Articles

DYSTOPIAN FILTERS
Ethel Lilienfeld Considers the Nuances of our Virtual Selves

Technology cannot be separated from the world we live in today. Indeed, post-pandemic, we are experiencing even more of our daily lives virtually. This phenomenon lies at the core of French multidisciplinary artist Ethel Lilienfeld’s work. Using video, installation and photography, Lilienfeld examines our relationships with technology and the virtual body—avatars we create to engage in digital...

SHATTERED
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme Find Meaning in Remembrance and Resistance

by Tara Anne Dalbow

In the 18th century, when the Iranian elite heard rumors of the grand mirrored halls of Europe, they sent merchants to procure as many sheets of brilliant reflective glass as their boats could carry. Still, the mirrors cracked in their elaborate frames somewhere between Venice and Tehran. Rather than attempt to reassemble the shattered glass, artisans inlaid the thousands of pieces in sweeping...

AS THE WORLD TURNS
Deborah Stratman Gazes Into the Abyss of Time

by Natasha Boyd

“I’m not sure satisfaction is a thing I feel while making art. I get satisfied from stuff like getting my laundry done or digging a trench or putting away my books,” mused director Deborah Stratman in a recent interview with Documentary magazine. Perhaps this questing, open-ended relationship to her practice is why, at age 57, Stratman has nearly two dozen films to her name. An associate...

REALM OF THE SENSES
Jónsi’s “VOX” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

by Emma Christ

Jónsi, artist and frontman of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, masterfully crafted a recent show titled “Vox” which challenges the definitions of visual, sonic and olfactory art, merging the mediums to form a multi-sensory exhibition that plays on the viewer’s mind and body. The entry point to the show is Var (safespace) (2023), a tapestry of hundreds of micro speakers draped over a rope...

LOST IN SPACE
The New Restoration of Franco Rossi's "Smog"

by Luca Celada

Franco Rossi’s restored Smog plays like a Nouvelle Vague travelogue, with protagonists seemingly lost in an urban landscape that amplifies their inner malaise. That backdrop is Los Angeles and the long-lost 1962 film (now finally available in a pristine 4K restoration by Cineteca di Bologna and UCLA Film & Television Archives) is also a snapshot of the city in its modernist “adolescence.” At...

« Older Entries

Next Entries »

Reviews

J. Parker Valentine
at Bel Ami

The one large abstract drawing here, wedged precisely in between the ceiling and floor, explores a relationship between geometric form and explorative mark-making. The light touch is enticing, but the sketchy linework feels too beholden to the diagonal lines and ovals...

Alexander Reben
at Charlie James Gallery

The central piece here is four split-flap displays showing AI-generated text and a large HD TV displaying images based on those texts. The problem is that AI images are already familiar enough to be corny. The upscale production values do not help, and the jokey...

Larry Johnson/curated by Larry Johnson
at Reena Spaulings/ O-Town House

In two exhibitions spanning galleries some twenty-minutes apart depending on traffic, Larry Johnson presents his own work alongside that of two other gay artists of a certain age and a certain generation, who lived through the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early...

Aria Dean
at Château Shatto

In her still-young career, Aria Dean has shown a remarkable knack for giving the institution exactly what it wants: shrewd work that stings the nerve of the moment without quite stabbing it. In activating the virtual as a conduit for Black radical thought, Dean’s...

Echoes of Voynich: Coded Systems in Contemporary Art
at Wonzimer Gallery

This show at Wonzimer Gallery, organized by contributing artist Marcie Begleiter, is inspired by the Voynich Manuscript, a work that constitutes a parallel exhibition to the show she curated. The Voynich is a mysterious codex from around the year 1410 by an unknown...

« Older Entries

Next Entries »