Newest Features
By CHARLES GIULIANO Print this article Scott Prior: New Paintings Alpha Gallery 14 Newbury Street Through January 5 In the decades that I have attentively followed the work of the Northampton based, representational painter, Scott Prior, he now appears to be at the peak of form. The technique is ever more refined, subtle and nuanced in tonality and qualities of luminism. The subject matter, however, while richer and more passionately poignant, seems to be fixed in a time warp. His gallerist, Joanna Fink, laughed somewhat self consciously when the timeless quality of…
By CHARLES GIULIANO Print this article East Village USA Curated by Dan Cameron New Museum of Contemporary Art 556 West 22nd Street Through March 19 Suddenly it’s the 1980s all over again in this lively and insightful exhibition. The intent of “East Village USA” is to recover a time of hope and dreams when a generation of art stars, some now stellar, others twinkled to obscurity and extinction, were oh so young and feisty. There is a lesson embedded here for those who care to look. That art runs through cycles. Some…
By MATTHEW NASH Print this article Boston is a college town. With this comes a constant turn-over of new artists, new ideas, and new energy. Much of the independent scene in our city is built on this energy, and fed by the yearly supply of graduates looking for their place in the world. This column is the first of several planned pieces that will look at some of the work from the student population, who are often ‘off the radar’, with an eye towards the future of the scene and the growth…
By MATTHEW NASH Print this article In a previous issue of Big RED, I wrote about science-fiction and its role as a gauge of our current collective fears. Good sci-fi extrapolates our underlying paranoia and expands them into the future – often creating a vision of what may be to come if we don’t change our ways now. In much the same way, the paintings of Scott Listfield extrapolate our underlying banalities, our daily routines, into a future both humorous and identifiable. Listfield’s paintings are infused with popular iconography, often many layers…
By JASON DEAN Print this article …Yet man to-day is the same man that drank from his enemy’s skull in the dark German forests, that sacked cities, and stole his women from neighboring clans like any howling aborigine. The flesh-and-blood body of man has not changed in the last several thousand years. Nor has his mind changed. There is no faculty of the mind of man to-day that did not exist in the minds of the men of long ago. Starve him, let him miss six meals, and see gape through the…
By THOMAS DORAN Print this article At the end of January two Boston venues will have played host to expansive exhibitions by the Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans; both the List Visual Arts Center at MIT and the MFA. Wyn Evans’ vehicle for entry at both institutions is a disorientingly large concave mirror. This frontispiece distorts reflections to an extreme degree, including of course, that of the viewer. Reverse, Inverse, Perverse (the title of the mirror at the MFA) has its symmetrical twin, Perverse, Inverse, Reverse at the door to the List.…
By LISA MITCHELL Print this article “No cornering or stampeding,” founder and curator James Hull says smiling warmly at people closing in on both entrances of America’s only subway gallery. “5-4-3-2-1,” he shouts, and the crowd funnels in greedily grabbing red-hot tags marking their favorite of the 150 artworks for $150. In seconds, Emil Corsillo’s painting “Caution” is snatched up, and the young artist appears, surveying the crowd for the buyer of his work. The 150 x $150 Mad Dash fundraiser was a prelude to Corsillo’s solo debut—an abstract painting and print…
By JAMES MANNING Print this article For the first week in December, the art world’s elite descended upon Miami Beach for Art Basel 2004. Several smaller fairs including Miami Scope and NADA gave art lovers plenty to look at. The entire Miami art scene was involved with nearly every local gallery and museum holding an event or reception coinciding with the event. The local government, the news media and much of the general public were involved. So the question arises, Why not us? Why not Boston? The main event, Art Basel is…