MOCA’s “Ordinary People” manages to tell a story about photorealism that is eclectic, diverse, condescending and drab. Homage to the People of the Bronx: Double Dutch at Kelly Street - La Freeda, Jevette, Towana, Staice (1981–1982) by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’...
‘Man proposes, but [God] disposes’—or so went the biblical proverb as distilled more or less through various Christian medieval iterations. In this simultaneously sunlit and dark-star doubling of two operas—George Lewis’s and librettist Douglas Kearney’s dark...
To experience Tala Madani’s exhibition is to be submerged in a world that rejects our dualist minds and embraces the proximity of attraction to repulsion, cleanliness to filth. Upon entering the museum, viewers are greeted by a large-scale painting depicting a pair of...
Get ready for the big 2022 Fall art season. This is traditionally the biggest show of any other time in the art world where most galleries put their best foot forward with their September and October exhibitions. We’ve selected a few highlights coming...
My early impressions of Claes Oldenburg and his work were shaped largely by mass media. I tended to think of his work in association with Pop artists like Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist—though also artists like Allan Kaprow and to a lesser extent, George...
MOCA Madness Good news, the art world is revving up! We have art fairs taking place In Real Life, galleries setting regular opening hours and museums flinging open their doors. Of course, we’re not completely out of the COVID woods—many venues require proof of vax...
One of the most memorable events at MOCA occurred when Chinese-American artist Cai Guo-Qiang exploded gunpowder from an exterior wall of the Geffen Contemporary just after sunset, setting off blinding and spectacular explosions before a huge crowd unprepared for such...
Kerry James Marshall’s current retrospective at MoCA is less a ‘Pick-of-the-Week’ than a Must of the Year. Regardless of the particulars of each individual’s experience, it is a show that compels serious reevaluation of the historical canon of Western painting (and...
Doug Aitken sings the earth and cosmos electric in a mid-career retrospective that could be a Pick of the Year exhibition. The Geffen space, which has never looked better, was entirely made over for the show – an immersive odyssey to mirror Aitken’s own process with...
There’s a new smell in town, and the best way to find the source is by following your nose down Grand Avenue to MOCA. Yeah, I thought it was coming from the room of stale, day-old Rothkos too, but it doesn’t take long to figure out that the odor comes from the R.M....
R. H. Quaytman’s Morning: Chapter 30 has an assertive, unrelenting horizontal presence, but it really represents a kind of constellation – coextensive with the larger universe of associations that populate Quaytman’s entire body of work. That constellation may be...
The beginning of another arts and culture season also marks a point where we really start to feel the impact of everything we’ve been experiencing over the preceding orbital/calendar year and start to take its measure. Events move swiftly; you can feel as if you’re...
There was astonishing buzz around Philippe Quesne’s La Mélancolie des Dragons at REDCAT last Wednesday night; and as a sucker for avant-garde theatre, I simply had to be there, heat or no heat. I felt cooler just looking at the stage set, which resembled a forest...
There may have been a ‘great thing’ or two (literally) amongst the millions of pages on display at the Geffen; but good luck finding them. I shouldn’t have to be telling this to Printed Matter (a fabulous art book store that’s a must whenever I’m in Chelsea)—but when...
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