Tracey Emin’s work presents an unfiltered and often embarrassingly personal view of emotional pain. It reflects the kind of desperate or careless narcissism that is the territory of the depressed. Emin is concerned with the primacy of her own experience—and the narrative of her own sadness is the unabashed subject of her work. Emin’s oeuvre has always felt most valuable to me in terms of[…..]

Mixed media—that creative collision of materials rarefied and commonplace, refined and raw—is, one might say, something of a given in the contemporary art world. The Hirshhorn’s Over, Under, Next: Experiments in Mixed Media, 1913-Present is a fascinating and provocative overview of this now-ubiquitous, once-incendiary mode of art making. Such an illuminating look back prompts one to see the present anew, and considered in the light[…..]

Caitlin Cunningham’s current solo exhibition is on view at sophiajacob in Baltimore, Maryland, through May 25th. The show, informally titled Tan Penis Island, extends from a focused critique of the legacy of modernist painter Paul Gauguin’s exploitation of Tahiti to examine the ramifications of fantastic projection, the economy of colonization, and the production of white masculinity through the exotic Other. Cunningham integrates live plants and[…..]

A dominant feature of contemporary Asian art has always been the reflection of cultural and historical frameworks within which such works are produced: firmly entrenched in tradition, yet forward-looking thanks to the far-reaching changes – and homogenisation – brought about by the formidable impact of globalisation. Even though artistic production in South Korea seems to follow this trend, it is problematised by the emergence of[…..]

At 11 p.m. on a Friday night in Paris, I took advantage of the late hours at the Palais de Tokyo. Before entering the Julio Le Parc exhibit, I overheard a conversation that seems to exemplify a standing problem of contemporary art. A visitor answered his phone while looking at a conceptual piece and jokingly described it. It went something like this: “I’m looking at[…..]

The very first thing you see when visiting Stefan Stagmeister’s “The Happy Show” at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center is wall text boldly declaring: “THIS EXHIBITION WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPIER.” While the text may seem like a cheeky and sarcastic pre-summarization of the content, Stagmeister sets the stage for his internal conflicts.  The information presented on the walls ranges from dry, yet poignant data, to[…..]

Through his refreshing lack of self-seriousness or sanctimony, Ragnar Kjartansson has cut a jagged, joyful figure on the contemporary art scene. Indeed, with solo exhibitions in Boston and New York, the artist has recently been favored with the art world’s fickle attentions and is having something of a well-deserved moment. Ragnar Kjartansson, “The End–Venice,” 2009. Performance view. Venice, June 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring[…..]