In Sarah O’Donnell’s work, cinema, the diorama, and immersive installation come together to give shape to her fascination with and investigation of human memory. O’Donnell is specifically interested in the places and characters through which memories are made. She often re-creates memories through her own ever-evolving methods of mise-en-scène and editing. In this way, her works all seem to reside somewhere between explaining and further[…..]
In Japanese, the word ametsuchi contains two characters, side by side. Together, they mean heaven and earth and make up the title of the oldest pangram in Japanese—a bare-bones chant that contains only six lines but, somehow, also includes every character in the Japanese syllabary. Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi borrows the title and theme of this ancient poem in her latest body of work, currently[…..]
In any survey of post-war abstract painting, an inescapable topic of discussion is the grid. Usual examples cite artists such as Agnes Martin and Ad Reinhardt, and the grid as aesthetic style typically bears descriptive qualities like “clinical,” “sterile,” and “objective”—words that have minimalistic sensibilities. However, as Zachary Cahill points out in an introductory text for Grid’s World at Locust Projects in Miami, grids are[…..]
The title of this year’s Venice Biennale, Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), illuminates the event’s political ideology via its philosophical and curatorial conceits. The main exhibition centers on a utopian fantasy of comprehensive knowledge, aspiring to a completist vision of human achievement with the caveat of inevitable failure built in. Though self-reflective in that sense, this theme does not acknowledge the long shadow of[…..]
I remember the first time I learned about Yves Klein in art history class. It was one of those moments (and I had many during that course) where I not only chuckled and admired the artist’s audacity but thought, “If only I could have been there to see this myself.” For Yves Klein’s work, this, of course, is the premise of its strength. Having an[…..]
As part of our ongoing partnership with KQED.org, today we bring you a reflection on Moment to Moment, a collaboration between San Francisco’s THE THING Quarterly and Levi’s. Author Roula Seikaly explores the art historical precedent for the project and questions the relationship between artistic endeavors and corporate sponsorship. She notes, “the THING/Levi’s Made & Crafted union is troublesome, if only because the partnership defies the[…..]
From our friends at Beautiful/Decay, today we bring you paintings by Tsherin Sherpa, who states: “if we […] analyze these Buddhist images, one will find that they are a means to develop a practitioner’s (Buddhist) goal towards enlightenment, which means that the images are not the ultimate goal but rather a vehicle.” This article was written by Russ Crest and originally published on October 2, 2013. Tsherin[…..]
