The “Fuck Em” Sex and Class Reversals of Alicia Gibson
A blind date is unfolding at Canada Gallery, in Alicia Gibson’s painting My Mom Set Me Up With a Redneck (2016). If, like me,…
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Vancouver Art Gallery’s “MashUp” Too Limited in its Understanding
The Vancouver Art Gallery’s survey exhibition MashUp is a missed opportunity. To be clear, that’s not because the artworks are “bad” (they’re not) or…
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The Pantomimed Fellowship of Nicole Eisenman’s “Al-ugh-ories”
Nicole Eisenman – beloved New York painter, now MacArthur-certified “Genius” – has just opened a show at the New Museum with the jokey title, “Al-ugh-ories.” The single-floor showing…
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Embracing the Sāo Paulo Biennial’s Acute Uncertainty
1951. “I don’t look back. I don’t want to know. I only think about the future, and I know that it’s certain.” These words…
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The Archive is a Set of Relations, Not a Record of History: Thomas Ruff at David Zwirner
Pockmarked moons and missiles at launch, astronauts in profile, and dark-suited men eying fighter jets in take-off. Scrawled archival notes map the surface of…
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“Accessibility” and the New Hoser Aesthetics
It’s autumn, in Edmonton. A crowd begins to gather outside an enclosed asphalt rink where bodies will soon be pressed against each other. It’s…
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The Depressing Power of Art in Raphaëlle de Groot’s “Summit Meetings”
Between 2009 and 2012, Raphaëlle de Groot invited people to give her objects that they no longer wanted but couldn’t get rid of. As…
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Eeriness: Tracing an Unquiet Tradition in British Landscape Art
In 1971 Derek Jarman made a 10-minute film called Journey To Avebury, documenting a summer walk through the chalklands of southern England. At first…
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Regionalism Vs. Provincialism: Agitating Against Critical Neglect in Artworld Peripheries
In February, I sent Momus editor Sky Goodden a draft of a review of an exhibition in Alberta that I had pitched to her…
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“As a Relief from Language”: Hilton Als, as Artist
To read White Girls, Hilton Als’s 2013 collection of upending essays, is to feel calcified assumptions about sexual and racial identification dissolve. A chain of…
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