“Afrogallonism” Takes Dubai: South-South Solidarity and the Urge to Exoticize
Yellow’s a strange cornstarch slurry of a word, one that quickly gets thick on the tongue and loses all meaning. Its symbolism oscillates wildly,…
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The Listening Gaze: Raymond Gervais (1946-2018)
People ask me from time to time where I got my interest in music, in musical objects and records, and why I refer to…
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From Artworld Punchline to Real-World Parable: Ruben Östlund’s “The Square”
The degree to which contemporary culture understands (or fails to understand) “The Art World” can be measured in how it gets portrayed in film…
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Freeing Latin American Art from Eurocentric Curating
A dense black explosion looms, static in the museum’s center. Nuclear Fungus (2007), by Argentinean artist León Ferrari, sculpturally simulates the smoke caused by…
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“Seen Anything Good?” The Burden of Biennial Excess
How much art can the human mind realistically absorb from a mega-exhibition? I’m not talking about superstar retrospectives or major surveys – mainstays of…
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“Speaking from a Wound”: Jesse Darling on Faith, Crisis, and Refusal
Over the past year, I’ve had considerable difficulty maintaining my faith in art. In the short version of this introduction to an interview, I…
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Mourning at the Museum: Montreal’s Post-Sincere Send-Off for Leonard Cohen
The impulse to grieve publicly is a measure of our turbulent times. We know, lately, the need to share a collective sadness. However, before…
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Crocodile Tears: Ed Atkins and the Crisis of Pathetic Masculinity
Type “Ed Atkins” into Google, and you’ll shortly come face to face with an asshole: not the artist himself – though his smiling visage…
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Does the Sublime Know Change? Updating Landscape for the Anthropocene
The notion that we live in the Anthropocene, an era defined by human influence on our planet, bestows a new gravity upon representations of…
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Darkling Futures and Desert Hangover at the New SITE Sante Fe
Two brand-new, chunky metal triangles jut out and join above the glassy entrance of the black cinderblock edifice that houses the recently-renovated SITE Santa…
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