
A lot has changed over the last two years in the world of water. The high level of lead found in children living in Flint, Michigan—exposed by consuming and bathing in Flint River tap water—was brought to the nation’s attention. And last fall, over 10,000 Keystone...
Tony Conrad is one of the unlikeliest figures to be the subject of the kind of late-career historical recontextualization that authenticity-starved hipster youth have made their simulacral avant-garde. Don’t get me wrong. His bona fides are all in place; a pivotal...
“She’s famous for her use of negative space.” The security guard’s soft voice wafted over to me from the corner of the gallery. I stood in the white cathedral of LACMA’s Broad Contemporary building, narrowing my eyes at a huge expanse of what looked like nearly...
Every now and then an artist pops above the horizon line with a private cosmology like the late Mati Klarwein whose Aleph Sanctuary in the 1970s was a marvel of jewel-like paintings. An artist like Alex Grey known for his visionary painting and his "Chapel of Sacred...
As every year, since 2004, Zona Maco, one of the most important Latin American art fairs, was carried last week in Mexico City with the participation of more than 150 galleries. Founded by Mexican Zélika García, Zona Maco is such a big and social event in a city...
Hudson Marquez, alumni of the art group Ant Farm and creator of The Cadillac Ranch, wants to make your sex life better—and it’s not by meds or therapy—it’s with his paintings of women’s stiletto high heel shoes. Marquez’ exhibition, "Welcome to Stiletto," at La Luz de...
As of late, queer art exhibitions have been popping up all over America. One such art show is “How Do I Look?: Shifting Representations in Queer Identifications,” which is on display at the Da Vinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia. In this review, I will surface the...
Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. —Donald Judd, Specific Objects 1965 When Donald Judd spoke of work that is a hybrid of painting and sculpture, one of the artists he was undoubtedly referring to was Frank...
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