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
As Minneapolis burns to a crisp after the murder of George Floyd by four homicidal cops (charge and arrest, and then, convict and sentence all of them already!), cities across America see police forces violently spiraling out of control at protesters, including arresting and shooting beanbag rounds at journalists, Trump goes to war with Twitter … Continue reading
I really can’t decide what’s more shocking: that Noah Davis painted the beautifully macabre images adorning the walls of his posthumous retrospective at David Zwirner before the artist was 33 years old, or that these gorgeous works were painted by someone who ever lived at all. So saturated with ghastly resignation and mourning, Davis’s paintings … Continue reading
“It’s almost embarrassing to acknowledge how good things are…There’s something abnormal about it,” reflects Perfume Genius’s Mike Hadreas in an interview with FADER. With the release of his new album this week No Shape, a transcendent ode to romanticism, love and domesticity as redemption, Perfume Genius raises the question: What does utopia sound like? Continue reading
An unintentional side effect of the recent uproar over the inclusion of Dana Schutz’s Open Casket in the Whitney Biennial is it raised important if seemingly self-explanatory questions about how white artists should ethically represent people of color and their experiences. And no, I’m not praising its ill-conceived inclusion as “opening a conversation.” I’m sure … Continue reading
“My mother is dead. My father is dead. I’m gay. I’d like to be a poet. This is my house,” unsettlingly proclaims artist Jordan Wolfson’s haunting creation, (Female figure), during both the introduction and conclusion of its seven-minute cycle in Wolfson’s solo exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery. And it certainly is her house now as she conjures … Continue reading
Following in the footsteps and aesthetic of these cinematic visions of sex work, photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s exhibition Hustlers at the David Zwirner Gallery features diCorcia’s esteemed early 1990s photographs of hustlers in Los Angeles, as well as a more recent video installation Best Seen, Not Heard. Continue reading