Ah, the list. The end of the year always means that the reading public is beleaguered with lists, each purporting to tell us the best and worst contribution to culture over the past twelve months. I’m always torn with lists;…
Ben Sloat My first question is about artistic research. I teach here in Boston in a couple of graduate programs and I’m always interested in sharing the rubrics of research with the students: what the methodologies of research are, what…
Ben Sloat One theme that has always struck me about your work (and seen most recently My Mother Told Me at the Tufts University Art Gallery) is that of impermanence: the impermanence of history, the impermanence of one’s experience, but…
The MIT List Visual Arts Center has recently concluded the excellent exhibition, In the Holocene, which proposes fascinating parallels and conditions regarding artistic and scientific speculation. Using the rubric of Robert Smithson’s artistic inquiries (his work is represented several times…
AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY By Ben Sloat William Christenberry is a multi-media artist whose themes relate to his Southern upbringing. Born in 1936 and raised in Hale County, Alabama, this is the very county made famous by James Agee and…
A CONVERSATION WITH GREGORY CREWDSON By Ben Sloat Gregory Crewdson is a photographer known best for his high production photographic projects, Hover, Twilight, and Beneath the Roses, open ended narratives that blend the suburban vernacular of the Northeast with the paranormal.…
OLAFUR ELIASSON: WATERFALLS By Ben Sloat I rode over the Manhattan Bridge today with a group of out of towners. As we looked eagerly into New York Harbor for the Eliasson waterfalls, we were disappointed to find only the scaffolding in…
By MATTHEW NASH & MATTHEW GAMBER Ben Sloat’s new exhibition “Death Is Just A Rumor Spread By Life” at Laconia Gallery is an intense and thoughtful exploration of methods and history of photography. By dissecting the very nature of graphing…
By BEN SLOAT The idea of humans having five senses comes from Aristotle, relating to his greater writings on perception, a condition he used to distinguish animals from plants. In the Aristotelian philosophy, an animal’s lifetime is defined by its…
By BEN SLOAT On view until September 9th at the Green Street Gallery is the multimedia exhibition Astronauts, Monsters, and Silicon Flowers. A dark and quirky rejoinder to the end of summer and the arrival of sober autumn, this show…
By BEN SLOAT Rarely does an art exhibition speak to the importance and advocacy of art itself. Temporary Walls, curated by Heidi Marston and Lydia Ruby, on exhibit at the Rhys Gallery until March 4th, is a show of work…
By BEN SLOAT On view at the Photographic Resource Center until January 22nd is the exhibition of images titled Group Portrait. Comprised of work from five different photographers from the Northeast and the Midwest, the images focus on the intimacy…
By BEN SLOAT Print this article In late September, the artist Zhang Huan did a performance entitled “My Boston” on the west lawn of the Museum of Fine Arts. Well known for his performance work in his native China such…
By BEN SLOAT Print this article David Hilliard is a Boston-based photographer known for his unique multi-panel images that present complex, yet personal narratives. Represented by galleries in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, and at the Bernard Toale Gallery here…
By BEN SLOAT Print this article The Museum of Fine Arts currently has a photography show tucked away in the Japanese print gallery called Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto: The Sylvan Barnet and William Burto Collection. Though it is surprising to…
By BEN SLOAT Print this article From the photographic capture of commonplace social artifacts by Eugene Atget and Walker Evans to the lifestyle documentation in the “snapshot aesthetic” by Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tilmans, photographing “ordinary” life is at once…
By BEN SLOAT Print this article Gallery Katz in the South End currently has on exhibit until October 16th, a show by the artist Shepard Fairey. Famed for his ubiquitous “Obey” stickers, replete with an image of Andre the Giant,…
By BEN SLOAT Print this article By means of the 3rd dimension used in minature, Joe Fig has happily provoked the nuances of what it is to be an art lover. Whether his objects can be labeled as sculpture, diorama,…