Sometimes an interview comes easily, and sometimes not: Rafał Bujnowski needed convincing. We smoked a cigarette together in Tarnow, Poland, where he was exhibiting work in Tarnow: 1000 years of modernity. I enthused about his work. He agreed to do it if I would email him the questions, and I gently refused. He claimed a poor grasp of English. I denied it. We smoked another[…..]
Recently in the San Francisco Bay Area it has been impossible to walk down a street without running into (or trying to avoid) someone protesting something. The messages range from concise to ironic, sardonic to flat-out fed up. In the undulating sea of abridged manifestos, there is the rare message so poignant that it demands the sign-bearer’s cause receives deeper consideration. Geoff Oppenheimer’s current exhibit[…..]
Vincent Vulsma’s exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam explores the use of appropriation through the history of Dutch colonial expansion. He presents a contemporary artistic perspective on our relationship with colonialism beyond imperial history. Using and re-working a number of works originally seen in the ‘African Negro Art’ exhibition in New York’s MOMA in 1935, Vulsma displays the historic artifacts along with modern designs,[…..]
Anna Nazzari’s exhibition Horse Play at Turner Galleries presents the losing game, and the dogged impulse to try again, as an inescapable aspect of the human condition. With a nod to the absurdist existentialism of Albert Camus, Nazzari’s games, which are impossible to win, allude to the futile quest for meaning in an inherently meaningless world. For Nazzari, this nightmarish scenario provides the ground to[…..]
On the night of October 25th, police officers fired teargas and flash grenades into a crowd of “Occupy Wall Street” protesters in Oakland, CA. The event was a significant escalation of force following weeks of arrests and threats of mandatory dispersal issued by police and local officials in American cities. The morning after the Oakland confrontation, news outlets were awash with chaotic images of police[…..]
A biblical parable tells of a wayward son who leaves home for a distant land after demanding his inheritance from his father. Squandering his riches quickly, he repentantly returns to his father’s house hoping to be hired as one of his father’s servants but find instead, his father’s unexpected kindness and forgiveness. Christine Ay Tjoe’s current site-specific show The Famous One from Lucas # I[…..]
Katarzyna Przezwanska‘s work is both playful and serious: riotous colors precisely define spaces for objects on a desk or in a room, or grace the facade of a dour old concrete building. She is equally adept at using pop brights and cool, pensive tones to create moods or to reference a particular history or locale. Her installation in the most recent Frieze Art Fair elicited[…..]
