Chip Schwartz ruminates on a group exhibition that parodies a birthday party. The morose and irony-tinged paintings and sculptural objects suggest the artists have long since taken off the rose-tinted glasses of childhood.
Read MoreKathy Cho considers aspects of art and the artist’s life and brings to the reader’s attention several web projects to explore. We find the question of race in Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, based on a photo of the slain Emmitt Till, especially important to ponder. Why did Schutz make this grotesque portrayal (based on a shocking photo of the young man in his open casket)? Why did the Whitney Museum choose to exhibit it in the Biennial, their signature show?
Read MoreArtblog’s newest contributor, Ephraim Russell, writes about a highly-researched and thought-provoking exhibition by Tyler Kline, that asks how and whether art can respond to present-day technological advances that are changing our environment and may be changing our very humanity.
Read MoreThe landscape architect of Rail Park’s Phase 1, Studio Bryan Haynes, traded manicured beauty for artfully rusting cor-ten steel beams to preserve the site’s legacy. “Dawn Chorus” also works with its Rail Park site, embedded with an ethos of rehabilitation, not reinvention.
Read MoreIn Unwritten Wills, Nandini Chirimar uses still life drawings explore the themes of memory and loss. The objects profiled in these works belong to Chirimar’s late father and her nanny, before they both passed away within a span of a year in 2015. Through these meticulous illustrations the artist has formed an intimate connection with her father and nanny’s life histories. The creative decision to present some of these personal items in their original form, like one of the metal trunks and its contents belonging to her nanny, alongside their two-dimensional renderings in pencil made me feel like I was sharing in a tangible and immediate experience with the departed. The artist transforms the solitary, contemplative act of drawing itself into an act of commemoration and remembrance of her departed loved ones.
Read MoreChicago-based painter and sculptor Himmelfarb’s recent projects consist of drawing, painting and assembling trucks–both toy-sized sculptures and actual vintage pickups loaded with an assortment of rusted objects and found detritus. His works are a kind of history on wheels, sojourners in time. And Venice, with its pronounced absence of cars–and wheels in general–proved an interesting place to uncover the essence of our attachment to motion and John’s current interests.
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