Newest Features
By THOMAS MARQUET #7: Thomas Marquet’s comic strip about life in a gallery. “The White Cube” comics can be read in series in the Big RED & Shiny Collections section. Thomas Marquet is a cartoonist, sculptor, and critic, based in Brooklyn, New York, which is an admittedly unoriginal place to be pursuing any of these things.
By JENNIFER MCMACKON TAAFI is in full swing. Holding its third annual event in Toronto and the crowds are out and the hype is on. I’m in room 203 of the tony Drake Hotel speaking with John McLachlin about his curatorial effort, Four Men and a Woman: A Small Project for My Father. The show features work by five Toronto artists, James Carl, Greg Hefford, Roula Partheniou, Gregory Reynolds and Robert Waters. The hotel art fair setting is not an especially easy place to carry out a conversation, let alone look at…
By GARY DUEHR Every work of visual art is an object of desire. It makes you want to get closer, see more, feel the texture. And usually, of course, this is forbidden or impossible—either because the artwork is on display, or because the object is standing in for the real thing, the celebrity or street scene or bloody pheasant, that is nowhere to be found. Even an abstract piece promises something beyond what’s there. It’s hands off. Which, naturally, fuels desire even more. So how does a piece transcend its aesthetic lust…
By BEN SLOAT The idea of humans having five senses comes from Aristotle, relating to his greater writings on perception, a condition he used to distinguish animals from plants. In the Aristotelian philosophy, an animal’s lifetime is defined by its constant navigation through the world by means of perception, acting upon agents with the capacity to be affected on. Within this interaction, change is present, as stated by Aristotle: “the perceptive faculty is in potentiality such as the object of perception already is in actuality.” Recent determinations of the senses include the…
By JON PETRO I once attended a lecture where Zach Feuer, ex-Bostonian and proprietor of a number of galleries in NYC, spoke to an audience of 20 or so newbies about how to make it in our current art market. Now, my recollections of the lecture’s concept are very vivid, however, I can only paraphrase Feuer’s comments for I was nursing a hangover of Patagonian proportions. When asked about how to make it his answer came in the form of a short statement; “it’s the gang mentality”. The core of his 25…
By MATTHEW NASH ‘Patamechanics is a method of discovering/manifesting artifacts’ much like those of the ancient Wonder-rooms, ‘which symbolically attribute their properties described by their virtuality to their lineaments.’ A Patamechanical artifact or device is displayed with the intention of validating the existence of a realm or entity ‘supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously, describe a universe which can be – and perhaps should be – envisaged in the place of the traditional one.’ The primary goal of the Musée Patamécanique is to explore the meaning and possibilities of Patamechanics […]…
By CHRISTIAN HOLLAND Note: This piece is the second in a series of interviews by Christian Holland with the four 2006 finalists for the ICA prize. You can read his interview with finalist Kelly Sherman here. Look for more interviews in future issues. Christian Holland: What does the ICA prize mean for you as an individual and an artist? Jane D. Marsching: It’s great; I was shocked and delighted. Not only because it’s great to be appreciated, but because this is a great moment to do the prize. For me it was…
By MATTHEW GAMBER A professor I once had was always probing students for the core of what made people want to create. She was little interested in what socialized rationale students offered, because it was usually safe to say in front of others, and probably a string of half truths. Some, out of frustration, would finally divulge, in fact, what they feared, rather than what they hoped. Interestingly, right there, you could see that person, their disgust with what the truth of their motivation. What had fueled their desire was its other:…