With the recent boom in museum building and expansion, there has been a recurring discussion of what makes a good space for art—as though an objective answer could be determined through a calculation of square footage, flexibility of design, and the ratio of natural to electric light. Indeed, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opted to demolish and rebuild its recently acquired neighboring building,[…..]
Art-historical borders cease to have validity if they stand in the way of new theoretical connections and investigations.
Palermo: Works 1973–1976, now on view at David Zwirner’s 20th St. gallery in Chelsea, speaks at close range. Unlike the gallery’s concurrent solo exhibitions—devoted to Suzan Frecon and Alice Neel—there’s no mounting symphony behind this selection of works by Blinky Palermo. The exhibition has moments of real depth, but situated between the abundance of the Frecon and Neel shows, it is in danger of functioning[…..]
“Glitter/Utopia,” “Boring/Because,” “Decade/Asshat,” “Wartime/Paisley”: These are a few of the word combinations that appear in Charles Atlas’ two-channel video projection, Ethel’s Fortune or The Waning of Justice (2015), currently filling two expansive, adjacent walls at Luhring Augustine’s Chelsea location. Each term in the dyad phases into position in front of footage of a maritime sunset while the letters themselves open up similar vistas contained within[…..]
Declarations of dissent can manifest in many ways. Playing with Fire: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions, currently on view at El Museo del Barrio, surveys a range of Latin American and Caribbean artists who through their art practices have voiced their dissent from oppressive cultural forces. The curator, Nicolás Dumit Estévez, frames these artistic impulses as foundational to the history and spirit of[…..]
The 2004 hit show Battlestar Galactica chronicles a future in which artificially intelligent robots called Cylons seek to destroy the human race as they advance and meld with technology in an almost mystical way. Constructed out of biological material, a bisected Cylon fighter plane actually bleeds—sinews, guts, and all. Other Cylons evolve to look exactly like human copies, and are so intelligent that they experience the complexities[…..]
On September 21, Daly Barnett’s JEF+KEV//SIM infiltrated the ranks of this year’s United Solo Theatre Festival and inoculated its lineup of “straight” theater with the virus of queer performance art. Solo performance and performance art share a symbiotic genesis, solo performance being fundamentally based in storytelling that often features the absence of a “fourth wall” and performance art seeking to eradicate this distinction entirely, its vital[…..]
