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, Maria Porges reviews Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible at the Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, California. Forrest Bess (1911–1977), a talented, visionary artist whose work was exhibited in[…..]

#engagement #social practice #institutions #academia #authenticity #representation Berkeley has lately been abuzz with social practice of a politically conscious nature that befits the People’s Republic. The Berkeley Art Museum is presenting David Wilson’s The Possible, an exhibition as creative platform that includes numerous artist collaborators and participatory activities for the public. Concurrent with that exhibition, UC Berkeley’s Center for South Asia Studies presented the conference “Collecting[…..]

We are proud to share an incredible new video interview between Barry McGee and Renny Pritikin. Pritikin is the former Chief Curator of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and was responsible for McGee’s first major solo exhibition at YBCA in the late 1990s. This video interview was created on the occasion of McGee’s mid-career survey exhibition currently on view at the Berkeley[…..]

Along with nine, hand-selected participants, artist Desirée Holman has spent the last two years developing a series of avatars. The resulting project, Heterotopias, 2011, a video and supporting drawings on view now at the Berkeley Art Museum, refers to corporeal reality’s relationship to virtual reality, the physical process by which the digitally rendered avatar is formed, and the ironic stasis of the body whilst the[…..]

For the first time in 26 years, an overview of Kurt Schwitters’ work is touring the US, and the Berkeley Art Museum is the exhibition’s only west-coast venue.  Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage spans the artist’s output between 1918 and 1947, and includes collages, assemblages, sculpture, and the reconstruction of the architectural/sculptural installation Merzbau, which was destroyed when the Allies bombed Hannover in 1943.  Schwitters[…..]

The growing spotlight on artists with developmental disabilities simultaneously questions ethics, challenges definitions in Art and inspires viewers. The current exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Create, features the works of 20 artists from three pioneering Bay Area centers for arts and disability – Creativity Explored, Creative Growth Art Center and the National Institute of Art and Disabilities. Once in the museum, I[…..]

All abstract art has one thing at its core:  the human body.  The existence of abstract art is as old as humankind, as are its attempts to either translate or transcend bodily experience without that pesky figuration getting in the way.  This conflict is even present etymologically:  the word ‘abstract’ boils down to meaning something along the lines of ‘drawn away’ – or ‘separated from[…..]