There is a profound stillness in Carla Jay Harris’ photographs—her framing and shooting style emits a pervasive calm that quiets the anxiety of her subject matter. Harris’ ability to create silence amid moments of emotional upheaval is eerie, tense, and evocative. Two bodies of work portray people and places in the midst of economic and cultural change; Dirt, Dust, Sand, Concrete (2012–2015) shows Smithfield, Virginia,[…..]
Mark Steinmetz’s current exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art has narrative ambition, but also asks difficult questions about the meaning of “straight photography” and its relationship to the documentary tradition. In what sense are documentary photographs social records, deadpan descriptions, or allegorical explications of the artist’s worldview? Are they a series of facile maneuvers, or as critic Garry Badger once claimed, “an existential[…..]
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, Danny Olda reviews Oscar Muñoz: Sedimentaciones at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa. The gallery is dark save for the surface of three[…..]
Matt Sheridan Smith’s current exhibition at Hannah Hoffman Gallery is a portrait show, but not in the conventional sense. Instead of painted likenesses of his subject (there is one representational image; more on that later), Sheridan Smith uses pattern, abstraction, and the readymade to create what he dubs “a sort of speculative portraiture.”[1] Evocative and confounding rather than illuminating, the works in the show obscure[…..]
In our predominantly consumerist society, it is increasingly difficult to disconnect ourselves from our belongings. Barbara Kruger summarized the contemporary Cartesian dualism when she created her 1987 piece, “I Shop Therefore I am.” The more we define ourselves through our endlessly multiplying clutter, the harder it is to relate to others who don’t share our specific collection of objects onto which we project meaning and[…..]
A solo exhibition of Victor Albrow’s photography is currently on view at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow. On entering the exhibition space, one is immediately drawn to the almost life-size portraits through the odd contrast of figures in a contemporary setting staged so to be reminiscent of Renaissance portrait paintings. While Albrow did not intentionally create parallels with Renaissance portraiture, the similarities and contexts are[…..]
The art world. It’s way more serious and important than every other industry! This thinking at least seems to persist even though the field of contemporary art has maintained an open flirtation with its sassy sister, the fashion industry, since long before even Andy Warhol trotted his wacky wigs around Studio 54 with the likes of Diane von Fürstenberg. There is a mutual fascination between[…..]
