When I was in art school, there was a painting professor who would shock new grad students by propping their palettes up next to their paintings and explaining, in great detail, why the palette was aesthetically superior. The students were crushed. How could a perfunctory manipulation of materials possibly be more successful than their über-personal paintings? He’d then rebuild their egos until they painted exactly[…..]

Lari Pittman is a gardener. Particularly fond of succulents, he maintains precisely manicured rows of cacti that borrow from a methodical landscape sensibility, a rational formation he claims “pushes back” against the chaos of nature. A composite of Columbian and American Southern heritage, Pittman is fluent in the duality of cultivated life. He understands that mortality is the only fixed variable in our otherwise unique[…..]

Sometimes we come upon an exhibition that reminds us that there are intersections between different kinds of collections. One might think that the worlds of paleontology, mineralogy and art are separate but a recent exhibition of works by the Dutch artist Ruth Van Beek at Okay Mountain Gallery in Austin shows us otherwise. Included in the exhibition are a series of paintings, photographs and collages[…..]

Art has been known to speak out of turn. In Singapore, there is a phrase, ‘O.B. marker’, that in local parlance is used to describe topics that are considered officially ‘out of bounds’. The phrase, borrowed from golfing terminology, to designate spaces where play is not allowed, on an island with limited land but a surprisingly large number of golf courses, is seldom used with[…..]

Today on DS, we bring you an article from our friends at DaWire. Carla Acevedo takes a look at Dan Colen’s controversial new show at Gagosian Gallery’s 24th Street space. The most talked about and controversial show of the New York City Fall season: Dan Colen’s inaugural solo debut at Gagosian titled Poetry. Walking around Chelsea during the opening weeks of the season, it was[…..]

Can’t we all just learn to trust Sue Williams? So what if, after all her stylistic shifts, she’s showing a new body of work devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories? And big deal that these are the exact same theories espoused by President Ahmadinejad of Iran that were publicly denounced by President Obama. For all of the artists who give lip service to taking risks, Williams[…..]

The listlessness of people waiting in an emergency waiting room contrasts discomfortingly with the gruesomeness of the chunks of human flesh appearing as fresh meat and liberal washes of red. This work is from one of Zeng Fanzhi’s earliest series, known as the “Hospital” series, markedly influenced by German Expressionism and its manifestation of society’s anxieties and decadence, as studied during his formative years at[…..]