Newest Features
By NATALIE LOVELESS Print this article It is impossible to ignore. Sex decorates the room…many moods of sex, many kinds of sex, many days of sex. Sex is contained into entrancing small and medium scale drawings, mounted to wood and arranged almost amorphously. From the intricacy and subtlety of line, to the obsessive, invested logic of the project, the show seduces us into “Integrating Sex into Everyday Life” – or at least representations of sex, and at least into the part of daily life that finds us in the gallery space. As the collage like…
By MICAH J. MALONE Print this article In her catalog essay for Work Ethic, Helen Molesworth argues that one unifying principle among the incredible diverse field of post World War II art is a concern with the “problematic of artistic labor.” Indeed, post war artists seem delighted with the idea of relinquishing traditional artistic skills and reevaluating the status of labor in a culture where working for oneself or building your own furniture is very much a novelty. Artistic movements diverse as Fluxus, Pop, Conceptualism and Abstraction have all mimicked, taunted, and challenged traditional…
By RACHAEL ARAUZ Print this article Yasumasa Morimura’s large, flower-adorned self-portrait as Frida Kahlo immediately confronts viewers to the ICA with the image they perhaps most expected to see in Made in Mexico. Not that anyone is expecting to see a young Japanese man in indigenous-Mexican drag, but there’s bound to be plenty of expectation that Frida will make an appearance. It doesn’t take long, however, for the complexities of this exhibition to defy expectations. As viewers approach Morimura’s photographic staging of Kahlo’s identity, they will notice not only the (knock-off?) Louis Vuitton shawl…
By CHRISTIAN HOLLAND Print this article Balagan, an experimental film and video series curated by local filmmakers Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva, brought to us seven works by one of the most important, though relatively obscure film and video artists of the latter half of the twentieth century. Programmed in reverse chronological order, this screening was focused upon Stan Vanderbeek, whose artistry was slowly revealed, getting to the essential core of his achievements. Vanderbeek was an artist, utopian visionary, and new media pioneer whose influence we still see today. Starting his creative life…
What can I say that has not already been said? I have played the role of arts advocate for the city of Boston. Loudly proclaiming that yes you can do it here. Every city has a creative core to it. The people that make up this core can do anything under the sun, moon, and stars… persistence, right? A couple of my friends and I started an alternative space some years back because we did not feel that there were enough venues in this city where challenging art and ideas could have…
What in the hell is going on in this city? As if the non-profit pulse in Boston wasn’t already barely beating, now we’ve been dealt another blow with the city’s closing of the Oni Gallery in Chinatown. How many more punches can we take before we’re down for the count? From their website: “Oni has been temporarily (we hope) shut down because of building code violations on the part of our landlord. Inspectional services, which shut the entire building down for a week in November, have reconverged on the building this week…
By THE EDITOR Several artists with ties to Boston have been included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, which has been deemed as the “Intergenerational Biennial.” Among the group are Taylor Davis, Laylah Ali and Sam Durant. Big Red congratulates these artists on the well-deserved attention! The Whitney Biennial Taylor Davis at The Gallery @ Green St. Layla Ali at Miller Block Gallery
Alas, we have a Vermeer in town. With only 35 paintings in existence and most of them in town. With only 35 paintings in existence and most of them concentrated in a few collections around the world, Boston should be delighted to have a small, beautiful Vermeer to hang in its Dutch gallery for a while. Most of Vermeer’s canvases are of a similar type – quiet, low-key in color, and asymmetrical but strongly geometric in organization. Often times we see women in interiors, alone or with a servant, engaged in some…