HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE? LOOKING BACK ON 5 YEARS OF BIG RED & SHINY By Matthew Nash On February 15th, 2009, Big RED & Shiny celebrates our fifth year online and our hundredth issue. It is impossible to…
MISSING @ BARBARA KRAKOW GALLERY By Angela Speece “Less is more” is the aesthetic motto that ties this group of diverse artists together…. In a world bombarded by visual imagery, this exhibition powerfully articulates a great deal of information in an…
SOL LEWITT @ MASSMOCA By Stephen V. Kobasa Into the maze – the shifting from walled in to walled up to walled out, moving through the bands of color as if they were tinted sound. This is the compendium of one…
GUY DE COINTET @ GREENE NAFTALI GALLERY, NYC By Alan Reid To confess, Guy de Cointet is an artist whose work I’ve unabashedly loved since first viewing. His is an easy-breezy theatrical stance, an art so seemingly light one is unlikely…
LAUREL SPARKS: PLEASURE DOME @ HOWARD YEZERSKI By David O. Avruch The studied madness suffusing the paintings in “Pleasure Dome,” Laurel Sparks’s new show at the Howard Yezerski Gallery, was clearly a labor of love. Dystopian and engag-ing, the works…
WHAT ARE LEE WALTON’S FRIENDS DOING ON F’BOOK? By Matthew Nash For the past several decades, artists have been embracing new forms of digital media in the creation of their work, and challenging the notion of creative experience in diverse ways.…
MEG AUBREY @ GALLERY STOKES, ATLANTA By Laura Ann Meyers In her current exhibition I Just Live Here, Savannah College of Art and Design alum Meg Aubrey explores the environment and psychology of contemporary suburbia. The show reeks of the political…
A REPORT FROM THE PHANTOM ZONE By Steve Aishman So I’ve almost stopped reading articles. In print, on-line… whatever. All I look for is how many comments have been made. The comment section of an article says far more about an…
ANDREW WITKIN WINS ICA FOSTER PRIZE By Big Red On January 21st, 2009, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston announced that Andrew Witkin was the winner of the James and Audrey Foster Prize. Witkin will receive $25,000 and an opportunity for…
BRANDEIS STUDENTS: SAVE THE ROSE By Brian Friedberg & Penelope Taylor The alarming rumors that Brandeis would be deeply affected by the looming economic recession, and the recent Madoff ponzi scheme scandal, set a decidedly anxious tone for the Winter/Spring…
BILL ARNING LEAVING THE LIST TO HEAD THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS MUSEUM HOUSTON By Big Red This morning The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston announced that Bill Arning has been named as their new director. Arning has been the curator at the List…
ANNABEL DAOU @ THE DAVID WINTON BELL GALLERY By Jon Petro Linguistics in contemporary art is an amalgamated concept developed to provide additional territory to the diminished landscape of the now obsolete avant-garde. It’s strategically similar to other movements in the…
A REPORT FROM THE PHANTOM ZONE By Steve Aishman “It’s easy to make contemporary art sound stupid— just describe it literally.” – Bill Arning Bill Arning is right about most things and in this case, you can apply the same logic…
THE BOSTON ART AWARDS BALL – FEBRUARY 2ND!!! By Big Red Please join us tomorrow night, February 2, at the Beehive for the Boston Art Awards Ball, hosted by Big RED & Shiny and the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research!…
THERE ARE NO NEW IDEAS. PART 3 By Christian Holland Part 3 of a 3-Part Series. Click here for Part 1 and here for part 2. Some philosophers, scientists and artists, such as Micah Malone, suggest that there are going to…
By James A. Nadeau As February dawns it seems like a good time to take a look back at the first month of the year. January brought many surprises and unfortunately not all of them were good. The good stuff entailed…
BACKLASH TO BRANDEIS CLOSING THE ROSE By Matthew Nash & Micah J. Malone On Monday, January 26th, The Boston Globe’s Geoff Edgers broke the story that Brandeis University was planning to close down the Rose Art Museum and sell off the…
PLATFORM2: MANIFESTO!SLAM By Matthew Nash The banner said “Get on the bus” so we did, sixteen participants in the MANIFESTO!SLAM created by the social activist collaborative Platform2. It was a cold evening but everyone was jubilant, that morning having witnessed the…
This morning The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston announced that Bill Arning has been named as their new director. Arning has been the curator at the List Visual Art Center at MIT, and while we are very happy that Arning will…
THE FUTURE: BOSTON LACKS ALTERNATIVE SPACES? By Greg Cook A month back, Matt Nash of Big Red & Shiny wrote an essay lamenting that in Boston the “alternative gallery scene is non-existent.”It struck a chord with thinking I’ve been doing about…