It’s understandable that Lara Schnitger would want to move on after a decade of making her signature anthropomorphic bundles of wood and fabric. Too bad the three new sculptures in her latest solo show outshine the main offering, a series of lackluster fabric-on-canvas “paintings.” Wittily evoking recognizable character types like a glitzy matron or glamorous [...]
By Merrily Kerr
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Also tagged artist, contemporary, critic, exhibition, gallery, New York City, painting, photography, sculpture, tour, tours
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Can an artist use rhinestones and still be taken seriously? At first glance, Mickalene Thomas’s sparkly portraits of provocatively posed models hardly seem destined for the art-historical canon. But beyond the gaudy veneer, her paintings and videos empower their subjects—Middle-aged African-American women with different body types but a uniformly charismatic appeal—making this artist’s long-awaited New [...]
By Merrily Kerr
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Posted in Reviews
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Also tagged artist, contemporary, critic, exhibition, gallery, New York City, painting, photography, sculpture, tour, tours
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Casanovas, do not visit this show. In a juicy new twist on Sophie Calle’s practice of turning her private life into art, the artist invited 107 professional women, from a French intelligence officer to a Talmudic scholar, to respond to a Dear John e-mail she received. Predictably, the resulting dossier in text, photography and video [...]
By Merrily Kerr
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Posted in Reviews
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Also tagged artist, contemporary, critic, exhibition, gallery, New York City, painting, photography, sculpture, tour, tours
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The embroideries, drawings and watercolors in Jessica Rankin’s latest solo show, while serene on the surface, hide tumultuous thoughts. On panels of organdy, she’s stitched provocative textual fragments from a Babylonian creation myth, along with diaristic phrases from other sources, which together present a picture of celestial failings and human weakness. Beautiful yet restrained, the [...]
By Merrily Kerr
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Posted in Reviews
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Also tagged artist, contemporary, critic, exhibition, gallery, New York City, painting, photography, sculpture, tour, tours
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After he moved to Shanghai from New York in 2005, Chinese art star Zhang Huan hired a huge staff to man a factory-like studio; the enormous installations that fill PaceWildenstein’s two downtown galleries give ample evidence of the scale of his industry since. But the new work lacks Zhang’s signature risk-taking, making it feel safe, [...]
By Merrily Kerr
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Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized
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Also tagged artist, contemporary, critic, exhibition, gallery, New York City, painting, photography, sculpture, tour, tours
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Delia Brown paints subjects we love to hate. In the past, she’s depicted herself and her friends in a manner blatantly intended to arouse jealousy—flaunting their youth, sexiness and supposed wealth. Her latest series still unfolds amid the trappings of (borrowed) luxury, but adds cute kids as props in saccharine portraits of the artist and [...]
By Merrily Kerr
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Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized
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Also tagged artist, contemporary, critic, exhibition, gallery, New York City, painting, photography, sculpture, tour, tours
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