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From the category archives:

Reviews

At the Studio Museum, Identity Gets a New Face

by Whitney Kimball on May 17, 2013
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Who was Sally Hemings? You could choose a number of titles: the mother of Thomas Jefferson’s children; his wife, Martha Jefferson’s, sister; Martha and Thomas’s slave. Her story is now nearly two centuries old, yet still demanded an answer in 1998, when a DNA test finally confirmed her link to the Jefferson bloodline.

Hemings is the subject of one of two shows at the Studio Museum right now, which both dig up old narratives, and both pull out a very fresh take on identity. The cerebral “American Cypher” by Mendi + Keith Obadike, and the romantic “Stray Light” by David Hartt are worth a trip up to Harlem, just to add their voices to the fray.

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Report from Detroit: Mike Kelley’s “Mobile Homestead” Opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

by Robin Dluzen on May 15, 2013
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At Friday’s preview, the permanent home for Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead (a formerly vacant lot behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) was behind schedule.

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“Palm Reader,” A Show About Touch

by Whitney Kimball on May 15, 2013
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Lumpy-dumpiness seems to be all the rage in the emerging scene (think curdled plaster, splotchy painting, loading palettes, pinched and unglazed ceramics), to the point where the Lower East Side can feel like one big boutique. But usually, a decent show will remind you that materials are not the problem. I review an intimate show of raw painting and sculpture by Fabienne Lasserre, Luke Armitstead, and Sophie Stone, in the new Sunset Park mini-gallery So What Space.

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Barbara Bloom, An Artist-Curator at the Jewish Museum

by Corinna Kirsch on May 14, 2013
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Why are artist-curators being recruited by New York museums? With all the artist-curated shows currently on view, the artist’s viewpoint may never have been represented so strongly.

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What’s the Plan for “Untapped Capital”?

by Whitney Kimball on May 10, 2013
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When government proposes finding “untapped capital” in the arts, artists may be wary. For the city, the growth of an arts district means money in the bank; for artists, it usually means finding a new apartment. Still, in last week’s Ideas City mayoral panel, a fairly compelling pro-tapping case was made by five former mayors of Austin, Nashville, Paris, and Miami, and the current mayor of Lexington, Kentucky—all of whom have significantly improved the living standards in each of their cities. Several told stories of recovering from a deep recession, often simply by nurturing local color, though that was prominently lacking in the panel itself.

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Yoko Ono: Future Mornings from the Past

by Eva Heisler on May 10, 2013
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“We’re all water in different containers,” writes Ono in 1967. “But even after the water’s gone we’ll probably point to the containers and say, ‘that’s me there, that one.’” Ono concludes, “We’re container minders.”

Guilty as charged. I am a furtive container-minder. But wandering through YOKO ONO: HALF-A-WIND SHOW at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the most comprehensive survey of Ono’s career to date, I soon give up trying to pin Ono’s work to a given practice or idea.

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A Hopeful Alternative to the Art Fairs? “Wish Meme” at the Old School

by Corinna Kirsch on May 8, 2013
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For the second year running, New York will host not just one, but two major art fair seasons within months of each other. Already fatigue seems to be the byword of choice for dealers, artists, and journalists faced with seeing the same, booth-friendly work throughout the year. For that reason, we look forward to the smaller shows that crop up in alternative spaces. “Wish Meme” dashed our expectations for a hopeful alternative to the blue-chip fairs.

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Four Gems from Berlin’s Sprawling Gallery Weekend

by Matthew Leifheit on May 7, 2013
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From the number of Berliners in galleries last weekend, you would think they were handing out free bratwurst.
Instead, they’d come for art, which fills every crevasse and hole in the city during Berlin Gallery Weekend. It’s similar to Gallery Week in New York, in that it brings big-name artists in for shows at major galleries and institutions. But thanks to cheap rents, you’ll just as often stumble across a show in a back alley, an empty shipping container, or somebody’s apartment. Here are the four shows that, more than the rest, had a little more soul.

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Rhizome’s Seven on Seven: Cards on the Table

by Paddy Johnson on April 26, 2013
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Rhizome’s Seven on Seven is, by definition, a crap shoot. The conference runs with the basic premise that by pairing seven technologists with seven artists and sticking them in a room together for 24 hours, a few creative sparks might fly. The following day, Rhizome hosts a six hour long conference in which the pairs are given 30 minutes each to present their collaborative work. The results are predictably mixed. Some projects fail, many have potential, but almost none amount to anything at all. Acknowledging this, Seven on Seven Moderator John Michael Boling quickly conceded during his opening remarks that “the main deliverable here is conversation.”

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We Went to Chicago: West of the Loop Edition

by Robin Dluzen and Pedro Velez on April 25, 2013
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Is “Psychosexual” at Andrew Rafacz gallery a portrait of the collector-psychologist-curator? Is Oliver Henry’s coffee creamer drawing charming? And can a pair of socks ever be a metaphor for the Gaza-Israel conflict? Critics Robin Dluzen and Pedro Vélez discuss.

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