Battle Hymn of the Republic: The Measure of Kehinde Wiley in the American South
Though history is said to have been written by the victors, one might be forgiven for casting doubt on this particular adage in Richmond,…
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The Photograph is a Hinge: Taca Sui Traces a Cultural Slippage
But when men do not forget what can be forgotten, but forget what cannot be forgotten—that may be called true forgetting. – Zhuangzi A…
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The Politics of Color in Kristine Moran
It’s tempting to consider Kristine Moran’s most recent work as a pivot-point in an ascendency from abstraction to figuration. Figures, indeed, are emerging from…
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Emerging Artist Neil Beloufa Turns Smug at MoMA
As subject matter, the debased utopia is low-hanging fruit. Every continent has a few, and they emanate intoxicating aromas of corrupted idealism. In making…
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The Tug of the Earth and the Tug of the Sky: The Writhing Stillness of Agnes Martin
Ask yourself, What kind of happiness do I feel with this music or this picture? – Agnes Martin, “Beauty is the Mystery of Life”…
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Abigail DeVille Unburies Bodies at The Contemporary
What happens to history in a black hole? Abigail DeVille’s exhibition Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars is a dense,…
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Printmaking in the Anthropocene: Sean Caulfield’s Uncannily-Timed “Firedamp” Burns Darkly
Beneath a cloudless, 180-degree sky, the prairie landscape is littered with alien, industrial objects. This is the backdrop of Sean Caulfield’s childhood in rural…
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The Unspecific (But Straining) Politics of Joan Jonas
Long an idiosyncratic priestess of the limbo between myth and art, Joan Jonas has moved into pagan revivalism. They Come to Us Without a…
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Evasion and Euphemism: The Guggenheim Underintellectualizes and Depoliticizes László Moholy-Nagy
In 1921, the Hungarian expat László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), then in Berlin, signed a “Call for Elementarist Art,” alongside Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, and…
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In the Skin of a Gallery: Sylvie Bélanger’s Challenge to Photography
The image disputes the presence of the thing. In the image, the thing is not content simply to be; the image shows that the…
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