ArtSeen
Adam Cvijanovic
By Katie Stone SonnenbornFor Adam Cvijanovic’s third solo show at Bellwether Gallery, Love Poem (10 Minutes After the End of Gravity), he has created two monumental paintings that hark back to the triumphant decoration of late eighteenth-century Rococo. Painted on Tyvek, the indestructible, fibrous, synthetic used for FedEx envelopes and house construction, the works are affixed directly onto the wall.
Rita Ackerman
By Roger WhiteIt’s helpful to look at the work in Rita Ackermann’s mini-retrospective of collages with the evolution of her paintings in mind.
The Art of 9/11
By Lyra KilstonIn the days after September 11, 2001, acts of daily life took on enormous significance. We asked ourselves how much news was too much? How could we return to the triviality of our usual worries? And, most urgently, what could we do?
Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua
By Thomas MicchelliAll-American aggression, bloody violence, and heavy metal pandemonium are the stock-in-trade of Braggin Rites, an installation of irredeemable junk fashioned by Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua into what they claim to be the world’s largest Bowie knife.
Maureen Cavanaugh
By James KalmMaureen Cavanaugh’s Lovey Loverson is a selection of paintings and small works on paper that initially seems to reinforce the common clichés of much “Post Feminist” or more recent “Chick Art.” These works, however, present a tightly knotted bundle of supposed contradictions: a cuteness that verges into the grotesque, an erotic voluptuousness that transforms into a Gothic severity, and a naïveté hiding a knowing cynicism that isn’t afraid to play the kitsch card when it suits her purposes.
Lara Schnitger
By Nick StillmanIn the hands of Harlem, Holland-born artist Lara Schnitger, the Harlem gallery Triple Candie resembles a crime scene, all wrapped up in that familiarly forbidding yellow tape. But instead of the warning “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS,” Schnitger’s wraps contain text fragments familiar to surreptitious late-night websurfers: “POPPIN’ FOAMING FANNIES,” for instance.
Bruce Pearson
By Ben La RoccoWhere do language art and biology meet? Can they be seen to have a common root and might any one of the three exist in its particular form contingent only on the forms of the others?
Paloma Varga Weisz
By Stephanie BuhmannIn a stunning New York debut, featuring several wooden sculptures and a series of watercolors, German artist Paloma Varga Weisz shines, raising the suspicion that she might be one of the most promising young talents around.
Ryan Wolfe, Mark Esper, Dam Stuhltrager
By James KalmAmericans have always been held in awe by the forces of the natural world: from the panoramas of the Hudson River school, to the vast vistas of Moran or Bierstadt, to the Earth works of Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, we idealize nature. Indeed we’ve sold an image to ourselves and the world of Americans (both North and South) as innocents in a struggle with nature. Now artists like Sarah Sze are dealing with the “nature” of technology, the art of the artificial.
John Paul Villegas
By William PowhidaThe title of Jon Paul Villegas’s exhibition, My Genitals’ Genitals: More in love with the idea of not being in love with the idea than with the idea of not being in love, suggests some of the calculated chaos of the show.
Joseph Karoly
By Shane McAdamsKaroly has indeed been making art about art for decades, and, while “Smart Art” has been reduced to a formula by some, the prevailing economic contradictions that inspired such critiques haven’t dissipated.
Post-Everything
By Ben La RoccoWe’ve got post-feminism, post-structuralism, and post-Marxism, all enveloped by post-modernism.
Dan Torop
By Jason MurisonIt is odd that in the height of the art market there is still a split between contemporary art galleries and photo galleries. But perhaps this gap is closing finally, if Dan Torop’s exhibition Estimated Landscapes is any indication.
Kim Jones
By Tomassio LonghiA great new chapter in Jones’s epic has opened its pages to public view, reminding us that his on-going impulse towards idiosyncratic narrative should be read in its totality.
Enemy Image
By William PowhidaA nation’s construction of an enemy “other” often serves less to define the latter than the former’s identity. The works in this politically charged group show interrogate various notions of how mechanisms of representation reflect this process.
Engaging Ephemera
By Hrag VartanianSometimes I encounter an artist whose work provokes a visceral reaction that haunts me for days. Cal Lane in Engaging Ephemera instigated exactly that response, and while she is one of three artists on display, she undoubtedly dominates the show.
Krzystof Wodiczko
By Dore AshtonKrzystof Wodiczko is what I call an intelligent designer. I also call him a poet, consummate visual artist, man of conscience, inventor, and extender of the great tradition of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art, that calls upon all the senses.
Chris Martin
By John YauOn the way to or from Chris Martin’s exhibition, you notice a large painting in red and black, “Manikarnika Ghat (Dedicated to Frank Moore)” (2002-2003) mounted high on the outside side wall of the gallery, placed exactly where someone would display a billboard advertising the latest gadget, food, or reality show we need to know about if we are to consider ourselves informed.
