Brian Droitcour
Brian Droitcour
December 2012
THE BEST PAINTING OF 2012 was the botched Jesus, the inexpert restoration of a nineteenth-century religious fresco. You can Google the restorer’s name and the location of her church if it matters to you; the painting interests me as one … READ ON
SLANT
It’s Always Sunny in Dnepropetrovsk
Olafur Eliasson at the Interpipe Steel Mill
October 2012 DNEPROPETROVSK, UKRAINE
OLAFUR ELIASSON has been thinking about steel. “The people who work with steel refer to it as something fluid,” he said. “No one ever referred to steel as something static.” We were in Dnepropetrovsk, an industrial city of a million… READ ON
DIARY
Michael Bell-Smith
Foxy Production
September 2012
It is impossible to identify a beginning or end to any of Michael Bell-Smith’s four new videos. By convention they should be called loops, but the word feels wrong here. A loop creates the impression of an image fallen out of time through… READ ON
PICKS
Last Dance
The closing party for the Central Utah Art Center
August 2012 EPHRAIM, UTAH
ON SATURDAY NIGHT I boarded a chartered “pARTy bus” from Salt Lake City to the Central Utah Art Center in Ephraim, Utah. Mikell Stringham, a member of CUAC’s board, welcomed passengers on the bus to the “Farewell to Ephraim Party.… READ ON
DIARY
Participant Observation
The opening of Documenta 13
June 2012 KASSEL, GERMANY
1. THE Q&A at Wednesday’s press conference was bracing. Reporters were long-winded and rude. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev resisted them with sass, though at times her frankness lost its edge and spilled over into strangeness. One asked her … READ ON
DIARY
Borna Sammak
JTT
May 2012
Extrusion grinds food down to tiny pellets and presses it into shapes. It is the manufacturing process that gives Cheetos and Doritos their addicting uniformity. The term is also used to describe the rendering of three-dimensional images, … READ ON
PICKS
Darren Bader
MoMA PS1
April 2012
One of the cats hid under the couch. But the sweet black-and-white one cuddled and played. They were up for adoption from the SaveKitty Foundation of Queens, New York, and they were sculptures by Darren Bader. “Each cat-adopter will get an… READ ON
PICKS
Artie Vierkant
MEDIA
March 2012
IN ARTIE VIERKANT’S EXHIBITION at China Art Objects in Los Angeles last October, he presented works from the series “Image Objects,” 2010–, which consists of thick, wall-mounted Sintra PVC sheets imprinted with bright abstractions … READ ON
IN PRINT March 2012 [TOC]
Ryan Sullivan
Maccarone Inc.
February 2012
Two distended oval depressions hollow out the surface of an untitled 2011 painting by Ryan Sullivan. Purple and abscessed, riddled with dusty black and yellow ridges, they look like a set of lungs ravaged by carcinogens. This is one of sixteen… READ ON
PICKS
Exclusive Content
The VIP 2.0 Art Fair
February 2012 VIPARTFAIR.COM
THERE IS A SPECIAL MIX of bewilderment, exhaustion, and despair that I feel only when visiting an art fair. The intensity of this feeling was the one metric in which the “exclusively online” VIP 2.0 Art Fair outdid its convention-center… READ ON