Evan gives props to the famous New York portraitist, Chuck Close, for being a virtuoso of photo techniques (everything from daguerrotypes to large-format Polaroids). But in a show of 90 prints, all very well executed, some of the works — and especially the celebrity photographs — fail to ignite empathy or excitement, he says. NOTE: This post was written prior to the sexual harassment charges against Close were made public. The article is about the artist’s photographs and does not deal with his behavior towards women.
Read MoreThe University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology hosts a powerful exhibition that juxtaposes work of contemporary Syrian artist Issam Hourbaj with antiquities from the regions of Iraq and Syria. The result is a meditation on loss and destruction that emphasizes the human face of the complex past and present of this region.
Read MoreEvan interviews Jeffrey Stockbridge about his moving and emotional Kensington Blues project, on view at Savery Gallery until June 2nd and available in book form as well.
Read MoreDid you make it to this year’s Art Book Fair? Now in its third year, this Philadelphia tradition features artists, writers, and editors from around the world. Meet some of them and check out the wares in this brief video.
Read MoreThe current show at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery brings together a diverse group of activist artists who critique consumer culture, colonialism, and the exploitation of the planet. Their goal, Evan says, is to get us out of the gallery and into the world to make meaningful change.
Read MoreLA is full of oddities, inevitable in a sprawl so expansive and diverse–Halpern’s eye has the ability to make the native seem alien and vice-versa. An image of a smoldering brush fire on a rocky slope, for example, seems pedestrian. Elsewhere, a woman outfitted stylishly in white fur, with jarring, raccoon-eyed makeup seems dropped to earth from space. But, captured in Halpern’s close-up style, she is as believable as the next person on the street.
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