Newest Features
“Entering in this state allows me to increase endurance — prolonging the lasting and going into unknown territory — to discover things, situations or conditions previously unknown.” Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes have been working together under the moniker of VestAndPage since 2006. “The world is our studio,” as Stenke poignantly put it. The internationally traveled pair have taught in Mexico City, produced a film in Antarctica, and most recently, conducted an intensive workshop in Florence, Italy. Having a vast traditional artistic training, both Stenke and Pagnes turned to body-based work…
Arlette Kayafas with one of the Guerrilla Girls in September 2012. Courtesy of Gallery Kayafas Ten years ago, Arlette Kayafas opened a photography gallery on 450 Harrison Avenue (Thayer Street entrance) becoming what Big Red & Shiny contributor Robyn Day calls, the “Thayer Street patron saint of fine art photography.” Aside from celebrating the 10th anniversary of the gallery, April has been a busy month for Arlette who is also the guest-curator of an exhibition on the photography of Jules Aarons, now on view through August 03, 2013 at the West…
In July of 2011, Michael Oatman, artist and associate professor at Rensselaer’s School of Architecture, gave me a tour of all utopias fell; a project that had opened nine months prior on the grounds of MASS MoCA and will be on view through the year 2020. During the tour, Michael unpacked the three facets of all utopias fell and the dense web of interconnections between each: The Shining, an Airstream trailer/space ship hovering precariously in the air as if it had just dropped from the sky, The Library of the Sun, which…
The curators of NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star at the New Museum would have been in their early teens to early twenties in 1993. This may not be such an insignificant fact given the time capsule mode of the exhibit. The ground floor display of an array of skateboard culture, and direct references to Larry Clark’s film Kids (actually released in 1995), almost resembles a really cool teen hangout. The array is a bit sad and a little creepy in its aged stickers, posters, and photos (some of…
When we talk about ‘occupying’ these days, we might be talking about a number of things—taking up a few seats on a bus, or how long we’ve lived in an apartment—but since Fall 2011, we’ve come to know the verb ‘occupy’ as charged with various political or sociological currencies, and the particular occupancy of paintings is due according critique. PAINT THINGS: beyond the stretcher, on view through April 21 at the deCordova and co-curated by Dina Deitsch and Evan Garza, is among the first museum exhibitions to specifically investigate painting in the…
The idea to discuss and document a discourse around New Media began with an innocent admonition of a field that seemed to both encompass and abandon our own practices as filmmakers. The discussion began with a telephone conversation and grew into an ongoing debate between two friends and fellow artists working in moving-image territories that include Super 8, 16mm, and video. Does New Media include us? Is our work relevant in the context of New Media? Are there underlying concepts that carry through to moving-image work made with increasingly obsolete mediums? We…
Every week, BR&S picks out a series of gallery events, screenings, exhibitions, performances. Here are our choices for you to go & see this week: • Events Thursday April 18* Boston University, Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston Contemporary Perspectives Lecture: Chris Jordan 6:30pm / Free Thursday April 18* School of Visual Arts (SMFA), B-311, 230 The Fenway, Boston 4 Photographers, Walid Raad 12:30pm / Free Sunday April 21* Boston University, Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston A Photographic Resource Center lecture: Abelardo Morell: My Life in Pictures — So Far 2pm…
Last June, after a decade, I left my perch as a senior planner with an architecture and planning firm in Boston. During that time—partly because of my training, partly because of my own inclinations and intuition—I became more and more engrossed by those core aspects of planning that come under the heading of “civic engagement”: creating routes into a deep understanding of the array of communities on whose behalf I was presumably doing the planning. I called it “getting under the skin of a place” in order to find the multiple social,…