It was a quiet Sunday afternoon of perusing exhibitions around the Lower East Side, and somewhat of a synchronistic moment to meet the artist Martin Wilner in midst of his current exhibition The Case Histories at Pierogi. Wilner invited each of the gallery’s artists to produce their own “responsa” to his dialogue with them, each … Continue reading
I can only imagine how impossible it must be to put together a biennial that everyone likes—to curate a group of works over the course of several years that will need to speak to the issues on everyone’s minds in the here and now, even though the news cycle moves at the speed of light. … Continue reading
Michel Houellebecq once wrote, “They would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness—powerless and shame filled—to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies.” Here, Houellebecq speaks of inevitable physical decline as inevitable spiritual decline. With your strength, goes your spirit. With your beauty, goes your hope. Whether we are … Continue reading
I live with Trumpy Bear. Yes, the “I come when the Trumpet sounds. I am the Storm!” Trumpy Bear with a comb-over, a tragic tie, and an enormous American flag built into his back. The one from the commercials airing on Fox News that seem like an SNL skit (what doesn’t anymore?). My relationship with … Continue reading
I hated Gina Beavers’s paintings the first time I saw them in MoMA PS1’s Greater New York in 2015. Detested. I was revolted and repulsed by their thickened physicality. Completely turned-off. I wanted to rip her depictions of rippled abs and bloody meat right off the wall. However, I have certainly come around in the … Continue reading
American art critic Kristine McKenna, writing for the Los Angeles Times in 1991, referred to artist Barbara Ess’s signature pinhole photographs as “luxuriously beautiful.” Those photographs, in which subjects are blurred, information is blacked out and realities blend into fantasies, expose photography as a medium that, at its best, is rife for the subjectivity of … Continue reading
Does Barbie know about AIDS? Does she know her new friend Keith Haring died of complications from AIDS? These are the questions, some of many, I found myself considering when I discovered last week to both horror and amusement that Mattel produced, in collaboration with the Keith Haring Foundation, the Keith Haring X Barbie® who … Continue reading
