When I walked into the White Cube Gallery in Berlin, I was confronted by the bright colorful stripes of three large paintings. My first thought: I had already seen such paintings, such horizontal bands so many times before. Nicholas Bodde at White Cube Gallery, Berlin Tina Kesting “o.T.”, Nr. 282, 2003, �l und Acryl/Aluminium , […]

On my recent visit to Beijing, I eagerly combed the Beijing art venues, hoping to find work that looked less "Chelsea" and more "Chinese." When Chinese contemporary art exploded the 1999 Venice Biennale, it was the lush but edgy paintings that received the most attention. The Lost Generation Bryony Roberts Cao Fei, Nada at Home […]

About a year ago, when rogue plans for rebuilding the twin towers were floating around, I thought it would be difficult to top the imaginative and intellectual bankruptcy of the idea. Lockdown at Ground Zero James Westcott left: The new Freedom Tower design, unveiled June 28 by David Childs, with a 200-foot concrete base clad […]

Tokyo is gearing up for the summer holidays with the usual apparently random selection of exhibitions pepped up with a smattering of kid-centric shows, like "Howl’s Moving Castle" at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Report from Tokyo C.B. Liddell Yasumasa Morimura, Dedicated To La Duquesa de Alba / Black Alba, 2004. Color photograph on canvas […]

Psychogeography: The study of the effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals What the Situationists left behind: Psychogeography Dina Deitsch 2004 Conflux performance by Dario D’Aprile to create a pedestrian crossing from baking flour in order to distribute a pattern of white footsteps throughout the neighborhood. […]

At "Comix Ex-Machina," the recent inventive group show at Flux Factory, the comics-inspired pieces are not confined to two dimensions; their stories move and change according to the subtle vibrations of tiny motors, the flipping on and off of lights, the donning of a special pair of glasses. Ranging in media from painting, to sculpture […]

The Greek artist Nayia Frangouli, who recently finished her Master’s at Yale and now lives and works in New York, has already been shown at ARCO Madrid and at the Armory Show. In her recent show at Els Hannape Underground in Athens, "The Misuse of Plans," Frangouli proves that beyond her skillful architectural sketches, pictures […]

Cooperative galleries are experiencing a boom right now in Berlin, just as they did in the late 1970s. Today these collectives exist usually for no more than one or two years before they are incorporated into the programs of their larger counterparts. This is what happened recently with Liga, a testing ground for young Leipzig […]

An age, we tend to think, is animated by a spirit: a common aspiration, a pattern of belief. And yet the most familiar of them?Stone, Bronze, Iron?are named for elements, not ideals. The move to class human cultures according to their weaponry and implements was first made by archaeologists, and the convention appears to have […]

New York has been witnessing the rise of a new star–51 year old architect Thomas Phifer. In the near future a whole sea of electrical stars will shoot up into the sky to light Avenues and Streets of New York City in a new and imaginative way. Phifer’s proposed street lamp design has won the […]