Hayv Kahraman’s current solo exhibition at Jack Shainman is captivating. A suite of large paintings, produced in 2014 and 2015, shows women in patterned garments interacting within simple architectural forms; Arabic script annotates the figures. The gallery text explains that the works depict “memories from Kahraman’s childhood in Baghdad and as a refugee in Sweden.” The women are suggestive, and refer to other artworks as diverse as Persian miniatures, ukiyo-e[…..]

Abstraction is dead! Long live abstraction! In Linear Abstraction, the SCAD Museum of Art negotiates the status of nonrepresentational work as it exists in the 21st century and includes work in various media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and digital formats. While the exhibition seeks to trace commonalities between contemporary practices by engaging somewhat diverse uses or ideas of lines, the resulting effect points succinctly to[…..]

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, Miguel Arzabe reviews Jake Longstreth: Free Range at Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco. For urban dwellers with the means and motivation to leave the city in[…..]

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, Emily Swaim reviews Shaping Abstraction at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California. Full disclosure—I have embarrassingly little education in abstract art. In fact, I chose[…..]

“Grids punctured with crosses in varying patterns” is perhaps the best—and admittedly, the most simplistic—way of summing up Ding Yi’s oeuvre. Ivory Black at the ShanghArt gallery is his latest iteration of these basic, severely geometric forms, in varying shades of blue, black, and white hues, distinguished only by date and serial number. Like an astronomer’s chart of the night sky, Ding’s gridded, ordered forms[…..]

Today, from our friends at BURNAWAY, we bring you a review of Clayton Colvin’s solo exhibition at beta pictoris gallery in Birmingham. Author Brett Levine notes, “[The exhibition] represents a strong commitment to the practice of painting as much as to its meaning.” This article was originally published on February 4, 2015. In new way to forget, Clayton Colvin’s third solo exhibition at beta pictoris gallery, we see the[…..]

Hope is a powerful catalyst for change, fueling courage and idealism in equal parts. It projects a vision of a future that is better than the present. Once people are moved with hope, extraordinary things can happen. But what happens to hope when a people are continuously subjugated for over six centuries? If Kiev-based artist Nikita Kadan’s quietly intense installation at Waterside Contemporary is an[…..]