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Stories of Almost Everyone at the Hammer Museum

April 9, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at the Hammer Museum (Through May 6, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Let’s be honest—contemporary art, especially anything of the minimalist or conceptual variety, can be elusive and sometimes even downright mystifying to the general public. While those with Art History degrees or a passion for the subject may appreciate these artistic movements due to an understanding of their respective historical contexts and goals, those without may be left feeling perplexed and perturbed. Indeed, these styles can look a bit stark and do feature highly unusual presentations of everyday objects. In response, the casual viewer may begin to claim that they could have made something similar or joke that one of the museum’s fire exit signs was particularly thought-provoking. In the Hammer Museum’s current headline-grabbing exhibition, Stories of Almost Everyone, we see this collegiate institution leaning into the joke while simultaneously addressing critical issues of artistic interpretation. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, The Line, Video

Lauren Halsey: we still here, there

March 22, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at MOCA Grand Avenue (Through September 3, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Appearing simultaneously prehistoric and futuristic, the labyrinthine cave formations presented in MOCA Grand Avenue’s fantastical current installation, Lauren Halsey: we still here, there are bathed in ethereal suffusions of cerulean, emerald, magenta, and violet light. This site-specific showing presents maximalism at its most celebratory and poignant with several diverse sources of inspiration, including Chinese-Buddhist caves, the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles and Watts, the sculptural architecture of André Bloc, and the music of Parliament-Funkadelic. Punctuated with a plethora of tropical potted plants, reflection pools, and found objects, this exhibition exists as a wondrous, whimsical realm, a vision of a just and inclusive society. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Geometry Born Of Dance: Nathan Hayden’s Strong Magic

February 28, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles (Through April 7, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

What mystical visions and artistic insights can dancing an hour per day provide? For Nathan Hayden, a West Virginia-born, Santa Barbara-based psychedelic multimedia artist, this transcendental practice inspires the mind-bending imagery behind his abstracted landscapes, biomorphic ceramic sculptures, and hallucinatory wall murals. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Louise Bourgeois: The Red Sky

February 25, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (Through May 20, 2018) 
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch 

“My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” ㅡLouise Bourgeois, 1998

Produced in the last three years of her life, the effervescent bubble and flower doodles, rudimentary abstract patterns, and scrawled, Cy Twombly-like swirls currently lining the walls of Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, in Louise Bourgeois: Red Sky may seem like this renowned French-American painter, sculptor, and printmaker’s innocent, joy-filled ruminations on childhood, however, a closer look reveals a world of anguish and anxiety. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Modernizing Modern Abstract: Mark Bradford’s New Works

February 20, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch 2 Comments

at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (Through May 20, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

How do you modernize modern abstract painting? If you are beloved Los Angeles-based painter and collage artist Mark Bradford, you build thick, impasto-inspired canvas surfaces with ten to fifteen layers of paper in the form of attention-grabbing advertisements, photographs, newsprint, magazines, posters, and comic book panels. Shellacked with glue and lacquer, you dry them in the sun, bleach them, and sand them down, partially exposing the forgotten strata below. With Bradford’s wildly inventive, semi-geological paintings, the viewer acts as an archaeologist from some distant future excavating the remains of our modern society. Also acting as socio-political city maps and diagrams of the human body, this MacArthur Fellow’s masterful large-scale fusions of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and Street art allow the audience to consider issues of LGBTQ rights, the AIDS epidemic, and systemic racism through the lens of both the micro and the macro. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth

February 17, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch 1 Comment

at the Broad, Los Angeles (through March 13, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing. Preconceptions which are sort of “knowing” may be placed in doubt or may be affirmed by seeing. 一 Jasper Johns, 1965

In a sudden moment of creative clarity and focus, Jasper Johns awoke from a dream in 1954 with a vision of the American flag dancing around in his head. The then-emerging New York-based multimedia artist knew immediately that he had to paint it. Not having the money for a new canvas, he simply used some old bedsheets instead. Little did Johns know at the time that he was creating an image that would elevate him to the upper echelons of artistic fame and forever alter the course of art history.

Now sixty-four years later, the Broad Museum, the mecca for all things modern art in Los Angeles, is looking back on this celebrated artist’s momentous collection of flag paintings in concert with his later number, target, and map works. Consisting of over 120 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints, including many that have never displayed in the city before, this extensive and historically significant collaboration between the Broad and London’s Royal Academy explores Johns’s oeuvre thematically rather than chronologically. This curatorial choice allows the viewer to see works of different eras on the same wall and make unexpected, eye-opening connections. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Night Falls On Caroline Walker’s Sunset

February 8, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (Through March 10, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

With its twinkling city lights in the distance, seductive glow of the illuminated swimming pool below, and sumptuous sheen of the satin nightgown worn by the seated woman in the foreground, the painting Tinseltown (2017) and all of the other works on display in Sunset — the debut exhibition from London-based figurative painter Caroline Walker’s at Anat Ebgi — delight the eye and highlight the lavish lifestyle of a chic, mature woman living in the Hollywood Hills. Through the twelve oil paintings and works on paper displayed here, she is depicted lounging in the pool, trying on clothes and brunching at the famed Beverly Hills Hotel. Although this David Hockney-esque realm of fantastical wealth and luxury is enviable, one cannot help but feel a twinge of sadness hanging in the air. Perhaps this melancholy stems from the fact that she is all alone. Ultimately, Sunset takes the viewer on a tour of the most glamourous haunts of Hollywood’s rich and famous while simultaneously revealing this woman’s most private thoughts and desires.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Catherine Opie: The Modernist

February 7, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at Regen Projects Los Angeles (Through February 17, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Bursting onto the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1990s with her enthralling and empathetic portraits of the LGBTQIA community, internationally acclaimed Ohio-born photographer Catherine Opie is currently setting the city ablaze again with the release of The Modernist, her haunting and provocative debut film project at Hollywood’s Regen Projects.

In the middle of the gallery floor, guests will find a sleek and reflective box-like structure. Built by Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan, a Los Angeles-based architect known for his work on Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Building, the Sixth Street Viaduct, and Regen Projects itself, this highly futuristic form houses the film projector and some seating while complimenting the film’s space age aesthetic. Lining the walls of the gallery, visitors will also find 33 photographs highlighting significant moments in the film. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Ecofeminism and The Elevation of Female Voices

February 2, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

The Feminine Sublime
At Pasadena Museum of California Art (Through June 3, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Offering a feminist perspective on the divine, art historical tradition, as well as widespread issues currently plaguing our planet, including climate change, consumer waste, terrorism, and the downsides of technology, The Feminine Sublime, currently on view at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, highlights the socially and politically charged work of five prominent Los Angeles-based female painters Merion Estes, Yvette Gellis, Virginia Katz, Constance Mallinson, and Marie Thibeault. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Parallel Worlds, Pools and The Psyche

January 29, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

Marty Schnapf: Fissures in the Fold
At Wilding Cran Gallery Los Angeles (Through March 10, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Multi-layered in both the composition and psychology, Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Marty Schnapf’s latest historically inspired yet wildly inventive oil and charcoal paintings, currently on view at LA’s Wilding Cran Gallery, dive into themes of the subconscious while boasting extensive allusions to parallel realities, Abstract Expressionism, as well as Pablo Picasso’s celebrated cubist period.

Titled Fissures in the Fold, this series heavily features contorted nude figures. With the twisted, angular poses and ubiquitous stray arms and legs seen here, the human body is deconstructed and the viewer is often left unsure about which limbs belong to which figure.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

An Ode to Femininity and Freedom

January 29, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

Judith Linhares: The Way She Goes to Town
at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (Through February 24, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

What does a world without men look like? Celebrated Pasadena-born, New York-based figurative painter Judith Linhares’s current exhibition at Hollywood’s prestigious Various Small Fires aids the viewer in imagining this feminist utopia through a wide array of sumptuous female nudes lounging in lush landscapes, communing with nature, and performing a range of daily tasks. Perhaps a vision of a mythical, Amazonian-inspired tribe of women or an era after men, The Way She Goes to Town reveals social order and harmony without gender roles. Here, women seem to be entirely comfortable in their bodies, in nature, in leisure, as well as in their duties. Although the subjects depicted here are nude, they are not sexualized; rather, they are joyful and peaceful in their natural state. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

The Surreal Fever Dreams Of Matt Lifson 

January 11, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

Matt Lifson: How is your fever?
At CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch 

Bathed in sumptuous yet disorientating shades of midnight blue, periwinkle, and canary yellow light, Los Angeles-based figurative painter Matt Lifson’s latest mural-sized works currently displayed in the CB1 Gallery exhibition How is your fever? reveal how color, mystery, nostalgia, and tone can influence the way an audience views a piece. As this Long Island-native’s first solo showing at the downtown Los Angeles gallery, the seemingly commonplace images seen here feature an ominous energy, forcing the viewer to play detective and piece together Lifson’s cryptic narratives.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Georganne Deen: Psychic Violence in America

January 9, 2018 By Emily Nimptsch 3 Comments

CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Renowned for her searing portraits of corruption, complicity, greed, and inequality in modern society, celebrated Joshua Tree-based painter Georganne Deen further explores this ubiquitous elitism and immorality in her latest collection of haunting figurative paintings, Georganne Deen: Psychic Violence in America, currently on view at CB1 Gallery in downtown Los Angeles.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Andy Robert: LAKOU: One Two Five

December 22, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

At Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (Through February 17, 2018)
By Emily Nimptsch

Hailing from the picturesque seaside town of Les Cayes, Haiti, conceptual painter Andy Robert has built a career on exploring notions of community. As a graduate of the prestigious Whitney Independent Study Studio Program, this assemblage and found object artist has depicted the human side of such monumental and important issues as the Flint Water crisis and poverty in exhibitions past. His latest series, Lakou: One Two Five currently on display at one of Hollywood’s avant-garde art meccas, Hannah Hoffman Gallery, this poignant collection delves into the ideas of heritage, society, and place. These intimate, heartfelt cityscapes and portraits connect the viewer to the Caribbean and its culture, people, and its tragic history. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

The Oozing, Undulating Forms of Lynda Benglis

November 29, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (Through December 16, 2017)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

As a legendary and enduring figure on the international art stage, Louisiana-born conceptual sculptor Lynda Benglis is renowned for crafting pained yet sensual anthropomorphic works out of melted bronze, latex, ceramics, polyurethane, and glass. Bursting into the public consciousness with her transgressive, fearless, and unforgettable nude advertisement in Artforum (the magazine refused to give her editorial space for the image) in 1974, the artist garnered much public praise and shock for posing with a dildo between her legs in order to subvert the male gaze, binary gender roles, and notions of bodily objectification. After decades of consistently producing arresting and audacious sculptures with themes of sexuality and mortality, Benglis is once again in the public eye with her current solo retrospective at Culver City’s prestigious Blum & Poe.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Adrián Villar Rojas: The Theater of Disappearance

November 20, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

At the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (Through May 13, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

As a meditation on the flexible nature of time and an ode to the objet trouvé readymades of French-born Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, Argentinian conceptual installation artist Adrián Villar Rojas’s current showing at Little Tokyo’s Geffen Contemporary at MOCA offers frozen cases of preserved organic and manmade materials, as well as layered, almost geological or landfill-like gallery floors infused with packed dirt, multicolored concrete, clay, old tennis shoes, and fruit peels. These modern and seemingly ancient items reveal Adrián Villar Rojas: The Theater of Disappearance be an excavation of sorts, or even perhaps a burial.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Through The Soundless Lens, Darkly

November 17, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin & Peter Hujar
At Matthew Marks, Los Angeles (Through December 22, 2017)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

As three supremely unconventional 20th century portrait photographers, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, and Peter Hujar are currently the subjects of an exhaustive, evocative and eponymous retrospective at Matthew Marks, Los Angeles. 

With twenty-two poignant prints spanning sixty years proudly on display here, the viewer can detect the overwhelming similarities and differences between these widely adored artists. Although all three chose the same medium and subject, each photographer approached the human form and spirit in a completely unique manner.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

A Whale Fall Into Aquamarine Mind

November 8, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

Ellen Gallagher: Accidental Records
At Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (Through January 28, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Expanding upon her seminal DeLuxe series (2004–05) as well as her intricately drawn Watery Ecstatic series (2001-2009), Rhode Island-born, Brooklyn and Rotterdam-based mixed-media artist and minimalist painter Ellen Gallagher’s newly opened exhibition, Ellen Gallagher: Accidental Records is currently making waves at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, with her exploration of maritime themes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors

October 27, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

at the Broad, Los Angeles (through January 1, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbound universe, from my own position in it, with dots. 
–Yayoi Kusama

Stitching together six of eccentric Japanese conceptual artist Yayoi Kusama’s signature infinity mirror chambers as well a meticulously curated selection of paintings, historical photographs, posters, and videos documenting her prolific sixty-year career, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, currently on display at downtown Los Angeles’ celebrated Broad Museum, celebrates Kusama’s vibrant maximalist style. This visiting special exhibition is surprisingly the first comprehensive museum survey highlighting the artist’s beloved infinity mirror rooms. So far, these shed-sized chambers filled with immersive lights and mirrors have garnered much attention in the city, sparking 90,000 advance tickets to sell out in mere hours. Due to lengthy lineups, guests are limited to 30 seconds inside each room. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

The Distortion Of Memory And Identity Through Isolation

October 24, 2017 By Emily Nimptsch Leave a Comment

Mike Kelley: Kandors 1999 – 2011
at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (through January 21, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Oozing avant-garde, post-industrial gravitas, Hauser & Wirth’s ultra-trendy Los Angeles Arts District location is currently housing Mike Kelley: Kandors 1999 – 2011, an exhaustive survey of internationally-renowned late sculpture and performance artist Mike Kelley’s rarely-seen Kandors. These miniature cityscapes encased in variously-colored glass bell jars offer a truly unique and poignant emotional viewing experience, revealing how it would feel to be a superhuman, omnipotent being gazing upon a civilization below. Exploring themes of memory, loneliness and desperation, Kelley’s titular Kandors are inspired by legendary comic book hero Superman’s home city of Kandor on the planet Krypton.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

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The Line

A poetic interpretation of Anselm Kiefer's Exodus, at Los Angeles Marciano Art Foundation, is at Riot Material.

On Wing With Word Through Anselm Kiefer’s Exodus

Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (through 25 March 2023) by Rachel Reid Wilkie Los Angeles poet Rachel Reid Wilkie was given the task of walking into Anselm Kiefer’s Exodus — a literally monumental exhibition, in that each of these paintings are upwards of 30’ tall — and addressing the colossal artworks “cold,” as in […]

Detail of Henry Taylor, "Warning shots not required," 2011. At Riot Material magazine.

Henry Taylor’s B Side: Where Mind Shapes Itself to Canvas

Henry Taylor: B Side at MOCA Grand, Los Angeles (through 30 April 2023) Reviewed by Eve Wood Ages ago when there were LP records and 45s, the B side of a popular single made allowances for experimentation and could be counted on as an alternative vision to the more mainstream and compulsory hit single. B […]

Songbook of a Bygone Dead: Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song

Reviewed by Dan Chiasson The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan Simon & Schuster, 352pp., $28.93 NYR Bob Dylan’s new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, is a kind of music-appreciation course open to auditors and members of the general public. It is best savored one chapter, one song, at a time, while listening to the […]

Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani

Words To Wrap Around A Dying Brother

Smoking the Bible Reviewed by Rhony Bhopla Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani Copper Canyon Press, 96pp., $15.99 HR Chris Abani’s autobiographical book of poems, Smoking the Bible, centers on the relationship of two brothers growing up in Nigeria with an Igbo father and an English mother. The poems, which incorporate the Igbo language along […]

Grant Wallace, “Through Evolution Comes Revelation.” at Riot Material magazine.

Communication Breakdown: Grant Wallace, His Heirs & the Legacy of a Forgotten Genius

Grant Wallace: Over the Psychic Radio at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC (through 3 December 2022) By Michael Bonesteel Freelance writer and editor Deborah Coffin of Albany, California, was in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 when she first encountered street musician Brian Wallace at a party. “I had a friend who knew Brian,” […]

The Joshua Tree Talk

A Conversation on Dzogchen C von Hassett & Rachel Reid Wilkie at Joshua Tree Retreat Center 

Louise Bourgeois: What Is The Shape of This Problem?

at University of Southern California, Fisher Museum of Art. (through 3 December 3, 2022) Reviewed by Margaret Lazzari Louise Bourgeois is widely recognized for her sculptures and installations, but Louise Bourgeois: What is The Shape of This Problem is a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in her perhaps-lesser-known prints, fabric work and writings. This exhibit contains over […]

Moonage Daydream Conveys More Myth Than Man

Moonage Daydream Dir. Brett Morgan Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin As one of the greatest shapeshifters in the expansive history of rock music, it seems only fitting that the documentary with David Bowie as its subject never seems content to express the trials, tribulations and artistic triumphs of Bowie in any one fixed way. This is […]

Carnación di Rocío Molina, at Riot Material Magazine.

On Binding: Notes from Venice

Bienalle Arte and Bienalle Danza, Venice 2022 By Allyn Aglaïa Chest bound, lips sealed, I walked through Venice alone, quiet, and: thought about narratives that bind us to erotic binds

Mohammad Barrangi's Guardians of Eden (Dreamscape #8), at Riot Material magazine.

Transcendence Beyond Erasure in Mohammad Barrangi’s Dreamscape

at Advocartsy, Los Angeles (thru 5 November 2022) Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz Fantasy requires a symbolic vehicle to transport a character from the real world into the imaginary realm, where the laws of reality are subverted or obscured to justify an otherwise absurd event. The artist might depict the vehicle as a real object […]

Soul Crash: Our Slow, Inexorable Release Into the Metaverse

by Sue Halpern The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball Liveright 352pp., $18.89 NYR In October 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would now be called Meta and its business interests would be pivoting to the metaverse, there was almost universal confusion: most observers had no idea what he was […]

green tara

Pointing the Staff at the Old Man

A wisdom transmission by Samaneri Jayasāra Excerpted from —  Advice from the Lotus Born  from the chapter “Pointing the Staff at the Old Man” Translated by Eric Pema Kunsang Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 184pp., $21.95 . .

Margaret Lazzari’s "Shimmer." From the exhibition "Breathing Space."

Margaret Lazzari’s Luminous Breathing Space

at George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles (through 8 October 2022) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner “Things are not what they seem: nor are they otherwise.” –Buddha Margaret Lazzari’s luminous solo exhibition of paintings, entitled Breathing Space, were painted during the pandemic, and the exhibition title is indeed significant. It’s defined as a respite, a hiatus, or an […]

From Phil Tippet's Mad God, reviewed at Riot Material magazine.

Nihilism Births Its Own Interminable Hell

Mad God Dir. Phil Tippett Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin Technically astonishing and immersive to a fault, director Phil Tippett successfully demonstrates that thirty years of relentless dedication to your craft can lead to cinematic innovations even his old stomping grounds – the sets of Star Wars and Jurassic Park – have yet to catch up. […]

A Look Back on an Iconoclast: Art Critic Dave Hickey

by Jarrett Earnest Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art by Daniel Oppenheimer University of Texas Press, 141 pp., $24.95 The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded by Dave Hickey University of Chicago Press, 123 pp., $15.00 (paper) Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey Art Issues Press, 215 […]

John Lurie’s The History of Bones

Reviewed by Cintra Wilson The History of Bones: A Memoir by John Lurie Random House, 435 pp., $28.00 NYRB It was 1989 when I saw John Lurie on TV in a late-night advertisement for the new Lounge Lizards album, Voice of Chunk, which was “not available in stores” and selling exclusively through an 800 number. Operators were standing […]

Marlene Dumas, "Losing (Her Meaning)," 1988. At Riot Material magazine.

Marlene Dumas’ Masks of Inborn Gods

open-end, at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (through 8 January 2023) Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx Four relatively small artworks greet the visitor in the first room of the Marlene Dumas exhibit, open-end, at Palazzo Grassi. D-rection shows a young man contemplating his rather large and purple erection. A bluish white face and a brown face unite […]

Clarice Lispector

Baffling the Sphinx: The Enigmatic World of Clarice Lispector

Reviewed by John Biscello Água Viva by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 88pp., $14.95 Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 864pp., $29.95 The word is my fourth dimension –Clarice Lispector And on the eighth and endless day, where the bottomless hallelujah meets Ouroboros, God created Clarice Lispector. Maybe. […]

Donna Ferrato "Diamond, Minneapolis, MN 1987." At Riot Material magazine

Donna Ferrato’s Magnificent Holy

at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, NYC (through July 29 2022) Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban The small scale of Donna Ferrato’s snapshot-like black-and-white photographs belies their personal and political power. Whether they document the medical sinks and shelves in a now-shuttered Texas abortion clinic, or hone in on the badly bruised face of a domestic violence […]

Darcilio Lima Unknown Lithograph, 1972. At Riot Material magazine.

Magia Protetora: The Art of Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos and Darcilio Lima

at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick, Cleveland OH (through 30 September 2022) Curated by Stephen Romano Gallery Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz The extension of a lineage occurs not merely by the repetition of form, but by the intersection of conservation and revolution. Transformation is fundamental to preserving the essence of a given tradition’s rituals and […]

Eve Wood's A Cadence for Redemption, written in the fictive voice of Abraham Lincoln, is excerpted at Riot Material magazine.

Songs For Our Higher Selves

A Cadence for Redemption: Conversations With Abraham Lincoln by Eve Wood Del Sol Press, 46pp., $5.99 Employing the fictive voice of a former president, Eve Wood shifts the perspective on the happenings of our times – where all indicators point to the slow, inexorable collapse of the American Experiment – to the one man who […]

The Clear, Crisp Taste of Cronenberg

Crimes of the Future Reviewed by Anna Shechtman and D.A. Miller Neon NYRB A line from Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s latest film, has been trailing it around with the campy insistence of an old-fashioned ad campaign: “Surgery is the new sex.” On receiving this information, a skeptical Saul Tenser, played by Viggo Mortensen, asks, “Does there have […]

Georganne Deen, How to prepare people for your weirdness (Painting for a gifted child) 2022

Conjuring a Divine Silence in Georganne Deen’s The Lyric Escape

at Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles (through 6 August) Reviewed by Eve Wood Albert Camus once famously asked, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” One can only hope that this was a rhetorical question, yet however ironic, it is still a sentiment worth pondering, especially considering today’s current socio-political climate […]

Pesticides in our foods inevitably enter the body and will have the intended effect of killing the organism. Which is to say you are certain to become diseased and evenutally die from the longterm ingestion of industrial pesticides.

A Strictly Organic Diet is Good Enough to Save Your Life

A chapter excerpt from Entering the Mind, the new book from C von Hassett which speaks to an ageless way of resting the mind in meditation to both recognize and stabilize in its already Awakened state. Yet to do this successfully, we must first cleanse the body of its myriad mind-fogging toxins taken in through […]

Milton’s Quotidian Paradise, Lost

By Catherine Nicholson Katie Kadue: Domestic Georgic: Labors of Preservation from Rabelais to Milton Timothy M. Harrison: Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England Nicholas McDowell: Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton Joe Moshenska: Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton NYRB Of the many liberties John Milton took in writing Paradise Lost, his 1667 epic […]

Foucault in Warsaw and the Shapeless, Shaping Gaze of the Surveillance State

Reviewed by Marcel Radosław Garboś Foucault in Warsaw by Remigiusz Ryziński  translated by Sean Gasper Bye Open Letter Books, 220pp., $15.95 Harvard Review Since Poland’s state socialist system collapsed in 1989, the records of its police agencies and security services have gone to a government commission entrusted with the “prosecution of crimes against the Polish […]

Noah Davis, Untitled (2015)

The Haunt of One Yet Faintly Present: Noah Davis, Still at Home

Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, Los Angeles Reviewed by Ricky Amadour Directly across from the entrance, an opening statement to Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, reads “many of the paintings you are about to see were painted in this space.” Smudges, dribbles, and droplets on the floor embody the physical notion of Davis […]

Julian Schnabel, The Chimes of Freedom Flashing (detail), 2022

The Supremely Humanistic Hand of Julian Schnabel

For Esmé – With Love and Squalor, at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (through 21 May 2022) Reviewed by Eve Wood How does one represent, let alone quantify hope, hate, grief, love, joy, tragedy, or anything, for that matter, which stands in opposition to something else? Throughout his illustrious career, Julian Schnabel has always been one to […]

Rose Wylie, "I Like To Be" (2020)

In Full Surrender to the Wylie Eye

Rose Wylie: Which One, at David Zwirner, NYC (through 12 June) Reviewed by David Salle Rose Wylie: Which One by Rose Wylie; with Barry Schwabsky, Judith Bernstein, and Hans Ulrich Obrist David Zwirner Books, 196pp., $75.00 NYRB Rose Wylie, who is now eighty-seven, has been painting in the same rural studio in Kent, England, since […]

The Artful Construction of The ‘I’

by Merve Emre NYR The essay form…bears some responsibility for the fact that bad essays tell stories about people instead of elucidating the matter at hand. —Theodor Adorno The personal essay is a genre that is difficult to define but easy to denounce. The offending element is rarely the essay as a form, but its […]

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  • Alci Rengifo
  • Allyn A. Aumand
  • Amadour
  • Ann Landi
  • Annabel Osberg
  • A. Hutter von Arx
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