Sophia Larigakis

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  picks March 05, 2020

  Parker Ito

  In one of the twin oil-on-linen works from 2020 that are part of Parker Ito’s series “Me in the Studio w/ Red Hat Render,” 2014–, tacks are lodged in the canvas like bullets, and in the other, they thrust out, with the sharp ends facing the viewer. Only the tacks facing inward are real—those that stick out are rendered in paint. This is one of several instances of trompe l’oeil on view in “Longevity Buns,” whose title refers to a Chinese pastry that masquerades as a peach. Ito’s work is indebted to the self-propagating and -surveilling culture of the internet, and that domain’s slippery sense

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  picks May 03, 2019

  Louis Fratino

  Louis Fratino’s paintings here evince a tenderness often excluded from portrayals of gay male desire. Although frequently graphic and enamored of the male body, they eschew a Grindr-marketplace aesthetic. Indistinguishable save for a few recurring tattoos, their subjects, when coupled, are a tangle of limbs. For instance, in Early Spring, 2019, a scene of penetration is rendered as a Cubist jumble of flesh, while I keep my treasure in my ass, 2019, features a man gripping his own ankles as a smaller man is either being birthed from or swallowed up by his asshole. Here, ardor runs the gamut from

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  picks March 01, 2019

  “CURRICULUM: spaces of learning and unlearning”

  Self-care is not what it used to be. Before it was a neoliberal mantra, it was a demand—for the recuperative space and time necessary for the reclamation of those subjectivities that have historically been erased. Mining affects such as color, atmosphere, and ritual, the works in “CURRICULUM: spaces of learning and unlearning” offer alternative networks of care and collectivity in response to, and in place of, institutions.

  Christen Clifford’s sculpture WE ARE ALL PINK INSIDE: Interiors, 2018, resembles a halved tent. Its soft-pink video projections of corporeal interiors and smooth surfaces

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  picks November 30, 2018

  Jamie Gray Williams

  Citing classic slapstick, the figures in Jamie Gray Williams’s paintings and drawings loom in tragicomic disarray. Squirming, tripping, poking, tumbling––their bodies are both unmoored from any discernible surroundings and completely at the mercy of unseen obstacles. These genderless, guileless creatures, their noses squishy and upturned, limbs scribbled like markings on craft-store pen-tester pads, are loopily fatalistic.

  The show encompasses paintings, drawings, and sculpture. The drawings are caricatures of movement, evincing every jiggle and sway in anticipation of toppling over. They are