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 Pipeline resisters showed up at Standing Rock in North Dakota to show solidarity with the Sioux tribe protecting the Missouri River....
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 figure in 1960s NYC experimental circles—the Velvet Underground was formed in his loft for God’s sake!—but his scattershot oeuvre and...
“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 nothing. MacArthur “Genius” Grant-winning Toba Khedoori’s massive and recondite oil-on-wax drawings of a table and a chair, a...
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 Mirrors" currently resides in Chelsea, New York. For one month right in our very midst and showing at the Highways Performance...
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 plenty of museums—170 according with the Ministry of Tourism—and with an increasing number of contemporary art galleries. Besides...
The creation of Black superheroes in Marvel Comics during the Silver Age (comics published from 1956–1970) and Bronze Age (comics published from 1970–1984) has consistently been the exception and not the rule. There was Black Panther (1966), Blade (1973) and Monica...
Fawn Rogers' exhibition "Your Perfect Plastic Heart" at Wilding Cran Gallery presents a series of paintings depicting oysters and their gooey erotic membranes. At first glance, these works struck me as a cross between Marylin Minter and Chloe Wise–glittery...
Three fine solo shows of paintings offer personal perspectives as unique as the artists who created them: Laura Krifka, Evita Tezeno, and Nancy Evans. Krifka’s “Still Point,” is a beautiful tribute to light, the human body, and the human heart. With domestic settings...
Vibrant matter dances and pulsates in vortical pools and currents. Artist Kevin Beasley petrifies matter in states of motion, submerging and emerging materials form dynamic topographies that embody personal and collective histories and significations. I remember my...
Mark Dion is best known for his conceptual artworks that riff on traditional historical or scientific presentations. He begins by collecting objects and researching a specific subject or locale, then merges his findings into evocative artworks that have an air of...