Articles

Martin Creed: Work No. 360 at the Henry Art Gallery

Martin Creed. Work No. 360: Half the air in a given space, 2015. Installation view. Courtesy of the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Photo: RJ Sánchez, Solstream Studios.

Let’s just state the obvious: Martin Creed’s Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space, on view at Henry Art Gallery, is insanely fun to experience. Pushing your way through a space filled (true to the installation’s title, only halfway) with over 37,000 pearly gray balloons is like being in a mosh pit, surrounded by marshmallows. It’s a ridiculous image, to be sure,[…..]

Sprawl!: Drawing Outside the Lines at the High Museum of Art

Fabian Williams. Gossip, 2014; watercolor on paper; 8 x 10 in. Courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Sprawl! Drawing Outside the Lines presents a compelling case for an expanded notion of drawing and draftsmanship in contemporary art. With over 100 drawings culled from artists and creative workers within the sprawling suburban metropolis of Atlanta, it’s a much-anticipated sequel to the 2013 exhibition Drawing Inside the Perimeter, which instigated the museum’s public commitment to acquiring and exhibiting the work of local artists. Sprawl! registers[…..]

Clare Rojas: New Work at Anglim Gilbert Gallery

Clare Rojas. Untitled (CR15014), 2015; 48 in. x 60 in. Courtesy of the Artist. and Anglim Gilbert Gallery.

Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Hana Metzger reviews Clare Rojas: New Work at Anglim Gilbert Gallery in San Francisco. New paintings by Clare Rojas at Anglim Gilbert Gallery give the greatest pleasure[…..]

Juan Carlos Quintana: Retrospectives at Jack Fischer Gallery

Juan Carlos Quintana. Reflections on Exile Part I (Entering the Forest), 2014-15; oil and acrylic on canvas; 84 x 192 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco.

From our partners at Art Practical, today we bring you a review of Juan Carlos Quintana: Retrospectives at Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco. Author Maria Porges quotes the artist at the end of the review: “And who is to say what is failure and what is success? As an artist you just need to trust and listen to yourself and keep moving forward.” This article was[…..]

Fan Mail: Tavis Lochhead

Tavis Lochhead. Habitat 10, 2015; digital image. Courtesy of Tavis Lochhead.

Toronto-based artist Tavis Lochhead has a knack for the surreal. In his photo collage series Habitat, large sections of industrial sites are digitally manipulated into semi-abstract compositions that disrupt the mundane aesthetics of manufacturing zones. In each work, the central figure—what the artist describes as “a sculptural element floating in space”—is an assemblage produced by an elaborate process of merging, mirroring, and stitching. Initially trained in[…..]

Taca Sui: Steles – Huang Yi Project at Chambers Fine Art Beijing

1.	Taca Sui, Tomb of Prince Lu #1 (2015). Silver on baryta paper. 53 x 80 cm. Courtesy of Chambers Fine Art.

Taca Sui’s photographs in Steles – Huang Yi Project at Chambers Fine Art Beijing capture images that cut across time: transcendent tombs and temples, primordial rock formations, and ephemeral waves. Sui’s black-and-white prints are a culmination of his research on Huang Yi, a celebrated 19th-century Chinese artist and archaeologist. Sui immersed himself in Huang’s writings, using Huang’s diaries as a guide to plan a photographic[…..]

Zoe Beloff: A World Redrawn at the James Gallery, CUNY

Zoe Beloff. Two Marxists in Hollywood, 2015 (film still). Courtesy of the James Gallery, Graduate Center, CUNY.

It is a strange fact that Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, and Bertolt Brecht all resided in Los Angeles, California, in the 1940s. Unsurprisingly, few of them found their wartime haven a particularly sympathetic milieu. Brecht’s stay was especially ill-fated, ending with his interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and consequent return to Berlin. A decade earlier, the Latvia-born film director[…..]