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Jamaica Plain-based painter Josh Jefferson has recently received a lot of attention for his brightly colored geometric collages and head series. Jefferson will be showing his work at Steven Zevitas in the SoWa district on September 9 and has shows lined up in NYC, LA, and Milan this upcoming year. I first discovered his work through Instagram and was immediately drawn to the beautiful and subtle color palette of earlier collages. His newer work is punchier and more dynamic. He has an excellent grasp of form and his color choice is sophisticated…
Jonathan Talit recently met with Julia Csekö to discuss her solo exhibition Straight from the Heart – The Rant Series (August 6-27, 2016), made possible with the generous support of the Walter Feldman Fellowship and organized by the Arts and Business Council. It was hosted by the Piano Craft Gallery–a historic gallery space off Tremont Street, focused on promoting contemporary Boston-based artists. Talit and Csekö struck a friendship after working together at the ICA. This interview is an extension of their numerous conversations about art. Jonathan Talit: I thought a good place…
“The best art speaks for itself,” someone stated at a recent public discussion about Boston Creates. My immediate internal response was yes, but art also prompts, at times even goads, us to speak or write. I concede that art is, of course, first about one’s sensorial experience of it, and there is much to be gained from this act alone. There is also much to gain from speaking, reading and writing about art as an intellectual and social–even civic–activity. In fact, these activities are vital for an active and dynamic arts ecosystem…
Since 2013 I’ve been focused—educatively, academically, artistically—on ‘socially-engaged art’ and the idea of learning in public.(1) Over the course of the last ten years, I’ve grown to understand the the site of my own work (as a curator, educator, artist and communit(ies)y member) as the space between art and audience. The social and ideological role of art and its institutions and the learning experiences of art viewers have guided this work, while curatorial practices, pedagogy and performance have continued to inform it. Coming to terms with the social qualities of my own…
Known for his work that confronts the fragile limits of perception and physicality, British sculptor Antony Gormley has confronted the human body throughout his career. In Chord (2015), a new public work permanently on view at MIT, Gormley challenges the idea of material and immaterial bodies. The sculpture is created through 1700 pounds of stainless steel forming thirty-three polyhedrons that extend from the ground floor to the glassed ceiling of MIT’s Maths and Sciences building, and in it, Gormley references both natural, abstract, and invisible formations. I spoke with Gormley online after…
From 1759 to 1763, writer Christopher Smart composed the sprawling poem Jubilate Agno while confined to an asylum. The best-known portion of the text is a 74-line segment in which Smart expounds on the ways that his cat is an ideal servant of God, a long passage where he describes daily feline behaviors in gushing detail in an attempt to exalt them as signs of religious fervor. Long before Jubilate Agno, and now, long after, cats have served as artistic subject matter, whether elevated or banal. Under the simple header MEOW, the…
Located in Faneuil Hall, Boston’s tourism epicenter, Pat Falco’s newest installation seems at first glance like the busy hub of any political campaign. Boston Campaign Headquarters, as it is titled, is made up of signs, banners, hats, and pins featuring political slogans. The key difference is that these slogans are not typical political jargon and doublespeak: Falco instead creates campaign signs that lay bare the implied meaning of popular American statements and current candidate catchphrases. The core of the exhibition is Untitled (Lesser Evils), a painting made with discarded house paint on…
Earlier this summer, Lisa Crossman sat on the grounds of the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts with Boston-based independent curator Pedro Alonzo. Alonzo is the Guest Curator for the Trustees Art and The Landscape initiative, which begins its program with Sam Durant’s The Meeting House at the Old Manse and Jeppe Hein’s A New End at the World’s End. Alonzo’s served as an adjunct curator for other notable institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and the Institute of Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Alonzo’s an expert on street art and has curated…