Ceramic arts often conjure notions of utility or delicacy. In the museum, pottery fragments from ancient societies shed light on their domestic lives, and ornate porcelain objects speak to opulence of periods of wealth. Contemporary ceramic artists might play with these assumptions but also frequently eschew them to explore more sculptural concerns. A selection of […]

A shallow stage, dramatic floor to ceiling curtain of silver mylar, pink lights, and disco ball have recently transformed the ground floor of Weston Art Gallery. Alluding to the settings of over-the-top performances of artifice, this open space literally sets the stage for Rachel Rampleman’s labyrinthine exploration of drag subcultures, body builders, make-up artists, and […]

In our contemporary image-saturated, screen-based culture, the materiality of photographic prints and negatives seems part of a quaint memory of the artwork before the age of digital reproduction and instant dissemination. While many artists certainly still work with film, in vernacular photography the digital reigns supreme and the analog has become a relic. The materiality […]

Masks serve multiple metaphorical and social functions in the world. In ancient Rome, wax masks were cast directly from the faces of the dead, preserving the countenance beyond the life of the body. Ritual societies often employ masks spiritually, transforming the wearer into a being from the spirit world as part of a rite of […]

Contemporary art has a number of interpretive frameworks, attempts to historicize the present moment that both distinguish it from what came before and draw genealogical lines from established art historical concepts. One branch of this diverse range of concepts is the return to romanticism in what some critics have referred to as New Sincerity, Post-postmodernism, […]

Art fairs, biennials, and public art festivals, on the rise since the 1990s, define much of the post-1989 international art world. From Venice to New Orleans to Gwangju and everywhere in between, urban centers transform into art world Meccas and back again all over the globe, creating a map of flickering lights and a web […]

Summer 2017 may very well be one of the most important art seasons in recent memory. In the wake of political turmoil and the record sale of a Basquiat for $110.5 million at auction, the art fairs of Europe aligned to create a Grand Tour for contemporary art devotees around the world at a moment […]

Ugo Rondinone, born and based in Switzerland, is known for sculptures and installations with alternately an absence or an overabundance of color. Referred to by the artist quite literally as “night” and “day,” one oeuvre contains mostly greys, browns, and earth tones while the other—what’s on view now at the CAC—a vibrant spectrum of bright, […]

Artworks today enter digital markets of circulation. Even the seemingly dematerialized, non-commodifiable works of land art and conceptual art are subject to economies of reproduction and intellectual property. The contours and cracks of these networks inform four very recent artworks in The Wired, an exhibition currently on view at the Alice F. and Harris K. […]

This winter, three major New York institutions hosted exhibitions of immersive, moving image installations. In many ways the works featured in these shows were direct descendants of “expanded cinema,” a term now used broadly to describe many artistic practices engaging the physical situation of moving images outside of theaters though first applied to the utopian […]

December 3rd marked the opening of two new exhibitions at Wave Pool: the group show Everything Is Nothing with a Twist on the ground floor and a solo installation Domus Candela by Erin Taylor upstairs. The ground exhibition, all by artists inspired by minimalism, contained works that were bound by their physical form, whereas Domus […]

The third installment of the Mini Microcinema’s series on urbanism and the city co-sponsored by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies and School of Planning, took place on November 9. The selection of films on revolved particularly around the ruins of modernist design. Chad Freidrichs’s feature-length documentary The Priutt-Igoe Myth (2011) and documentary […]