Reviews
You Are All Individuals!
Castrum Peregrini - Amsterdam
Curated by Nina Folkersma
By Paco Barragán
One of the promotion clips of the show “You Are All Individuals!” showcases the famous scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) in which Brian, who is mistaken for the Messiah and tired of people following him, shouts out loud from the window: “You don’t need [...]
Pedro Reyes: Baby Marx
Walker Art Center - Minneapolis
Curated by Bartholomew Ryan and Camille Washington
By Regan Golden-McNerney
The protagonists in Baby Marx are an unlikely duo-Adam Smith and Karl Marx reincarnated as wooden puppets. Baby Marx is the title of artist Pedro Reyes’ in-progress video, as well as his exhibition at the Walker Art Center that transforms the gallery into [...]
Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom
Contemporary Art Museum - Houston
Curated by Bill Arning and Joao Ribas
“Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment.”
-Lionel Shriver
By Garland Fielder
The culture of infotainment that currently reigns supreme in America has tentacles reaching far into the past. The yellow journalism that passes for news spewed forth nightly on cable channels has [...]
Where Do We Migrate To?
Center for Art and Visual Culture. University of Maryland - Baltimore
Curated by Niels van Tomme
By J.W. Mahoney
Visual artists have, for many centuries, been readily useful as the only capable recorders of the visual character of their times - in cultural, natural, or social contexts. The artist Jacques Le Moyne made the only extant visual records [...]
We Are Grammar
Pratt Manhattan Gallery - New York
Curated by Dave Beech and Paul O’ Neill
By Jeff Edwards
The survey of recent text art “We Are Grammar” is deeply indebted to Lawrence Weiner’s 1968 Declaration of Intent, particularly its assertion that a work of art need not be built. Many of the pieces in the show owe the lion’s [...]
Santiago Escobar: Invisibles
Galería Christopher Paschall S.XXI - Bogota
Revealing the Invisible Truth
By Caridad Botella
On an interview with Doris Salcedo posted on the Tate Channel website, the Colombian artist states that “every work of art is political … the nature of art is political.” I doubt this is a universal, trans-historical truth, but it does come very close to [...]
Daniel Fiorda: Nostalgic Hardware
Lelia Mordoch Gallery - Miami
By Janet Batet
One of the most typifying traits of our contemporary society is the accelerated pace of the modernization we face daily. In this process, where innovation is the key to success for consumerism, the market creates a fictitious need that keeps us in perpetual anxiety. This concern, which certainly meets [...]
Lara Almarcegui
TENT - Rotterdam
Lara Almarcegui: Construction Materials, Excavations, Wastelands
By Catherine Somzé
In his now famous 1997 performance Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing, Belgian conceptual artist Francis Alÿs pushed an ice-block for eight hours throughout the streets of Mexico City to illustrate the impossible attempt of many of the megapolis residents to improve their living situation. Since [...]
Laurel Nakadate: Only the Lonely
Laurel Nakadate, Stay The Same Never Change (Mary in the Water), 2008. © Laurel Nakadate. Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks+Projects.
PS1 MoMA - New York
By Marco Antonini
Considering the formal and conceptual consistency of many of the presented works, Laurel Nakadate’s early to mid-career retrospective at PS1 seemed unnecessarily all-inclusive, a visual assault that left me wondering how really necessary [...]
Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab
Institute of Contemporary Art - Boston
By Irina Leyva-Pérez
“Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab” is the title of Gabriel Kuri’s first solo exhibition in a museum in the United States. The exhibition was organized by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, and is currently on view at the Institute of [...]
