There is always someone who is offended by every biennial. They are inherently two-headed beasts, with the introspective head judging the strengths and weaknesses of a portion of the art world, while the extroverted head optimistically presents a narrative, declaring why the included artists are notable. For this year’s DeCordova Biennial, curators Dina Deitsch and Abigail Ross Goodman followed tradition by programming a regional Biennial[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “At this moment, my iPad is totally f–ing me up,” said Eleanor Antin last Sunday at the Hammer Museum, in Act V of Before the Revolution, a remaking of her originally one-woman ballet. Act V was actually called “The Interruption,” because the performers were slated to stop performing and the artist to[…..]
As part of our ongoing partnership with Art Practical, Daily Serving is sharing Patricia Maloney’s article Making Events of Objects on [2nd floor projects] and THE THING Quarterly in San Francisco. A central tenet to emerge from Conceptual art in the 1960s was the perception of language as an object: a visual form of signification that requires us to negotiate its materiality in order to locate its meaning.[…..]
When Lady Macbeth said “Out, damn’d spot!” she was referring to stains of blood, not brightly-colored enamel paint, but I’m sure there are more than a few art critics out there who echo her thought this month. The reason? What to make of “Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011”, now on view at eleven Gagosian galleries worldwide. The spots at Gagosian LA range from[…..]
I can’t remember exactly how I found the website of Whitney Lynn—one of those following links of links things—but as soon as I saw images of her sculptures of pillow fort/military bunkers I knew I wanted to talk with her. Luckily for me, she was about to install a solo show at Steven Wolf Fine Arts in San Francisco. I went over to the gallery[…..]
I must admit I am often plagued by skepticism walking into ‘best of’ exhibitions – the ones, like the recent Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence, that promise to clairvoyantly open up a window onto the future of contemporary art. Often, these group exhibitions seem plagued by too many artists, who are represented by a single work, thrust together in a curatorial jumble that[…..]
Comprising only a large installation at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir’s Crepusculum – Latin for “twilight” or “dusk” – is a mixed-media, polyphonic, physical exploration of metaphysical structures that govern the human psyche, and speculates that an enigmatic and irrational system of signs, meanings and forms counterbalances the deceptively ordered exteriors of our existence. Above all, it is an experiential and tactile show that prioritises[…..]
