As someone born two decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I received visual access to the civil-rights era predominantly through photographic documentation. Black-and-white photos in history books, documentary films, and microfilm of front-page newspaper stories shaped my understanding of the period, suggesting a more or less linear sequence of events. Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, now at the Brooklyn Museum,[…..]

“There’s no content being produced, because I’m in the first generation that grew up digital…. We are just transferring all the time: tape, CDs, and now the clouds.”[1] Something radical has been happening for a while in art that has been evading easy classification. The digital fold has facilitated a giant mash-up of layers upon layers of information composed from fragments of fragments. Sound bites, video[…..]

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, Deanne Gertner reviews Senga Nengudi: The Material Body at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.   In her solo exhibition The Material Body at Museum of[…..]

Beijing is exhausting, exhilarating, infuriating, appalling, and wonderful, all at the same time. The energy of the city, undefeated by its weight of imperial and revolutionary history, or by the dead hand of contemporary politics and power struggles, is encapsulated in the lively diversity of its art scene. In the late 1990s and the early years of this century, Chinese artists were rock stars, earning[…..]

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, Vanessa Thill reviews Jumana Manna: Menace of Origins at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York.    At SculptureCenter, a single strange object made from egg cartons[…..]

Landscape painting does not garner a lot of excitement these days, but the work of California-based Leslie Shows keeps viewers’ eyes and minds engaged. Her large-scale paintings—which also veer into sculptural forms—are meticulously and thoughtfully crafted, layering material and form into otherworldly interpretations of natural and synthetic landscapes. A survey of Shows’ recent works is currently on view at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art—the[…..]

Located more than nine miles west of Chicago’s city center, The Suburban is one of a number of alternative spaces that have caught on in the bordering village of Oak Park. It’s quiet, affluent, and easily accessed by public transit, yet Oak Park is an unlikely host to such alternative spaces as Terrain Exhibitions, The Franklin, and The Suburban, all of which locate innovative art[…..]