Newest Features
By MATTHEW NASH As summer approaches, so does the end of school and the ensuing conflux of graduating student exhibitions. The next few weeks will feature a great abundance of artwork showing the culmination of years of work at many great institutions. There are, of course, the obvious annual favorites. MassArt’s Bakalar and Paine Galleries feature an MFA thesis exhibition that is not to be missed. SMFA’s Grossman Gallery and Atrium will soon have a graduating students show, while Tufts University’s Aidekman Arts Center features the MFA thesis work from SMFA’s grad…
By BIG RED April 22, 2006 Candid snaps from a Big RED night OUT OF TOWN at Saltworks Gallery in Atlanta, GA: 60 seconds of play, curated by Avantika Bawa in conjunction with DRAIN, and Push Back by the collective Club Rio. Shots by Steve Aishman.
By BAD AT SPORTS A mouth-less snowman seems to cry out from a turbulent ground, imploring us with unseen lips, begging for some kind of crutch upon which it could utter the words of an unknown will. Beside the snowman hangs another unsettled ground, this time with a black fracturing snowflake-esque stick figure almost stamped into the canvas. The shape suggests that some force smacked the center of the canvas and its strength has radiated outward, like a crack gone awry on a windshield. It proposes that damaging paintings in such a…
By BIG RED April 12, 2006 Candid snaps from Kelly Sherman’s artist talk at The Berwick. She is the first AIR artist for 2006, and she introduced herself and her previous work to the public as well as the project that she will be working on during her residency at Berwick. Kelly will be investigating wedding seating arrangements and the manifestations of (dis)harmony. Berwick Research Institute
By JASON DEAN Gift and Commodity Transactions in Contemporary Practice, a lecture hosted by Art in General Art is not an ordinary commodity. Art is not a loaf of bread: it’s easy to figure out how much it costs to grow wheat, bake it, and get it to the supermarket. Ultimately, with a piece of art the buyer is buying an idea and the artist’s execution of that idea. The artist would hope a buyer agrees with the ideas and may have some personal relationships with the concepts. Lately there seems to…
By KAREN SCHIFF On the opening day of Abigail Child’s exhibition of films and prints Mirror World, film theorist Laura Mulvey gave a talk at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A coincidence of scheduling? Of course…but a highly appropriate one. Mulvey’s classic essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” exposes how the Hollywood mainstream (and therefore masculine) “gaze” uses the camera’s frame to objectify and “cut up” female bodies. And Child explores cinematic fragmentation — especially of women’s bodies — in ways that would make Mulvey wake up and smell the…carnival. Yes,…
By BIG RED April 21st, 2006 Candid snaps from a Big RED night on-the-town at NESAD/SU for the opening of Eyegasm, the 2006 fine arts student exhibit.
By RACHEL GEPNER Under normal circumstances this piece would have appeared in the “On the Town” section of Big RED & Shiny because I didn’t intend to review the work when I arrived (or even when I left) the show. I couldn’t do this, however because it raised several important questions that needed to be addressed. First, at what point does an artist’s work deserve critical attention? The obvious answer would be “when it’s good,” but of course it’s not that simple. As artists subject themselves to the rigors of their educations…