“How to Lie About Canadian Art”: A Case Study in Art Criticism
Art criticism doesn’t often speculate on the value of pithy maxims such as ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But when an article…
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The Incautious Abstractions of Erin Loree
I visited Erin Loree’s Toronto studio a couple months before her first commercial exhibition, Midnight Bloom, opened at Angell Gallery in January. Working from…
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Only at Home in a Paradox: M.C. Escher Gets His Artworld Due
Like Gustav Klimt or Claude Monet, the unwilling darlings of dorm room posters everywhere, Maurits Cornelis Escher belongs to the class of meritorious artists…
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How to See the Invisible
“An SEP,” he said, “is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that…
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Redefining the Sex in the Sale at Birch Contemporary
In the wake of last year’s No Man’s Land: Women Artist’s from The Rubell Family Collection, and the unprecedented Larry Gagosian / Jeffrey Deitch…
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Towards the Quiet, or with Larger Amplifiers: An Interview with Berlin Performance Artist Aleks Slota
Nothing about Aleks Slota’s elfin appearance prepares you for his performances. Small-framed and wiry, his body hardly looks bullish enough for acts of endurance…
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Do You Have to Be Rich to Make It as an Artist?
On my end-of-the-year “Best Shows” list, I nominated Rachel Rose’s hypnotic Everything and More video at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In response,…
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From Exile to Acclaim, the Unlikely Story of Mu Xin, and China’s Reformation
Landscaping along the 87-mile stretch of highway from Shanghai to the ancient village of Wuzhen in southern China is a work in progress. On…
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No Land in Sight: A Timely Response to the Migrant Crisis from Denmark’s SUPERFLEX
A small white boat navigates forceful swells and choppy waves. No land in sight, this lone vessel presses forth. Fortunately, the lightly clouded sky…
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Abstraction Made Political: Helena Almeida Rewrites Her Own History in Portugal
In 1968 political turmoil and tumult reverberated throughout America, Europe, and beyond. Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm described this year as a signpost; almost every…
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