Archive

Monthly Archives: January 2011

New guest blogger: Kevin Buist

New guest blogger: Kevin Buist

Thanks to Dorota Biczel for her fantastic series of writings on Polish, Peruvian, and Spanish contemporary artists (and Wojnarowicz too). Look out for more from her in the coming months. …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Ben Durham

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Ben Durham

Turkish and Other Delights columnist Elizabeth Wolfson is filling in for regular Inside the Artist’s Studio writer Georgia Kotretsos this month and next.  — Ed. Ben Durham lives and works …

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

As I am grieving the disappearance of the Minimalist from the pages of the New York Times, I am also pondering Mark Bittman’s statement from his farewell column, “the continuing …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The California Biennial: Collectives, Conversations, and Collaborations

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The California Biennial: Collectives, Conversations, and Collaborations

I first experienced the California Biennial in 2008 as a participant in Mary Kelly’s Flashing Nipple Happening.   Kelly had recruited around five dozen young women to gear-up in black …

Flash Points

Flash Points: Friends and Influence

Flash Points

Flash Points: Friends and Influence

Tonight, I am sitting in a red booth at Formosa Café in Hollywood, the Cantonese restaurant Frank Sinatra reportedly frequented when heartsick over Ava Gardner. Lana Turner came here too, …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

When One Day Is Not Enough

Teaching with Contemporary Art

When One Day Is Not Enough

With all of the mandatory testing that students must be put through it’s no wonder that most kids, especially in elementary grades, receive classes in visual and performing arts one …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Master of the Healing Arts

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Master of the Healing Arts

For many years, I was set on becoming a doctor of sorts. I had done an undergraduate thesis in experimental psychology, was doing research at a hospital, and on my …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Artists Are Like Rats

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Artists Are Like Rats

“We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.” — David Hockney Sometime in the afternoon on the second day …

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

Several months ago, even before I set my foot on Catalan ground, I was captivated by a seemingly modest photograph: a chocolate candy in a golden wrapper set on a …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights: Extramücadele/Extrastruggle

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights: Extramücadele/Extrastruggle

Extrastruggle is an enormous project which began in 1997. It works on imaginary demands from imaginary customers. Just like a graphic designer designing a logo for a client, it designs …

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Multiple Possibilities: An Interview with Dan Devening

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Multiple Possibilities: An Interview with Dan Devening

Dan Devening is an artist, educator (he’s on the faculty of the Paintings and Drawings Department of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and the creative force behind …

A-Z Cellular Compartment

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

In this week’s roundup, Janine Antoni is a top art chef, Shahzia Sikander is honored, Carrie Mae Weems explores the body, Andrea Zittel and Jeff Koons invite interaction, and more. …

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Martha Rosler’s Kitchen Mise-en-Scène

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Martha Rosler’s Kitchen Mise-en-Scène

In 2003, the Whitechapel Gallery in London invited Martha Rosler to recreate her classic video Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) as a live performance. She accepted the invitation by holding …

Art21 Extended Play

William Kentridge: “The Magic Flute”

Art21 Extended Play

William Kentridge: “The Magic Flute”

Dissecting the Social Self: A [Wo]Man, an Animal, and an Ambiguous “I.”

Dissecting the Social Self: A [Wo]Man, an Animal, and an Ambiguous “I.”

At the turn of December and January, the myriad summaries and best-of lists of the past year I browse through coincide with a more personal check-up. There is no better …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

I first encountered Rigo 23’s work this past summer staying with friends in San Francisco’s Mission, where Rigo 23 partially got his start as an artist through his engagement with …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Stupidity

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Stupidity

As promised last week, let’s talk about the plight Mr. Curtis Acosta finds himself in. As a public school teacher in Arizona, obviously a state with its share of issues …

Open Enrollment

Hello, Open Enrollment!

Open Enrollment

Hello, Open Enrollment!

It’s at moments such as these that I realize that I’m still really, really close to the beginning even though the development of dark, round, deep eye bags that require …

Open Enrollment

Introducing Open Enrollment’s Newest Writers

Open Enrollment

Introducing Open Enrollment’s Newest Writers

We are pleased to announce Open Enrollment’s incoming class for the Spring 2011 semester. Our newest correspondents will write from their outposts in Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, and NYC, where …

Jeffrey Augustine Songco, "The Opening Scene". Courtesy the artist.

Flash Points

Art Under the Influence

Flash Points

Art Under the Influence

After reading Flash Points Editor Rachel Craft‘s initial post (“Flash Points: What Influences Art?”) regarding William Kentridge’s love of the stage, I thought it would be appropriate to continue that line …

Visibility, Potency and Meaning: Making Sense of Art at the Crosshairs

Visibility, Potency and Meaning: Making Sense of Art at the Crosshairs

Since I made my first appearance on the Art21 blog about six weeks ago, commenting on the now-infamous censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly at the …

Cindy Sherman

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

In this week’s roundup, Ellen Gallagher engages the empirical, Cindy Sherman breaks out of the frame, Nancy Spero is honored, Cao Fei employs virtuality and more. Ellen Gallagher‘s latest work …

Letter from London

Letter from London | Porn, Porn Everywhere: Analog at Riflemaker Gallery.

Letter from London

Letter from London | Porn, Porn Everywhere: Analog at Riflemaker Gallery.

In this second and last guest blog post, Kerim Aytac fills in for our hero Ben Street this month. — Ed. Looking at Richard Nicholson’s elegiac contribution to the Analog …

New guest blogger: Dorota Biczel

New guest blogger: Dorota Biczel

Thanks to Caroline Picard for a record number of fabulous interviews. Follow her work back on her site, Lantern Projects. Up next is Dorota Biczel. Dorota Biczel is a Polish-born …

How To Stretch an Arm Through a Gap : An Interview with Ellen Rothenberg

How To Stretch an Arm Through a Gap : An Interview with Ellen Rothenberg

While Ellen Rothenberg works in a range of scale and material, there is a tactile quality to her work–a directness that calls attention to the body. I always think of …

Fostering Pragmatism: An Interview with Nadine Nakanishi

Fostering Pragmatism: An Interview with Nadine Nakanishi

Nadine Nakanishi has been working with Nick Butcher in their collaborative independent print shop since 2005. Under the shared moniker, Sonnenzimmer, they’ve made posters for such notables as Beach House, …

Art21 Extended Play

Krzysztof Wodiczko: Designer Adam Whiton

Art21 Extended Play

Krzysztof Wodiczko: Designer Adam Whiton

SUBSCRIBE TO EXCLUSIVE: RSS | ITUNES | YOUTUBE | ARTBABBLE Episode #133: Filmed at the Interrogative Design Group offices at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, designer Adam Whiton discusses his work …

Las Vegas Studio

Las Vegas Studio

“…We look backward at history and tradition to go forward; we can also look downward to go upward. And withholding judgment may be used as a tool to make later …

Occupying Multiple Scales at Once: An Interview with Hiro Sakaguchi

Occupying Multiple Scales at Once: An Interview with Hiro Sakaguchi

I am fascinated by varying scales of reference, especially when one has to negotiate multiple scales over the course of a single day. Hiro Sakaguchi works as an art handler, …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Big, Broad Bunker Hill

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Big, Broad Bunker Hill

Eli Broad, Los Angeles’s most aggressive philanthropist, nearly always wears solid, primary colored ties. Last Thursday, he wore a red one to unveil the plan for his new museum on …

Caution, You Are Being Watched: Deb Sokolow and You

Caution, You Are Being Watched: Deb Sokolow and You

Deb Sokolow invokes You, the audience. When engaging her work–wall drawings rife with text-narratives that revel in heist, hijinks and mystery, You are not a passive bystander. You are implicated …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working with Violent Images

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working with Violent Images

Only a few days ago I was all set to write a post that highlighted the plight of Curtis Acosta, an Arizona teacher who finds himself in the position of …

Active Blur: An Interview with Tsherin Sherpa

Active Blur: An Interview with Tsherin Sherpa

Tsherin Sherpa has a unique background. Trained as a Tibetan thangka painter in Nepal, he was raised within a specific regime of mark-making, proportion, and subject. Embedded in that tradition …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights: An Introduction

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights: An Introduction

Art21 is pleased to announce our newest column on the blog — the first of several new endeavors for 2011. Turkish and Other Delights is a column devoted to exploring …

Flash Points

Call For Artists: Creative Limitations

Flash Points

Call For Artists: Creative Limitations

The artist-gallery relationship presents a curious contradiction. That is, there is the notion that a gallery representing contemporary artwork has a certain responsibility for promoting challenging and inspiring ideas, whereas, …

At the Center: An Interview With Brandon Alvendia

At the Center: An Interview With Brandon Alvendia

While conversations continue (albeit tiredly) to predict the demise of physical book production, new publishers continue to produce books. There is a wealth of new, bright-eyed small presses all over …