The idea is of an artist being a/n (insert nationality here) artist is becoming a thing of the past. This isn’t politically correct posturing, it’s reality now that the smartest artists today work locally and show globally. Conceptually it’s not a viable option to sit still in one environment understanding only what you consider native, and economically it’s not possible for a single city to[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley When photographer Larry Sultan was growing up, his mother hired a decorator to “cozy up” their new San Fernando Valley home with its marble floors and 12-foot fireplace. The decorator had red hair, tight pants and lipstick that always spread beyond the limits of her lips. She brought in shag carpets, candelabras,[…..]
A biblical parable tells of a wayward son who leaves home for a distant land after demanding his inheritance from his father. Squandering his riches quickly, he repentantly returns to his father’s house hoping to be hired as one of his father’s servants but find instead, his father’s unexpected kindness and forgiveness. Christine Ay Tjoe’s current site-specific show The Famous One from Lucas # I[…..]
When contemplating the city of Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands, one’s mind typically reaches for the successful football team, PSV Eindhoven or the international product giants, Philips. A city more closely associated to manufacture and design rather than to the expressive and conceptual world of contemporary art. Therefore, it was a welcome surprise to visit the Van Abbemuseum, and view the current exhibition[…..]
I have always had a soft spot for the Museum of Everything – it was their self-prophetic name and bizarre doodles that first won me over, and the witty banter of their newsletter that has sustained the affair since. With last year’s always numbered, never titled, Exhibition #3 featuring a funhouse of circus-cum-taxidermy as curated by Sir Peter Blake, it was with great anticipation that[…..]
Performance, installation, and a camera. It is on a rare occasion that I attend an exhibition and struggle to walk away from what is hanging on the walls, even with the allure of many excellent pubs outside. Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s Soft Horizons at the beautiful location of the Museum Huis Voor Fotografie Marseille in Amsterdam, stopped me in my tracks with a rich array of[…..]
Modernity—in all its West-centric incarnations—has been debated, deliberated and disputed since the last feudal lord packed it in. Baudelaire lambasted the arbitrary parameters that dictate “advanced” civilization; Machiavelli’s antecedents celebrated them. The very notion of a “modern” world results in a perpetual discourse on the factors that prescribe it. Within the walls of Ambach & Rice‘s new Los Angeles gallery, the dialogue persists with Alon[…..]
