David Hammons, an infamously reclusive yet pervasive figure, is undoubtedly a pioneer and solidified staple of the art world. His thought-provoking work permeates the visual language of contemporary art making. From his Duchampian repurposing of found objects, to his...
“Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective” is the first large-scale museum survey devoted to work originally presented by the artist in his museum and gallery exhibitions. It premiered at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and has traveled to the Institute of Contemporary...
Lebanon-born, Los Angeles-based painter and sculptor Rabbia Sukkarieh regards her art as a means of transmuting a traumatic past. Having experienced the 1975–90 Lebanese Civil War, she creates ambiguous abstractions combining tokens of comfort with elements relating...
Argentine artists Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone who together form the duo Chiachio & Giannone were painters at one point in their careers. Their combined artistic identity has since been forged working in textile, with such labor-intensive techniques as...
Joy, transformation, transcendence—all lofty goals of early abstract expressionism—are exalted in the present tense at The Shed in the world premiere collaboration of three major 20th-century artists, now in their sunset years. This stellar exhibition is marked by the...
Milwaukee-bred, California-based filmmaker James Benning’s current exhibit at MCASB is nothing less than a brilliant baklava of America, a solemn layering of the country’s heartbreaking agricultural and class history, turned out in the cool minimalism of the vanguard...
Ever since man created robots, there have arisen ethical and moral questions regarding when and how they should be used. Isaac Asimov created the concept of the Three Laws of Robots in his 1942 short story “Runaround,” the first of which stipulated that a robot was...
Most people, when confronted with the mind-bending vastness and ubiquity of urban slums, experience some amalgam of shock, disorientation, fear, recoilment, sympathy and outrage. Witnessing a veritable sea of lean-to huts with house-of-card engineering expand into the...
When Push Comes to Shove (2015), take what you know and simply make—make objects, make observations, make connections, make people listen, make people think, make a doorway in which others can enter your world. Jeffrey Gibson’s approach to making fits perfectly into...
With a theatricality apposite to its subject, Bel Canto exploits the rapturous, dolorous and mysterious allure that can make opera, in its premier manifestations, indistinguishable from magic. The exhibition design manages to be both subtle and grand as its labyrinth...
Just last summer and fall, Firelei Báez brought a touch of joy to Harlem, along with a sense of her past. Even with five paintings, at the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library, one might not have seen them as an immersive installation rather than a fiery...
Raffi Kalenderian’s solo exhibition “Memento Vivo” (Remember to Live) is a meditation on painting as much as it is a reminder to observe the real world as it rustles around you and enjoy its pleasures. His vibrant paintings—all variations on portraiture—explore the...
Imagine yourself gazing meditatively at a set table in a light-filled kitchen. If you stare long enough, utensils and fruits seem to detach from reality and take on peculiar identities of their own. Lost in reverie, you begin to wonder about the secret lives of these...
"Life Still," the title of Kirsten Everberg's show at 1301PE, underscores her paintings' implied precariousness. Bringing to mind the line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "All that lives must die," Everberg's animal subjects appear quite animate; yet as in Dutch vanitas...
Manga, the comic book genre, and Katsushika Hokusai, the legendary Japanese artistic genius who deeply influenced its creative roots are getting a fresh look with an educational twist. Not just visual entertainment, manga's historical how-to process and its real and...
Tomm El-Saieh's paintings evoke the mystical feeling of hearing incantations in strange tongues. Born of mixed heritage in Port-au-Prince, El-Saieh migrated to Miami at the age of 12. The artist is steeped in Western and Caribbean art traditions; he co-directs an...
Argentina sometimes tosses the world an indescribably singular artist. There was Leon Ferrari, whose Vietnam-era political pieces inspired widespread spite and repression. And now there is Guillermo Kuitca. Since his 2007 Venice Biennale showing, he is perhaps his...
Beauty and the grotesque, foreign and familiar poetically intersect in “the living + soft center” at Kate’s Little Angel, an exhibition space in a renovated garage in the back of Kate Eringer’s home (Eringer is contributor to Artillery's Last Night column). Curated by...