“For Thinkin’ Long and Dark,” Brent Owens’ third solo show at English Kills, probably has enough distinct bodies of work in it to comprise several more tangential exhibitions. This is what’s great about it: the plurality of ideas eddy together, challenging the standards of an artist’s body of work, and the ways in which it […]

Based On, If Any, Jordan Rathus’s incisive and wildly entertaining museum debut, at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art focuses primarily on videos that playfully deconstruct and subvert preconceived expectations of both authorship and viewership. Drawing on the materiality of film, Rathus dissects the conventions of the medium, and also draws attention to the […]

Jim Elledge’s, Henry Darger: Throw Away Boy presents a rich portrait of the outsider artist’s life, scaffolded with a decade’s worth of research. Arguing against claims that Darger “was a pedophile, a sadist, or a serial killer”, Elledge has produced a fascinating, and frankly heart-wrenching, account that explains Darger’s work through the context of it’s […]

İrfan Önürmen plumbs the intricacies of existence with a postmodern process-oriented painting strategy that fuses a cartoon drawing aesthetic, tulle collage, and cubist planar construction; effectively obscuring formal classification and raising more questions than it answers. His current show at C24 Gallery persistently mines the many shades and guises of the human condition in subtle […]

Everybody agrees that “Hey Ya!” is the greatest song. Viscerally and emotionally powerful, its references to history and form leave no doubt as to Andre 3000’s intelligence and artistry. It isn’t often that a piece can create such unanimity of judgment. And, what exists at the other end of the spectrum?  Can a work actively […]

I happened to be at the premiere of the new production of Rigoletto by Boston Lyric Opera. Unlike any other Rigoletto I’ve seen, this particular production hits you right in the gut. To find out why, I went behind the scenes to interview the director, costume designer, set designer, and main character. I wanted to […]

Matthew Day Jackson explores an ambitious hybrid fusion of art, science, and technology in his multi-media exhibition entitled, Capture, on view at Hauser and Wirth. The biological underbelly of life’s undeniable dark side is richly expressed in sculpture, framed wall works, and digital photography, where themes of dehumanization mediated by technological interventions create a hyper-tense […]

The claws of a big brown and white animal hugging a tree trunk—that was the first image I saw from Meryl McMaster a few years ago. The figure was completely hidden behind the tree. Was it hiding from some predator? Or was it a predator itself, ready to fly up and attack us in the […]

Jen Mazza’s latest paintings mix trompe l’oeil with the school of appropriation. Adding overlays of heavy punctuation marks and solid geometric shapes, they can convey the harmony of a duet, or the mischievous twist of black bars hiding the face of someone in a compromising position. The muted colors and meticulous details perfectly evoke the […]

Elisabetta Benassi’s work The Dry Salvages is an impressively large orange book, which at first glance appears to be a specific resource, packed with a decidedly organized volume of information. A little further digging and an inspection of the introduction page reveals the fact that it is actually a collection of 10,000 entries, each specific […]