Jesus Christ. This shit is fucking ugly. That’s the immediate thought I had upon clicking on the installation views of the current exhibition Painting in New York: 1971-83 at the two Karma spaces on 2nd Street. My eyes watered staring at squiggles of bold yellow paint resembling squirts of yellow mustard on a hot dog … Continue reading
Natalya Hughes’s The Interior, presently on view at the IMA in Brisbane, is in essence an abstraction of Freud’s consultation rooms during and after the Second World War, from Vienna to London. Hughes cordons off the threshold of her exhibition with a blue curtain on a metal rod, reminiscent of a makeshift hospital ward. The … Continue reading
Two sultry gazes stare sightlessly from a weathered window or a picture frame as if stolen from the bedroom wall of a fanatical teenage girl in 1955. James Dean and Elvis Presley, icons of mid-20th century rebels without causes. Ripping it up, hip thrusting, jailhouse rocking, Vampira attracting, drag racing, they are double martyrs to … Continue reading
In his Last Will and Testament made in 1987, on view in the sprawling exhibition Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition, Nick Cave requested: “…money earned on records, both publishing and record sales, should be used to have and maintain a small but adequate room or rooms that will serve as the “Nick Cave … Continue reading
In the nebulous period of 1983 and 1984 between the drug-fueled dissolution of the trash can-driving, six-inch-gold-blade-slicing, zoo-music-girl-lusting, junkyard royalty The Birthday Party and the official designation of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave played a smattering of clubs under a few different titles. There was Nick Cave and the Cavemen, which is … Continue reading
Stepping closer to inspect the rouged cheeks of an otherwise black-and-white photograph of Nico, I neglected to notice Sarah Ortmeyer’s diminutive DIABOLUS (PROTECTOR), a cast aluminum sculpture roughly three inches in height, kicking it on its side. Continue reading
Tony Soprano. Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. Donald Trump. What do these three figures have in common? Is it their putty-like pudgy faces? How about Donald Trump’s wielding of Alfred E. Neuman as an insult against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg? Or maybe the mob boss actions of our former ketchup-throwing, table cloth-swiping President who still … Continue reading
After four days of crisscrossing Venice, mostly on foot, for the pre-opening of the 59th Venice Biennale, I sat next to a curator from Sweden on my Scandinavian Airlines flight leaving Venice for Copenhagen. As we waited impatiently inside a warming plane still on the tarmac—our delay due to the imminent boarding of the Queen … Continue reading
“It is human to shy away from or ignore what makes us uncomfortable, but this practice unintentionally causes harm. You have an opportunity to lean into the discomfort of confronting racism on an experiential level as you view art that wrestles with America’s past and present racial tensions. You have every right to feel your … Continue reading
On location of the 59th Venice Biennale Arte Preview for Filthy Dreams! In the next weeks, I’ll post an in-depth review of the main exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani with anecdotes about accompanying national pavilions. First impression: EXTRAORDINARY! GROUNDBREAKING! But first, a FASHION REPORT: It’s impossible to see/experience this year’s Biennale … Continue reading