Reviews

Performa 13

Various venues - New York City
By Vanessa Albury
Referencing the Venice Biennale’s garden pavilion structures, Performa 13’s Pavilions Without Walls continues to shape Performa as an internationally attuned and attended performance art biennial with a transient presence housed by New York City. The Performa Hub hosts daily contextual and background presentations like curators Johanne [...]

9 ARTISTS

Walker Art Center - Minneapolis
Curated by Bartholomew Ryan

A Provocative Proposal
By Christina Schmid
I can’t work this way. The letters emerge from a cluster of nails hammered into the white gallery wall. Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s memorable albeit reluctant contribution to a 2007 art fair proved immensely attractive: part of the Guggenheim’s collection, it now graces [...]

Come Together: Surviving Sandy

Industry City - Brooklyn, New York
By Stephen Truax
“Come Together: Surviving Sandy“ is the largest independently organized exhibition in New York in recent memory. It was organized by Phong Bui, an artist as well as the founder, and publisher of the Brooklyn Rail. Bui’s studio was tragically submerged during Hurricane Sandy and he lost [...]

Behind the Wall

The 8th Floor - New York
Curated by Juan Delgado Calzadilla
By Jeff Edwards
A relentless spirit of ambivalence haunts the works in “Detrás del Muro (Behind the Wall),” the 8th Floor’s reincarnation of a 2012 Havana Biennial exhibition originally staged on the Malecón, a protective seawall and esplanade that has served as a gathering place [...]

James Viscardi: Present Perfect

Ana Cristea Gallery - New York
By Stephen Truax
Ana Cristea, New York, is in Chelsea, but this show looks straight out of Bridgehampton. Literally, a summer show of beach and leisure scenes.
“Regional,” bad and provisional paintings have become unmistakable markers of contemporary art. This, I propose, is precisely the content underneath James Viscardi’s deceptively [...]

Cory Arcangel: Masters

Carnegie Museum of Art - Pittsburgh
Curated by Tina Kukielski
By Stephen Knudsen
No longer do most of us give a second thought to the invasion of lowbrow [pop]ulism in the elitist white cube. Warhol’s Marilyns and Elvises have begotten Koon’s puppies, Hirst’s sharks, Murakami’s superflats, and much more. The ubiquity of such work asks a simple question: [...]

Alexandre Arrechea: No Limits

Park Avenue - New York
By Stephen Knudsen
Alexandre Arrechea’s No Limits1 is so good that I am going to skip the dance drill and stake out a conclusion right from the beginning. The 10 sculptures are unpardonably smart, humorous and beautiful-with Kantian flourishes of spirit.2

With art history’s grand narrative annulled (thanks, Arthur Danto), [...]

Arnold Mesches: A Life’s Work

Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design
Curated by Kim Levin
The Cultural Contexts of Arnold Mesches
By Jill Thayer, Ph.D.
During the Great Depression, artists portrayed the plight of the working class by exposing the dire economic and social conditions of the 1930s. Throughout this period, Arnold Mesches developed a penchant for social change. His [...]

Melanie Bonajo: One Question, Three Rooms, 44 Possible Answers

P.P.O.W. - New York
By Stephanie Buhmann
Based in Amsterdam and Berlin, Melanie Bonajo creates works that draw on everyday stereotypes and misconceptions. Her photographs, installations and performances are inspired by the shortcomings of contemporary society and its obsessive glorification of excess. In Bonajo, we find the world in free fall, scarred by consumerism, injustice [...]

Rosy Keyser: Medusa Pie Country

Peter Blum - New York
By Stephanie Buhmann
In her latest New York solo exhibition Rosy Keyser continued her quest to challenge the conventions of painting. This pertained primarily to shape and material content. Her new works are increasingly large, confrontational in their immediacy and determined to address notions of physicality. These compositions extend beyond [...]