Newest Features
By FRANK PEREZ Having just read an article on a graffiti artist becoming legitimized by selling a spray painted portrait in a gallery for tens of thousands, in my mind, when I saw the ad for the Stencils, I had imagined the gallery walls littered with swatches of patterned, spray painted graphics. Because of this, I showed up at the gallery thinking the exhibit was over. Interestingly enough, there were patterns, just not the overt urban graphics I had expected. The patterns are there, though they exist in the compression of information…
By JOHN RUGGIERI Robin Rhode’s video performance The Storyteller, involves a lone performer whose storyline is enlivened in expressively drawn wall and ground illustrations using time-exposed action and simple props. It is the seemingly bare production values and materials that are at first intriguing to me upon viewing this performance-based work. Much of the work in his three-gallery exhibition succeeds on its dynamic, formal tug of art completing life, multiple exposures of daily acts and tasks created by a three-dimensional performer interacting with two-dimensional materials. In his photographs, the iconic act of…
By ARTHUR WHITMAN To those well-versed in contemporary art, the selection of work in “Recent Acquisitions” is likely to have a wearisome familiarity. Many or perhaps most of the artists will be familiar. Most of the art seems to fall into into well-worn modes. And (not unusually for such work) much of the art here walks the line between the endearingly offbeat and the gratuitously twee. (The best example of work falling into the latter category is an untitled figure sculpture by Lucky de Bellevue made out of variously hued pipe cleaners…
By JENNIFER SCHMIDT A pocket in Greensboro, North Carolina: two tracks come together at a crossing, going where/coming from…I don’t know. It’s southern here with some BBQ on the horizon. Old signs and antiques… Beer in the alley… And famed Cheerwine soda. I keep thinking of lakes and swimming. While, at the Y, they talk of God. Welcome to Elsewhere: a place defined more by stuff than by location. Dense with objects, Elsewhere represents an event horizon of consumables produced between 1930 and 1997, which, amazingly, have been rescued in the wake…
By BIG RED HARRY POTTER 5 == THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK by MATTHEW NASH BLACK BOOK by MICAH MALONE KNOCKED UP: GROSS-OUT COMEDY FOR EVANGELICALS by BEN SLOAT THE SIMPSONS MOVIE by MATTHEW NASH ALL THE THINGS I LEARNED FROM LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD by HEIDI M. AISHMAN Welcome to the Big RED & Shiny Summer Movie Extravaganza! Can I interest you in a combo snack pack? Well, did you know that if you go one size larger, it’s only twenty-eight cents? Would you like your parking validated? Can I…
By MARTINA TANGA Bouncing two balls between the floor and ceiling with changing rhythm (1967-68) is a ten minute long film where Bruce Nauman bounces two balls in his studio. Though first in control, Nauman seems to spend the rest of his time chasing after the two balls around his studio. He repeats this sequence of actions, seemingly aimlessly, apparently in a state of boredom. Apart from Bouncing two balls between the floor and ceiling with changing rhythms (1967-68), Nauman made other similar staged performances, for example, Stamping in the Studio (1968),…
By CHRISTIAN HOLLAND Jon Taylor, an artist of New Bedford, Massachusetts, will, on occasion, put moss into his mouth. It’s true; there are pictures to prove it. He will also make expressions like those Andrew W.K. makes when photographed, but it’s doubtful that Jon copied Andrew, as Jon is several years older, giving him much more time on this earth to conjure up such visagial misconfigurations (1). Jon believes the most mundane and widely accepted aspects of our lives are the ones that need the most scrutiny. The basic practices which make…
By BIG RED Friday, July 6th, 2007 Candid snaps from a Big RED night on-the-town at Laconia Gallery for the opening reception of “Taking In,” photographs by students of the Art Institute of Boston. Laconia Gallery Photos by James Hull