Ian Solaski is a graduating senior at the Studio for Interrelated Media at MassArt. I was first exposed to his work as his professor. This encounter was intense; he was developing a performance in which he violently translated the Sandy…
At first glance, The Split, curated by Amanda Schmitt, feels schizophrenic. The works span media from video to drawing, painting, sound, and sculpture and a diagonal wall physically extenuates the mental dissonance. At first, it is very tempting to read…
Stills from Pierre Huyghe’s 19-minute video, Untitled (Human Mask) have haunted me since its 2014 debut. The image of the ghostly porcelain face touched ever so gently by the impish hairy hand has appeared and reappeared before me in magazines…
Since the 1990s, Beverly Semmes’s work has been at the forefront of contemporary art. Semmes’s work is situated at the nexus of American feminism, puritanism, and history of sculpture and craft. This work spans across disciplines and cultures, from photography,…
Sidetracked, which occupies the storefront gallery in Watertown, Drive-by Projects, is a group show featuring work by Katherine Mitchell DiRico, Mike Witt and Andy Bablo. Though they use quite different materials, these artists address communication and modes of transmission in…
West, Kathya M. Landeros’s photography show at kijidome, presents both the people and the land of Central California and Eastern Washington State, bringing a particular reality – that of Latinx agricultural communities in these regions – into focus. In a…
I shall always be grateful to Honduras, though for it has given me back myself. I am my old brash self again. -Zora Neale Hurston, Puerto Cortes, Honduras, May 20, 1947 Being a fan or scholar of Zora Neale Hurston…
A sightline refers to a direct line of vision between spectator and an object in view, whether it’s the Washington Monument, a Broadway musical, or an NFL playoff game. To painter Dana Clancy, sightlines are a way to compose and…
With a background in linguistics and work experience as an interpreter for several years in China, Furen Dai’s artistic practice centers on language and the culture built through it. She reflects on various forms of interpretation in her work with…
Corey Escoto’s current solo show at Samsøn Projects, “A Routine Pattern of Troubling Behaviour,” is far more than at first meets the eye. When I walked into the gallery, a spare white rectangle, the works seemed quiet and unassuming. Until I…
Providence artist Allison Paschke can be disobedient in museums. Sometimes, she’ll find a sculpture or object irresistible, and smooth her hand carefully over its surface. In her latest exhibit at AS220 Project Space, Paschke extends this “mischievous glee” to her…
When I found out that the artist A.K. Burns was one of the Radcliffe fellows at Harvard this year, I was excited to have gotten that memo because things come and go pretty quietly over there. My husband works next…
Whenever an immersive art experience takes place in Boston, I hear many people say: “This is exactly what Boston needs…we need more of this.” I don’t think it’s the spectacle people need. I think people crave a space where they…
Observance: As I See You, You See Me (up through April 8 at the Montserrat College of Art Gallery in Beverley, MA) is an exhibition of portrait photography that features multiple viewpoints on identity. Curated by Leonie Bradbury, the variety…
Doug Weathersby turns the act of cleaning and organizing into his art. For $60 an hour, Environmental Service will perform any task that the customer may need, from house painting and studio cleanup to art installation. He takes the fragments…
In One Makes an Instrument of Themselves, and is Estranged Also, collaborators Mimi Cabell and Lindsay Foster probe the “the commercialized self, the marketized private life.” As today’s corporate landscape ostensibly reorients itself toward workers’ happiness, Cabell and Foster remind…
Vitreous Bodies: Assembled Visions in Glass centers on the material of glass, but maneuvers past the typical, disposable aftertaste of many material-based exhibits. Located at MassArt’s Stephen D. Paine Gallery, the show gathers over a dozen international artists who use…
DRAW/Boston, an exhibition of over 60 artists curated by Tomas Vu, toys with scale, color, style, and sound, wedding the scholarly air of a professional university gallery with the aesthetic resemblances of a working artist’s studio. The arrangement alone warrants…
“What is radical in 2016-2017?” artist, activist, educator Morehshin Allahyari asked the audience in attendance for her talk “On Activism, Digital Colonialism, and Re-figuring” at UMass Lowell last Wednesday afternoon. Born in Iran and a resident of the US since…
My favorite piece in the 2016 edition of the Montreal Biennial was also the oldest by nearly five centuries: Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Portrait of a Lady. Like any anatomically correct 16th century woman, her waist is the width of…