Open Secrets: Gossip and the Reframing of a Canadian Painting Dynasty
The October 12, 2019, edition of CBC Radio’s “Weekend AM Newfoundland with Heather Barrett” begins with a Thanksgiving-themed story about Newfoundland’s love of the…
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After the Afterparty: Alan Belcher and Friends, in Retrospect
Alan Belcher’s Friends at Downs & Ross is an afterparty. The works in the exhibition are a series of mascot-like plush sculptures sitting in…
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The Art We Deserve: Luc Tuymans’s Exhausted Image
After days of historic high water and watching Venice’s warren of shops and restaurants struggle to survive, it was a relief to enter the…
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In the Waiting Room: The Sticky, Slippery Duration of “Sick Time”
It’s my last morning in Detroit, where I’ve come for two days to see an art exhibition. The wind’s picking up as I stand…
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Decolonization is Not a Metaphor: The Toronto Biennial Fights its Frame
The fanfare and the pageantry of press junkets, patrons’ previews, and inaugural performances have long subsided. A reluctant holdout, I belatedly find myself in…
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John Boskovich Steers His Own “Recovery”
In the fall of 2018 the Guggenheim presented a retrospective of 19th-century Swedish artist Hilma af Klint to a zealous, if unsuspecting, audience. The…
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A Provisional Biennial Amid Istanbul’s Endless Restoration
Everything is always under construction. In Istanbul, Hagia Sophia, the famed church-turned-mosque-turned-museum, has, over the centuries, seen earthquakes, bloodbaths, and any number of politically…
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Unequal Planes: Vancouver’s Architectural Clash of Ideal and Real
When socio-political awareness gathers to a breaking point, and nerves are raw, and people start getting fed up, fantasy runs into problems. In fraught…
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Fantastic Emissions: Mika Rottenberg’s Labor of Mystification
“Once in a while it happens that I vomit up a bunny,” confesses the narrator of Julio Cortázar’s “Letter to a Young Lady in…
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The Tautological Reeling of Young & Giroux
“When a point becomes movement and line, it takes up time. Similarly, when a line pulls itself out into a plane. And the same…
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