Until now, the ICA Boston’s Foster Prize has been relatively traditional. It begins with the museum’s announcement of a short list of artists who participate in its biennial. From there, an independent panel of judges selects one winner, who walks away with a cash prize. This year’s Foster Prize is different. The ICA’s Associate Director of Performing Arts, John Andress, and Senior Curator, Jenelle Porter,[…..]
The entry point to Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors (2012)—if you’re lucky enough to see the beginning of the looping one-hour, nine-channel video—is like awakening each day in a house full of people who were up all night while you slept. Slightly disorienting, the sound, light, and being start streaming into the gallery as each of the screens lights up. The camera is impartial: The shots[…..]
Amy Sillman? All I can say is pentimenti. The artist’s working process provides so many transitory parts that the brain has to protect itself by combining them into a whole. The work comes to a rest, but hiding under the surface are two interpretive horizons: The complete painting and the individual paint strokes. The whole work is inseparable from each stroke, and yet the individual[…..]
Today we bring you a review of the deCordova Biennial from our friends at Big Red & Shiny in Boston. Twenty-one artists and collaborative teams from the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont are featured in this six-month survey exhibition. Author John Pyper notes, “…the intention is to create a snapshot of the artists in New England and to feature emerging talent. This[…..]
There is always someone who is offended by every biennial. They are inherently two-headed beasts, with the introspective head judging the strengths and weaknesses of a portion of the art world, while the extroverted head optimistically presents a narrative, declaring why the included artists are notable. For this year’s DeCordova Biennial, curators Dina Deitsch and Abigail Ross Goodman followed tradition by programming a regional Biennial[…..]
You walk in to a darkish room where ever-changing shapes move like a school of fish across the walls. After your eyes adjust, you find that the there are two benches sitting among six sculptures that are producing the schools of fish and that the fish are made out of nothing but light beams. These sculptures are metal. Simple geometry (sphere, cube, etc). The room[…..]
The idea is of an artist being a/n (insert nationality here) artist is becoming a thing of the past. This isn’t politically correct posturing, it’s reality now that the smartest artists today work locally and show globally. Conceptually it’s not a viable option to sit still in one environment understanding only what you consider native, and economically it’s not possible for a single city to[…..]
