Wael Shawky’s gorgeous cinematography, sets, and marionettes fuse a child-like play with the horrors and complications of war and history.

While walking through her retrospective Botched Execution, Portland-based artist Heidi Schwegler recounted a story about a lost baby boy. He disappeared during the night—last seen falling asleep in bed between his grandparents. In the morning, he was gone. The police arrived to search the home and surrounding area, and they turned up no trace. Hours later, in the bedroom, an officer heard a small cough—a[…..]

Today from our archives we bring you a look back at John Zarobell’s review of Water City Berkeley at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. The first line of the review says it all: “Why celebrate when the world is going to hell?” This article was originally published on December 22, 2013. Why celebrate when the world is going to hell? Kim Anno’s ambitious effort to envision the future of humanity[…..]

From our partners at Art Practical, today we bring you a review of Diana Thater’s current solo exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art. Author Genevieve Quick notes that this exhibition is remarkably similar to ones the artist has already presented: “I am unconvinced that Thater’s minor changes constitute new works or the experimentation that the series seeks to support.” This article was originally published on April 28,[…..]

Today from our friends at Kadist Art Foundation, we bring you a video excerpt from The Secession Sessions, “an exhibition and series of related public programs exploring a place caught in a contested narrative.” In this session, art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson gives a brief history of artists re-creating political systems within their practices, artist Aaron Gach talks about his work at the Center for Tactical Magic, and poet David Buuck[…..]

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, Nancy Garcia reviews Sanaz Mazinani: Threshold at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Currently on view at the Asian Art Museum is Threshold, a[…..]

In the dark at PSM Gallery in Berlin, a digital animation is silently breathing. It appears as an inverted landscape split in equal parts by land and sky. A field recedes into the horizon, with a mass of permafrost above and mostly clear blue atmosphere below. Green shrubs flop and slide loosely on the screen, wriggling and dismorphic, moving as they would in an acid[…..]