DAM’s Jeffrey Gibson exhibit takes a powerful swing at Native American invisibility — Ray Mark Rinaldi
The Denver Post , 05.18.2018

Jeffrey Gibson wants to make connections: Between Native American tradition and contemporary art, between anger and release, oppression and expression, masculine and feminine, between the tipi architecture of his ancestors and the easy-breezy music of George Michael, Stevie Wonder and Public Enemy.

Deciphering Inka Essenhigh’s Blurred Visions — Peter Malone
Hyperallergic , 05.18.2018

Inka Essenhigh — to suggest an artist who exemplifies this more open attitude — seems like many of her generation, immune to anxieties related to fusing abstraction with figuration. But her inaugural exhibition at Miles McEnerythis spring reveals an even greater level of freedom and invention, a freedom that resonates unapologetically with all manner of fusion: of figure and design, of abstraction and narrative, of sentiment and humor, and more generally a fusion of ambitious painting with a readable narrative.

FRONT’s ‘Great Lakes Research’ show, including 6 artists from NEO, may have a chip on its shoulder — Steven Litt
Cleveland.com, 05.14.2018

Grabner, 55, is a Milwaukee-based artist, a longtime professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a veteran curator who co-organized the 2014 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She said in a recent visit to Cleveland that she viewed it as her "obligation" to champion the artists of the Great Lakes and to correct what she called the "fraudulent" narrative that dominant art world centers such as New York or London should have to last word on quality and importance.

Questions about her art? Ask away — Rami Yoakum
Southside Daily , 05.11.2018

“Inka Essenhigh will be speaking about her incredible career as one the leading contemporary artists working today,” said Sallie Wiggins, spokeswoman for MOCA. “She will discuss what has inspired her vision and will encourage questions and remarks from the audience.”

Black Canadian contemporary art alongside From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face Picasso — Montreal Times
Montreal Times , 05.11.2018

Developed by the Royal Ontario Museum, Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art challenges preconceived notions of Blackness in Canada through the work of eight contemporary artists, to which the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has added three Montreal artists in its presentation: Sandra Brewster, Sylvia D. Hamilton,Chantal Gibson, Bushra Junaid, Charmaine Lurch, Esmaa Mohamoud, Michèle Pearson Clarke and Gordon Shadrach, as well as Montrealers Eddy Firmin a.k.a. Ano, Manuel Mathieu and Shanna Strauss.

Manuel Mathieu Kavi Gupta / Chicago — Caroline Elbaor
Flash Art , 05.11.2018

In what is the artist’s stateside debut, staged at Kavi Gupta, painter Manuel Mathieu presents a new body of work that expands upon his ongoing multilayered research into trauma and memory, and by extension solitude and vulnerability. These poignant and emotionally confrontational paintings leave a piercing impression.

JEFFREY GIBSON BREAKS THE RULES AT THE DENVER ART MUSEUM — TED LOOS
Cultured , 05.11.2018

A happy vibe pervades Gibson’s huge studio, located in a former grade school in a small town. Different rooms are designated for different activities and in the large gym, house music is playing. Late on a Friday, Gibson is painting away on a canvas featuring a dense grid of triangular reds in slightly different hues. Nearby, his assistants, more of them women than men today, are at work creating colorful garments, and some of them are dancing to the beat while they do it.

What Happens When Art History Gets Refigured — Jane Levere
Smithsonian Magazine, 05.09.2018

That theme of redefining mainstream narratives of history and representation holds throughout Figuring History, an exhibition of 26 works by three successive generations of African-American artists: Colescott, Kerry James Marshall and Mickalene Thomas. Catharina Manchanda, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, said she began thinking about the ideas of history and representation in art during the Obama administration. “All of a sudden we found ourselves presented with the historical importance of his presidency, and at the same time questions about race in every aspect of everyday life became part of an active public conversation,” she said.

Sculpture Milwaukee fills out its list of artists for 2018 (excerpt) — On Milwaukee
On Milwaukee, 05.04.2018

Over the past decade, Chicago-based artist Tony Tasset has been making surreal sculptures that draw imagery from American popular culture. Like Pop artist Andy Warhol before him, Tasset looks for images or ideas that are simple and easily understood, allowing the visitor to bring their own set of meanings to each work.

Natural Tendencies: A Studio Visit with Sculptor Richard Hunt — Phillip Barcio
Michigan Quarterly Review , 05.02.2018

In his illustrious and prolific career, Hunt established himself as very possibly the most productive public sculptor in the United States. His more than 125 public sculptures grace everything from the grassy sweeps of idyllic public parks to the imposing facades of steel and glass skyscrapers. He has been commissioned by corporations, hospitals, museums, municipalities, universities, and athletic organizations. One of his proudest recent accomplishments is the welded bronze sculpture Swing Low (2016), which hangs in the lobby of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, the newest Smithsonian institution.

Frieze Celebrates Pioneering New York Art Dealer Hudson — Paul Laster
Galerie Magazine , 05.02.2018

Visible outside the fair’s massive white tent are recent sculptures by Tom Friedman and Tony Tasset, presented by Stephen Friedman Gallery and Kavi Gupta, respectively. Inside, works from when they showed with Hudson are on view in each gallery’s booths. Tasset, who started out with Hudson in 1986, right after getting his MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, had six solo shows with the gallery through 1994...

Michelle Grabner on Beverly Fishman — Michelle Grabner
Art Forum, 05.01.2018

Assigning a physical or mental ailment to each shape in her titles, Fishman engages her fascination with the pharmaceutical industry and how its aesthetic choices advance the market. Although the shapes composing the paintings do not take the form of pills, tablets, or capsules, they provide Fishman with a comparable abstract lexicon. 

Frieze Salutes Feature Inc., the Visionary Gallery That Changed the Art World — Carl Swanson
Vulture, 05.01.2018

It consists of artists who had shown with Feature, and are now sold by their current galleries; some of the work is from back in the day, but much of it is new. (“I wasn’t interested in it being a historical section,” says Higgs.) David Zwirner will present Pettibon; Gagosian, Murakami; Nicelle Beauchene, Andrew Masullo; CANADA, Jason Fox and Daniel Hesidence; Kavi Gupta, Tony Tasset; David Kordansky, Tom of Finland; Karma, Dike Blair; Stephen Friedman, Tom Friedman. Fourteen other former Feature artists, including Kern and Wurtz, will be shown in their own group booth.

Making an anti-monument: Chicago artist Tony Tasset plans giant hand for FRONT Triennial — Steven Litt
Cleveland.com, 04.29.2018

Chicago artist Tony Tasset said he first bought his wife flowers and made dinner reservations before asking her to stick her right hand in a bucket of goo for the greater glory of art.

Last Chance To See Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas At Seattle Art Museum — The Seattle Medium
The Seattle Medium , 04.27.2018

Kerry James Marshall and Mickalene Thomas both created new paintings specifically for the exhibition. Thomas also presents a popular “living room” installation that visitors can interact with, filled with seating, plants, and books by Black authors.

Artist list for 10th edition —
E-flux, 04.25.2018

We don't need another hero: The 10th Berlin Biennale is curated by Gabi Ngcobo with a curatorial team composed of Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, Serubiri Moses, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Yvette Mutumba.

Here’s the Full List of Participating Artists for the 10th Berlin Biennale — Kate Brown
Art Net , 04.25.2018

Ana Mendieta, Firelei Báez, Sondra Perry, and Oscar Murillo are among the 46 artists and collectives included in this year’s Berlin Biennale. Organized by curator Gabi Ngcobo, the highly anticipated exhibition, “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” takes its name from a 1985 Tina Turner song of the same title.

BERLIN BIENNALE RELEASES ARTIST LIST FOR TENTH EDITION — Art Forum
Art Forum, 04.25.2018

Curated by Gabi Ngcobo, this year’s biennial, titled “We don’t need another hero,” is named after a Tina Turner song from 1985. The exhibition invites artists and contributors “to confront the incessant anxieties perpetuated by a willful disregard for complex subjectivities.” It will run from June 9 to September 9.

One New Honor for 213 Exceptional Individuals: American Academy of Arts and Sciences Elects New Members — PR Newswire
PR Newswire , 04.18.2018

"Membership in the Academy is not only an honor, but also an opportunity and a responsibility," said Jonathan Fanton, President of the American Academy. "Members can be inspired and engaged by connecting with one another and through Academy projects dedicated to the common good. The intellect, creativity, and commitment of the 2018 Class will enrich the work of the Academy and the world in which we live." 

From Baselitz to Burning Man: 28 Can’t-Miss Museum Shows to See in the United States This Spring (excerpt) — Caroline Goldstein & Sarah Cascone
Art Net , 04.11.2018

The abstracted works are informed by his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, as well as the formative pop-cultural events that define America.

Massive, colorful mural will soon grace downtown Detroit’s skyline — Ryan Patrick Hooper
Detroit Free Press, 04.05.2018

A new 170-foot-by-60-foot mural by accomplished artist and educator Beverly Fishman will rank among the largest pieces of public art in the city once it’s finished by early May.

Beverly Fishman’s abstract art to color downtown Detroit with new, 170-foot mural — Violet Ikonomova
Detroit Metro Times , 04.05.2018

Speaking via e-mail, Fishman says the mural’s “rhythmic repetitions” were designed to counterpoint the building’s horizontal balconies and were inspired by the “pulse of the city’s electronic music scene” as well as “the echo of its assembly lines.”

Two Chicago Exhibitions Elaborate on Emptiness and Space — Phillip Barcio
Hyperallergic , 04.04.2018

I left this exhibition reflecting on how artists can invite us to examine our understanding of emptiness. Fishman has deftly restated the invitation to turn to art as a source of psychic replenishment.

10 Art Exhibitions in the U.S. Worth Traveling for This Spring (excerpt) — Allison C. Meier
Afar, 04.02.2018

Jeffrey Gibson’s beaded punching bags are emblazoned with statements such as “OUR FREEDOM IS WORTH MORE THAN OUR PAIN”; the materials and messages reflect both strength and rage.

News: Upcoming exhibitions at the High to feature work by Yayoi Kusama, Yuri Suzuki (excerpt) — ArtsATL
ArtsATL, 03.29.2018

The exhibition, organized by the High Museum of Art in collaboration with Los Angeles–based conceptual artist Glenn Kaino, considers the historic gesture of gold medal sprinter Tommie Smith as he raised a fist at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico to protest abuse of human rights around the world and in response to the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

Glenn Kaino and the art of hope — Christin Kay
Aspen Public Radio , 03.26.2018

Kaino often makes statements about current social issues and politics in his art.  He feels a responsibility to use his platform to help people see another point of view. 

Virginia MOCA Presents Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line — Hyperallergic
Hyperallergic , 03.19.2018

Essenhigh’s large-format paintings will illuminate MOCA’s TowneBank Galleries with otherworldly expression. Ghosts and gods, monsters and maenads, carry Essenhigh’s portrayal of the 21st-century human from her brush into the viewer’s imagination.

FRONT announces outdoor projects and big installations for regional exhibit opening July 14 — Steven Litt
Cleveland.com, 03.16.2018

Jointly developed by FRONT and the Putnam Collection of outdoor art at CWRU, Tasset's project will involve creating an oversize, highly accurate fiberglass representation of the hand of the artist's wife, painter JudyLedgerwood, which will double as a shelter and gathering spot.

Documenting the age of Anthropocene — Tejal Pandey
The Hindu , 03.16.2018

Drawing on images of familiarity, Manish Nai, known to work with minimal structures created from ubiquitously found material, presents the viewer with what resembles a pyramid. Long narrow bars stacked one upon another, on a closer look reveal printed garments glued together, that one sees in street markets everywhere. This untitled pyramid though is hardly a marker of a glorious past, reminding one instead, of the ever growing heaps of thoughtlessly disposed garbage, generated by a vicious cycle of consumerism that plagues our towns and cities.

What to see at the first FRONT International Cleveland Triennial — Olivia Martin
The Architects Newspaper , 03.16.2018

At Case Western Reserve University, FRONT artistic director Michelle Grabner and the university commissioned Chicago-based artist and sculptor Tony Tasset to create a pavilion for the 34,000-square-foot plaza at the university. The result, Judy’s Hand Pavilion, represents the hand of Tasset’s wife touching down on the earth. “It has this great interplay of masculine and feminine because it is clearly a woman’s hand, but also has these God-like references reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam,” Grabner said.

The mystical worlds of artist Inka Essenhigh to open at MOCA — Denise M. Watson
The Virginian-Pilot, 03.15.2018

Her pieces now hang in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., Richmond’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Tate in London. The Drawing Center in New York commissioned Essenhigh to paint a site-specific wall drawing that will be unveiled in April.

Spring Preview: The Most Promising Museum Shows and Biennials Around the World — Art News
ART News, 03.14.2018

For Gibson’s first major institutional exhibition, the Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor will show work made between 2011 and the present—a period in which the artist’s practice began to allude to his Native American roots. Take the show’s titular sculpture, for example, which is made with, among other materials, elk hide, glass beads, and a wool blanket. Its rich patterning is at once totemic and psychedelic, recalling everything from indigenous craft objects to the defunct Rhode Island collective Forcefield. The 65-work show will bring together sculptures, videos, and installations that reflect on the legacy of colonialism, in ways both darkly ironic and not. —J.C.

Spring Preview: The Most Promising Museum Shows and Biennials Around the World (excerpt) — Art News
Art News , 03.14.2018

For Gibson’s first major institutional exhibition, the Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor will show work made between 2011 and the present—a period in which the artist’s practice began to allude to his Native American roots.

Why you must catch Asymmetrical Objects at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum — Tasneem Zakaria Mehta
Verve magazine, 03.13.2018

We invited 10 of our foremost artists whose practices include an interest in nature and science, to explore the Age of the Anthropocene and its impact on the environment and its effects on biodiversity. Jitish Kallat’s work powerfully encapsulates issues surrounding water; Manish Nai evokes notions of consumption and excess.

30 Must-See Artists at the Armory Show — Martha Schwendender
The New York Times , 03.08.2018

Jeffrey Gibson is a painter, but he also makes ceremonial-style garments, inspired by Native American Ghost Dance shirts. Several wonderful examples, presented by the gallery Kavi Gupta (Booth 611), are suspended from the ceiling in Pier 94.

Jeffrey Gibson Designs Vibrant Garments to Confound Cultural Assumptions — Phillip Barcio
Hyperallergic , 03.06.2018

By confronting every visitor to the Armory Show with these garments, Gibson pushes the boundaries normally imposed by context. He invites consumers of culture to reach beyond outdated understandings. Poly-national, multi-ethnic, and omnigendered, these garments are not relics of the past.

Beverly Fishman conjures the ‘Chemical Sublime’ at Kavi Gupta — Megan D. Robinson
Art and Object , 02.26.2018

The carefully crafted forms and brilliant, neon-edged colors are both soothing and unsettling, reflecting the double-edged relationship we have with technology: it can both harm and heal.

Into the Blue: Dhaka Art Summit 2018 (excerpt) — Into the Blue: Dhaka Art Summit 2018
Ocula, 02.23.2018

Also standing in peaceful protest, albeit as a reminder of a different historical struggle, was Manish Nai's Untitled (2017): five large sticks wrapped in compressed strips of burlap dyed indigo leaning upright against a wall. The work recalls the bloody history of indigo planting in Bengal, when the British turned farmers from food to indigo cultivation, offering loans at interest rates that left farmers, forced to convert their crop, in debt. (The frustration and despair caused by the resultant precarity swelled into an uprising in 1859 that was violently suppressed by colonial forces.)

Turn of the Tide celebrates 20 years of Khoj support for artists across mediums, ideas — Indulge Express
Indulge Express, 02.21.2018

The 20/20 artists who have generously gifted their works to the association include Abir Karmakar, Amshu Chukki, Andrew Anand Voogel, Benitha Perciyal, Bhuvanesh Gowda, Kartik Sood, Katyayini Garg, Manish Nai, Pallavi Paul, Prabhakar Pachpute, Pranay Dutta, Rakhi Peswani, Rohini Devasher, Sachin George Sebastian, Sahej Rahal, Sahil Naik, Shailesh BR, Shreyas Karle, Shweta Bhattad, Sumakshi Singh and Surabhi Saraf.

A ‘Shout’ for Action at the CAC — Maria Seda-Reeder
City Beat, 02.20.2018

Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Glenn Kaino’s first mid-career survey, A Shout Within a Storm, exhibits the work of the trained sculptor, whose choice of media is inventively fluid. The Contemporary Arts Center’s exhibit, curated by Steven Matijcio, shows how that fluidity allows for the artist’s continued investigations of ways to visualize the actions of social-justice movements.

A Groundbreaking Show Presents a New, Inclusive Vision of American Art — Roberta Smith
New York Times, 02.15.2018

WASHINGTON — Anyone interested in American modernism should see “Outliers and American Vanguard Art” at the National Gallery of Art. Flaws and all, this groundbreaking adventure highlights outstanding, sometimes rarely-seen artworks; revives neglected histories; and reframes the contributions of self-taught artists to this country’s rich visual culture

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum — e-flux
e-flux, 02.11.2018

The exhibition title is drawn from the work of Timothy Morton who the Guardian calls “the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene.” The Anthropocene is a concept that looks at man’s alienation from nature through deep time and the geological cataclysms it has initiated. Morton has characterized the phase we are in as the "Asymmetrical Phase" in which forces beyond our cognition that he calls "hyperobjects" take on a life of their own, much like the objects we create and house in a Museum develop a life removed from their maker.

When reusing discarded household items becomes art — Dhriti Gandhi Ranjan
The Week, 02.09.2018

There are plenty of things in our house that we discard after daily use. Ever wondered how these products can be transformed into pieces of art? Manish Nai knows it. He passionately collects discarded materials from daily life and reuses them to make sculptures.

Manuel Mathieu: reflections on abstract painting and trauma — Raquel Villar-Pérez
Africanah, 02.07.2018

As an artist I think there is a capacity to dig in to very precise subjects or concerns and find elements that people relate to, it is our strength. It is through singularity that people connect and transcend reality.

Spieltrieb: Polly Apfelbaum, Beverly Fishman, Ryan Mrozowski, Kathleen Ryan — David Rhodes
The Brooklyn Rail, 02.07.2018

The representation of emotional and physical pain relief becomes an invitation to something altogether different—brightly colored minimalist constructions—both analogy and critique in a powerful hit of spiked formalism.

Manuel Mathieu’s “Nobody is Watching” at Kavi Gupta, Chicago — BLOUIN ARTINFO
BLOUIN ARTINFO, 02.06.2018

Titled "Nobody is Watching” by Manuel Mathieu’ this is a solo exhibition of original work by Manuel Mathieu. Although known as an interdisciplinary artist, Manuel is always drawn back to his paintbrushes. His approach to art is through the quest of self in the vast landscape of solitude and isolation. The artists creates new works and stylized paintings that are at once highly personal and provocative, yet at the same time slightly unnerving in their intimacy.

Prescription Pills Inspire Beverly Fishman’s Vivid Polychrome Reliefs — Annie Block
Interior Design , 02.06.2018

Fishman started the series six years ago with depictions of single pills. The 10 appearing in “Chemical Sublime,” at Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago, February 24 to April 28, however, are larger and more complex.

Soulful: ‘Art in the Age of Black Power’ at Crystal Bridges — Leslie Newell Peacock
Arkansas Times, 01.31.2018

If you didn’t see those exhibitions last year, then you really must not miss “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,”works by 60 of America’s finest African-America artists from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Jeffly Gabriela Molina’s ‘Suspiro’ at Kavi Gupta, Chicago — BLOUIN ARTINFO
BLOUIN ARTINFO, 01.30.2018

Molina’s new exhibit investigates the quality, character, or sentiment that enables the artist's reality to act upon the things he makes. He observes, give names to, and restage unconscious gestures, habits, fleeting poses, and sometimes absurd situations. These things that the artist observes, writes down, and sketches, often merge with memories drawn loosely from the places he has lived, both in Venezuela and the United States.

College Art Association Announces 2018 Awards for Distinction (excerpt) — Andrew Russeth
Art News, 01.26.2018

Firelei Báez wins the Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work

10 of India’s top artists come together for a Mumbai exhibition — Phalguni Desai
Vogue India, 01.24.2018

Manish Nai brings his signature compressions of waste material turned into sculpture while Prajakta Potnis explores the effects of sterile spaces on the human mind. Reena Kallat and Shilpa Gupta explore the myriad relationships between humans and various entities. In a continuation of her series Hyphenated Lives, Kallat creates new hybrids between species that have historically been seen as symbols of India and Pakistan, creating a narrative of convergence and healing between the two nations.

Artistic Innovation at the Bronx Museum: an interview with Angel Otero — Phil Chan
Ivy Magazine, 01.17.2018

“This was easily one of my favorite shows of the year… the ideas were strong, the perspective clear, and the work definitely impressive,” says critic and curator Hrag Vartanian, highlighting visual artist Angel Otero’s show Elegies at the Bronx Museum. Writing for his arts blog Hyperallergic, Vartanian included Elegies as one of the top New York City art shows of 2017.

Review: Exploring Playfulness at Jack Hanley Gallery in new show titled “Spieltrieb” —
Juxtapose Magazine, 01.16.2018

Jack Hanley Gallery in New York is currently hosting a four person group show, titled Spieltrieb, featuring the works of Polly Apfelbaum, Beverly Fishman, Ryan Mrozowski and Kathleen Ryan. On view through February 4th, the show is a clever display of painting, sculpture and site specific installation.

Beverly Fishman at Kavi Gupta, Chicago — BLOUIN ARTINFO
BLOUIN ARTINFO, 01.09.2018

Beverly Fishman’s "Beverly Fishman” is a solo exhibition of original work combining the handmade with the industrial. The artist employs a variety of techniques to explore technological, scientific, and biological systems of perception and representation, instigating constructive conversations about the ways people see their bodies and minds, and construct their identities.

Painter Manuel Mathieu’s First Major Show Revisits Haiti’s Undiscussed, Traumatic Past — Sabo Kpade
Okayafrica., 01.08.2018

Manuel Mathieu is off to a great start. All the works in Truth To Power, his first major exhibition at Tiwani Contemporary in the UK, sold out and the closing date, originally slated for Dec. 22, has been pushed back through January.

‘Spieltrieb’ at Jack Hanley Gallery, New York — BLOUIN ARTINFO
BLOUIN ARTINFO, 01.02.2018

A similar play with opposites becomes evident in the works of Beverly Fishman. The titles of her wall reliefs “Untitled (a+b)” and “Untitled (double/pain)” reveal a formula to her seemingly sleek abstract compositions. Based on shapes and colors of prescription drugs and various medication like Prozac, Vicodin or Xanax, Fishman’s wall reliefs and works on paper suddenly possess a much darker quality that, despite and because of their bright colors, reference the current opioid addiction crisis.

Gerald Williams — Kyle MacMillan
Art in America , 01.01.2018

Kavi Gupta’s recent mini survey of Williams’s work comprised a dozen acrylic paintings dating from 1969 to 2017. It was the first solo show in more than twenty years for the artist, who, in 2015, after living in various places around the world (largely while serving as an arts administrator for the Air Force), returned to West Woodlawn, the South Side neighborhood where he grew up.

Best of 2017: Our Top 20 Exhibitions Across the United States —
Hyperallergic , 12.21.2017

At Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago, a retrospective paired Roger Brown: Estate Paintings, a selection of paintings and sculptures by the seminal Imagist artist, with Collecting came quite natural for me, a series of recreated assemblages of objects in Brown’s personal collections from his home in La Conchita, California.

Best of 2017: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows —
Hyperallergic , 12.20.2017

In the conversation with Motherwell, Otero has a lot to say, and I was happy to listen.

Crystal Bridges to temporarily close galleries for redesign —
The Joplin Globe, 12.19.2017

In other changes coming after the first of the year, "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power" will open on Feb. 3 in its U.S. debut. Focusing on the contribution of dozens of black artists, the exhibition features paintings, sculptures, street photography and murals. Tickets will be $10 per person and free for museum members and anyone younger than 18.

Firelei Baez’s Stirring, New Meditations on Femininity — Andy Smith
Hi-Fructose , 12.15.2017

Firelei Baez blends an array of techniques and materials to explore culture and femininity. Often using the figurative form as a base, she subverts the viewers’ expectations by implementing several textures, patterns, and materials.

Crystal Bridges announces renovations, new works and temporary closures of two galleries — Kevin Kinder
Fayetteville Flyer, 12.14.2017

Tony Tasset’s 2015 work “Deer,” constructed of fiberglass, epoxy and paint spanning 20 feet by 12 feet by 8 feet, will be on view starting Dec. 23 in Crystal Bridges’ North Forest Area.

Insiders’ tips: what not to miss at Art Basel in Miami Beach —
The Art Newspaper , 12.09.2017

My selection is Tony Tasset's Fallen Snowman (2017) at Kavi Gupta. The sculpture appears to be a real snowman collapsed on the floor; its head has rolled away from its body and it lacks eyes and a mouth.

Art Basel Miami Beach: Chicago Artist and AfriCOBRA Co-Founder Gerald Williams Debuts at Kavi Gupta Gallery — Victoria L. Valentine
Culture Type , 12.08.2017

Work by Williams and other AfriCOBRA artists is featured in “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” the group exhibition organized by the Tate Modern in London, which is scheduled to debut in the United States at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on Feb. 3, 2018, before traveling to the Brooklyn Museum.

10 Emerging Artists to Watch at Art Basel Miami Beach — Sara Roffino
Galerie Magazine , 12.01.2017

At this year’s ABMB, Kavi Gupta is including two of the artist’s recent paintings in their booth and will present the artist’s first North American solo show in February. Moving fluidly between figurative and abstract gestures, Mathieu’s paintings—which are priced between $15,000 and $20,000—are at once personal and political.

Beer with a Painter: Steve Mumford and Inka Essenhigh — Jennifer Samet
Hyperallergic , 11.25.2017

Essenhigh became known in the late 1990s for her enamel paintings of anime-like creatures inhabiting the voids of public or institutional spaces. Over the last several years, her work evolved into depictions of more universal mythologies and populated landscapes: tree spirits; goddesses; lilting, attenuated flora and fauna – first in oil paint, and now with a combination of enamel and oil.

Roxy Paine: ‘Denuded Lens’ — Ken Johnson
The New York Times , 11.14.2017

Roxy Paine is known for technically ambitious sculptures, like trees made of stainless-steel tubes, and computer-controlled machines that produce globby plastic sculptures.Lately he has taken to woodworking, creating realistic objects that look as if they had been transformed by a Midas with a wooden touch.

For Gerald Williams, a Co-Founder of AfriCOBRA, Transnational Black Aesthetics Are as Relevant as Ever — Phillip Barcio
Hyperallergic, 11.12.2017

All around me on the walls, the shelves, resting on the floor, are hundreds of artworks. Their dates of creation span from the mid-1960s to this morning. Their aesthetic approach ranges from graphic figuration to pure abstraction. Watercolors, collages, impasto oil paintings, flat acrylic works, sculptural reliefs, multi-dimensional kinetic works.

Glenn Kaino on reconsidering the everyday — T. Cole Rachel
The Creative Independent , 11.10.2017

My practice is designed to connect—using an internal language that we have at the studio—with systems of knowledge and production that don’t normally have a chance to connect. Whether it’s me working with Tommie Smith or me working in the world of magic with Derek DelGaudio or with biologists, it’s really about connecting different systems and learning how to operate on different time scales.

The Pacific has been filling Young-il Ahn’s canvases for decades. At 83, the L.A. artist is getting belated recognition. — Victoria Kim
La Times, 11.06.2017

He's been painting what he saw in that instant ever since, calling his evolving body of work the "Water Series." They are canvases of all sizes filled with meticulous square knife strokes that leap off the canvas like waves — at once still and dynamic, monochromatic and iridescent.

Single Work Appreciation Day: ‘Aquarius,’ Inka Essenhigh — Daniel Maidman
Huffington Post, 10.26.2017

The composition is unified in its broad shape and structure, and crisp and clean in its blues and aquas and greens and yellows. For all its empty passages and quiet zones, it is a crowded composition, echoing the crowded cosmology of certain cluttered artworks from the late middle ages and the early Renaissance.

Jeffrey Gibson: American. Native American. Gay. An artist’s life outside labels — David Pagel
LA Times, 10.07.2017

Gibson’s current works layer Native American beadwork, trading post blankets, metal studs, fancy fringes and jingles — dangling decorations for powwow regalia worn by Native American women that were once made from the lids of snuff and tobacco canisters but are now mass-produced in Taiwan in gold, silver and bronze.

John Legend to Produce Olympics Human Rights Salute Documentary — Althea Legaspi
Rolling Stone, 10.06.2017

"With Drawn Arms" will be co-directed by conceptual artist Glenn Kaino and Afshin Shahidi, who was Prince's cinematographer and photographer.

John Legend & Jesse Williams To EP 1968 Olympics Protest Salute Documentary — Dominic Patten and Amanda N'Duka
Deadline, 10.05.2017

“We are excited to collaborate with true artists in Glenn Kaino and Afshin Shahidi to bring this powerful story to the world in a fresh and compelling way,”said Oscar and Grammy winner Legend today of the co-directed docu.

Jeffrey Gibson: Post Contact — Jenelle Porter
Surface Design Journal, 10.02.2017

Jeffrey Gibson’s series of punching bag sculptures celebrates this multifaceted potency with colorful beads, painted surfaces, shiny metal jingles, and other adornments.

Jeffrey Gibson: These Practices Were Here Before You Were — Parker Ship
Flaunt, 09.21.2017

Gibson is an artist of both Cherokee and Choctaw descent. In his sculptural work, Gibson uses the technique, craft, and material of his Native American heritage while simultaneously appropriating the text of adjacent cultural production: literature, pop music, sermons, hymns. The results are bold, composite art pieces melding history and the ephemeral, locked-down, beaded, and bedazzled into three-dimensional space. The experience is both cataclysmic and layered.

At The Kemper, A ‘Treasure Hunt’ Leads From Colonial Louisiana To Today’s Kansas City — Vicky Diaz-Camacho
Kansas City University Radio, 08.25.2017

Báez says she studies United States, Latin American and Caribbean histories that usually aren’t taught in schools. For the Kemper, she decided to create a huge portrait of a woman, her hair covered by a tignon — a scarf that looks like a turban. Surrounding the image of the woman’s head, patterns from her tignon cover the wall like peeling paint, a wall of tattered indig

What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week (excerpt) — ROBERTA SMITH, MARTHA SCHWENDENER and WILL HEINRICH
New York Times, 07.27.2017

In “Study for Monsters of Manhattan,” Inka Essenhigh paints three mysterious women with watery lines and finely observed anatomical details. Alice Mackler’s earthenware figure combines squeezes, pokes and thumbprints with a rooster-colored glaze, creating a startling mannequin of bright-eyed psychological defiance.

Can you make out Basquiat’s name in this abstract art show? —
Phaidon , 07.13.2017

Tate Modern’s hit new exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, charts both important social changes in American politics, and also presents a number of once-obscure artists to an international...

Chicago Riverwalk Public Sculpture — Blouin Artinfo
BlouinArtinfo, 07.07.2017

“Chicago Riverwalk Public Sculpture Exhibition” will display works by Chicago artists Tony Tasset, Scott Reeder, Candida Alvarez, Sam Kirk and Tyrue “Slang” Jones. The works will be on view till November 1, 2017. The City of Chicago and...

Firelei Baez on Generosity and Freedom in Art — Angie Cruz
Asterix Journal , 07.06.2017

Latino and Caribbean artists have been working within mainstream American institutions all through history. Take Gordon Matta Clark for instance, who was of Chilean descent but is solely cited as an American Artist. It is through the efforts of courageous academics and artists within the last thirty or so years that artist like myself can proudly claim our Caribbean seat at the table. I am the first Caribbeña artist to have a solo show at The Warhol Museum.

New public art Installations have taken over Chicago Riverwalk — Zach Long
TimeOut, 06.30.2017

The Year of Public Art is kicking into gear this summer and the Chicago Riverwalk is getting in on the citywide celebration. Earlier this week, a series of new public art installations went on display along the...

Chicago Installs “REAL FAKE” Sculpture in Front of Trump Tower — Claire Voon
Hyperallergic, 06.29.2017

“Real Fake” is one of the five new artworks installed along the Riverwalk as part of the city’s Year of Public Art — a $1.5 million initiative to commission artists to create new works for spaces across Chicago.

Chicago Artist Carefully Placed ‘Real Fake’ Sculpture Outside Trump Tower — Priscilla Frank
Huffington Post , 06.29.2017

Reeder’s piece was installed on Monday night by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), as reported by The Chicago Tribune, as part of the city’s Year of Public Art program.

Deer Sculpture installed along Chicago Riverwalk — Leonor Vivanco
Chicago Tribune, 06.27.2017

A larger-than-life white-tailed deer without antlers stood on the grass facing the newest section of the Chicago Riverwalk on Tuesday as pedestrians walked past. It’s a 12-foot-tall, 20-foot-long painted fiberglass sculpture titled “Deer,” which was...

Chicago trolls Trump Tower with ‘Real Fake’ sculpture — Kim Janssen
Chicago Tribune, 06.27.2017

It's 5 foot tall, covered in gaudy gold paint and spells out the words "REAL FAKE" right in front of Trump Tower. But don't read anything into the city of Chicago's decision to install artist Scott Reeder's provocative sculpture near the building most associated with President Donald Trump.

This is what intersectional feminist art looks like — Lori Waxman
The Chicago Tribune , 06.21.2017

This is what feminist art looks like today. It's called "intersectional" and it attends to the ways in which not just gender but also race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, language, class and sexuality overlap to inform a woman's identity and her experience in the world. Minh Khai was killed by a French firing squad in 1941 not because she was a woman but because she was a bourgeois Vietnamese woman deeply involved in an anti-colonial revolution.

The ‘Undeniable Beauty’ of Inka Essenhigh’s Paintings — Dan Halm
SVA NYC, 06.14.2017

In her latest series of paintings, which appear here, Essenhigh mines the beauty and stillness of cemeteries and the dynamics of trees. “If I go to a forest, I see groupings of trees and I see gangs. I see them pushing at each other,” she says. “There are actually big dramas going on in nature all the time in a slow-motion kind of way, and it’s fun to anthropomorphize that.”

10 Must-See Works at Art Basel Unlimited — MOLLY GOTTSCHALK
Artsy, 06.12.2017

Mickalene Thomas, Do I Look Like a Lady? (Comedians and Singers), 2016 Walking into Thomas’s two-channel film installation is like being invited into a cozy living room to celebrate the diversity of womanhood, and in...

Grappling with Authorship and Acceptance in the Pop Art of Roger Brown — Sarah Rose Sharp
Hyperallergic , 06.06.2017

A pair of exhibitions at Kavi Gupta gallery places the artist’s paintings and sculptures in dialogue with arrangements of objects from his personal collections. CHICAGO — The tendency of Pop artists to collect objects makes...

Venice Biennale: Whose Reflection Do You See? — Holland Cotter
The New York Times , 05.22.2017

… “There are exceptions in the Giardini, the park that hosts some 30 national pavilions. One, a witty video by the young Russian artist Taus Makhacheva, shows an acrobat transferring a museum’s worth of Socialist...

McAurthur Binion – 57th Venice Biennale Short Guide —
57th Venice Biennale Short Guide , 05.17.2017

Denver Art Museum to host first major exhibition from American Indian artist Jeffrey Gibson — John Wenzel
The Know , 05.16.2017

The 45-year-old, Colorado-born artist (now based in New York) “is widely recognized as a unique and influential voice in contemporary art as well as within Native American art circles, and we are eager to present his first major museum exhibition, which is bold in both color and scale,” said Christoph Heinrich, director of the Denver Art Museum, in a press statement.

14 Artists You’ll Be Talking about Long after the Venice Biennale — Alexxa Gotthardt
Artsy , 05.12.2017

McArthur Binion Until he came to install for the Biennale, the 70-year-old Binion had never set foot in Venice. “I told friends that I wouldn’t go unless my work was in this show,” he said,...

First impressions of Christine Macel’s ‘Viva Arte Viva’ in the Central Pavilion — Evan Moffitt
Frieze , 05.11.2017

… “A beautiful suite of paintings by McArthur Binion, their surfaces pasted with shredded official documents – the artist’s birth certificate and car registration, for example – painted over with a crosshatch of black and...

McArthur Binion Addresses the Past in a Stunning Suite of Paintings — Sarah Douglas
Artnews, 05.09.2017

One of the first galleries in the Giardini section of Christine Macel’s curated exhibition at the Biennale, “Viva Arte Viva,” is a skylit display of paintings by the African-American artist McArthur Binion. Completed between 2014...

The Darker Meaning Behind Young Il-Ahn’s Colourful Canvases at LACMA — Yunyi Lau
The Artling, 05.08.2017

His Water paintings are Ahn's attempt to re-create the harmnoius effect of light, water and fog interacting in a myriad of ways. The works appear as flat, monochromatic surfaces, which upon closer inspection, reveal an uneven mosaic of squares applied in impasto.

Roxy Paine explores nature, folklore and geometry in his latest exhibition — Olivia Martin
Wallpaper*, 05.05.2017

Much of Paine’s work evoke questions of whether something is or is not. His latest series of Dendroids, for example, resemble silver tree sculptures, but study many dendritic forms, such as the branching human vascular and digestive systems and neuron structures.

Exhibition of works by Young Il Ahn on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — Art Daily
Art Daily, 05.01.2017

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Unexpected Light: Works by Young Il Ahn, the first solo exhibition of a Korean American artist at LACMA. Young Il Ahn has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 1966, and the city’s landscape has profoundly affected his work.

Firelei Baez: Bloodlines tackles race, gender and history at The Warhol — Amani Newton
Pittsburgh City Paper, 04.19.2017

The show is an attempt to engage with the immorality inseparable from the African diaspora, by a working artist whose life is indivisible from it. This is why you should walk right upon entering, so the final work you’re left with is “Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to the Fan Test for the Month of June,” the embodiment of all the internalized history in the work you’ve seen before it.

Manish Nai Exhibit Opens With Panel On Indian Contemporary Art — Sunthar Visuvalingam
News India Times, 03.28.2017

An exhibition of works by Mumbai-based artist Manish Nai premiered here at Kavi Gupta Gallery, June 5, with a panel discussion co-hosted by the Eye on India Festival. Nai’s conversation with independent curator and specialist...

Seeing Beyond Space and Place Through Indian Contemporary Art — Sunthar Visuvalingam
News India Times, 03.28.2017

CHICAGO A panel discussion on “Space and Place: Transcending Local Meaning in Indian Contemporary Art” was presented by Eye on India Festival at downtown co-host Kavi Gupta Gallery, June 11. Moderated by Tanya Gill, the...

Angel Otero: The story behind an artwork, in the artist’s own words — Martin Parsekian
Modern Painters, 03.28.2017

This painting is based on Nicolas Poussin’s Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. For the past few months, I’ve been taking Poussin as a straight reference and reproducing some of his paintings in the process...

Beverly Fishman: Color-Coding Big Pharma — Zachary Small
Art21, 03.21.2017

From the pillbox, Beverly Fishman chooses colors with a calculating eye. A master colorist, Fishman explores the allure of intoxication: the fluorescent highs of addiction and sickly tones of withdrawal. With her vivid and enticingly...

The Drug Administration: Beverly Fishman talks High Modernism and Big Pharma — Leslie Wayne
ArtCritical , 03.17.2017

You’ve stated that you would like to have your viewers “think about the seductive nature of the pharmaceutical industry as well as the purist and transcendental language of high modernism.”

An Interview with James Krone — Bonnie Begusch
Don't Panic Online, 03.14.2017

In James Krone’s “Waterhome”, on view at Kavi Gupta Gallery until April 14, oil paintings hang from a system of support structures that blur the distinctions between front and back, the exposed and the concealed....

In Conversation with Firelei Báez: Her Wondrous Exihibit ‘Bloodlines’ and Her Exploration of Black Womanhood — Jasmin Hernandez
Gallery Gurls, 03.01.2017

I grew up knowing that I was part of a very slippery in-between space of binary-defying identities, which is the construction of race in the Caribbean, not fitting easily into one category. I went into this project thinking that if I have to lock myself down into something, if I have to see myself through a specific filter, as many people of color are forced to in the US, what would it be like? Portraiture, which has a very clear history in Western tradition, seemed like the ideal medium to talk about these contested issues

The Drug of Abstraction: An Interview with Beverly Fishman — Jason Sopa
Art in America, 02.21.2017

Yes, I intend for my paintings to be subversive—but I don’t see them as only subversive. I want you to think about the seductive nature of the pharmaceutical industry as well as the purist and transcendental language of high modernism when you look at them. Both can be dangerous. The pharmaceutical industry creates medical issues to sell us more drugs than we need. High modernism can overemphasize autonomy and art’s separation from the world.

Chicago Reviews: “Assisted” — Nicolas Linnert
ARTFORUM, 02.11.2017

“Assisted” KAVI GUPTA GALLERY | 835 W. WASHINGTON BLVD. “Assisted,” a vibrant group exhibition curated by Jessica Stockholder, was predominantly installed on the second floor of Kavi Gupta, above Stockholder’s concurrent solo show “Door Hinges.”...

Jessica Stockholder: Door Hinges — Stephanie Cristello
Art Review, 02.11.2017

There is no one word in the English language that rhymes with ‘orange’. Perhaps this is why we hear of ‘tangerine’ trees and ‘marmalade’ skies in song, while ‘orange’ is left out of popular melodies....

25 Amazing Exhibitors at Expo Chicago 2015 — Paul Laster
Whitehot Magazine, 02.11.2017

Expo Chicago returned to Navy Pier on September 17th for the fourth edition of “The Windy City’s” art fair with 140 exhibitors from 16 countries and 47 cities. Looking as strong as it has since...

57th Venice Biennale Reveals List of Participating Artists — Alyssa Buffenstein
Artnet, 02.07.2017

See whose work will be on display at “Viva Arte Viva” this summer. The 57th Venice Biennale released the list of participating artists for its main exhibition today, revealing the 120 artists—compared to last year’s...

November: José Lerma — Scott Indrisek
Modern Painters Magazine, 01.24.2017

A former law student who began pursuing art only at age 30, Lerma employs painting and sculpture in installations that refer to place and history in eccentric ways. (His show earlier this year at Andrea...

JOSH SMITH / JOSÉ LERMA — Ryder Richards
Ryder Richards DB14, 01.24.2017

Josh Smith’s works are quite awful objects. Overwhelmingly kitsch paintings on canvas and poorly crafted ceramics demand consideration as art world commentary if only because of Smith’s success carried by Luhring Augustine Gallery [link] and...

José Lerma: La Bella Crisis —
e-flux, 01.24.2017

In La Bella Crisis, Puerto Rican artist José Lerma revisits MOCAD’s history by transforming the museum’s main gallery, once an auto showroom, into a series of booths like those typically found at international art fairs,...

What a Mess!: José Lerma — Allison Gibson
Beautiful/Decay, 01.24.2017

THE PAINTINGS OF SPANISH-BORN, BROOKLYN-BASED JOSÉ LERMA SUGGEST THE TRADITION OF PORTRAITURE, THOUGH IT IS UNCERTAIN WHETHER THE SUBJECT OF THE PORTRAIT IS THE SITTER OR THE ARTIST’S CHOSEN MEDIUM ITSELF. DENSE LAYERS THAT SEEM...

José Lerma, “I am sorry I am Perry” — Joseph R. Wolin
Time Out New York, 01.24.2017

In José Lerma’s compact exhibition, squiggly blue lines that look like ballpoint-pen doodles form twin columns of piled spirals, rising up on either side of John Law, a large unprimed canvas on beveled stretchers. The...

José Lerma: Art About Other Things —
Tandem Press, 01.24.2017

José Lerma’s first visit to Tandem Press represented a form of homecoming. While attending the University of Wisconsin Madison at the turn of the century, he made a lifechanging decision to switch from the study...

José Lerma — Matthew Israel
Artforum, 01.24.2017

Relegated to this gallery’s smaller rear room, José Lerma’s latest exhibition, “I am sorry I am Perry,” would have benefited from the larger main space. His show is brimming with ideas, which deserve the additional...

Glenn Kaino: Leviathan — Christian Viveros-Fauné
ArtReview, 01.17.2017

Conceptual artist Glenn Kaino is a protean talent. A former chief creative officer of Napster and now senior VP at Oprah Winfrey’s media company, the LA-based artist is also very much a Johnny-on-the-spot in the...

CLARE ROJAS X VLADIMIR RESTOIN ROITFELD — Allyson Shiffman
Interview Magazine, 01.17.2017

It was a family affair at the opening for artist Clare Rojas’ solo exhibition at Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld’s uptown project space. Both Roitfeld’s mother, Carine, and his sister, Julia, were on hand to celebrate. The...

Prospect.3: Notes for Now in New Orleans — Paul Laster
Whitehot Magazine, 01.17.2017

Launched two years after Hurricane Katrina had devastated large areas of New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Region, Prospect New Orleans was conceived as an international biennial to exhibit current artistic practices while contributing to...

Glenn Kaino, On Concepts and Coral — Rachel Small
Interview Magazine, 01.17.2017

In a small space at the biennial exhibition Prospect.3 in New Orleans, seven aquariums in artist Glenn Kaino’s installation Tank give off a mechanical hum, generating a white noise that creates an oddly comforting background...

The Believer — Eric Bryant
Blouin ART+AUCTION, 01.17.2017

Early this fall, inside a vast, disused brick building in the gritty Southeast quadrant of Washington DC, a ribbon of gold about three feet wide and more than 100 feet long traced a path heavenward....

Roger Brown Goes Pop! at Kavi Gupta — Franck Mercurio
Chicago Gallery News, 12.14.2016

Earlier this year, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) announced that Kavi Gupta Gallery will represent the estate of artist Roger Brown (1941–1997) on behalf of the School. The announcement was received...

Beverly Fishman @ Library Street Collective — Ron Scott
Detroit Art Review, 12.14.2016

...the artist describes her work regarding pills, tablets, and Big Pharma, but this work stands on its own in terms of the abstraction of form, shape, and color. The first comparison that comes to mind is the work of Frank Stella from the 1970s, who studied the work of Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann.

Artforum: Jessica Stockholder at Mitchell-Innes & Nash — David Frankel
Artforum, 12.01.2016

In a talk on the painter Elizabeth Murray in 2005, Jessica Stockholder remarked that Murray’s pictures, in doing away with flat rectangular canvases while retaining naturalistic representation and illusion, embody “a duality between aggressive challenge...

Face to Face, Warhol and Brown Reveal Deeper Meaning — Kerry Cardoza
Art Newcity , 10.18.2016

Roger Brown died on November 22, 1997, at the age of fifty-five, from AIDS-related complications. Thirty-four years earlier to the day, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was the type of news item Brown might...

McArthur Binion: A Must-See Art Guide: Chicago — Joshua Poveda
Artnet, 09.22.2016

A city that takes pride in its industrious past, Chicago is the birthplace of the zipper and the United States’ first skyscraper. Like many other East-Coast cities, it has a charming balance of past, present,...

Feeling Gravity’s Pull: Jessica Stockholder’s Stacked Works at Mitchell-Innes & Nash — Allison Young
Wallpaper, 08.31.2016

Creased, tied, folded, pierced, draped and bound: the repertoire of operations that Jessica Stockholder applies in her handling of found and manufactured materials is seemingly infinite. Blurring the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture, Stockholder’s...

Jamming in Traffic and Other Orchestrated Scenarios – Johanna Billing — Mark Sheerin
Hyperallergic, 08.25.2016

BRIGHTON, UK — Johanna Billing is an artist who orchestrates and films idealistic group activities which involve the viewer, but only up to a bittersweet point. She finds volunteers to make music, improvise dance, sail,...

Angel Otero on His New Painting Technique and First Hong Kong Exhibition — Samuel Spencer
Blouin Artinfo , 06.07.2016

ARTINFO spoke to the painter about this new series, which involves an innovative medium developed by the artist called “oil skins,” as well as his Hong Kong city highlights. Excerpts: What can visitors to your...

Tony Tasset’s monuments to everyone and everything — Lori Waxman
Chicago Tribune, 05.11.2016

The market is up. The market is down. Does it ever go sideways? I wondered this while standing amid the dizzying pointers of Tony Tasset’s “Me And My Arrow,” a solo show at Kavi Gupta’s...

Mickalene Thomas is Celebrating Our Skin | Studio Visit — Gabrielle Bruney
The Creators Project , 05.04.2016

Tackling pop-culture with high-art sensibilities, Mickalene Thomas’ work spans painting, photography, collage, and film. Her art is in MoMA’s permanent collection, and it lines the Lyons’ walls in Empire. Throughout the diversity of her practice, one theme is near-constant: black women.

A Life Ruled by Ups and Downs, Tony Tasset at Kavi Gupta Gallery — Vasia Rigou
Newcity Art, 03.30.2016

“Me And My Arrow” is the latest solo exhibition by Tony Tasset featuring sixty-six “Arrow Paintings” alongside two “Arrow Sculptures.” A floor-to-ceiling painting installation, the exhibition forms a fascinating 360-degree panorama of grid-like compositions—an overwhelming...

Pointlessness Is the Point: Tony Tasset and His Arrow at Kavi Gupta — Alison Reilly
Art Slant, 03.28.2016

I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to points. I thought, ‘Oh!...

Can’t-miss shows at galleries and museums this spring — Can’t-miss shows at galleries and museums this spring
Crain's Chicago Business, 03.10.2016

ALEX KATZ: “PRESENT TENSE” THROUGH APRIL 22 In Richard Gray Gallery’s stable of living artists, there are several with arguably larger international reputations than Alex Katz—Jaume Plensa, Jim Dine and Magdalena Abakanowicz—but none who embodies...

Tony Tasset’s Colorful Monument to 400,000 Artists Arrives in Grant Park — Jason Foumberg
Chicago Magazine, 02.19.2016

Find names of famous artists and maybe even your friends. Chicago sculptor Tony Tasset is known for his oversize artworks—like his 30-foot eyeball in Pritzker Park a few years ago. Now one of his largest...

Tony Tasset’s Artists Monument brightens up Grant Park — Ionit Behar
Chicago Reader, 02.17.2016

When people visit the Bean in Millennium Park, the first thing they see is themselves. The large, warped bodies and surroundings reflecting off the surface of the sculpture are a significant part of the artwork’s...

Review: James Krone/Kavi Gupta Gallery — Stephen F. Eisenman
New City Art, 02.09.2016

The results are intriguing, with echoes of William Blake and Max Ernst who also employed monoprint techniques, Robert Rauschenberg who employed transfer printing in his combines, and Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol who repeated signs and images until their meanings were depleted. Krone’s effigies are many times removed from any actual bird; he has thus created “an ornithology” he supposes meaningless for birds.

Firelei Báez’s Complex Studies of Female Identity Show Why She’s an Artist for Our Time — Jared Quinton
Artsy, 02.09.2016

The works’ ornate, colorful designs are not simply there for our visual consumption, delectable as they might be. In many cases, they converge into powerful female figures, saved from complete abstraction by their piercing eyes and distinctive fashions and hairstyles. In other cases the opposite dynamic is at play, and a closer inspection of the patterns reveals symbols and narrative vignettes that reference the experiences of African-American and Afro-Caribbean women—scenes of subjugation and, more frequently, radical self-making in the face of it.

In Mickalene Thomas’s awe-inspiring portraits, a meaningful reflection of black women in art — Katie Booth
The New York Times , 01.29.2016

Over the course of her trailblazing artistic career, Mickalene Thomas has drawn inspiration from prolific artists and pop culture icons alike, from 1970s supermodel Beverly Johnson to Edouard Manet’s Odalisque figures of the 19th Century. From these influences, she’s created a vast body of portraits that critically deconstruct definitions of beauty, race, and gender — specifically for black women — and redefine them on her own terms.

Mickalene Thomas on Her Photographic Muses — Julia Felsenthal
Vogue , 01.28.2016

“Muse,” based on a book of the same name that came out this past fall, focuses on Thomas’s photographic practice. The show is arranged, she explained, like a set of concentric squares. The perimeter displays Thomas’s collages and photographs from the past 15 years, mostly images, like her paintings, of ultra-feminized black women lounging in sumptuous, textile-strewn interiors.

Manish Nai – The man in the burlap cloak — Gayatri Jayaraman
India Today, 01.27.2016

There is something cyclical about Manish Nai. His studio in Dahisar, a karkhana where he works with wood and metal frames and columns of jute (next door to the clanging and hissing of otherworldly metals...

When the Weather Gives You Snowmageddon, Make Art Snowmen — Benjamin Sutton
Hyperallergic, 01.26.2016

Welcome to Snowmageddon 2015. (For readers outside the northeastern United States, this is all you need to know.) As we hunker down in anticipation of what will almost certainly be a less dramatic snowstorm than...

Sex Toy ‘Tree’ Heads to LA Fair, Museum puts ‘Races of Mankind’ Back on View–and More — Alanna Martinez
Observer, 01.21.2016

Paul McCarthy’s 79-foot-tall inflatable green sculpture, Tree, will be shown at the third edition of the Paramount Ranch art fair on January 30-31. The sculpture was first shown at Paris’ Place Vendome plaza in 2014,...

Colorful Art Installation Is Coming To Grant Park In The Dead Of Winter — Kate Shepherd
Chicagoist, 01.20.2016

Grant Park is getting a new art installation just south of 9th Street and Michigan Avenue by the end of January or early February. “The Artists Monument” by Chicago-based multimedia artist Tony Tasset is long...

Mother, Muse, Mirror — Jennifer Blessing
The New Yorker , 01.16.2016

Mickalene Thomas started out as an abstract painter, inspired by Australian Aboriginal art and late-nineteenth-century French Pointillism. She had always incorporated found materials into her work, but when she got to graduate school she began...

First Look: Firelei Báez — Wendy Vogel
Art in America , 12.17.2015

Báez addresses the subversive potential of style and portraiture in various ways. A painting series called “Geographic Delay” (2010-ongoing) depicts ornately costumed women she scouted at Brooklyn’s West Indian American Day parade. Báez renders their skin tattooed with abstract decorative motifs as well as landscapes of Latin America, Asia and other homelands, suggesting how cultural identity is both performed and concealed.

Angel Otero New Paintings — Jessica Holmes
The Brooklyn Rail , 12.09.2015

Puerto Rican-born, New York-based artist Angel Otero has refined a singular, labor-intensive process for making paintings. He applies thick oil paint to Plexiglas slabs and allows it to nearly dry before painstakingly peeling the oil skins away and reapplying them to canvas, to which he then adds and scrapes additional paint, resulting in an entirely new composition.

Firelei Báez’s Stunning PAMM Exhibit, “Bloodlines,” Dissects Complex Racial Identities — Stassa Edwards
Miami New Times , 12.01.2015

Báez delves into that history by adding the outlined bodies of women "doing things outside of the norm of what's feminine or acceptable." She found the images on YouTube and added the bodies, largely of women of color, by inserting them into histories from which they had been erased. On one page, Báez has altered a print of James Booth, a 19th-century American chemist, by adding brightly colored flames emerging from his head.

Mega Guide to Art Basel Miami Beach 2015: Part 4 — Gary Pini
Paper, 11.17.2015

One of our fave AB/MB sectors, PUBLIC, just announced this year’s list of 26 artists who’ll be doing site-specific installations and performances all week in Collins Park. Several caught our eye: a jemstone-encrusted “Healing Pavilion”...

Utah Museum Exhibits Art Of Award-Winning Painter — Mikey Kettender
Utah Public Radio , 10.13.2015

Baez's multicultural background and experiences from living in both the United States and Dominican Republic gives her a unique perspective on history, and allows her to make connections between different cultures.

Art Review: Sarah Sze, McArthur Binion and Dana Schutz — Peter Plagens
The Wall Street Journal , 10.09.2015

Whatever one perceives more strongly—Mr. Binion’s formalist gifts or his personal history—his paintings reward the viewer in different ways depending on whether one is up close or farther away. For their beauty and meaning to be fully appreciated, they must—repeat, must—be seen in the flesh.

Art Basel Miami’s Curated Kabinett Sector to Feature Chris Ofili, Glenn Kaino — Alanna Martinez
Observer Culture, 10.09.2015

This year 267 galleries will exhibit at Art Basel Miami Beach, the biggest art fair on the North American calendar and one of the most important annual events of the art world. The fair, which...

Recovering Abstraction: McArthur Binion’s Intimate Grids — John Yau
Hyperallergic , 10.04.2015

McArthur Binion’s exhibition, Re: Mine, currently at Galerie Lelong (September 10 – October 17, 2015) stirred up a swarm of associations while I was looking at it, and the buzz did not die down after...

Realismically Speaking, Irena Haiduk — Monika Szewczyk
Mousse #50, 10.01.2015

Art institutions in the western world are constantly on the lookout for artists capable of becoming agents of social change. Irena Haiduk, in her recent work Seductive Exacting Realism—presented in its two components at the...

Hitting Refresh: McArthur Binion at Galerie Lelong — Ryan Steadman
The Observer , 09.25.2015

Anyone that thinks artists are immune to either a gentle boost or a subtle snub from the art establishment is fooling themselves. Context and circumstance can be artists’ foes as easily as their friends, and...

10 art shows to see this fall — Lori Waxman
Chicago Tribune, 09.04.2015

This fall, feminist perspectives, generally, and women artists, particularly, take over the Chicago arts scene. It wasn’t planned by the city, a museum conglomerate or even one of the local academies; it just worked out...

25 Amazing Exhibitors at Expo Chicago 2015 — Paul Laster
Whitehot Magazine, 09.01.2015

Expo Chicago returned to Navy Pier on September 17th for the fourth edition of “The Windy City’s” art fair with 140 exhibitors from 16 countries and 47 cities. Looking as strong as it has since...

Introduction — Matthew Jesse Jackson
Published in Irena Haiduk's monograph Spells by Sternberg Press, 09.01.2015

YOU WILL NOT DIE IN BED HORSES WILL FUCK YOU IN THE EYES ALL CLASSIFICATIONS WILL LOSE THEIR GRIDS Polite art wants to live, multiply, and grow. There’s a basic assumption throughout Euro-America that the...

A Ghost in the Family — Dana Goodyear
The New Yorker, 08.10.2015

Early on the morning I went to see the San Francisco artists Barry McGee and Clare Rojas at their weekend place, in Marin County, a robin redbreast began hurling itself at a window in their...

‘Bonsai’ Show at Maccarone Honors Roger Brown — Roberta Smith
The New York Times , 07.23.2015

This exquisitely calibrated group show honors Roger Brown, the Chicago painter whose “Virtual Still Life” series is on view in the gallery’s larger space (at 630 Greenwich Street). Never seen in New York before, that...

Preparing to Live: Roger Brown in California — Jonathan Griffin
East of Borneo , 07.21.2015

The tiny settlement of La Conchita, California, is one of those places that are at once utterly rational and crazily perverse. A neat oblong of ten streets perpendicular to the Pacific Ocean, it is almost...

Review: Manish Nai/Kavi Gupta Gallery — Lee Ann Norman
New City Art, 07.15.2015

RECOMMENDED The work of Mumbai-based Manish Nai makes a viewer reconsider the limits of an artistic medium. He doesn’t use traditional media, such as heavy metals and wood, oil or acrylic. Instead, Nai uses everyday...

Goings On: ART: Roger Brown — Maccarone
The New Yorker, 06.26.2015

Late, great works by the still underappreciated Chicago painter, who died in 1997. Abstracted landscape paintings (rolling hills and mountains in the form of stripes and semicircles) have frames on their lower edges that extend...

Critics’ Picks: New York: Roger Brown — Alex Jovanovich
Artforum, 06.25.2015

Chicago Imagism: second-rate Pop from a Second City that had its moment—for about a second—too many years ago. This, of course, is all bullshit, but it is the narrative that’s been built around this Midwestern...

Art & Soul: Jepson exhibit showcases the 1990’s — Allison Hersh
Savannah Morning News, 06.21.2015

“Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be.” – Nirvana, “Come As You Are” The Jepson Center turns back the clock with “Come As You Are,” a new exhibition focusing...

Angel Otero — Kyle MacMillan
Art in America , 06.18.2015

Since completing his graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, Angel Otero has devoted himself to revitalizing painting with a highly concept- and process-driven approach to the well-traveled medium. The Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s recent exhibition at Kavi Gupta offered a tightly focused look at six red-and-white abstractions, the largest of which are 8 by 10 feet. They are all from a 2015 series titled “Lago,” a reference to the red-painted town in Clint Eastwood’s 1973 Western, High Plains Drifter.

Episode 511: Manish Nai — Christopher Hudgens
Bad At Sports, 06.15.2015

Tanya Gill interviews Mumbai artist Manish Nai at Kavi Gupta’s Elizabeth street space as he prepares for his June 6th opening. This is Manish Nai’s debut solo exhibition in the United States. He is using...

Manish Nai Opening —
Eye On India, 06.11.2015

Saturday, June 6 2015 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm Kavi Gupta Gallery 219 North Elizabeth St Chicago IL 60607 Free Admission (On Exhibit through August 1 2015) Kavi Gupta is proud to announce a solo exhibition...

Jepson Opens ‘Come As You Are: Art of the 1990s’ — Kristopher Monroe
Do Savannah, 06.08.2015

Flannel shirts, scrunchies and slap bracelets? Or do you remember it as the decade of the culture wars and the debate over political correctness? Even though the new exhibition opening at the Jepson this week...

From the community: Eye on India Festival Comes to Lemont (Excerpt) — Lauren M. Heist
Chicago Tribune, 05.21.2015

Eye on India and Teamwork Arts is proud to announce the 5th annual Eye on India Festival May 28 through June 28. From cinema, photography and music, to fashion, dance and yoga, Eye on India...

Vibrant sea life comes to KC’s Grand Arts in Glenn Kaino’s ‘Tanks’ exhibit — David Cateforis
Kansas City Star, 05.09.2015

Art and science, philosophy and activism converge in Glenn Kaino’s “Tank,” the current exhibition at Grand Arts. The installation achieves seductive visual splendor within the darkened space of the gallery, which presents 10 sleek, square,...

Glenn Kaino parks his dazzling Tank at Grand Arts — Tracy Abeln
The Pitch, 05.05.2015

Billy Clubs. X-Lunar Destroyer. Time Machines and Poker Chips and Lava Rain. Reverse Gorilla Nipples. Ultimate Warrior and Tickle Me Pink. Albino Blizzard Zoa and Utter Chaos. Also: Space Monsters, Long Lash Angel, Taylor’s Holy...

Building Bridges: Glenn Kaino — Seth Hawkins
Artillery, 05.05.2015

After dodging the reporters and cameramen that were shooting footage of Leonard Nimoy’s star for memorial news coverage on Hollywood Boulevard, I was buzzed into Glenn Kaino’s studio and escorted up to the second floor...

“Come As You Are,” to Montclair Museum’s Exhibition of 90s Art — Brent Johnson
Jersey Arts, 02.20.2015

It was the decade when grunge swept over popular music, when Bill Clinton moved into the White House, when “Titanic” shattered box-office records, when personal computers and cell phones began to proliferate. And amid it...

Montclair Art Museum presents Come As You Are: Art of the 1990s — Gwen Orel
The Montclair Times, 02.12.2015

As you walk into the Marion Mann Roberts Gallery, there’s a sound of humming that makes a constant background. It’s not the heat. Nor is it feedback from someone’s headphones. It’s the spinning of a...

Glenn Kaino // Honor Fraser — Natalie Hegert
The Seen, 02.10.2015

A day of dense, low-lying fog finally succumbed to heavy rainfall over the city of Los Angeles. As we danced around the puddles, making our way up La Cienaga Boulevard to Honor Fraser, I paused...

Montclair Art Museum opens ambitious ’90s art exhibition, ‘Come As You Are’ — Jay Lustig
NJ Arts, 02.09.2015

Artistically, decades don’t often fall into tidy 10-year intervals. When we talk about ’60s culture, for instance, we’re really talking about the time period from the assassination of Kennedy (1963) to the resignation of Nixon...

Kochi and Consciousness — Niranjan Kunwar
The Huffington Post, 01.08.2015

I am writing from Varkala, a coastal town by the Arabian Sea, located in India’s south-western state of Kerala. Last weekend I was in Kochi, Kerala’s biggest city, where I had an opportunity to check...

Miley, a Must-Have Sweatshirt, and More: Lauren Goodman’s Best of 2014 — Laura Goodman
Style.com, 01.05.2015

Thinking over 2014, there are so many bright spots. Here are a few I wanted to celebrate just a little bit more. Like the Oscars, many of my favorites reflect a recency effect…there were so...

The 50 Most Exciting Artists of 2014 — Christian Viveros-Fauné
Artnet, 12.29.2014

Life can’t be boiled down to a listicle. Neither can art or money. Yet all three have become so intimately intertwined that they could seriously stand the kind of rearranging that only an alternative inventory...

A ground report from India’s biggest art show in Kochi — Riddhi Doshi
Hindustan Times, 12.21.2014

Ten feet above the ground, a man perched on a metal stand is trying to unfurl a large sheet of plastic over giant speakers. It is day one of the Kochi-Muziris biennale, and it has...

Bass Museum’s 50th anniversary exhibit is all about history’s favorite precious metal — Anne Tschida
The Miami Herald, 11.15.2014

The GOLD exhibit at the Bass Museum of Art is layered with meaning, some obvious, some subtle. To begin with, the title acknowledges the 50th birthday of the museum — its Golden Anniversary. Starting from...

The Highlights of Prospect.3: New Orleans Hosts A Global Art Exhibition — Ann Binlot
Forbes, 11.14.2014

How can art and artists contribute to the rebuilding of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans? That was the question that started Prospect New Orleans, a biannual international exhibition held in the Big Easy. What began as...

Prospect.3 // Interview with Franklin Sirmans — Maria Avila Risolute
The Seen, 11.13.2014

Prospect, the New Orleans biennial, is now in its third chapter–reflecting the city’s rich cultural breadth with a wide array of exhibitions and performances. Like so many metropolitan areas, there are many different neighborhoods, and...

Lesley Dill installation and ‘Art on Paper’ worth the trip — Tom Patterson
Winston-Salem Journal, 11.09.2014

Two of the most stimulating exhibitions the Triad has seen this year are currently at Greensboro’s Weatherspoon Art Museum. One is a solo exhibition by Lesley Dill, a New York artist, and the other is...

Glenn Kaino on Art’s “Infinite Possibility” to Incite Social Change — Noelle Bodick
ArtSpace, 10.31.2014

The Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Glenn Kaino is compelled by the provisional ecosystems that pop up in the midst of political activity, for instance in Tahrir Square, which he visited before the Egyptian revolution, and,...

Bright Prospects — Linda Yablonsky
Artforum International, 10.31.2014

THERE’S ALWAYS A GOOD REASON to be in New Orleans. Last weekend, the draw was “Prospect 3: Notes for Now,” or P.3, the resonant third edition of the international biennial that Dan Cameron created in...

Prospect.3 Trains Its Eye Provocatively On the Art World’s Social Failings — Christian Viveros-Fauné
Artnet, 10.29.2014

“Somewhere and not Anywhere.” That’s the way Binx Bolling, the protagonist of Walker Percy’s 1961 novel The Moviegoer, describes his ideal digs in New Orleans. Describing a place that is familiar yet in no way...

Military Machines Become Coral Reefs In Glenn Kaino’s ‘Tank’ — Hannah Stamler
Vice Magazine - The Creators Project, 10.28.2014

Art exhibitions are sometimes described as incubators for new ideas, but rarely do they also serve as incubators in the literal sense of the word, helping to sustain or breed life. New Orleans’s recently opened...

The Man Behind Prospect 3 — Lindsay Koerner
NolaVie, 10.27.2014

As a Los Angeles transplant to New Orleans, it is always a bit of a jolt when the chasm between L.A. and LA is bridged. That is happening to me with Prospect 3: Notes for...

Must-See Projects at Prospect New Orleans, a Citywide Art Biennial — Julie Baumgardner
New York Times Style Magazine, 10.24.2014

Though it only launched in 2008, Prospect New Orleans — the city’s ambitious attempt at an internationally competitive art biennial — has seen more than its share of trials and tribulations. Board blunders and cash-flow...

New Orleans Biennial ‘Prospect 3’ Leads The Way In Art World Diversity — Priscilla Frank
The Huffington Post, 10.24.2014

Whitney Biennial, take note. Contemporary art is taking over the city of New Orleans for “Prospect 3,” a city-wide festival comprised of 58 artists and 18 locations. And, as reported by Julia Halperin for The...

Glenn Kaino Is Inspired As Much by Ferguson As A Bottle of Opus One — Eileen Kinsella
Artnet, 10.24.2014

One of the most buzzed about art projects in the months leading up to the third edition of the New Orleans biennial, “Prospect.3” has been Glenn Kaino’s Tank (2014) for which the artist has built...

Glenn Kaino — Glenn Kaino, with Paige K. Bradley
Artforum, 10.24.2014

Glenn Kaino is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work addresses social and political histories while prioritizing individual subjectivity. His latest installation Tank, comprises seven saltwater-filled vitrines in which clear resin sculptures cast from a disused...

L.A. artist reimagines U.S. Army tanks as living coral paintings: A best bet at Prospect.3 in New Orleans — Doug MacCash
The Times-Picayune, 10.23.2014

Los Angeles artist Glenn Kaino’s collection of living coral displayed in murmuring high-tech aquariums on the second fl oor of the Contemporary Arts Center is my personal favorite of the Prospect.3 international art festival exhibits...

In New Orleans, a Biennial on the 3-Year Plan — Ted Loos
The New York Times, 10.23.2014

After a very bumpy sophomore effort that was delayed by a year and plagued by cost overruns, the organizers of Prospect New Orleans, which was started as a biennial in 2008, are officially calling this...

ALTER/ABOLISH/ADDRESS TURNS THE CITY INTO A GALLERY IN WASHINGTON, D.C. — Justin Quirk
Artphaire, 10.21.2014

Throughout the fall, the Los Angeles Nomadic Division presents a series of five site-specific commissions which will sprawl out across Washington D.C. taking over public spaces. “Alter/Abolish/ Address” will take place as part of 5×5:2014....

Bridges, ‘junk’ and photos: A different kind of street art — Alicia Lozano
WTOP, 10.20.2014

Perhaps you’ve seen an image on the corner of 14th and U streets in Northwest D.C. of a black man wearing a cap and gown. He is looking out from the photo, daring his peers...

Tony Tasset — Kyle Macmillan
Art in America, 09.24.2014

A mound of bean dip. A puddle of multipurpose cleaner. A glob of blackberry yogurt. Three-dimensional re-creations in colored resin and other mediums of a few dozen food and consumer products, along with the actual...

From Tahrir Square to Ferguson, artist Glenn Kaino’s rocks of protest — Carolina A. Miranda
Los Angeles Times, 09.22.2014

Artist Glenn Kaino picked up his first rock in Cairo a couple of years back. He was in Egypt doing some research for the 13th annual Cairo Biennale, where he had been selected to represent...

Glenn Kaino’s Social Experiment — Fan Zhong
Wmagazine, 09.18.2014

There are two ways to draw a crowd to a difficult subject: you can make a loud noise, or you can wrap it in an attractive package. “Aesthetics matter to me a lot,” says the...

A piece of Ferguson protests come to Chicago — Pac Pobric
The Art Newspaper, 09.18.2014

The American artist Glenn Kaino recently visited Ferguson, Missouri—the town torn by protests after a white police officer killed Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on 9 August—for a work he is due to unveil...

Artist Glenn Kaino On Ferguson, Equality and Tommie Smith’s Iconic Salute — Ann Binlot
Forbes, 09.16.2014

Glenn Kaino’s Bridge is one of the most powerful pieces of art in recent history. Comprised of a series of fiberglass casts painted of gold from the raised fisted arm of Tommie Smith, the 1968...

5 x 5: A Powerful Commentary on Gentrification in Washington, D.C. — Jared Green
The Dirt, 09.09.2014

The Washington, D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities just seriously upped their game with their latest city-wide temporary public art project called 5 x 5. Five curators brought 25 artists’ site-specific installations to all 8...

Map: Where To See 5×5’s Public Art This Weekend — Sarah Anne Hughes
DCist, 09.05.2014

D.C.’s citywide public art event, 5×5, begins this weekend. That’s the good news. The bad news is that free tickets for two guided bus tours this Saturday, and a fancy reception tonight at the Capitol...

5×5 Brings a Burst of Public Art to DC — Anneliese Cooper
Blouin ArtInfo, 09.04.2014

With the opening words “By art is created that great Leviathan,” Thomas Hobbes launches readers into his seminal work of political philosophy, Leviathan, in which he imagines the State as a great aggregation of the...

DC’s 5×5 public art festival: What to see and where to see it (MAP) — Caroline Dobuzinskis
Elevation DC, 08.19.2014

5×5, a project of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH), will bring public art to all eight wards of the city – transforming, at least temporarily, neighborhoods and parks, street corners, and...

Manish Nai: The Proceduralist — Dhamini Ratnam
Live Mint.com - The Wall Street Journal, 08.16.2014

Our first glimpse of Manish Nai involves the 35-year-old artist standing on top of a table pressing an iron box on a 6.6ftlong paper stuck on a wall. Two assistants stand alongside him and iron...

Art Alliance: The Provocateurs, Chicago —
Known Gallery, 08.05.2014

The exhibition featured over 40 trailblazers of the art world including Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Space Invader, Ryan McGinness, Camille Rose Garcia, Clare Rojas, Cleon Peterson, CYRCLE, D*FACE, Dana Louise Kirkpatrick, Deedee Cheriel, Dzine,...

Art Alliance: The Provocateurs Opens Today at Block 37 in Chicago —
Obey Giant, 07.31.2014

Art Alliance: The Provocateurs at Block 37 opens today. Feel free to walk in any time during daytime hours 10am-6pm. Here are some shots of the murals being completed by Cleon Peterson, RETNA, and POSE....

Columbia College Teams Up with Shepard Fairey and “The Provocateurs” Exhibition — Bethany Hexom
Columbia College Chicago Blog, 07.29.2014

Columbia College Chicago has teamed up with Shepard Fairey (OBEY series, Obama HOPE) and three other Art Alliance: The Provocateurs artists to showcase their work in the Wabash Arts Corridor as part of the exhibition...

Introducing Art Provocateurs Week on Complex, With Artists Curated by Shepard Fairey — Cedar Passori
Complex, 07.28.2014

Welcome to Art Provocateurs Week, in collaboration with Art Alliance, where we interview artists who are a part of the Shepard Fairey-curated “The Provocateurs” exhibition during Lollapalooza. Enter our contest for a chance to win...

Art Alliance: The Provocateurs, July 31 – August 4, 2014 —
Juxtapoz Magazine, 07.18.2014

For the last 20 years, Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine has worked to create a place and dialogue for artists who stood outside of the museum programming of the time but were creating substantial and...

Learn from how Chicago does culture — Greg Cook
The Boston Globe, 06.27.2014

When Chicago’s Millennium Park turned 10 this month, the Chicago Tribune hailed it as “the best thing former Mayor Richard M. Daley ever did” and “the latest demonstration of Chicago’s audacious ability to invent the...

CAC Exhibit Pushes Back Against Museum’s Architecture — Mara Seda-Reeder
City Beat Cincinnati, 06.25.2014

“When people ask me what are my influences, they’re ghosts and magic,” artist and curator Michael Stillion said during a recent visit to his studio in Evanston. So you can be sure that Stillion, a...

SPECIAL GUEST LECTURE: Tony Tasset —
Oak Park Art League, 06.23.2014

In conjunction with our exhibition OFF THE GRID, the Oak Park Art League presents a special guest lecture by Chicago artist, Tony Tasset, who will be discussing his work Artists Monument, recently featured at the...

Artist’s Multiple: Tony Tasset on Vagueness, Pants and Having A Good Cry —
Paddle 8, 06.10.2014

While Tony Tasset may modestly credit a large portion of his creative inspiration to “more successful artists,” the art world has long been eyeing his large-scale multimedia works with enthusiastic appreciation, fittingly so as his...

Whitney Biennial 2014 — Jason Fargo
Frieze, 06.06.2014

Reviews of the Whitney Biennial usually start by invoking the impossibility of the exhibition form and all the failed editions that came before, but here’s the tricky thing: three of the last four were good....

Phantom Sense: Tony Tasset’s Spill Paintings — Stephanie Cristello
ArtSlant, 05.30.2014

What Tony Tasset’s Spill Paintings lack in their pictorial realization they make up for in engaging other senses. It is impossible to talk about these paintings solely through optics, since they depend so much on...

Artwork of the Week: Manish Nai’s Newspaper Wall at Art Basel in HK — Rosalyn D'Mello
Blouin Artinfo, 05.25.2014

When we met Manish Nai last month, his latest work — two paintings and six sculptures — made specially for the Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke booth at Art Basel in Hong Kong — was yet...

Maychack’s objects on the verge, and a vanishing modernism — Kenneth Baker
San Francisco Chronicle, 05.24.2014

Clare Rojas at Anglim: The passages of abstraction in Clare Rojas’ narrative paintings always seemed to me the most appealing bits. She could have gone straight to “pure” abstraction years ago. But her new work...

Warfield Building Gets Schooled — Andrea Valencia
MissionLocal, 05.21.2014

One wall of the Warfield building on 982 Market Street, is undergoing a mural by Clare Rojas. According to the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Facebook page, the mural was funded by the National Endowment for...

The Arts Calendar – May 19-24, 2014 (Excerpt) — Kyle MacMillan
Chicago Sun-Times, 05.18.2014

Chicago artist Tony Tasset, who is featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial, has gained national recognition for his varied multimedia works, which are usually playful, often pop-influenced and sometimes downright weird. Tasset returns to the...

GSU sculpture park picked among best in the world — Donna Vickroy
Southtown Star, 05.16.2014

“Great art picks up where nature ends.” – Marc Chagall Among the tall grasses, windswept prairies and lines of spindly Osage orange trees on the campus of Governors State University rise giant works of steel,...

A Trifurcated 2014 WHITNEY BIENNIAL Bids Farewell to its Madison Avenue Home (Excerpt) — Kitty Garner
Peachy, 05.15.2014

“Its architecture is like a horror movie” wrote one particularly caustic critic, referring to the Marcel Breuer building which has housed the Whitney Museum of American Art for nearly half a century. “Stygian”, “menacing”, “bellicose”,...

Clare Rojas @ Paule Anglim — David Roth
Square Cylinder, 05.06.2014

Clare Rojas has moved a long way from her Mission School roots. Where several years ago she was painting psychosexual dramas in a folk-art manner, she’s since reinvented herself as a geometric abstractionist, making works...

The Eyes Have It — Allese Thomson
Artforum, 04.23.2014

THE JOULE HOTEL was the nexus of activity during the sixth edition of the Dallas Art Fair. Everyone from Heidi Klum to artists like Richard Phillips and Will Boone and dealers including James Fuentes and...

Monumental Moments: Tony Tasset — Daniel G. Baird
Bad at Sports, 04.22.2014

Tony Tasset’s artworks consistently aim to destabilize and question our understanding of value.  Often perceived as humorous, whimsical or playful, the works poetically allude toward confrontations with mortality, timelessness and cultural awareness through slick pop-art...

Dallas Rising — Allyson Shiffman
Wmagazine, 04.15.2014

If there’s one word to describe the Dallas Art Fair, which ran from April 11 through 13, it might be “approachable.” The relatively modest size makes it digestible in a few hours and the staffers...

Art scenesters make Eye contact at Joule hotel Dallas Art Fair throwdown — Diana Oates
Culturemap Dallas, 04.14.2014

The Joule Dallas unveiled the most distinctive rental space in town on April 12 at the Eye Ball, a party hosted in conjunction with Dallas Art Fair that introduced the Eye as a venue available...

Dallas Fêtes Sixth Art Fair with “Eye Ball” — Kristen Boatright
Blouin ArtInfo, 04.14.2014

Artists, gallerists, collectors and other industry insiders descended on Dallas for the sixth Dallas Art Fair, which wrapped at the Fashion Industry Gallery Sunday. On Saturday night, revelers gathered in front of Tony Tasset’s 30-foot...

The Joule Dallas Hosts THE EYE BALL At Dallas Art Fair —
alwaysFashionWeek, 04.14.2014

This weekend, The Joule Hotel hosted a cocktail party in celebration of the sixth annual Dallas Art Fair at the Eye sculpture by Tony Tasset. Guests enjoyed a live graffiti painting by the Sour Grapes...

Dallas Art Fair Offers an Eyeful at The Joule —
Eat | Style | Dallas, 04.13.2014

Last night a list of lucky guests and Dallas friends of the arts were treated to windy weather fun in Downtown Dallas. The Joule Hotel hosted a cocktail party in celebration of the sixth annual...

Monument/Anti-Monument Conference Puts Public Sculpture In The Spotlight — Stephanie Zimmerman
St. Louis Public Radio, 04.08.2014

As home to works such as Eero Saarinen’s “Gateway Arch” and Richard Serra’s “Twain” and to places such as Laumeier Sculpture Park and CityGarden, St. Louis has established itself as a formidable player in the...

The Approval Matrix: Week of April 7, 2014 —
New York Magazine, 04.06.2014

Lancaster City Morning Buzz: Thursday, 27 March — Jeanne Eckmann
The Examiner, 03.27.2014

“Folklore” will be the featured exhibit at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design (PCA&D) through 18 April. The contemporary works of art by Amy Cutler, Clare Grill, Clare Rojas and others will be featured...

To Do: March 26–April 9, 2014 —
New York Magazine, 03.23.2014

Art 6. See Tony Tasset’s Artists Monument An outpost of the Biennial, near its next home. Tasset’s massive multicolored work is a big rectangular prism etched with the names of 392,486 artists. They range from...

SFAE Review: James Krone’s “Catsuit for Men” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles — Gladys-Katherina Hernando
SFAQ, 03.22.2014

Known for his deliberately choreographed aesthetic procedures, Berlin-based artist James Krone brings a new series of haunting paintings, an installation, and a video to the project space Night Gallery in Los Angeles. Through repetition, process, and a veiled series of plays on language, Krone creates a subtle framework to address signifiers of desire and the reciprocity of exchange.

Why This Year’s Whitney Biennial Should Be Seen Through a (Slightly) Rose-Colored Lens — Christian Vivernos-Faune
The Village Voice, 03.19.2014

There’s an anecdote I try to remember every time I get too down on New York and its coddled, flighty art world. One afternoon over lunch, I unburdened myself of months’ worth of negativity to...

BEAUTIFUL AND SAD AND CLASSY — Christina Catherine Martinez
ArtSlant, 03.17.2014

The bottle she dipped from was chintzy and anonymous. It could have been any of the petit-bourgeois elixirs for which James Krone’s Spell Paintings are named—Leather Woman, Misty Cherry, Catsuit for Men—titles which betray their otherwise classy surface and process, which evokes more chic forms of magic still practiced to this day by trustafarian tribes in the hills of Laurel Canyon, but the word ‘classy’ has a precarious magic of its own: it has the power to undermine itself at the very moment of utterance.

On The Horizon: Dallas —
The New York Times, 03.09.2014

While most of the year Dallas is associated with football, in early April it distinguishes itself as a city of the arts. Beginning April 4, the second annual Dallas Arts Week festival will showcase an...

‘The Way of the Shovel’ at the MCA Chicago — Derek Fincham
Illicit, 03.03.2014

Museums and the field of archaeology often have an uneasy relationship. Archaeologists deal in context, unearthing the history with careful study. Museums have varied missions. Some display fine art, some focus on amassing as many...

Artist Clare Rojas Talks Abstraction, Art Market Gossip and Louie C.K. — Priscilla Frank
The Huffington Post, 12.15.2013

In her paintings, Clare Rojas lets geometric narratives unfold between colors and shapes. Drifting, colliding, coexisting and communicating, Rojas’ sharp-edged forms build tension and character with their paths, while remaining fully alien and abstract. Rojas’...

New Work by Clare Rojas — Deeksha Mehta
Trendland, 11.12.2013

Contemporary artist Clare Rojas recently began painting again after a personal hiatus, and her current artwork displays a completely new point of view and style. Whereas her works in the past were much more subject-based...

Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld Hosts The Clare Rojas Opening Exhibition —
Fashion Week Daily, 11.11.2013

The art and fashion world married on Saturday night when Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld lured his pals uptown for the opening reception of artist Clare Rojas’ solo exhibition. The exhibition, hosted by Restoin Roitfeld, includes over...

Clare Rojas Folk Art Inspired Tableaus Shift Into Abstract — Ilya Fyars
Artlyst, 11.09.2013

After a years long hiatus artist Clare Rojas, known for her folk art inspired tableaus, is debuting a series of 33 never-before-seen works at Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld’s project space on November 11th. Rojas has taken...

Previews: Clare Rojas @ Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld — Sleepboy
Arrested Motion, 11.09.2013

With the private opening set tonight and the public unveiling on November 11th, Clare Rojas’ new exhibition is set to give her fans in New York a look at her recent abstract work. Hosted by...

James Krone and Ryan McNamara at Brand New Gallery, Milan —
Mousse Magazine , 11.09.2013

The aquarium isn’t a painter’s object like a bowl of pears is or a view from my studio window, a patient sitter in a chair, a photograph of any of these things or even a structuralist allegory is. It is more like a cathedral without a religion. In this way, as a shell for performative inhabitation, it is a vessel for drag.

WEEKEND INSPIRATION: Clare Rojas Takes On Geometric Abstraction —
Surf Collective NYC, 11.08.2013

Rojas’s new paintings, drawings, poems and installations, which will be appearing tomorrow in an exhibition at Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld in New York, marks a shift from the former work she is known for, and toward...

On View | Clare Rojas Gets in Touch With Her Abstract Side — Erica Bellman
New York Times Style Magazine, 11.07.2013

Clare Rojas, the Bay Area-based multidisciplinary artist, refuses to confine her expansive practice to a single medium. Instead, she glides from paintbrush to pen, from camera to guitar (or banjo — she produces bluegrass-infused music...

McArthur Binion Kavi Gupta — Faye Gleisser
Artforum , 11.03.2013

To see “Ghost: Rhythms,” Chicago-based artist McArthur Binion’s first solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta, was to be let in on a secret. From a distance, the rarely seen abstractions on unstretched canvas and aluminum from the artist’s early career in New York during the 1970s recall aerial maps or stratified rock formations. Upon closer inspection, the seemingly monochromatic beige oil-stick skeins give way to teeming beds or imperfect grids of barely perceptible crisscrossing blue, green, and red lines. By insisting that viewers look not only at but through his subtle, multilayered works, Binion invites an excavational mode of seeing attuned to the ghosting of mark-making itself- a major theme of the artist’s oeuvre as a whole.

James Krone — Steven Cox
Hunted Projects , 10.19.2013

Upon exploring the stained surfaces of Krone’s Screen Paintings, one is made aware of the causality occurring between the artist’s systematic layering process and its entirely arbitrary result. The speckles of varying algae related tones highlight the repercussion of oil paint seeping through insufficiently sized canvas. Acting as a visual analogy, the algae-esque surfaces of Krone’s Screen Paintings comparably relate to the evolving and growing algal bloom that physically exists within the lonesome tank that stands only feet away.

Angel Otero’s Digs On Frayed Canvases and Crumbled Sculptures — Christian Viveros-Faune
The Village Voice , 09.18.2013

What Otero managed to do in Chicago was remarkable for an artist at any age. He reinvented the practice of painting for himself by learning to excavate volatile new meanings from the medium’s most essential materials: paint and cloth. Using a now-signature method in which he lays oil paint onto glass panes in order to subsequently peel off their “skins,” the artist then devised a way to reattach his flayed sheets onto waiting canvases—thereby crafting finished works that look partly like spontaneous 1950s abstractions (of the Art Informel variety), but also like torn, graffitied posters found in outer borough subway tunnels.

Manish Nai | Geometry in jute — Deepika Sorabjee
Live Mint.com - The Wall Street Journal, 04.27.2013

Son of a jute trader and hailing from the traditional nai (barber) community, Manish Nai graduated from the LS Raheja School of Art, Mumbai, in 2000, choosing the medium of watercolours in his final year....

Review: McArthur Binion/Kavi Gupta Gallery — Alan Pocaro
NewCity Art, 04.16.2013

Shortly before creating the paintings in “Ghost: Rhythms,” in the early 1970s, McArthur Binion became the first African American to receive an MFA from Cranbrook Art Academy. The eleventh child of Mississippi tenant farmers, the...

On View: Clare Rojas at Galleri Nicolai Wallner — Nastia Voynovskaya
Hi-Fructose, 04.08.2013

Known for her character-driven paintings — with their autumn hues and patterns inspired by folk art forms — Clare Rojas has taken a radically new direction in her past few exhibitions. The artist opened a...

A Performance of Accidental Intrusions: An Interview with James Krone — Caroline Picard
Bad at Sports, 12.21.2012

Everything I’ve read about Berlin-based painter, James Krone’s, recent exhibit Waterhome centers Krone’s practice around an empty aquarium. The aquarium in question, however, is not present in the exhibit itself. Instead you’ll find a series of paintings hung on the wall, a folding screen dividing the room that is similarly composed of paintings and a stack of paintings face up on a plinth.

Art Review: Firelei Baez at Richard Heller Gallery — Holly Myers
Los Angeles Times , 04.14.2012

In this, the work has a familiar ring, building as it does on a growing tradition of smart, racially charged feminist work by artists like Kara Walker and Wangechi Mutu. There’s something distinctive, however, in the intricacy of her imagery, in the careful balance of elegance and force, that promises to carry the ideas to a similar distinction.

Gerald Williams Interview — Rebecca Zorach
Never the Same , 11.01.2011

Interview with Gerald Williams at his home in Sumter, South Carolina, in November 2011, by Rebecca Zorach for Never The Same. Gerald Williams is a painter and a founding member of AfriCOBRA. Born in Chicago,...

Pattern and Representation — Erik Wenzel
ArtSlant, 12.25.2010

When I met James this summer in Berlin, we hung out in his apartment studio sitting in those very chairs talking and they seemed more than adequate. Seeing them in the gallery, they felt alien, foreign and off limits. Presented in this manner they become self-conscious. “I can’t believe we sat in those!” I thought. Not that they are particularly disgusting, just that they seem so different and familiar at the same time.

New Body of Work by James Krone on View at Country Club —
Art Daily, 04.03.2010

Art & Language’s Secret Painting, 1967-68, consists of two square canvases next to each other, one all black, the other all white but with a sentence printed on it announcing that which is unknowable in the content of the black canvas. It might be the first postmodern artwork, the text a conceptualist tool qualifying the inherited pretensions of the Black Square. Krone’s black paintings unite the transcendental image with the disillusioned postmodern commentary.

James Krone: Country Club Projects — Cassie Wu
Art Forum, 02.03.2010

Walking into James Krone’s latest exhibition, “The Wilderness Is the Witches Leash,” is like stepping onto a lovingly crafted and sincere movie set, however paradoxical that may sound. Much of the feeling derives initially from the domestic architecture of Country Club Projects, which operates out of Rudolf Schindler’s 1934 Buck House.

Roger Brown, 55, Leading Chicago Imagist Painter, Dies — Roberta Smith
The New York Times , 11.01.1997

Roger Brown, a leading painter of the Chicago Imagist style, whose radiant, panoramic images were as passionately political as they were rigorously visual, died on Saturday at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. He was 55 and...

Interview with Roger Brown — Mark Price
Sculpture Magazine , 09.01.1997

Born in Alabama, Roger Brown first came to prominence as an artist when his work was included in the 1969 exhibition, “Don Baum Says: Chicago Needs Famous Artists,” at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Subsequently...