Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe

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  picks May 21, 2019

  Winnie Herbstein

  Though “women’s work” is often used to describe the domestic sphere within a house in which the family unit is produced and maintained—both cosmetically and hygienically—Winnie Herbstein’s latest exhibition, “Brace,” chronicles an instance where women’s work was to build the house itself. Minutes, 2019, a new film by Herbstein complements The House That Jill Built, 1998, a documentary produced by Video Information Project (Magda Ang, Karen Dickson, and Helen Archer) about Glasgow’s distaff self-build collective Take Root. Also included is a supportive steel structure made by Herbstein and members

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  picks January 07, 2019

  Christopher Aque

  For “Red-blooded, White-skinned, and the Blues,” Christopher Aque has installed a radio, Transmission (all works 2018), tuned to a station specializing in 2000s rock. The exhibition’s title can thus be read as a reference to that particular strain of white masculine Americana and its cultural output: “alt-rock,” its prefix signifying defiance of the mainstream, and these days, proudly adopted by the alt-right. In the related text materials, the artist details his embarrassment about adolescent melancholia. Bands such as Bright Eyes and Arcade Fire—which now play through the radio in the gallery,

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  picks November 26, 2018

  Sidsel Meineche Hansen

  Following the logic of both magic and design—in which an object changes form while the mechanism of transformation remains concealed—Sidsel Meineche Hansen has become part designer and part sorcerer for her current exhibition, “Real Doll Theatre.” Here, she continues her ongoing research practice into the disciplinary nature of technologized capital on bodies, desire, pleasure, and labor, as well as its estranging, superstitious, and psychological effects. The relationship between Untitled (Sex Robot) (all works 2018), a wooden marionette-cum-beta-type sex robot, and the dolls featured in