The Brooklyn Rail

Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture

JUNE 2012

The Brooklyn Rail



  • Local
  • Express
  • Art
  • ArtSeen
  • Books
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Film
  • Theater
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Art Books
  • LastWords
  • Home
  • table of contents






ArtSeen

AARON CURRY Buzz Kill

by Jonathan Goodman

ArtSeen

Aaron Curry has created an allover environmental installation for the relatively small gallery space at Michael Werner. Yet, despite the boundaries of a limited room, or perhaps because of them, he has successfully created an environment whose mixed influences demonstrate just how well the artist has done with internalizing other artists’ visions and making them his own.

Restrictions, Limitations, Confinements

by Dan Tarnowski

ArtSeen

For this group exhibition at the Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, artist and curator Felix Morelo invited local Bronx artists to explore the themes of restriction, limitation, and confinement.

VARDA CAIVANO / YAEL DAVIDS

by David Rhodes

ArtSeen

Varda Caivano and Yael Davids’s two-person exhibition opened during Berlin’s hectic Gallery Weekend, and despite the profusion of new shows in the city, this proved to be the one not to miss.

SHURA CHERNOZATONSKAYA Raw/Cooked

by Veronika Sheer

ArtSeen

Though even in presence, faint as fading dreams with a few familiar, recurring signs clinging to memory, Shura Chernozatonskaya’s images tenaciously linger. Her show is married to the mind, in which it refuses to be disassembled.

EARLY CONCEPTUAL ART: Documents, Installations, and Related Manifestations

by Robert C. Morgan

ArtSeen

The exhibition clarifies the fact that Conceptual Art was not only an American or New York phenomenon. It was happening in Europe and, to a certain extent, was present in Japan, South America, and later—in some case rather profoundly—in Eastern and Central Europe.

DAN FLAVIN’s Altering Light

by Greg Lindquist

ArtSeen

There are few things in the real world that Dan Flavin’s light environments correspond to. Viewing a Flavin sculpture is about experiencing electric color inhabit its surroundings. This fluorescent-borne light washes blank walls with glowing, gradient hues, appearing painted.

N. DASH

by Michael Straus

ArtSeen

In her first solo show, N. Dash presents a body of work comprising both wall pieces and photographs, wherein she expands upon her longstanding interest in deconstructing the traditional boundaries separating image from support in painting and sculpture.

ELLEN PHELAN Encyclopedia of Drawing, 1964 – 2012

by Phong Bui

ArtSeen

Ellen Phelan’s relationship with drawing has always been the key to her non-conformist spirit as an artist.

CUI FEI & TACA SUI Origins

by Charlie Schultz

ArtSeen

The idea of an origin is problematic for a number of reasons, one being that it would seem to suggest a starting point without precedent and, of course, that’s impossible.

THE PARADE: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg

by Kara L. Rooney

ArtSeen

I first encountered the graphically visceral, clay-based animations and musical scores of Nathalie Djurberg and her collaborator, Hans Berg, at the 2007 Performa Biennial, for which the two were commissioned to perform one of Djurberg’s films live.

Ascent for Myron Stout and Ralph Ellison

by Ben LaRocco

ArtSeen

I have eaten a pot cookie weighing between two and three ounces and about two inches in diameter. It was crunchy. I ate it in three pieces, the first at 5 p.m., the second at 5:20 and the third at 5:40. It is now 6:18 p.m. and I estimate that the effects of the drug should just be setting in.

SAM GORDON trompe l’oeil

by Gail Victoria Braddock Quagliata

ArtSeen

Sam Gordon’s trompe l’oeil, his seventh solo show at Feature, consists of a series of collage-like paintings that seem, when taken together, to reveal the artist’s heady, abstruse exploration of his own private language.

JOSEPH NECHVATAL nOise anusmOs

by Robert C. Morgan

ArtSeen

Besides the anti-Oedipalist pairing of Deleuze with Guattari, the fatal actor Antonin Artaud, and the undaunted ex-Minister of Excess, Georges Bataille, there are few others who could escape the scathingly promiscuous beauty inscribed in the paintings and sensuous auditory and multimedia works of Joseph Nechvatal.

MARTIN PURYEAR New Sculpture

by Phong Bui

ArtSeen

When I think of Martin Puryear’s work, I think of its exquisite nature in relationship to our contemporary history, and of the benevolent yet fierce spirit that each piece generates.

TAYLOR DAVIS

by David St.-Lascaux

ArtSeen

Taylor Davis’s show at Dodge Gallery features two- and three-dimensional works, most incorporating text.

Time-Lapse

by Corina Larkin

ArtSeen

As the title of the current exhibition suggests, Time-Lapse showcases pieces that either address the subjective experience of time or rely expressly on the passage of time to achieve full realization. Works accrue gradually, offering visitors a unique viewing experience every day, if not every minute.

Letter from TOKYO

by Terry R. Myers

ArtSeen

During my most recent six-week trip to Japan, with my sense of distance and displacement quickly reestablished I was struck by the serendipity of concurrent retrospectives of the, yes, groundbreaking work of Atsuko Tanaka and Jackson Pollock, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MoT) and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, respectively.

FRANCESCA DIMATTIO Table Setting and Flower Arranging

by Erin Yerby

ArtSeen

Comprising multiple painted vase-like structures, as well as three large-scale paintings, the exhibition plays out a tension-in-contiguity between painterly sculptures and sculptural paintings.

Letter from LEEDS
Windows and Doors

by William Corwin

ArtSeen

Fiona Rae: Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century at the Leeds Art Gallery (through August 26th) and Michael Dean: Government at the Henry Moore Institute (through June 17th) share little commonality beyond the fact that their exhibiting galleries are next door to each other, but both abundantly fulfill architectural tropes ascribed to the visual arts.

KELLY JAZVAC Thermoloaded

by R.H. Lossin

ArtSeen

You wouldn’t know it at first, but Kelly Jazvac is really into vinyl and death. The London, Ontario-based artist has been creating work from salvaged adhesive vinyl for nearly a decade, collecting scraps from often reluctant commercial printers and sorting them by color and size for later use.

ANDRÉ MASSON
The Mythology of Desire: Masterworks from 1925 to 1945

by Valery Oisteanu

ArtSeen

The second floor of the Carlyle Hotel is the site of Blain|Di Donna, where a magical rendezvous with 34 works by an artist/philosopher invites us to surrender to a trance state of mind. André Masson (1896-1987), whose early works are on view here, was a key figure in Surrealism.

 

ADVERTISEMENTS
  • Copyright 2005-2013 The Brooklyn Rail
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • CONTACT
  • EVENTS
  • SUBMIT
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • SUPPORT
  • ADVERTISE