Meriem Bennani 2 Lizards and Siham & Hafida

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Two Moroccan women navigate the changing face of traditional Aita music in Meriem Bennani’s mesmerizing video ‘Siham & Hafida’ from ’17, seen here at The Kitchen in a photo from New York Art Tours’ archive.  Two quite different characters – a pair of lizards in Brooklyn – navigate a separate set of challenges in Bennani’s new video series, launched with filmmaker friend Orian Barki in mid-March as a break from COVID-19 mandated isolation.  Entertaining and short, the videos speak to the surreal quality of life during the pandemic. (Episode One.  Episode Two).

Meriem Bennani, still from the video installation Siham & Hafida, The Kitchen, 2017.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen at jamescohan.com

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

The centerpiece of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s current on-line show at James Cohan Gallery is  ‘The Boat People,’ a video about a heroic group of survivor children who’ve become the last humans alive.  They parade through their lonely world carrying wooden artifacts (sculpture hand crafted in Bataan, Philippines) that speak to war and migration pre-apocalypse.  The Bodhisattva Guanyin reappears throughout the exhibition (here making a benevolent gesture), repeatedly orienting the narrative toward compassion.  In a must-see video, Nguyen explains that the dark, burned areas on the wood point to fire as ‘a strong metaphor for freedom and liberation, both spiritual and political.’ (On view through May 3rd).

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Offering Of A Sentient Cry (detail – right hand only), hand-carved gmelina wood, 26.5 x 15.5 x 9 inches, 2019.

Rebecca Morris at bortolamigallery.com

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Exhibition walkthroughs and artist interviews have abounded since the pandemic cut off access to physical gallery spaces, but few videos have been as engaging and personal as Rebecca Morris’ recent Q & As with painter friends at bortolamigallery.com.  The untitled work here from New York Art Tours’ archive (May ’16) prefigures the silver and gold paint and the play between organic and inorganic shapes prominent in her show installed through June at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca.

Rebecca Morris, Untitled (#02-16), oil and spray paint on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, 2016.

Curtis Talwst Santiago at The Drawing Center

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Canadian-Trinidadian artist Curtis Talwst Santiago’s invented ancestors are conduits to an inaccessible past, allowing him to imagine the lives of those who came before him.  The fabulously beaded Jab Jab Knight seen here breaks through a wall of netting and stone to dominate Santiago’s recent show at Rachel Uffner Gallery; at the Drawing Center where the artist’s drawings and installations are now on view on-line, Santiago walks visitors through the show, introducing his knights and inspiring consideration of ‘genetic imagination.’

Curtis Talwst Santiago, The Jab Jab Knight, wire and beads, 82 x 24 x 24 inches, 2020.

Liza Lou & makers at #apartogether_art

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Liza Lou is no stranger to communal art projects, having run studios in California and South Africa employing dozens of craftspeople to hand-make sheets of beads as seen in this textile piece at Lehmann Maupin Gallery from fall ‘18.  Now isolated in her studio by the pandemic, she’s launched #apartogether_art, an open invitation to the on-line community to take inspiration from childhood security blankets and make textiles using materials at hand.  With hundreds of postings, the project testifies to the ubiquity and diversity of the creative impulse.  (Also accessible via apartogether.com).

Pannus, oil paint on woven glass beads and thread, 89 x 95 x 6 inches (approximately overall), 2018.