2016

“Combining deeply personal and popular subjects, this amalgamation of media allows Leckey to investigate the pivotal moments in technology and culture that have occurred in his lifetime.”

The works in this program combine fiction and documentary realism to investigate African and African American experience, asserting resistance to traditional notions of race, gender, labor, and power. Combining hand-drawn imagery, found photographs, footage of slavery, anti-police brutality protests, field recordings of rural West African garment production and an American 1960s Black Panther rally, the filmmakers refuse marginalization, silence and absence, powerfully answering Tony Cokes’ question “how do people make history under conditions pre-established to dissuade them from intervening in it?”

“…shamanism as science, the natural world and its phenomena, and community based crafts. In 2014, Neto and members of the Huni Kuin embarked on a series of artistic exchanges that investigate the rituals and shamanistic traditions of the tribe. The Huni Kuin’s spiritual life, their desire for healing in harmony with nature, and the wisdom and serenity they draw from their deep connection with the energy of the planet, introduced into Neto’s work a new awareness to the scared dimension of nature and to its internal geometry. Drawing inspiration from these traditions, medicines and customs, his new body of work speaks of internal transformation, and adds layers of meaning to his inquiry into connectivity as a social and ecological concern.”

“Over the course of nearly six decades, Eggleston has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning.”

“At 101, the artist Carmen Herrera is finally getting the show the art world should have given her 40 or 50 years ago: a solo exhibition at a major museum in New York, where she has been living and working since 1954.”

A work that’s too large to really represent on a website, the above is just a postage stamp sample. “The work depicts… an upheaval of order… The scale and the amount of imagery are aggressively magnanimous. Rendered in exquisite detail, the overflowing canvas presents nuanced complexities.”

From Wikipedia: “[Jim] Otto punished his body greatly during his NFL career, resulting in nearly 74 surgeries, including 28 knee operations and multiple joint replacements. His joints are riddled with arthritis, and he has debilitating back and neck problems. In his book, "The Pain of Glory" Otto describes near death experiences from medical procedures, including fighting off three life-threatening bouts of infections due to complications with his artificial joints. During one six-month stretch, he was without a proper right knee joint because he had to wait for an infection to heal before another artificial knee could be implanted. Otto eventually had to have his right leg amputated on August 1, 2007 (only the part of his right leg above the knee was amputated, to this day Otto still has all of his right leg below the knee including all of his right toes and right foot this is all attached to a paper thin strip of flesh that goes into his body socket). Despite his maladies, Otto says he has no regrets and wouldn't change a thing even if given the opportunity to do it over again.”

"With the tightening noose of social media, and the retinal-screen more generally, my empathies and intellectual inquiries are now with nature. Is there a way to look beyond the neurotic human hive—with its infinite self-interest and love of violence—to see again something more interesting? With this work, I will look the other way and remind myself of what is there.” -- Donald Moffett

"... the process of drafting is tantamount to the process of crafting a lie. We know this. We can accept it. So why do we invariably return to art and to fiction for an approximation of the truth?”

“A walled-off installation, housed within a purpose-built space at the centre of the gallery, contains different objects that glide momentarily past on a moving conveyor belt. Visible only through a small aperture on the wall, the installation acts as a self-portrait, showcasing the internal workings of the artist’s mind.”

Best title for a group show. 

“Calvin subverts Popeye’s inherent cartoon lightness by reimagining himself in an alternate reality, restaging him in a bleak psychological landscape. With the memory accumulated from drawing this iconic character repeatedly in his youth, Calvin uses the figure’s instantly recognizable shape, and it’s associations, as a vessel for ruminations on pathos.”

Phew.

“Groundbreaking ceremonies are a lot like burials. Contractors, developers, and mourners alike gather at the edge of a shallow depression in the ground and ambivalently toss soil.”

“Testament” by Natalie Bookchin—a collage of random, anonymous YouTube confessionals stitched together creating a brand new group narrative.

What constitutes a portrait, and what does it have to say about the artist or its subject?