picks January 18, 2019

Eleanor Ray

I am standing in a sparse room, looking out a window. The view is familiar because of its frequent depiction. The bright light outside dictates harsh shadows, dark triangles within the concrete boxes of Donald Judd’s sculptures arranged elegantly on the plains of Marfa, Texas.

The painting I describe, Marfa Window, 2017, is one in a group of works by Eleanor Ray. I stand close enough to her small panels that the images break down, becoming a series of soft geometric forms. The compositions have the tightness of photographs, and the light is plein air. Art and earth play shadow games. A window

print January 2019

CLOSE UP: IN ANOTHER VEIN

A KNIFE PUNCTURES FLESH. The blade enters a nasal passageway, and the camera shakes with every cut. Tweezers penetrate the frame and tug out a lump of bloody tissue and bone. “Nothing to worry about,” the surgeon says. Quivering atop a piece of medical gauze, the extracted substance resembles a slug, or a sliver of tongue. “Who are you?” the young patient asks, frowning. “We are your inferior turbinates,” the lump replies, now personified by a pair of adolescents wrapped in pink sleeping bags. Thus begins the young patient’s nightmare, starring a giant papier-mâché nose—a proxy for her own.

previews January 2019

“WONG PING: GOLDEN SHOWER”

Curated by Elena Filipovic

Do you know why love is shown in the shape of a red heart? The narratives in Wong Ping’s beguiling animations revolve around obsessions not only with every kind of human appendage—long noses included—but also with things: Popsicles, sweat, teeth, turnstiles, and videotapes. It’s exciting, then, to hear that Wong’s first institutional solo exhibition will focus on his wonderfully visceral videos (including the sequel to Wong Ping’s Fables 1, 2017, which will debut here) as well as on his bemusing sculptures and installations, existing and newly commissioned.

print December 2018

EJ Hill

A white neon sign announced the subjects of EJ Hill’s “An Unwavering Tendency Toward the Center of a Blistering Sun”: HERE STOOD HE, / STOICALLY AND VALIANTLY, / FOR THOSE WHOSE BURDENS LIE / DARKLY / IN EVEN THE HIGHEST OF NOONS. / JUNE 3 – SEPTEMBER 2, 2018. Given that the sign was rendered in capital letters, a viewer might have first thought that “he” referred to the almighty “Him.” The dates also suggested that this could have been culled from a eulogy. Both references are useful, as those days bracketed Hill’s performance at the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A. 2018” this past summer, for

print November 2018

Brian Dario, Liza Lacroix, and Vladislav Markov

The palette of this three-person show was dominated by brown hues: in the crude-oil-like sheen of paintings by Liza Lacroix, the grimy residues of sweaty hands and raw materials in sculptures by Brian Dario, and the delicate gradations of burnt umber to dark tan in an installation by Vladislav Markov. Materially, each work was in some way stained. The protective panels of suede in Dario’s Foam, 2018—a foot-and-a-half-high stack of eighteen single, used work gloves—looked rough, teased into a texture resembling sandpaper. Markov’s long sheets of old toilet paper, xC, 2017, which had

picks October 02, 2018

Dorian Gaudin

In the center of Dorian Gaudin’s current show is The coffee cup spring (all works 2018), a giant yellow conveyor belt that forms an elaborate loop through the space—a rectangular prism with additional horizontal, vertical, and upside-down segments. The belt itself is composed only of two chains, which carry not consumer products but two lone objects rendered in fiberglass: a disposable coffee cup and a houseplant. Jerking along endlessly at a rate slower than a moving sidewalk, the objects almost mount a commentary on postconsumer waste. (Perhaps the brown planter could be made from the recycled

interviews October 2018

1000 WORDS: WILL RAWLS

AT THE START of each of his “Cursor” performances, Will Rawls introduces the working concept for the series: “Cursor, from the Latin root meaning ‘run’ or ‘runner,’ is a movable, usually black, and blinking figure that indicates the position on a screen where the next character will appear, or where user action is needed.” He then proceeds to the rear of the audience, where, taking a seat, he begins typing into a document that is projected at the front for all to see. Sometimes enunciating each letter and symbol as an individual sound, some-times pronouncing whole words or syllables, Rawls’s

picks September 05, 2018

Richanda Rhoden

Richanda Rhoden’s story ended like many others. Her husband’s work found its way into a permanent collection after his death, following a life full of admirable exhibitions and honors. His New York Times obituary mentions her only as his wife. Her obituary in the Brooklyn Heights Press (the Rhodens’ neighborhood publication) mentions him, his work, and finally her “very beautiful paintings,” most of which never left their house—aside from the dozen or so that were selected by her neighbor, Emily Weiner (one of Soloway’s cofounders), for this posthumous first exhibition.

Such a story could easily

previews September 2018

“ANNE COLLIER: PHOTOGRAPHIC”

The woman is cast for a role. The makeup artist prepares her face: eyeliner, mascara, glycerin. Her lids flutter, a fake tear falls, the camera shutter clicks. The image circulates widely. Anne Collier finds it. She rephotographs, enlarges, crops, and prints it. She hangs it in a gallery. A viewer is transfixed by this close-up of a damp cheek: What happened—why did she cry? It was neither from pain, nor from joy, but for profit. It was all for show. Collier will have her own show of shows of roughly forty pictures taken from advertisements, album covers, and assorted

interviews August 14, 2018

Wong Ping

Gradient horizons, retro computer graphics, and emojis figure prominently in the animated “fables” of the Hong Kong–based artist Wong Ping, who made his New York debut this past February in the New Museum’s triennial, “Songs for Sabotage.” Shortly after, his video Dear, Can I Give You a Hand?, 2018—involving an elderly character navigating the death of his wife, the allure of his daughter-in-law, a severe case of diabetes, and an afterlife in a computer server cemetery’s porn site—premiered in “One Hand Clapping,” which is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York until October

performance June 06, 2018

Self and Others

PRIVATE COLLECTION is a phrase charged by museum tombstones, which display information about an artwork that is otherwise inaccessible to anyone beyond the “private” owner. It connotes a kind of exclusivity, a proprietary right to viewership, a generosity in extending that privilege to the viewer. The term also echoes private recollection, memories and personal experiences replaying in fragmented form. As the title of Lauren Bakst’s recent performance at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, the phrase and all of its associations formed a framework for something that, as Bakst declared, was “not a

print Summer 2018

Fia Backström

Despite its title, “A Vaudeville on Mankind in Time and Space” was more of a poetic observation of our strange present moment on earth. To the right of the gallery’s entrance hung two shelves lined with Plexiglas plates that appeared to be smeared with a white substance, as if they were slides of bacteria being prepared for laboratory testing. These “smears” were in fact engravings, each spelling out a prefix or suffix for describing intersections of the body, politics, and the environment: SOCIO-, -ROTIC, E-, -ZONE, POLY-, -TICAL, BIO-, and –DEMIC. This installation, flexible fragmentation-compression

picks April 13, 2018

Zoe Leonard

Part of the elegance of Zoe Leonard’s work lies in its straightforward concepts: For instance, in 1961, 2002–, one blue suitcase for each year of the artist’s life is arranged into an undulating line. Over one thousand copies of Kodak’s instructional guide to photography are stacked up by year of publication in How to Take Good Pictures, 2018. And for You see I am here after all, 2008, thousands of postcards of Niagara Falls are organized by the vantage point of the photographer. These premises entail laborious processes, and the resulting visual accumulations relish those tacky fingerprints of

performance April 09, 2018

All In the Family

THE SETUP of writer-performer Constance Dejong and Tony Oursler's performance Relatives is simple: a large boxy television sits on a stand at center stage, flanked by two stools. As the TV plays a video created by Oursler, DeJong delivers a fragmented monologue, gesturing to the screen as one would a PowerPoint presentation, or a friend, following its movements, touching its surface, talking to it, finding in it familiar faces of relatives, real and imagined: DeJong’s great-grandmother, mother, uncle, older sister, and younger sister, all representations of family buried just under the glass,

picks March 30, 2018

Laure Prouvost

Laure Prouvost’s travel agency has all the right fixtures: desks with padded office chairs, brochures and getaway magazines taped over with the company name (Deep Travel Ink), paper posters and maps in various stages of decay pasted to the wall. The extensive transformation of the gallery serves an elaborate punch line about the imagined white Western male traveler who goes on expeditions to “exotic” destinations. The agency is supposedly the artist’s uncle’s, and her newest video piece for the exhibition, Monteverdi ici, 2018, predominantly features imagery of a nude woman’s back as she conducts

picks March 09, 2018

Lionel Maunz

Lionel Maunz finds flesh to be malleable in the most torturous sense. It is rendered not in soft resins and pink plastics but black iron, closer to the torqued bronze of Rodin than the gleeful puttiness found in MoMA PS1’s 2017 exhibition “Past Skin.” A condition report for one of the sculpted figures on display, In the Sewer of Your Body (all works 2018), the show’s titular piece: Hand like a glove, flesh creased at the wrist; knobs of malignant tumors; facial tissue webbed; gaping wound above right breast. The creature—for it seems not quite human, haunches hugging sunken chest—is encased in

print March 2018

“Fictions”

"FICTIONS” marked a set of endings: It was the fifth in the Studio Museum’s “F-show” series, which began with the landmark 2001 exhibition “Freestyle” (curated by Thelma Golden, the show proposed the contentious, generative term post-black), and was the last to be on view in the museum’s current home in Harlem. (A new, David Adjaye–designed building is due to open in 2021.) But the show, curated by Connie H. Choi and Hallie Ringle, was also a space for beginnings: None of the nineteen artists, all of African and Latin American descent, had previously shown at the venue, and the exhibition focused

print February 2018

Christie Neptune

Three boxy Sony televisions sat on white pedestals of diminishing heights, positioned along a diagonal axis within the white cube of the gallery. On each screen, looping video segments depicted another white cube, inside of which two women were trapped. Dressed in white undergarments that contrasted starkly with their dark skin, they moved in sync within their confines, looking alternately up at the ceiling, around at the surrounding walls, or out at the viewer, who was made conscious of her position within a comparably claustrophobic space.

The video piece, She Fell from Normalcy, 2016, is the

picks January 05, 2018

Cathy Wilkes

The air is cold and heavy with desperation: Witness the tattered cloths, the dirty dishes. A 2006 painting with an overturned saucer affixed to its jejune surface spells out its title in thin pencil strokes: “She’s pregnant again.” The piece is a womb and a void. Look at the children: Their legs are thin or absent, their toys worn, shredded (see the brown Beanie Babies bunny whose velvety ears lie a little too close to that tarnished Swiss Army knife, in Non Verbal, 2005/2011). Their TV is turned off, with a faded red towel thrown on top of it—did it put out a small fire? Cathy Wilkes’s show is

picks December 15, 2017

Sage Sohier

Sage Sohier’s “Witness to Beauty” opens with a portrait of a woman at a vanity, looking at herself in a handheld mirror. This is the artist’s mother, Wendy Morgan. She looks at herself, Sohier looks at her mother, and the viewer looks at the artist looking at her mother. There are, therefore, a series of frames—in a literal sense, too, as framed paintings, mirrors, and family photographs seem to adorn every wall in the pieces’ domestic settings. These backdrops often feel highly staged: Magazines are arranged just so on the coffee table, and the subjects’ outfits mimic those in the family portrait

Mira Dayal