Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Susan Kaprov: Conversations on Art, Technology and The Space Age

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by Jill Conner      

In some respects Susan Kaprov’s art has remained elusive, until now. Her experimental photomontages are included in the permanent collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Susan Kaprov was born in 1946 and grew up in New York City when the verve of women’s liberation and the haze of the sexual revolution continued to circulate. Shortly before finishing high school, The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, and The Group, by Mary McCarthy, both appeared in 1963, and Elizabeth Hardwick had co-founded The New York Review of Books while The New York Times remained on a 4-month strike.  When Susan Kaprov received a Bachelor of Science degree from the City University of New York in 1970, Kate Millet’s groundbreaking book, Sexual Politics, was published. A new realism was flourishing throughout contemporary art at this time. [Read more…]

Beyond the Canonical Cube: Whitney Biennial’s Quiet As It’s Kept Sings

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at Whitney Museum of American Art, Curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards (6 April – 5 September 2022)
Reviewed by Jill Conner

Throughout Quiet As It’s Kept, the Whitney Museum of American Art has finally reached beyond the limitations of the white cube in order to bring 63 artists and collectives together in what has resulted in a cathartically gripping exhibition that is pieced together mostly by artists of Native American, African American, Latino, and Asian descent. By presenting the voices of those who have thrived creatively beyond the filters of Western entertainment and popular culture, Quiet As It’s Kept carries the flair of a cinematic documentary, while calling attention to the ongoing, multi-faceted contexts of American life. [Read more…]

In Studio With Pavel Kraus

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by Jill Conner

There is usually nothing to say in the wake of violent conflict. The history of forms is bound to the dynamic of time, as a rendering of thoughts on survival. Perceptions create and deconstruct what one sees and experiences before them. Sometimes essence is all that we are left with, because words and forms do not effectively inform one another. Within Pavel Kraus’s sculptures and paintings, there is no time like the present. Although his work has been inspired by the structural tenets of the Classical era and the dynasties of Europe, Kraus’s conceptually abstract artworks remain complex and stand as critical responses to the state of disillusion. While utilizing the visual language of abstraction, Kraus attempts to unwind the past. [Read more…]

Restless Threads: The Tapestries of Annette Cords

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Reviewed by Jill Conner
at Project:ARTspace, New York City
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When Shape/Shifters opened on January 7, 2020 at Project:ARTspace in Manhattan, no one was remotely ready for something as dramatic as the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the reports that had been circulating out of China. The opening reception was packed and stood as a strong validation of Cords’ new Jacquard tapestries, which simultaneously embraced and reflected the fast-paced nature of New York City. Even though this curatorial collaboration between myself and the artist closed on February 20, 2020, the unexpected shutdown that occurred nearly two weeks later, ceased all potential conversations about this innovative project. The walkable city had been brought to an abrupt halt, and the regular conduits of communication were distorted. And yet, despite the new era of lockdowns and self-quarantine, her work remains key to an objective, city-based adaptation.

[Read more…]

Reconsidering Content In Open Call Group 2

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at The Shed Bloomberg Building, NYC (through August 25)
Reviewed by Jill Conner

When The Shed opened in April, it was roundly panned by the cultural press, despite the fact that it is currently the most dynamic platform for emerging, contemporary art made by artists who live and work in New York City. The rough, daily endeavor of living and working here finds resonance throughout the monumental, rhomboid shape designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro that is imbued with movement. This philanthropic effort to finally preserve and platform the city’s ever-growing, marginal, creative culture is not only epic, but long overdue. [Read more…]

Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again

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at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (May 19 – September 2)
Reviewed by Jill Conner

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is set to open Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again, a stunning retrospective that presents the artist’s large-scale compositions, installations, portraits, sculptures and films. The title of this exhibition suggests something relational about Warhol, which sounds odd at first because he had been so well connected.  Since moving to New York City in 1949, he became the most sought-after commercial illustrator in advertising design, where images and their subsequent repetition in print bridged perfectly with popular culture. [Read more…]

Helmut Newton: Private Property

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at 10 Corso Como, NYC
Reviewed by Jill Conner

The infamous partnership between art and fashion is receiving overwhelming recognition throughout New York galleries and museums this Fall. From September to November, 10 Corso Como introduced Private Property by the world-renowned fashion photographer, Helmut Newton. Although Newton passed away in 2004, this specific set of photographs had never been exhibited in the United States. Initially Private Property was created in 1984, but Newton had not intended for these photographs to be seen publicly. This dossier of 45 gelatin silver prints covers a decade of Newton’s career, from 1971 to 1983, and presents a mix of unknown models with well-known celebrities who, at that time, were beginning to gain notoriety. [Read more…]

Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable

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Reviewed by Jill Conner

Garry Winogrand. Park Avenue, New York, 1959 [monkey in car, vertical]

Park Avenue, New York, 1959 [monkey in car, vertical]

Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer
2018 / 90-minutes
A Greenwich Entertainment Release
at Film Forum, NYC

When Garry Winogrand died unexpectedly in 1984, he left behind over 2,500 undeveloped rolls of film. Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, directed by Sasha Waters Freyer, is a fascinating documentary that examines the quiet life of one of America’s most prominent postwar photographers, setting that in contrast to the professional career he had been most known for.  As a stringer who worked primarily for mass-print magazines such as LOOK and LIFE, Winogrand has long been associated with prominent subjects such as Marilyn Monroe, Mohammed Ali and John F. Kennedy. However, this film’s vast number of interviews — which include his first wife Adrienne Lebeau, Thomas Roma, Jeffrey Fraenkel, Todd Papageorge, Jeffrey Henson Scales, Shelley Rice, Laurie Simmons and Matthew Weiner — show Winogrand as someone who enjoyed his own invisibility while rendering serendipitous inconsistencies. [Read more…]

The Space Outside: Sculptures by Richard Pitts

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Reviewed by Jill Conner

Over the course of five decades Richard Pitts has migrated through the margins of New York City’s art world despite a flourishing career that began in the early 1970s and lasted until the late 1980s, when the popularity of the art market crashed. Once confidence fell, figurative art lost its elevated grace, became more human as a form, more literal and translatable, reflecting different degrees of self-doubt, loathing and inner shame. The weight of pluralism led to the loss of meaning. Painting was considered dead, a new cliché at the time. Richard Pitts stepped away from figurative art and entered into a long-term reflection that focused upon works he had made in the early 1960s while living in Germany, serving in the U.S. Army. [Read more…]