Newest Features
For the past two years, I have taught a course on Reviled Architecture at Boston University. The class explored a variety of buildings that frequently incite people’s ire, and my students found no lack of published sources on the subject. Last summer, for example, California Home + Design Magazine assembled a list of “25 buildings that should be demolished right now,” which joins compendiums of ugliest/worst/most-hated buildings from Forbes, New York magazine, HRH the Prince of Wales, Virtual Tourist, Esquire, and CNN, among many others. The problems with these rankings are obvious.…
George Fifield is a media arts curator, writer, teacher and artist. He is the founder and director of Boston Cyberarts Inc., a nonprofit arts organization, which from 1999 through 2011 produced the Boston Cyberarts Festival. Big Red & Shiny sits down for a conversation with him about the future plans for Boston Cyberarts and its connection to alternative spaces. BR&S: George, earlier this summer you announced that Cyberarts would no longer be doing the festival, what happened? Fifield: A lot of things changed in the last year, we have been taking…
Here are some of my recent source images. Sometimes it’s enough to scroll through them, but lately I like being able to see them laid out in a little grid. Previously I hadn’t made the connection between eyeball and hole in the wall! It also provides an instant palette. Persisan rugs, brick wall, digital wall, eye ball, hole in wall, cartoon smile, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Ren and Stimpy, pink frosting, water droplets, Abe Morell, Egyptian relief Mexican mask, pizza car, cinderblock wall, blob fish, Marina Abromovic + blob fish, pink…
By The Editors October 14, 2012 The museum has a ton of roles to play. First, is the protective role, collecting, preserving, and identifying what is important to our culture, our aesthetics, or any other divisions you can think of (media, technology, economics, politics, etc). Over time, this and other roles have shifted as their inviolable status has become more fluid and complicated. Museums evolve and the way that they evolve can be hard to explain, never mind difficult to decide if you agree with the changes. This usually isn’t…
It’s best to start this piece by confessing that I’ve yet to watch a single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, Smallville, Veronica Mars or one of the Harry Potter franchise movies. The Big Bad, according to Wikipedia and several pop-culture blogs is a term that originated in the show Buffy. It refers to that “Big Bad” character that usually dominates one episode or an entire season of a show—the root of all evil, the cause of all bad happenings. Currently at the Nave Gallery in Somerville is a show…
L.A. based Argentinian artist Analia Saban’s show at Tanya Bonakdar is teeming with associations for me. Her work is formally advanced and ripe with historical connotations, but the thing that draws me in most is her self-assured gestures. Her work dares the audience to contradict her. You could walk in and see nothing but monochrome canvases lacking any amount of subject or argument and turn on them in an instant, but if you would do that, I’d ask you to spend another moment looking. The work holds a subtlety that Michael Pepi…
By Sarah Sulistio October 12, 2012 Recognized by ArtReview as the art world’s “Most Powerful Figure” in 2011, Ai Weiwei is no stranger to the art world. Best-known for his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron on the design of the Beijing Olympic Stadium, his ubiquitous presence in social media and detention for political and social activism, Ai Weiwei is China’s most provocative contemporary artist. It comes as no surprise then that his first North American survey is at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Park in Washington, D.C. The retrospective—which opened on…
By The Editors October 12, 2012 Big Red & Shiny would like to congratulate Suara Welitoff on the news that she has been awarded this year’s Rappaport Prize by the deCordova! The Rappaport Prize is awarded annually to a mid-career contemporary artist with ties to New England. Welitoff’s work is, in the words of the deCordova, “lyrical and meditative videos that elevate the everyday to the poetic.” Working mostly in video and photographic installations, she was named the 2002 Maud Morgan recipient, received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in…