The well-established field of postcolonial critique and its art-world iterations have prepared and conditioned us to be conscientiously pleased with the 60th International Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia titled Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. The recent #MeToo and #BLM movements, Indigenous and descendant movements, the expanding LGBTQIA+ or LGBTQI2S movement, and consequent installations … Continue reading
If Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez’s current exhibition Survey at David Peter Francis had a smell, other than that of East Broadway’s markets wafting through the third-floor windows, it would be that sweetly sour stench of unwashed, slept-in sheets and stale dry-mouthed morning breath. A man dozes, his face pushed hard into the white-sheeted bed while his … Continue reading
Take the watch. Pocket it. Nobody, not even the nit-pickiest gallery worker, will notice it’s missing. Until too late, that is. It’s barely noticeable anyway, plunked at the edge of a puddle of shucked clothes—a crumpled Van Heusen suit, a snaked tie, itty black undies tucked into dress pants, and brown leather shoes due for … Continue reading
A minuscule flushed hand with five chubby fingers sticks out of a slick reddened birth canal as if waving from a seeping open wound. A rubber-gloved palm grabs the neck of a splotchy greenish-purple head, its rubbery face smushed and eyes slammed shut with yellow viscous fluid running from its nose. Another grumpy face, this … Continue reading
A monstrous gaudy powder-white Christmas wreath, adorned with silver balls and a gigantic red bow, towers over a full bar. The ginormous wreath is flanked by metallic cut-out stars, floating down from the heavens, caught by a single string pinned to the ceiling. Partially hidden behind the pine needles like an upstaged choir are the … Continue reading
Artist and RAGGA NYC founder, Christopher Udemezue aka Christina, has been in the studio connecting the dots between history, romance, the macabre, and community for some time in his work. Our last coverage of his practice was an introduction to his RAGGA NYC collective show, RAGGA NYC: All the threatened and delicious things joining one … Continue reading
Laced with easy ironies, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest forgoes subtlety in its rendering of the mundane monstrosities of Nazi concentration camp administrators through one distinctly complacent family. Aided by the minimalism of Mica Levi’s shrieking and belching score, cottagecore bliss is juxtaposed against an aural backdrop of carnage where occasional gunshots and screams … Continue reading
“Lypsinka Suffers Nervous Collapse!” So screams the trashy rag headline from the Los Angeles Tribune that spins dizzily into frame at the beginning of Lypsinka: Toxic Femininity, a 43-minute film directed by Chloë Sevigny and currently screening on The New Group Off Stage’s website (until February 16 so watch it fast!). The report of a … Continue reading
Did you know that you have to massage baby hedgehogs’ tiny genitals in order to get them to shit? Me neither, until attending a walkthrough with artist Thordis Adalsteinsdottir of her current exhibition Some of It May Have Started at the River at Nunu Fine Art. I don’t bring up this hedgehog-rearing tip just to … Continue reading
Pigeons are rarely bestowed a place of prominence in artwork. Doves? Sure. But those mottled rats with wings often get a comparably short shrift. Somewhat understandably. It’s hard to celebrate the pigeon. I almost stomp on one every morning when I run as they stare up at me blankly like they forgot they have wings. … Continue reading