Edgar Arcenaux’s exhibition at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, Written in Fire and Smoke, is relatively modest in scale, occupying the List’s two main galleries. But while the exhibition is physically constrained, conceptually it is oversized—colossal, even. Written in Fire and Smoke is comprised of three bodies of work, all of which manifest through different material approaches. All, however, share the complexity that defines Arceneaux’s[…..]
Paola Pivi’s exhibition, Ma’am, at the Dallas Contemporary Museum fills the galleries with colorful creatures and inflatables, coffee beans, feathers, and faux pearls. Visual tricks and gags, sensorial puns, and oddities—these are the territory of Pivi’s sculptures, photographs, films, and interventions. Her monumentally scaled, untitled airplane work—a small Fiat G-91 placed upside-down on the floor—guards the entrance into the space. Around the corner, a swath of[…..]
I visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on the 68th day of Marilyn Arsem’s 100-day-long performance exhibition, 100 Ways to Consider Time. The premise behind Arsem’s exhibition (which exists, it seems, as one piece or work) is that the artist will be on-site, situated in a gallery inside the museum, for each of the 100 days of the show. As the museum is[…..]
Artist Laurie Anderson opens Heart of a Dog by recounting a rather bizarre dream. Illustrated on the screen through sketchy black-and-white drawings and narrated in Anderson’s calm, comely voice, the artist gives birth to her dog, Lolabelle, the spectral rat terrier who becomes in some ways (though in others not) the star of the film. After being presented with her bundle, Anderson’s dream self feels very[…..]
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) is a timeless sort of place. Sure, its first floor boasts an urban-inspired coffee bar with contemporary furnishings that gesture toward the present day, but the galleries tell a different story of time altogether. From costumes to hand-painted ceramics, ritual objects to period rooms, the MIA offers abstract snapshots of other places and other times, mixing centuries and geographies[…..]
Spread about a large rear gallery at the Bronx Museum, this exhibition surveys various bodies of work by the Argentine American artist Jaime Davidovich. At the entrance of the show, alongside the explanatory wall text, a small monitor atop a pedestal plays the video that lends the exhibition its title, Adventures of the Avant-Garde. In this 1981 short loop, Davidovich takes on a role that[…..]
The fourth floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is typically an airy space with high ceilings and ample skylights, but currently it is crowded with an overabundance of furniture. Visitors are greeted with the pleasant mineral smell of dirt and a dense maze of wooden tables. The lighting is diffuse, almost grayed, and the galleries take on the look of a luminous dusk,[…..]
