L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley Inimitable novelist Norman Mailer and essayist Gore Vidal feuded on The Dick Cavett show in 1971. Vidal had written these two sentences for the New York Review of Books, in a review of Eva Fige’s book Patriarchal Attitudes: “There has been from Henry Miller and Normal Mailer to Charles Manson a logical[…..]
The collection of works by Paul Cowan, Brendan Fowler, Chadwick Rantanen, and Dan Rees at Shane Campbell Gallery add up to an exhibition that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In his own way, each artist imbues an existing object and/or the space of the gallery with low-key but engaging creative intention. This makes for a surprisingly cohesive exhibition despite the fact[…..]
Polly Morgan is an artist notorious for her taxidermied animal assemblages that skillfully transform a tradition often seen as kitsch or macabre into elegant and highly sought-after creations. Initially training with professional taxidermist George Jamieson, Morgan set out not necessarily to make art, but rather as a way to furnish her own flat. She continued to create, trying preserving the moments between decay and death,[…..]
In place of what would have been SITE Santa Fe’s 9th International Biennial, the exhibition More Real?: Art in the Age of Truthiness is mounted as a question. Through cumulative stagings, illusions, virtual worlds, and fictional archives the exhibition creates a circuit of “truthiness”. The term coined by the venerable pop icon Stephen Colbert essentially means truth through gut feeling or desire rather than fact.[…..]
Disembarking visitors to the 18th Biennale of Sydney at Cockatoo Island first encounter fog rising from a crevice between sandstone cliffs and the island’s abandoned buildings. A site-specific work by Fujiko Nakaya, it exemplifies the intentions of the artistic directors – to open our senses to water, wind, and earth. Jonathan Jones, of the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nations, created a midden of oyster shells and porcelain teacups, a poignant reference[…..]
Functioning as an “exploded museum,” as curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev calls it, the hundreds of artworks of the dOCUMENTA (13) are housed in venues near and far. Beyond Kassel, Germany there are dOCUMENTA happenings in Kabul, Afghanistan, Cairo, Egypt, and in Banff, Canada. Within Kassel, the exhibitions are taking place in the Karlsaue park, at the historic Fridericianum (claiming fame to being the first public museum[…..]
As part of our ongoing partnership with Art Practical, Daily Serving is sharing Matt Stromberg‘s article on Made in LA 2012, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. On the heels of the sprawling Pacific Standard Time (PST) series of exhibitions comes the Hammer Museum’s inaugural Los Angeles biennial. Whereas the PST programming sought to recuperate, re-contextualize, and, in a sense, canonize, five decades of Southern[…..]
