I had a dream shortly after my mother’s death. I was in a bloody underworld not unlike the chamber of horrors described in The Visions of Zosimos of Panopolis, a third century AD alchemical text. I saw my mother as a huge spider with her face reflected in its eyes, and I was on a […]

Utilizing germinal, historical, and scientific references as a conceptual base is typical of my approach to sculpting in multi-mediums. In 1969, NASA put Neil Armstrong on the moon, I read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and our family visited the Aztec archeological site, Temple of the Sun and Moon in Teotihuacán, Mexico. These occurrences represented […]

Despite a solid and admirable 40-year career, at the age of 68, artist Mary Heilmann is only now garnering the long over-due recognition she deserves. After an August 2007 feature in Vogue, and her unprecedented coup of scoring the November 2007 covers of both Art Forum and Art in America, the 2008 Armory Show honored […]

Marfa, Texas, a ten-hour long journey at best from the New York art capitol, has evolved into an iconic cultural pilgrimage site drawing international art seekers. A measure of incredulity has also arisen with its new popular image, as is evidenced by John Waters’ infamous tourist-poster-turned-Artforum-cover, and by the recent opening of a Prada store. […]

Something spontaneous, easy, and fresh spreads out over the work of David Ostrowski, which amuses the viewer instantly. However, this limits and encompasses the viewer from seeing the richness that lies beyond his astonishing visual offerings. One might not recognize the double meaning in evident in his images/pictures. Nonetheless, the painter attempts to recognize what […]

The recent Gustave Courbet exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum (traveling from the Musée d’Orsay and Petit Palais, France) provides the public with a moment to reflect upon how Courbet’s approaches to crossing artistic boundaries led to innovative developments in art, painting, and the very notion of the artist. Ironically, this is most apparent by what […]

In 1990, The World of Female Painters opened at China Central Academy of Fine Arts. I had just graduated from college. As a curator and a participating artist, I was nervous to see the audience’s feedback, just like any young person who organized an exhibition for the first time. The ’85 New Wave and the […]

I approach my work with specific formal concerns. I think about materials that create activities when they interact with light. The materials I am attracted to absorb, reflect, and transmit direct light, light filtered by film, and video projection. Through these activities, I am interested in producing excess, and thus eventually, creating a fantastic space. […]

The name Andrew Penfold is actually a pen name used to disguise the identity of an English based landscape artist and illustrator who was inspired to tackle the subject of human sexuality by a visit to Amsterdam’s Museum of Erotica in 2006. Using this alias allows Andrew to enjoy both anonymity and the freedom to […]

This round of works by the prolific, Bob Dylan-admiring Canadian artist Marcel Dzama exposes his interest in the political realm, although the artist was quick to point out (in response to a prying journalist’s question) that it is his intention to be oblique rather than dogmatic in his approach to subjects such as the Bush […]