In Part 2 of Andrea Kirsh’s annual roundup of the best in art books, there is something for everyone on your holiday gift list from lovers of figurative painting to abstract sculpture fans. There’s also something for everyone to learn, whether it’s about a previously under-appreciated regional artist or the most famous self-promoter in the history of Modern Art.
Read MoreDeb Krieger takes an early tour of The Complicit Eye, lauded ceramicist Kukuli Velarde’s first major solo show of paintings in Philadelphia. This provocative body of work, on view at Taller Puertorriqueño through April 30, 2019, reveals Velarde’s long-standing use of self-portraiture as a mode of intersectional feminist critique.
Read MoreFor over a decade, Massachusetts-based artist, Gina Siepel has been using woodworking and other craft techniques to grapple with the myth of self-reliance and its relationship to both gender and nationalism. Here Levi Bentley speaks with Siepel about “Self-Made,” her current installation of objects, video and documents at Vox Populi, and pens a thoughtful response to the exhibition’s central themes. We can’t recommend this show enough, so read on and catch it before it closes on December 16, 2018.
Read MoreAs we grapple with harrowing images emerging daily from California’s still-raging wildfires, Michael Lieberman turns his attentions towards a local exhibition which addresses humanity’s devastating impact on the land. Not only does “Nature’s Nation — American Art and Environment,” on view through January 6, 2019 at the Princeton University Art Museum, look back at how the visual arts have historically shaped Americans’ understanding of our environment, but it also explores how artists can impact the current climate crisis.
Read MoreOlivia Jia doesn’t just write about art, she is also a painter in her own right who is deeply curious about the fate of contemporary painting and its potential to tell new stories. Here she tells us about a painter and University of the Arts alum, Stephen W. Evans, whose works confound the deeply-rooted nationalism of the American landscape tradition. If there was ever a time to rethink our relationship to history and the land, that time is now!
Read MoreAndrea Kirsh pens an appreciation of Make Me a Summary of the World, Indian-American artist Rina Banerjee’s solo show currently up at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Densely layered in materials and meaning, this exhibition addresses the legacy of colonialism and the transnational nature of the contemporary art world through sensuous textures and bright colors. Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World is on view through March 31, 2019.
Read MoreJanyce Glasper offers a poetic reflection of John Dowell’s current exhibition at the African American Museum of Philadelphia, Cotton: The Soft, Dangerous Beauty of the Past. On view through January 21, 2019, this installation of large-scale prints and medium-format digital collages explores slavery, not as a particularly southern phenomenon, but as an institution that haunts our nation from Alabama from Wall Street. What’s more, Dowell uses the symbolic force of cotton to carve out a space for personal reflection and collective celebration.
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