Despite a month of chilling temperatures, Joan Semmel’s captivating new paintings on view in A Necessary Elaboration at Alexander Gray Associates (January 10 – February 16, 2019) bestow a welcome rush of warmth and meditative calm upon gallery-goers. In a series of works produced within the last two years, Semmel demonstrates her mastery of color and the sculptural application of…
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Master Manipulator: Bruce Nauman at MoMA
Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts opened in March at the Schaulager Museum in Basel, Switzerland, to rave critical reviews and social media buzz. Here in New York, the work is presented in two parts between the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, and although the curators refrain from calling it a retrospective, according to the museum website it is “the…
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Door to Manhattan: An Interview with Curator Kelly Baum
One of the major advantages of studying at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU is that our school is situated in New York City. A course that I’m currently taking with Helen Gould Sheppard Professor in the History of Art Edward J. Sullivan is held off-site every week in a different archive, gallery, or museum located in the city.…
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Fleeting Structures: Diana Al-Hadid at the Bronx Museum
Addressing themes not often united in contemporary art exhibitions, the Bronx Museum of the Art’s stellar presentation of Diana Al-Hadid: Delirious Matter (July 18—October 14, 2018) challenges the viewer to consider architecture, the female body, and public space. Organized by Lauren Schell Dickens, a curator at the San José Museum of Art, the exhibition weaves these elements into a conversation…
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An Interview with Artist Nasrin Sheykhi
I was first intrigued by the Iranian artist Nasrin Sheykhi’s collage drawings and then by her story, and how she has navigated a perilous path as an immigrant to the United States with acerbic wit. Sheykhi did not speak until she was three years old and when she began to speak it was when her mother taught her how to…
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The Work of Post-Memory in “This Happened Here” at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
“The horror of looking is not necessarily in the image but in the story we provide to fill in what is left out of the image.” -Marianne Hirsch [1] A recent survey conducted in February 2018 by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found that 49% of Millennials cannot name a single concentration camp or ghetto among the dozens…
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Smashing Windows: Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Intersectional Feminism, and Black Empowerment
Never shy about her political stance, Beyonce openly endorsed candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, making clear her belief that the future is female. Her album Lemonade, which Beyoncé produced the same year and complemented with powerful video content, illustrates her feminist stance through explicitly political, but also personal references. One of the most memorable scenes from Lemonade…
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Art World Meets Instagram
In a gallery off to one side in the ongoing (through May 28, 2018) retrospective on the photography of Stephen Shore at the Museum of Modern Art is a row of iPads linked continuously to Shore’s ever-changing Instagram account. While Shore’s work has always strived to replicate quotidian experiences, it feels strange to scroll through the account while surrounded by…
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An Interview with Hu Xiangqian
In early November, IFA MA student Cindy Qi interviewed Hu Xiangqian, whose work is currently exhibited at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU as a part of the fall Duke House Exhibition chin(a)frica: an interface, on view through February 18, 2018. Hu Xiangqian (b. 1983) was born in Leizhou, Guangdong Province and graduated in 2007 from Guangzhou Academy of Fine…
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Unpacking the Layers of Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined
When visitors step into the Whitney’s first-floor gallery, which currently houses Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined, they risk forgetting that they are standing in a museum. There is a softness to the space that distances it from the rest of the building, its warm lighting and the pink color of the walls evoking a feeling of intimacy that is…
