Artblog | video

April 5, 2017 by Andrea Kirsh

When the plastic cracks or the motor fails, how do you conserve contemporary art, and should you? Part 1

After fifty years is “Zen for Film” an experience, an object, a projection, or a relic? Holling examines the early history of the work, contemporaneous artworks that raised similar questions, and protocols for institutions that would borrow and exhibit examples from various public collections. Some of Holling’s questions are now being answered by the artist’s estate, museums, and film archives–and they offer inconsistent answers. “Zen for Film,” whose subject is entirely bound with its materiality, raises particularly complex questions, and Holling is thoughtful, dogged, and modest in searching for answers. Her examination raises points common to enough 20th- and 21st-century works that art historians concerned with the record as well as curators and conservators tasked with exhibiting and caring for them will have to acknowledge them.

October 13, 2016 by Andrea Kirsh

Chicago Shine – The Freedom Principle at the ICA

Over the past couple of decades, almost all American art museums have claimed a mission to reach out to “underserved communities,” yet none of them have acknowledged that these communities have their own well-developed aesthetics of art and material culture. They differ from the mainstream, and the institutions have not been willing to embrace aesthetic values beyond their own. The first part of “The Freedom Principle” is remarkable for doing just that: exhibiting art–and music–that was selected by a group of artists largely excluded from the mainstream of their period, who developed a different set of aesthetic aspirations and standards.

October 12, 2016 by Roberta

Elaine Byrne – Classic material with a contemporary context

Irish artist Elaine Byrne makes work that uses Dante, James Joyce and other heady source material for her works with political and social commentary on contemporary issues. In one case she is calling out an Irish bank scandal, using Dante’s Purgatorio and a pilgrimage location in Ireland called St. Patrick’s Purgatory; in another she’s raising issues about anti-Semitism in the context of Joyce’s Cyclops section of Ulysses. The videos are captivating, and give so very much to chew over. Elaine’s Irish accent is part of the treat of this 38-minutes long podcast.

September 24, 2016 by Andrea Kirsh

Between Text and Textile – Ann Hamilton’s “habitus”

Hamilton always invokes more than one sense with her work; here it is the sight of the swirling fabric, the oddly musical sound of the pulley mechanisms, and the touch of the pulleys–which visitors are encouraged to operate–as well as the physical sense of wind on the body from both the swirling fabric and the river breezes.

April 3, 2016 by Andrea Kirsh

A Conceptual Bent in Dublin, Part II

The exhibition was one of dozens organized around Ireland to coincide with the centenary of the Easter Uprising, the bloody rebellion which failed militarily but initiated the movement towards Irish independence.

April 1, 2016 by Andrea Kirsh

A Conceptual Bent in Dublin, Part I

Both scientists and humanities scholars present details of their research methods either to back up their conclusions or interpretations, or for pedagogic purposes.

March 9, 2016 by Tina Plokarz

Rodney McMillian’s sinister The Black Show at the ICA

The Black Show makes me think about José Saramago’s epic novel “Blindness” (1997), in which blindness invokes darkness, oscillating between sociopolitical misconception and human malice. “I don’t think we did go blind,” reflects one of Saramago’s figures at the end.

February 12, 2016 by Tina Plokarz

Matt Mullican’s world of signs at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery

It seems to me that Matt Mullican doesn’t present ultimate solutions to these questions, but he ostensibly reveals a structural nexus behind the visual world driven by an archive of signs and symbols.