Julie Karabenick’s Systematic Freedoms Vivek Narayanan  Composition 37, acrylic on canvas, 28″ x 28″, 2003 JulieKarabenick’s is a careful, unsentimental mind in the midst ofself-clarification. In each set of her explorations, one finds emotionaldepth, unity, and a complex internal conversation between subtly-wrought colorsand shapes. The artist has developed a long process by which a work […]

Rosemarie Trockel’s Suspicious Kitchens Vivek Narayanan Rosemarie Trockel, Spleen exhibition images [[Sourcelink for images: http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/trockel/]] style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>In the mercurial tradition of thoseGerman grandmasters – Gerhard Richter or Joseph Beuys – who came before her,Rosemarie Trockel has stayed one step ahead of the critic’s easy gloss byembracing apparent contradictions, and by working obsessively through a widerange of […]

A Mythology for Our Times L.P. Streitfeld  A Mythology for Our Times – L.P. Streitfeld   Once in ageneration an exhibition comes along that sums up an age that we are living. TheMasters Series: Marshall Arisman at the School of Visual Arts is a rare exhibition thatelicits a welcome visceral reaction. The lack of identifying […]

SWEETLY THE AIR FLEW OVERHEAD Louisa Buck Cathyde Monchaux’s artistic language has always been rife with paradox. Immediate,distinctive and utterly particular to her; it is both sharply-focused andwide-reaching, extending way beyond issues of style to permeate all manner ofmedia from photographed landscape to recorded sound as well as theintricately-wrought floor and wall pieces for which […]

Thoughts on the Polish Artistic Present Slawomir Marzec   Tomasz Domanski, “Forest Movement accorging to Macbeth.” Video, 2001; Image courtesy CRP Oronsko.     Theexhibition, "Sztuka II RP," in Oronsko, Poland presents a somewhatatypical view of Polish art from the 1990`s, and goes across ranking lists and"official" interpretations. One saw there the work of alreadywell-known […]

Failed Art and Uneasy Britons: Notes from the United Kingdom Cedar Lewishohn Franz West, Waiting Area (2003) A Franz West retrospective in England or anywhere else isgoing to be messy. The Austrian Actionist has a way of raising havoc in themost unexpected of places. He’s liable to paint out the details of billboardsand add his […]

Andreas Gursky, The Strange Reporter Saul Austerlitz Andreas Gursky: Cable Car, Dolomites (1987) [[Source: http://english.ohio-state.edu/people/garcha.2/cablecar.htm]] The worldof German photographer Andreas Gursky is nothing if not familiar, yet,everything within it is somehow askew. The overriding sensation one gets uponstudying a Gursky photograph is that of having stumbled onto the documentationof an unfamiliar ritual practice. In his […]

Do-Ho Suh: Identity, Anonymity, Displacement Anya Kamenetz   Seoul Home     style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>People entering a space where Do-HoSuh’s best-known work, the diaphanous, tent-like "Seoul Home/L.A.Home/New York Home/London Home" is installed, inevitably crane their necks and smile indelight like children seeing a large balloon float up to the ceiling. Alife-size, three-dimensional silk reconstruction of his childhood […]

Post-Human PROMETHEUS: Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Technology of E-motio H.J. Boisvert In an apolitical and techno-centered age where the individual more readily falls prey to pre-Raphaelite pastiche and slumbering decadence, “political art” would seem to possess scant interest and even less impact. Yet the innovative and varied work of the polish born artist and industrial designer, Krzysztof […]

A Torn Tapestry Holly Morganelli  Quick! Name a topic that is at once redundant and silenced within the American tapestry. Yes! And for 1 trillion dollars in Dubya’s tax cuts, the answer is social class. The mainstream media packages the illusion that we are all middle-class, gives it the seal of approval and sends it […]