Artblog | Reviews

March 4, 2022 by Andrea Kirsh

A tale of two storytellers at the Hirshhorn Museum, Laurie Anderson and Toyin Ojih Odutola

Andrea Kirsh visits the Hirshhorn Museum for two installations, one by Laurie Anderson and one by Toyin Ojih Odutola, that evoke thoughts of human – and cosmic – bodies in motion.

February 18, 2022 by Kate Brock

Sarah Gamble’s spiritual-abstract ‘Theory of Everything’ at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery

Kate Brock has a close encounter with Sarah Gamble’s paintings and drawings, works that Brock says are in the lineage of the “spiritual-abstract” of Hilma af Klint and the surrealism of Leonora Carrington. She also brings up the exoticism of Elvis! “I see Gamble’s kaleidoscopic worlds as an effort toward a speculative realm, wherein the spiritual, the creaturely, astronomical, atomic, and Elvis all bump into each other, and new poetry is formed.” Enjoy this great review, and catch the exhibit at Fleisher-Ollman, up until March 12, 2022.

February 3, 2022 by Patrick Coué

Complex and impassioned, Shwarga Bhattacharjee’s works at Twelve Gates Arts are immersive trips into personal and historical territory

Patrick Coué sees the materially-complex paintings by Shwarga Bhattacharjee and calls the works a perfect immersion into a reverie space far away from our “world of constant mediated inputs.” The works are both abstract historical landscapes and topographic maps, that are layered with meanings and feelings, Patrick says.

January 31, 2022 by Andrea Kirsh

The magic glow above Mary Obering’s paintings at Bortolami Gallery

Mary Obering’s geometric abstractions glow from the placement of gold leaf on their tops or sides and Andrea Kirsh says they are like nothing else being made today. The work is up at Bortolami through Feb. 26, we recommend you get over and see this under-known artist and her glowing works.

January 26, 2022 by Corey Qureshi

Neon in an intimate space creates ‘Electric Caverns’ at Hot-Bed’s Micro Gallery

Using hand-bent neon sculptures, artist Alissa Eberle installs a warm, candy-colored electric cavern into a small gallery space at HOT•BED. Our contributor Corey Qureshi’s review plays with the ideas of an intimate space treated with what are typically public and extroverted sign materials, and says the installation will put you in two different moods that feel loose and enjoyable. The show is up til Feb. 19, 2022.

January 20, 2022 by Andrea Kirsh

Sex, aging bodies and the human condition, Joan Semmel’s overdue first solo museum show, at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Feminist artist Joan Semmel’s first solo museum exhibit is long overdue. Our contributor Andrea Kirsh says that Semmel “…breaks taboos about the depiction of women, their bodies and their thoughts.” The show is at PAFA through April 3, 2022. Be sure to catch it.

January 11, 2022 by Kate Brock

Transparency, opacity and the limits of human understanding in Jennifer Packer’s “The Eye is not Satisfied with Seeing,” at the Whitney Museum

New Artblog Contributor Kate Brock reviews ‘Jennifer Packer: The Eye is Not Satisfied With Seeing,’ a retrospective of the painter’s radiant portraits, interiors, and funerary bouquets. “The lack of dimensional representation of Black people, especially Black women, in the history of painting… leaves the eye unsatisfied… Packer’s vision reveals the historic absences,” Kate says. Catch the show at the Whitney before it closes April 17, 2022.

January 6, 2022 by Susan Isaacs

‘Afro-American Images 1971’ exhibit is restaged by Delaware Art Museum in a museum mea culpa

“To write about the Black presence at the Delaware Art Museum is to recall the absence of curators, exhibitions, and artists,” says art historian and artist Simone Austin in the catalog for the re-staging of the exhibition ‘Afro-American Images 1971,’ now at the Delaware Museum. Our contributor Susan Isaacs gives the story of the current exhibition and its historical predecessor, and says, “The show is very important.”