AfriCOBRA Artists Honored at School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2020 Virtual Commencement, Offer Advice to Graduates — VICTORIA L. VALENTINE
Culture Type, 05.29.2020

After years of hard work and dedication to their crafts and curriculums, 2020 graduates are unable to experience the joy and satisfaction of gathering for ceremonies celebrating their accomplishments, due to widespread social distancing mandates...

FIRELEI BÁEZ AMONG 2020 HERB ALPERT AWARD WINNERS —
ARTFORUM, 05.25.2020

The Herb Alpert Foundation and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) have presented the 2020 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts to five midcareer artists in the fields of visual art, film and video,...

What This Artist Needs to Make Work During a Pandemic — John Yau
HYPERALLERGIC, 05.02.2020

Tony Tasset’s use of inexpensive graph paper suggests that drawing is a way to remain open to ideas, whims, passing thoughts, even dreams. During the past few weeks, when Tony Tasset and I first began...

CANADA’S 2020 SOBEY ART AWARD TO DIVIDE GRAND PRIZE AMONG LONGLISTED ARTISTS —
ARTFORUM, 04.16.2020

The Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada have announced that they will not name a single winner of the prestigious $100,000 CAD Sobey Art Award, the country’s largest contemporary art prize. Instead...

Ten Years Ago, Artist Jeffrey Gibson Almost Quit the Art World in Frustration. Here’s How He Found the Strength to Keep Striving — Taylor Dafoe
Artnet News, 03.26.2020

In the light-filled gymnasium of an old schoolhouse in Hudson, New York, a punching bag adorned with neon beads and tassels hangs near a long-forgotten basketball hoop. A totemic sculpture stands in a carpeted classroom...

America’s Big Museums on the Hot Seat — Holland Cotter
The New York Times, 03.18.2020

Along with expanding the choice of art they show and histories they tell, museums need to loosen up their ideas about who’s qualified to do the choosing and telling. The Brooklyn Museum made a smart...

Chicago art heist: Fashion designer Duro Olowu raids city’s walls to create exuberant ‘Seeing Chicago’ at MCA — Chicago art heist: Fashion designer Duro Olowu raids city’s walls to create exuberant ‘Seeing Chicago’ at MCA
Chicago Tribune, 03.11.2020

So many art exhibitions are precise, exacting, mixed like a bracing cocktail and meant to be taken in sips. “Seeing Chicago,” the MCA’s new eclectic gathering of Chicago-owned art convened by London fashion designer Duro...

Review: Frieze? Please. Try the upstart Felix art fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt — Christopher Knight
Los Angeles Times, 02.14.2020

Frieze, the high-ticket international art fair that had its successful Los Angeles debut last year, is having its second outing through Sunday. Seventy-seven contemporary art galleries at or around the blue-chip end of the spectrum, vetted for inclusion by...

Hot right now: 10 American post-war and contemporary artists to have in your collection —
Christie's, 02.13.2020

A selection of artists whose burgeoning art-world profiles are matched by their rising markets — featuring works offered in our Post-War to Present auction in New York Nathaniel Mary Quinn Who? Known for his collage-style composite...

Remixing Native American Art — Susan Delson
The Wall Street Journal, 02.06.2020

Jeffrey Gibson first spotted “The Dying Indian”—a bronze statue of a Native American man on horseback, by the American sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey —while he was leaving the Brooklyn Museum. Mr. Gibson, an artist of...

Mount Vernon Man Injured in Auto Accident in Dent County —
My MO Info, 02.06.2020

(Salem, Mo.) A man from Mount Vernon was taken to Salem Memorial District Hospital after being involved in a one-vehicle accident Thursday morning in Dent County. The Missouri State Highway Patrol reports the accident took place on Highway...

Diverse, inclusive, modern: Say ‘YO’ to the new Cantor — Carissa Lee
The Stanford Daily, 01.21.2020

Looking for a quick escape from the returning onslaught of essays and p-sets? Or, perhaps, the ideal site for that annual “still surviving winter quarter” photoshoot? The Cantor Arts Center’s recently-acquired “OY/YO” sculpture, the brainchild...

‘YO’: Stanford has a new, bright-yellow social media magnet — Sam Whiting
DATEBOOK, 01.13.2020

Sartorial planning got Alexis Murphy to Cantor Arts Center wearing her yellow crewneck sweater. She’d come to the free museum at Stanford University to snap a photo to post on Instagram, one of her peeking...

Why Alfred Conteh Is The Dopest Artist You Never Heard Of — Ida Harris
Medium, 01.07.2020

(BLACKSTEW) — According to astronomy, the Sculptor is a faint southern constellation between two others — Grus and Cetus, to be exact. Conversely, of my own assessment, the Sculptor is a pellucid southern entity on a par with...

Immersive Community: Mickalene Thomas brings warmth to Miami’s Bass Museum — Caira Moreira-Brown
FAD Magazine, 12.29.2019

Tucked into rooms at the Bass Museum Mickalene Thomas creates a space indicative of community through comfort, leisure, and color scheme. Installation view of Mickalene Thomas, “Better Nights,” at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, 2019. Courtesy...

Mickalene Thomas recreates the sparkling dance parties and radical black aesthetic of the ’70s and ’80s — Ann Binlot
DOCUMENT, 12.18.2019

The artist enlists emerging artists and musicians in an immersive tribute to her mother at Miami’s Bass Museum. It was a set of Polaroids from the ’70s and ’80s that depict her mother having a...

‘She Was Brave, Like Me’: Deborah Kass and Patricia Cronin on How Activism Sparked Their Romance, and the Art They Crave to See — Noor Brara
Artnet News, 12.18.2019

For Artnet’s Art and Modern Love series, the New York-based couple sat down to discuss how they fell in love over their shared passions. New York artists Deborah Kass and Patricia Cronin are easily one...

The Most Influential Artist of 2019 — Artsy editors
Artsy, 12.11.2019

Mickalene Thomas B. 1971, Camden, New Jersey. Lives and works in New York. In March, Mickalene Thomas’s photograph of path-breaking activists, artists, and intellectuals graced the cover of Out magazine. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Barbara Smith, Tourmaline, Alicia...

Mickalene Thomas Opens a Seductive, Spectacular Show in Miami — Alina Cohen
Artsy, 12.06.2019

When artist Mickalene Thomas was a child in New Jersey, her mother, model Sandra Bush, threw parties and produced local plays with friends to raise money for charitable causes. “They were always creating community,” Thomas...

Unraveling the Tangled History of the Hoodie Read — Brigit Katz
Smart News; Smithsonian.com , 12.04.2019

The hoodie’s association with sports endured through the 1970s—think Rocky Balboa running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art—when it also became a “streetwear staple,” according to Elizabeth Paton of the New York...

Jeffrey Gibson’s Artistic Remixes, From Song Lyrics to Indigenous Craft — Laura Raicovich
Hyperallergic, 12.04.2019

CHICAGO — Jeffrey Gibson’s current exhibition is titled CAN YOU FEEL IT, after the classic house remix by Chicago-born DJ Larry Fine, aka Mr. Fingers. The show is packed with paintings, punching bags, and quilts, the last of...

The Rise and Rise of Mickalene Thomas — Carol Vogel
Town&Country, 12.03.2019

Back in the summer of 2013, while collectors were scouring the annual art fair in Basel, Switzerland, for hot trends and up-and-coming talents, Mickalene Thomas was holed up a few blocks away in a space...

How I Get It Done: Artist Mickalene Thomas — Erica Schwiegershausen
The Cut, 12.02.2019

Mickalene Thomas is best known for her elaborate mixed-media paintings of black women. These portraits — composed with rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel — question our assumptions about femininity, sexuality, and the ways that women are represented in...

“The Hoodie” Exhibition Explores the Garment’s Role as a Socio-Political Carrier — Keith Estiler
Hypebeast, 11.19.2019

While hoodies have long served as essential items to wear during the cold months, established writer and cultural commentator Lou Stoppard has noticed that the garment is more than just a functional piece of clothing. Stoppard is...

KENNEDY YANKO EXPLORES SHIFTING IDENTITIES THROUGH REPURPOSED METAL — CAIRA MOREIRA-BROWN
Cultbytes, 10.21.2019

Using repurposed metal and paint skin the multimedia artist Kennedy Yanko explores the limitations of materials in their solo-show HANNAH at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago. To create their sculptures they integrate found abandoned raw materials,...

Acid Abstraction: A Review of Jeffrey Gibson at Kavi Gupta — Caira Moreira-Brown
Newcity Art, 10.16.2019

Jeffrey Gibson’s new solo exhibition, “CAN YOU FEEL IT,” at Kavi Gupta includes a new range of works by the 2019 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Here, the American artist integrates his background in rave culture and punk...

Dominican multimedia artist Firelei Báez named ICA Watershed artist for 2020 — Chris Triunfo
The Boston Globe, 10.10.2019

The Institute of Contemporary Art has announced plans for a third summer season at its East Boston Watershed space. The museum has commissioned Dominican multimedia artist Firelei Báez to fill the venue with her largest sculptural installation...

BOSTON’S ICA SELECTS FIRELEI BÁEZ FOR THIRD WATERSHED COMMISSION —
ARTFORUM, 10.10.2019

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, announced that artist Firelei Báez has been commissioned to create her largest sculpture to date for the ICA’s Watershed, a seasonal project space in East Boston, which reopens for...

MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grants Go to Mel Chin, Jeffrey Gibson, Cameron Rowland, More — Andrew Russeth
ARTnews, 09.25.2019

Huge news this Wednesday morning that has nothing to do with the House impeachment inquiry: the MacArthur Foundation has named its new class of fellows—the recipients of its so-called “Genius” grants—and among the 26 winners...

MEL CHIN, JEFFREY GIBSON, AND CAMERON ROWLAND WIN MACARTHUR “GENIUS” GRANTS —
ARTFORUM, 09.25.2019

Twenty-six individuals—including artists, writers, philosophers, educators, scientists, urban designers, and criminal justice reformers—have been awarded MacArthur Fellowships, also known as the “genius grants,” for their “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” Administered by...

Navigating the Portals Between Works by Ligia Lewis and Firelei Baez — Dixa Ramírez D'Oleo
Hyperallergic, 09.25.2019

As a fellow Dominican-born black diasporic subject, I saw the recent High Line commissions as portals into what Sarah Cervenak and J. Kameron Carter call “the black outdoors”: a space of “gathering” for thinking about...

Artists Cameron Rowland, Mel Chin, and Jeffrey Gibson Are Among the 2019 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant Winners — Taylor Dafoe
Artnet News, 09.25.2019

The winners will receive $625,000 in unrestricted grant money, distributed over five years. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today that artists Mel Chin, Jeffrey Gibson, Walter Hood, and Cameron Rowland are...

Jeffrey Gibson, Mel Chin, and Cameron Rowland won MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants. — Christy Kuesel
Artsy, 09.25.2019

Artists Jeffrey Gibson, Mel Chin, and Cameron Rowland are among this year’s MacArthur “genius” grant winners. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation honored 26 individuals this year, ranging in occupations from guitarist to marine scientist. Along with a...

Meet the New Class of MacArthur Fellows — N. Jamiyla Chisholm
Colorlines, 09.25.2019

Many of the new “geniuses” are people of color, and the McArthur Foundation says they “give us reason for hope, and they inspire us all to follow our own creative instincts.” On Wednesday (September 25),...

MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grants Go to Mel Chin, Jeffrey Gibson, Cameron Rowland, More — Andrew Russeth
ARTnews, 09.25.2019

Huge news this Wednesday morning that has nothing to do with the House impeachment inquiry: the MacArthur Foundation has named its new class of fellows—the recipients of its so-called “Genius” grants—and among the 26 winners...

MEL CHIN, JEFFREY GIBSON, AND CAMERON ROWLAND WIN MACARTHUR “GENIUS” GRANTS —
Artforum, 09.25.2019

Twenty-six individuals—including artists, writers, philosophers, educators, scientists, urban designers, and criminal justice reformers—have been awarded MacArthur Fellowships, also known as the “genius grants,” for their “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” Administered by...

A Refreshing Vision of the Future — Robert Archambeau
Hyperallergic, 08.17.2019

CHICAGO — “A map of the world that does not include Utopia,” quipped Oscar Wilde, “is not worth even glancing at.” Inka Essenhigh’s Uchronia at Kavi Gupta gives us not a map, but fragments and glimpses of...

This D.C. barbershop and art gallery offers insight into the LGBTQ community alongside free haircuts — Hannah Natansan
The Washington Post, 08.09.2019

Seven-year-old Nasir Blake wanted to know: Why was his barber taking medicine to “become a boy?” “I don’t get it,” Nasir said last week, spinning in his chair to stare at Brixton Millner, the transgender,...

This D.C. barbershop and art gallery offers insight into the LGBTQ community alongside free haircuts — Hannah Natanson
The Washington Post, 08.09.2019

Seven-year-old Nasir Blake wanted to know: Why was his barber taking medicine to “become a boy?” “I don’t get it,” Nasir said last week, spinning in his chair to stare at Brixton Millner, the transgender,...

The Fierce Pride and Passion of Rhinestone Fashion — Anne Showalter
Smithsonian, 08.09.2019

Contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas is best known for her large-scale paintings of black women posed against boldly patterned backgrounds and adorned with rhinestones. Illustrative of the artist’s signature style, her 2010 Portrait of Mnonja depicts a striking female figure...

On View: ‘Wadsworth Jarrell: Come Saturday Punch’ at Kavi Gupta in Chicago — VICTORIA L. VALENTINE
Culture Type , 08.03.2019

CHARTING THE EVOLUTION of Wadsworth Jarrell‘s practice, “Come Saturday Punch” presents more than two-dozen works spanning 55 years. One of five original co-founders of AfriCOBRA, the collective established in Chicago in 1968, Jarrell has maintained a unique visual...

In Chicago, Overlooked Achievements by L.G.B.T.Q. Artists — Arthur Lubow
The New York Times, 08.02.2019

CHICAGO — Because photographs record a moment that has passed, they are by nature poignant. But a particularly bittersweet mood infuses an ambitious exhibition here of photographs, paintings and videos of L.G.B.T.Q. art. The show,...

Potent Pigments: A Review of Wadsworth Jarrell at Kavi Gupta — Caira Moreira-Brown
Newcity Art, 07.29.2019

“Come Saturday Punch,” a career survey of Wadsworth Jarrell’s work at Kavi Gupta Gallery, delves into the core elements of the artist’s practice. Jarrell’s influence on the Chicago art community began with his contribution to...

Black models in modern art — Kay Lim
CBS News, 07.14.2019

Since 1865, when Édouard Manet’s painting “Olympia” debuted in Paris, all eyes have been focused on the reclining nude gazing directly out at the viewer. “It was very controversial,” said curator Denise Murrell. “This aspect...

TAKE A LOOK AT THE BLANTON’S LATEST EXHIBIT: “THIS IS THE DAY” —
Austin Monthly, 07.11.2019

Stepping into the galleries of the Blanton’s latest exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: This Is the Day is like walking into a vibrant, inclusive future. Contemporary artist Jeffrey Gibson brings together his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, as well...

Three year Smithsonian exhibition to highlight men of colour and their impact on history — Katherine Keener
Art Critique, 07.08.2019

In August, the Smithsonian will launch a long-term travelling exhibition highlighting African American men. Titled ‘Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth.’, the exhibition will feature men of colour who are historic and contemporary icons linked...

Museums Are Swapping Paintings by White Male Artists for Works by Black Artists, Filling Historic Gaps in Their Collections — Victoria L. Valentine
Culture Type , 07.06.2019

FOR GENERATIONS, African American artists have not received anywhere near the institutional and market recognition experienced by their white peers. In terms of acquisitions, many museums are attempting long-delayed corrections. Few museums have consistently collected...

Artist Scott Reeder Revisits Moon World at Kohler Arts Center — John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Shepard Express, 07.03.2019

Working across a variety of mediums, artist Scott Reeder offers commentary on contemporary culture, politics, and trends. His public sculptures reference and remix news headlines, while his humorous list-based paintings offer hypothetical book titles, band...

Firelei Báez at the Mennello Museum of American Art — Jean Marie Carey
Artefuse, 07.02.2019

“Immersion into Compounded Time and the Paintings of Firelei Báez” at the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando is at first pass an accessible and pleasant exhibition, neither a confounding academic treatise nor confrontational...

Widewalls Welcomes Perrotin and 18 Other Top-Tier Galleries Into Its Marketplace — Widewalls
Widewalls, 07.02.2019

LONDON, July 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Widewalls, the online marketplace and magazine dedicated to modern and contemporary art, is delighted to announce that 19 internationally renowned galleries will shortly join its marketplace, in a collective effort to...

Nina Chanel Abney Packs a Visual “PUNCH” in Massive LA Exhibition — Eith Estiler
Hypebeast, 07.01.2019

Following her New York installment last fall, acclaimed visual artist Nina Chanel Abney now launches the Los Angeles exhibition of “PUNCH” at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles. Abney curates an expansive presentation featuring a total of...

SFMOMA Sells Rothko Painting To Fund Purchase Of 11 Works By Women And Minorities — Jay Barmann
SFMOMA, 06.28.2019

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is making a strategic effort to diversify its collection following a major bequest from Gap founders Doris and Donald Fisher that many saw as overly skewed toward white male artists....

SFMOMA’s new acquisitions an important drop in the bucket — Charles Desmarais
SFMOMA, 06.28.2019

Neal Benezra would not be pinned down. In February, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art granted an exclusive interview to The Chronicle. He was seated at a round table in his...

SFMOMA Sold a Rothko for $50 Million to Diversify Its Collection. Here’s What They Bought With the Proceeds — Taylor Dafoe
artnet news, 06.26.2019

In an effort to diversify its collection and address art-historical gaps, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) deaccessioned a prized Mark Rothko painting for $50.1 millionat Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale last month. Now, just five...

Tilda Swinton Curates Photography Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando — Ksenia M. Soboleva
hyperallergic, 06.26.2019

“Guest-edited by Tilda Swinton. Inspired by Virginia Woolf,” so reads the cover of this year’s summer edition of Aperture. The issue and the accompanying exhibition are centered around Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando, a piece of writing Swinton...

‘Be Seen’: Portraits reclaiming the gay experience at Wadsworth Atheneum — Susan Dunne
Hartford Courant, 06.26.2019

The 1969 Stonewall riots emboldened LGBTQ people nationwide to fight for their rights. As an extension of that freedom, queer and nonbinary artists started coming out of the shadows. No longer would their faces be...

Aiming to Diversify Collection, SFMOMA Purchases 11 Works with Profits from $50 M. Rothko Sale — Claire Selvin
Artnews, 06.26.2019

With funds from the sale of Mark Rothko’s Untitled (1960) from its collection, which fetched $50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York last month, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has acquired 11 works by 10...

Art Top 5: July 2019 — Kerry Cardoza
Newcity Art, 06.25.2019

1 Eric J. Garcia: The Bald Eagle’s Toupee (DePaul Art Museum) Part of the National Veterans Art Museum’s first-ever triennial, Garcia’s immersive installation offers a satirical critique of the militarization of U.S. culture. Through August 11 2...

ART DEALERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA WELCOMES EIGHT NEW MEMBER GALLERIES — Artforum
Artforum, 06.19.2019

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) has annoucned that eight new galleries have joined the ranks of the nonprofit organization. Its new members are Avery Galleries (New York and Bryn Mawr), Kavi Gupta (Chicago), David...

Clarkson: Hinsdale Library acquires five limited edition prints for its art collection — Sara Clarkson
Chicago Tribune, 06.13.2019

“We want to surprise you and delight you every time you come into the library,” Karen Kleckner Keefe, the Hinsdale Public Library’s executive director, told me last year during its 125th anniversary commemorations. To the...

New Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Profiles Revolutionary African American Men — Webwire
Webwire, 06.11.2019

A new traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian presents the narrative of a nation through the profiles of significant African American men who are icons in the country’s historical and cultural landscape. “Men of Change: Power....

Surround yourself in the 70s: Mickalene Thomas installation comes to Miami’s Bass Museum — VICTORIA STAPLEY-BROWN
The Art Newspaper, 06.06.2019

Mickalene Thomas is bringing a major installation and series of programming, grounded in her personal history but conceived for a wider community, to the Bass in Miami Beach in December with the immersive environment Better...

MIAMI’S RUBELL MUSEUM TO OPEN NEW 100,000-SQUARE-FOOT HOME IN DECEMBER — Artforum
Artforum, 06.06.2019

The Rubell Family has revealed that it will move its contemporary art collection of 7,200 works by more than one thousand artists—including Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Rashid Johnson, William Kentridge, Cindy Sherman, and Mickalene Thomas—to...

National YoungArts Foundation Competition Open To 15- To 18-Year-Old Artists Across Disciplines — Danceland
Danceland, 06.06.2019

(Miami, FL) – The National YoungArts Foundation (YoungArts) announced that applications for the 2020 YoungArts competition will be accepted beginning today, June 4, through October 11, 2019 at youngarts.org/apply. Approximately 700 of the country’s most...

Upcoming MMOCA show a ‘mash-up’ of tradition and identity — Gayle Worland
Wisconsin State Journal, 06.03.2019

When Madison Museum of Contemporary Art curator Leah Kolb was in New York a couple of years ago, she got an invitation to visit the rural studio of artist Jeffrey Gibson. “It’s this amazing studio...

Whitney Biennial Artists Reveal the Creative Processes Behind Their 2019 Work — Milan Polk
Vulture, 05.31.2019

Whitney Biennial co-curators Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley are giving the public a look behind their artists’ curtains. In a new video series, five Biennial participants go in-depth on their work, explaining how they planned...

Arts District to get Sixth Street bridge’s first public art piece: a sculpture of the ‘LA’ fingers — Bianca Barragan
Curbed | Los Angeles, 05.23.2019

A large-scale sculpture of hands making the “LA” fingers—the only work of art definitively planned for a 12-acre park below the new Sixth Street Viaduct—will go on the Arts Districtside of the bridge, not Boyle Heights. The location was...

Tilda Swinton Has Curated an Exhibition Themed on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando — Belle Hutton
AnOther, 05.23.2019

In 1992, Tilda Swinton played the titular character in Sally Potter’s film Orlando, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel of the same name. In Woolf’s seminal book, Orlando, born a man in Elizabethan times, was a poet who...

A Buyer’s Guide to the Whitney Biennial: What You Need to Know About the Exhibition’s Brightest Rising Stars — Caroline Goldstein & Eileen Kinsella
Artnet News, 05.22.2019

The Whitney Biennial is officially open to the public, and like many of the sprawling biennials and triennials that have proliferated worldwide, it’s difficult to know where to start. This year’s iteration is organized by...

Artist Jeffrey Gibson’s Artwork Activates Overlooked Histories and Marginalized Identities — Jacoba Urist
Smithsonian.com, 05.21.2019

The National Portrait Gallery’s “Identify” performance showcases the multimedia artist’s masterful 50-person drumming event Artist Jeffrey Gibson, a half-Cherokee member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, takes a multidisciplinary approach to his work—he is...

14 CULTURED ARTISTS IN THE 2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL —
Cultured Magazine, 05.13.2019

For the 2019 Whitney Biennial, curators Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta spent a year traveling, visiting artists in their studio, searching for work that resonated with the times—crucially and energetically (and sometimes optimistically). It’s one of...

Initial Thoughts and Highlights from the 2019 Whitney Biennial — Zachary Small
Hyperallergic, 05.13.2019

The 2019 Whitney Biennial is about the state of American culture and how contemporary artists are responding to the conditions of living in a country with increasingly inequitable social stratifications. Curators Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley have...

Required Reading — Hrag Vartanian
Hyperallergic, 05.12.2019

Holland Cotter of the New York Times joins the chorus of voices that thinks Warren Kanders should step off the Whitney Museum board and wonders if museums can really police themselves: We need these institutions,...

Resort 2020 – First Collections Overview — Trendstop
Fashion United, 05.10.2019

Trendstop gives FashionUnited readers an insight into the first collections gracing the international Resort 2020 runways. Trendstop’s catwalk experts bring you a first taste of the Resort season’s most extravagant and influential catwalk events staged...

Mighty Mighty Art Installation is Centerpiece of Barbershop Project at THEARC — George Kevin Jordan
AFRO, 05.10.2019

The barbershop has long been a safe space for certain parts of the Black community- particularly Black men. Artist Devan Shimoyama wanted to take an in-depth look at that relationship in his art installation “Mighty...

We Speak to the Artist Who Just Redesigned the Dior Bar Jacket — Hannah Tindle
AnOther, 05.09.2019

In 1947, Christian Dior unveiled his inaugural haute couture collection in Paris. It famously marked the birth of the ‘New Look’, after then Harper’s Bazaar Editor-in-Chief Carmel Snow declared: “It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian! Your dresses have such...

‘They’re not necessarily welcoming’ | Artist challenges hypermasculinity in black barbershops with exhibit in Anacostia #ForTheCulture — Michael Quander
WUSA9, 05.09.2019

WASHINGTON — Inside of a big, blue shipping container on Mississippi Avenue in Southeast D.C., you’ll find a fully-functioning barbershop adorned with rhinestones, silk flowers, and paintings to make you think. “I think barbershops have...

PAST MEETS PRESENT IN INDIGENOUS FASHION SHOW — Mari Iwasaki
Spectator , 05.08.2019

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) hosted an event on May 2 in partnership with yəhaw̓ (pronunciation: yahowt), an Indigenous-led year-long project to give exposure to their artists and creatives. This event, Lifting the Sky: An...

ALUMNA MICKALENE THOMAS HONORED WITH THE 2019 PIONEER WORKS VISIONARY AWARD — PRATT INSTITUTE
PRATT INSTITUTE, 05.07.2019

Renowned artist and Pratt alumna Mickalene Thomas, BFA ’00, was honored with the Visionary Award in recognition of her influential work at the 2019 Village Fête at Pioneer Works. Thomas’ colossal mixed media portraits of...

Every Must-See Moment From Dior’s Resort 2020 Show — Francesca Wallace
Marie Claire, 05.06.2019

Christian Dior’s resort show is always one for the history books. From the iconic walls of Oxfordshire in England to the architectural wow of Palais Bulles in France, the heritage French brand has never been...

DC art exhibit features barbershop, free haircuts throughout the summer — Madeleine Simon
WTOP, 05.05.2019

There’s no shortage of art museums in D.C., but a new exhibit is offering visitors something most galleries won’t have: free haircuts. The Barbershop Project is the latest installation inside the Mobile Art Gallery, the...

Inside Pioneer Works’s 6th Annual Village Fete — LILAH RAMZI
Vogue, 05.05.2019

“There’s a lot of people here that I’m looking around at,” said Mickalene Thomas, the artist and woman of honor at Pioneer Works’s sixth annual Village Fete on Saturday, April 27. “I thought I saw...

Firelei Báez’s Intoxicating Installation Is a Feminist Ode to the African Diaspora — Julia Wolkoff
Artsy, 05.03.2019

Lift the ragged hem of the blue tarp framing the entryway to James Cohan’s Grand Street gallery and you’ll find yourself in a quixotic, tented fantasy. As your eyes adjust to the dim light filtered through...

Mickalene Thomas’ Total Engagement — Sharon Edelson
WWD, 05.02.2019

Mickalene Thomas’ shimmering, tactile collage portraits aren’t just pretty faces. Exploring themes of self-love, black female sexuality, beauty, power and exploitation, the works are as multilayered as the artist’s process, which combines painting, drawing and...

Nigerians react to the #DiorCruise 2020 “African Wax” Collection — BellaNaija Style
BellaNaija , 05.01.2019

The show opened with a quote by Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun: Culture teaches us to live together, teaches us that we’re not alone in the world, that other people have different traditions and ways of...

Meet the dior cruise collaborator who dressed nelson mandela — Steve Salter
i-D, 05.01.2019

From turning to one of the last remaining factories producing wax fabrics through artisanal techniques, Abidjan-based Uniwax, to inviting designer Grace Wales Bonner and visual artist Mickalene Thomas to reimagine the iconic New Look for...

Dior Cruise 2020: Mickalene Thomas and Grace Wales Bonner on redesigning the iconic Bar jacket — PAR VOGUE
VOGUE , 04.30.2019

Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri has tapped two visionary women – artist Mickalene Thomas and designer Grace Wales Bonner – to reinterpret Christian Dior’s Bar jacket for the Cruise 2020 show. Here, they tell...

Maria Grazia Chiuri Finds Common Ground in Marrakesh for Dior — Trey Gaskin
L’OFFICIEL, 04.30.2019

THE COLLABORATIONS Maria Grazia Churri worked with collaborators to promote cultural appreciation and emphasize the importance of local craftsmanship. Wax print fabrics were produced in collaboration with Uniwax. The opening look- a beige wool coat...

Open Society Foundation Names Winners of 2019 Soros Arts Fellowships — Annie Armstrong
ArtNews, 04.25.2019

The Open Society Foundation in New York has announced the 2019 recipients of its Soros Arts Fellowships. Some 11 artists, curators, researchers, and filmmakers from eight different countries are receiving the 2019 fellowships, which recognize...

How Queer Artists Are Leveling the Scales For the Next Generation — Mikelle Street
OUT Magazine, 04.25.2019

In March 2018, art consultant Racquel Chevremont and her partner, multimedia artist Mickalene Thomas, jointly curated The Aesthetics of Matter exhibition at the Volta New York art fair. The groundbreaking night served as a launch...

Lexicon: The Language of Gesture in 25 Years at Kemper Museum — Breeze Richardson
CISION PRWeb, 04.24.2019

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Lexicon: The Language of Gesture in 25 Years at Kemper Museum” with a free opening reception taking place Thursday, May 16, from 6:00–8:00 p.m. Celebrating Kemper...

Around America’s Dinner Table — Merrell Hambleton
The New York Times Style Magazine , 04.10.2019

For a story in T’s Culture issue, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon invited 25 American (or working-in-America) guests to a series of imaginary dinner parties. We asked them to contemplate the country now, and in...

Tony Tasset Named the 2019 Distinguished Alumnus — Art Academy
Art Academy of Cincinnati , 04.04.2019

The Alumni Council of the Art Academy of Cincinnati is proud to confer upon Tony Tasset the 2019 Distinguished Alumnus Award. Tasset will also join at the Academy’s Commencement speaker. Tasset fuses unstinting candor, dizzying scale shifts,...

Close to Home: Devan Shimoyama on His Glimmering, Incisive Portraits at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago — Claire Voon
ArtNews, 04.04.2019

ast summer, the artist Devan Shimoyama purchased a 1926 yellow-brick Craftsman house in the Pittsburgh suburb of Brentwood. For the 29-year-old artist, whose glittering, life-size portraits of queer black men have exhibited widely in recent...

Art Top 5: April 2019 — ELLIOT REICHERT
New City , 04.02.2019

1 Gregg Bordowitz (Art Institute of Chicago) The videos, poems and performances of Chicago-based artist and activist Gregg Bordowitz examine his queer, Jewish identity and his impact on AIDS activism in America. Opens April 4...

Boots Riley on the links between art, Surrealism and social justice — VICTORIA STAPLEY-BROWN
The Art News Paper , 04.02.2019

“All art is communication, so there are so many similarities between art forms, which is why I was able to do a film [Sorry to Bother You] after doing music for that many years,” says...

‘Your Body Itself Is Already a Place of Politics’: Contemporary Artists Respond to Eight Questions from AfriCOBRA Cofounder Jeff Donaldson — ArtNews
ArtNews, 04.01.2019

On the first Monday of each month, through June, in a partnership with the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art,ARTnews will be sharing a short film directed by Wes Miller from a series that the AAA produced...

See Proposals by Mickalene Thomas, Firelei Báez, and Others for a Monument to the First Black Woman to Serve in Congress — Sarah Cascone
Artnet News , 03.27.2019

New York City is one step closer to unveiling its monument to Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman. Today, the city revealed proposals by five artists: Firelei Báez, La Vaughn Belle, Tanda Francis, Mickalene Thomas, and Amanda Williams...

See the Five Artist Proposals for NYC’s Shirley Chisholm Monument — Zachary Small
Hyperallergic, 03.27.2019

Finalists for the She Built NYC initiative include Firelei Báez, La Vaughn Belle, Mickalene Thomas, Tanda Francis, and a joint project by Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous. The vision for gender parity in public art...

Artist Proposals for Shirley Chisholm Monument in New York Revealed — Claire Selvin
ArtNews, 03.27.2019

New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs revealed five preliminary proposals for a new monument in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to honor of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to be elected to the United States...

Artist Devan Shimoyama Puts Glitter All Over Toxic Masculinity — RAQUEL WILLIS
Out Magazine, 03.18.2019

When Devan Shimoyama was creating Sit Still, a self-portrait in his game-changing Devan Shimoyama: Cry, Baby exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum, he drew upon his first experiences as a young, queer Black kid in a barbershop. The...

Increasing Exposure for Native Artists — By Alex V. Cipolle
New York Times, 03.13.2019

PENDLETON, Ore. — In the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon, a short drive from the rodeo town of Pendleton and about 200 miles east of Portland, is the only professional print house...

Artist Jeffrey Gibson mixes Indigenous heritage, pop culture and art therapy in SAM show — Lisa Edge
Real Change News , 03.13.2019

When rap group Public Enemy released the song “Fight the Power” in 1989 it spoke to discontent in the Black community and the need to rise up against an oppressive system. The tune was more...

The “Fundamentally Transgressive” Attitude of the Chicago Imagists — Elephant
Elephant , 03.13.2019

The band of misfits known as the Chicago Imagists in the 1960s have been brought together in a new exhibition at Goldsmiths CCA, exploring how their weird and wonderful work resonates with the political climate...

The Gibbes Museum of Art to Exhibit “Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem” — The Charleston Chronicle
The Charleston Chronicle, 03.12.2019

The Gibbes Museum of Art will present Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem, a major traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem this spring....

A Conversation on Indigenous Craft and Design with Jeffrey Gibson — Deena ElGenaidi
Hyperallergic, 03.11.2019

At the New Museum this Saturday, curator and writer Glenn Adamson and art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson will sit down for a conversation linked to Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition The Anthrophagic Effect. The two will discuss Gibson’s Indigenous craft techniques,...

The Broad Brings ‘Soul of a Nation’ Exhibition to West Coast — Enrique Menendez
Hypebeat, 03.09.2019

The Broad Museum in Los Angeles will present the West Coast debut of the acclaimed Soul of a Nation: Art In The Age of Black Power 1963-1983 exhibition. The show highlights the work of black artists created over two decades, beginning...

NEW SAM EXHIBITION EXPLORES INTERSECTIONALITY — Michaela Moore
Seattle Spectator, 03.07.2019

The Seattle Art Museum introduced Jeffrey Gibson’s contemporary Like a Hammer exhibition this past week. Like a Hammer features beautiful beadwork and paintings done by Gibson, all in hopes to convey the message of Gibson’s...

Paper City and Ghost Modernity: In Conversation with Ranjana Steinruecke — Art Fervour
Art Fervour, 03.06.2019

Contemporary Indian artist Manish Nai has a rather unique artistic style. He often works with found and discarded objects- recycling old clothes and newspapers, compressing books and various kinds of fabric- transforming them into sculptural...

Jeffrey Gibson’s art, on view at SAM, knocks down boundaries with gentle taps and potent blows — Gayle Clemans
The Seattle Times, 03.05.2019

Jeffrey Gibson’s art is like a beautiful hammer: a finely wrought tool capable of gentle taps or potent blows. In Gibson’s hands, indigenous craft methods, colorful abstraction and complex symbols fuse into iconic forms, knocking...

A Brooklyn Artist Finds Inspiration, and Refuge, in Puerto Rico — Osman Can Yerebakan
New York Times, 03.05.2019

Dressed in all black, in contrast to the radiant colors that surround him, the artist Angel Otero emanates warmth as he stands in his studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, right off the high-spirited Avenue of Puerto Rico (also...

Jeffrey Gibson brings ‘Like a Hammer’ exhibit to SAM — Blake Peterson
The Daily, 03.04.2019

Multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson’s “Like a Hammer,” an amalgamation of various works produced from 2011 on, opened to the public Thursday at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and will remain there until May 12. The...

Jeffrey Gibson’s Like a Hammer Strikes Today — Jasmyne Keimig
The Stranger, 03.01.2019

In 2010, artist Jeffrey Gibson cut the canvas of his paintings off their stretchers, shoved them into a garbage bag, dragged them down to his local laundromat in Brooklyn, and threw them into the washing...

2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL ANNOUNCES PARTICIPATING ARTISTS —
ARTFORUM , 02.25.2019

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York announced today that seventy-five artists have been selected to present work in the Seventy-Ninth Whitney Biennial, which will be curated by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley and will run from...

BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS EXPANDS BOARD OF TRUSTEES —
ArtForum, 02.21.2019

The Bronx Museum of the Arts announced today that it has welcomed seven new members to its board of trustees. “They embody the tremendous resources our community has to offer, and will serve to help...

Ahmedabad has a new museum, and it’s dedicated to a shade of blue — SHAHNAZ SIGANPORIA
Vogue India, 02.11.2019

The museum space has long stood as an institution that preserves and parades those integral cultural, historical, scientific or artistic moments of significance. While it does chronicle, it also becomes a sort of social marker—and...

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT | ART Artist Mickalene Thomas and author Darnell Moore explore race, identity at ‘Entangled Spirits’ conversation — Columbia Spectator
Columbia Spectator , 02.08.2019

Visual and written works of art provide a unique platform for people to express their political, religious, and racial identities. Visual artist Mickalene Thomas and author Darnell Moore do not shy away from making the...

Next Up on the High Line in New York: Paintings — Annie Armstrong
Art News, 02.05.2019

Most of the High Line’s roughly 1.5-mile length along Manhattan’s West Side is open to the elements, making it a fine venue for durable sculpture but something less than an ideal one for some other...

Beyoncé’s Black History Month Collage Teaches Us A Powerful Lesson — Jolie A. Doggett
Huffington Post , 02.05.2019

Beyoncé remains the queen of poignant Black History Month moments. In 2016, she dropped her hit-single-turned-black-anthem “Formation.” In 2017, she revealed her pregnancy with Sir and Rumi Carter. And this year, she surprised us with a...

“She Persists”: An Unprecedented Show of Art by Women in “the People’s House” — Andrea K. Scott
The New Yorker, 02.05.2019

Last month, a record-breaking hundred and twenty-seven women were sworn in to the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Now forty-four women have taken over the walls of Gracie Mansion, the official home of the...

Sports, Tommie Smith and racial injustice — Bo Emerson
AJC, 02.01.2019

Fifty years ago Olympic sprinter Tommie Smith raised a fist to the sky and shook the world. That iconic protest against racial injustice has never stopped reverberating. This week the issue of sports and protest...

THIS IS NO TIME TO CRY WITH DEVAN SHIMOYAMA — MARIA BRITO CO-PRODUCED AND CO-EDITED BY PETER KOLOFF AND MARIA BRITO.
CULTURED, 02.01.2019

How does the simple activity of getting a haircut become so charged with memories that are entangled with identity, personality and the assertion of one’s own agency? Philadelphia-born aritst Devan Shimoyama piques the spectator’s curiosity and invites...

Atlanta Stokes a Civil Rights Conversation for Some Super Bowl Players — Ken Belson
The New York Times , 02.01.2019

Players in the Super Bowl rarely get out to see the sights, but this group, with the issues they champion so embroidered in the dialogue of the N.F.L., said they were determined to make Atlanta’s...

JEFFREY GIBSON: THE ANTHROPOPHAGIC EFFECT — New Museum
New Musuem , 02.01.2019

Multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) will be the artist-in-residence for the Department of Education and Public Engagement’s Winter/Spring R&D Season: INHERITANCE. Gibson’s exhibition will explore the material histories and futures of several...

Black Canadian women artists detangle the roots of Black beauty — Cheryl Thompson
The Conversation CA, 01.17.2019

Renowned visual artist Mickalene Thomas has taken over the fifth-floor gallery space of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) with her show “Femmes Noires.” Working with curator Julie Crooks, it is the first time the...

Artist Devan Shimoyama Takes on Race and Sexuality With Glitter and Rhinestones — Noah Johnson
GQ Magazine , 01.15.2019

Philadelphia Native Shimoyama is now based in Pittsburgh, where he teaches at Carnegie Mellon University. A Yale M.F.A. graduate, his paintings borrow materials from drag culture—glitter, feathers, and rhinestones—and explore issues related to race, masculinity, and...

Culture Type: The Year in Black Art 2018 — Victoria L. Valentine
Culture Type, 01.15.2019

EXHIBITION | Feb. 15: “Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas” opens at the Seattle Art Museum. Spanning three generations, Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, and Mickalene Thomas are recognized for their singular and assertive representations of black figures....

The Billionaire Who Is Trying to Make Dallas Trendy — Sheila Marikar
Fortune Magazine , 01.11.2019

When Tim Headington was 13 years old, his father proposed that he skip school and accompany him on a business trip to Dallas, a four-hour drive from their Oklahoma City home. Like many teenagers, Headington...

Pittsburgh Report: Five Places for Healing Through Art — Martha Schwendener
The New York Times , 01.02.2019

‘Devan Shimoyama: Cry, Baby’ Through March 17 at the Andy Warhol Museum; 412-237-8300, warhol.org. In the mid-1970s, Andy Warhol was commissioned by an Italian art dealer to create portraits of drag stars who treated gender —...

Best of 2018: Our Top 20 Exhibitions Across the United States (excerpt) — Hyperallergic
Hyperallergic, 12.19.2018

2. Jeffrey Gibson: This is the Day at the Wellin Museum As Tracy Adler, the curator of Jeffrey Gibson’s This Is the Dayexhibition at the Wellin Museum said to me, Gibson could go on continuing to...

“ANONYMOUS WAS A WOMAN” NAMES 2018 GRANT RECIPIENTS — Art Forum
Art Forum, 12.11.2018

The unrestricted grant program Anonymous Was A Woman announced today the ten recipients of its 2018 grants, which recognize women artists who are over forty years old and have made significant contributions to their fields.

Long-Running ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ Grants Awarded for 2018, With Betty Tompkins and Deborah Roberts Among 10 Winners — Alex Greenberger
Art News, 12.11.2018

Started in 1996 as a response to the National Endowment for the Arts’s decision to stop funding individual artists, the grants had long been awarded by a donor who chose to remain anonymous.

JEFFREY GIBSON with Nick Bennett — Nick Bennett
Brooklyn Rail, 12.11.2018

On a recent fall day we spoke for a few hours about Gibson’s incredible and diverse body of work, and in the edited conversation that follows we touch on the deep and shifting influence of one’s identity, and for Gibson, what it means to reimagine the objects and rituals surrounding powwows within Native history, indulging in kitsch and camp

Here Are the 10 Female Artists Over 40 Who Have Won the $250,000 Anonymous Was a Woman Awards — Sarah Cascone
Art Net , 12.11.2018

Betty Tompkins and Kate Gilmore are among the ten artists who will receive unrestricted $25,000 grants from the Anonymous Was a Woman awards, dedicated to women artists over the age of 40. This year’s recipients range in age...

‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ Award Gives Major Boost to 10 Female Artists — COLLEEN CURRY
Galerie Magazine , 12.11.2018

The grant program Anonymous Was a Woman today awarded $250,000 to ten female artists for significant contributions in their fields. Women artists over the age of 40 qualify for the unrestricted $25,000 grant, and recipients...

Art Movements (excerpt) — Jasmine Weber
Hyperallergic, 12.11.2018

Anonymous Was a Woman announced the 10 recipients of its annual award recognizing women artists over 40 years of age. 2018’s winners include Dotty Attie, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Patty Chang, Beverly Fishman, Kate Gilmore, Heather Hart, Deborah...

The recipients of the 2018 Anonymous Was a Woman grants for female artists were announced — Artsy
Artsy, 12.11.2018

The latest recipients of the annual Anonymous Was a Woman grants, which since 1996 has bestowed unrestricted awards of $25,000 to hundreds of women artists over the age of 40, were revealed this week. And...

Why This Female-Led Organization Gives Art Grants to Women 40 and Over — Angela M.H. Schuster
Robb Report , 12.11.2018

It’s no secret that when it comes to a presence in art galleries and museums—and even as collectors—women are underrepresented. And artist/philanthropist Susan Unterberg is on a one-woman campaign to change that. For more than...

Two revelatory exhibitions upend our understanding of black models in art — Sebastian Smee
Two revelatory exhibitions upend our understanding of black models in art, 12.10.2018

Now, thanks to Denise Murrell, an art historian with a background in finance, Laure has emerged from the shadows. We find her in the company, what’s more, of dozens of other black models in modern...

The Emergence of a Brash Young Painter — David Carrier and Graham Shearing
Hyperallergic, 12.08.2018

PITTSBURGH — Cry, Baby at The Andy Warhol Museum is the first solo museum exhibition for Devan Shimoyama, a Pittsburgh artist, not yet 30. It includes 30 paintings, three sculptures, and four photographs. The survey covers a...

The art world often excludes Black women. Mickalene Thomas’s superpower is making them visible — Amanda Parris
CBC, 12.08.2018

Thomas also expresses a desire to explore the range and diversity of Blackness, which includes extending the conversation beyond the African American experience to include the larger African Diaspora.

5 Outstanding Discoveries at Miami Art Week’s Satellite Fairs — Andrew Goldstein
artnet, 12.07.2018

Devan Shimoyama at Untitled Who: A 29-year-old Philadelphia artist with a Yale MFA and a tremendous amount of buzz, Shimoyama paints mesmerizing portraits that often comment on his multifaceted concerns—from police-shooting victims to notions of masculinity—as a young...

Jeffrey Gibson’s Futurist Gaze — Seph Rodney
Jeffrey Gibson’s Futurist Gaze, 12.05.2018

CLINTON, NY — What if an artist made work for a people not yet born? A visitor to Jefferey Gibson’s exhibition This Is the Day at the Wellin Museum might recognize this invocation. There are hints and clues, and there...

The Baltimore Museum of Art – Mickalene Thomas selected as inaugural artist for new biennial public art commission — e-flux announcements
e-fulx, 12.02.2018

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announces a major new biennial commission made possible by an historic endowment gift from Baltimore philanthropists Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. As the first named public art commission for a...

At Miami’s Art Fairs, a Somber Mood Sets In — Kelly Crow
The Wall Street Journal, 12.01.2018

Jeffrey Gibson, also living in New York, has developed an international reputation for beaded figures and paintings on rawhide that reference his Choctaw heritage. Yet over the past year, he said he felt a greater need to...

Deconstructing Race in Western Painting — David Carrier
Hyperallergic, 12.01.2018

Recently a number of female and male black artists, many American, some French, have radically deconstructed the traditional schema of the active male artist depicting a passive female model, questioning its assumptions about gender and race. And...

Still the Main Attraction, Art Basel Returns to Miami Beach — Paul Laster
Galerie, 11.30.2018

Likewise, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami exhibition “AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People,” opening December 6, motivated gallerist Kavi Gupta to bring to the fair classic works by several of the artists in the museum show, including Gerald Williams’ colorful protest painting Take It (1971).

BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART LAUNCHES COMMISSION SERIES AND CURATORIAL FELLOWSHIP WITH FOCUS ON DIVERSITY —
Artforum, 11.30.2018

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) is launching a diversity-minded commission program for artists to create site-specific works in the museum’s lobby with funds from a gift by philanthropists Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. The...

From a Judy Chicago Retrospective to a Celebration of AfriCOBRA, Here Are 11 Shows to See in Miami During Art Basel — Caroline Goldstein
artnet news, 11.27.2018

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Chicago-based art collective afriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists).

Museum Of Contemporary Art North Miami Shines New Light On AfriCOBRA — Chadd Scott
Forbes, 11.25.2018

You would need to be a serious student of modern American art to be familiar with AfriCOBRA. Fifty years after the black artist collective that defined the visual aesthetic of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was founded; the Chicago-based artists are receiving fresh attention.

Beverly Fishman — David Rhodes
The Brooklyn Rail, 11.20.2018

Beverly Fishman’s high gloss surfaces have an inscrutable beauty. The shape and color of each work looks both estranging and familiar, and whilst the combinations of sometimes acidic or synthetic color entrance, they do not comfort.

Studio Visit: Firelei Báez — Isabel Custodio
MoMA, 11.14.2018

On November 17, Firelei Báez will unveil her work For Améthyste and Athénaire (Exiled Muses Beyond Jean Luc Nancy’s Canon), Anaconasas part of The Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Window series. In her art, Báez reclaims the...

The Best Art Exhibitions in Seoul — Yujin Min
Frieze , 11.13.2018

Angel Otero, ‘Piel de Luna’ Lehmann Maupin 1 November – 22 December It’s becoming clear that Lehmann Maupin is focusing its newly-opened Seoul outpost on bringing some of the finest artists from the New York...

POSING MODERNITY — LONG NGUYEN
Flaunt, 11.12.2018

Diversity and inclusiveness have been the latest buzzwords in the fashion industry. The industry is prone to making amends: over exclusion of racial representations in the creation of the images; over advertising campaigns that feature...

What it Means When Columbia Does a Show About the Black Model on Its West Harlem Expansion Campus — Tiana Reid
Vulture, 11.09.2018

Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today is the current exhibition at the new Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, part of Columbia University’s $6.3 billion expansion into West Harlem. (Columbia...

As If, Audemars Piguet Bring Stimulating Talk to Beautiful Setting — Sharon Edelson
WWD, 11.09.2018

As If magazine’s event on Wednesday offered guests some food for thought before dinner was served: the first installment of its speaker series, launched with Audemars Piguet. “It’s our duty to deliver real estate in the magazine...

50 Years Later, Chicago Artists Are Getting Their Due — Tariro Mzezewa
The New York Times , 11.08.2018

Chicago — “Stop the murder of brothers and sisters.” “Liberate our nation.” “Unite.” The exhortations, on the vibrantly colored canvas of Gerald Williams’s “Messages,” couldn’t be more timely. Yet it is nearly 50 years old,...

50 Years Later, Chicago Artists Are Getting Their Due — Tariro Mzezewa
The New York Times , 11.08.2018

Chicago — “Stop the murder of brothers and sisters.” “Liberate our nation.” “Unite.” The exhortations, on the vibrantly colored canvas of Gerald Williams’s “Messages,” couldn’t be more timely. Yet it is nearly 50 years old,...

Redrawing the History of Women of Color in Vibrant Hues — Julia Friedman
Hyperallergic , 11.07.2018

These women inspired Firelei Báez: Joy Out of Fire, a series of dynamic paintings now on view at the Schomburg Center’s Latimer/Edison Gallery. Blending bright colors and portraiture, the paintings serve as a mini history lesson, offering long overdue recognition for a number of activists, writers, artists, dancers, and politicians.

Jeffrey Gibson — Zack Hatfield
Art Forum, 11.06.2018

For nearly two decades, Jeffrey Gibson has sought to complicate ideas of identity and heritage through multiform work rooted in modernist abstraction, indigenous traditions, and queerness.

Beyond identity politics, the art of Jeffrey Gibson — Amy Zion
Art Basel, 11.01.2018

‘Like a Hammer’, which is touring to the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, highlights a fundamental turning point in Gibson’s work. Prior to 2011, the artist was producing more classic, albeit innovative, abstract painting.

Seven Artists on the Warhol Influence (excerpt) — Antwaun Sargent
The New York Times , 11.01.2018

Three decades after Andy Warhol’s death, he remains one of America’s most provocative artists. His influence on popular culture is so pervasive that each emerging art movement after him has had to grapple with Warhol’s focus on surface perfections and his singular celebrity.

FIRELEI BÁEZ with Hồng-Ân Trương — Hồng-Ân Trương
The Brooklyn Rail, 11.01.2018

I first encountered Firelei Báez’s work in 2012 in a group show called Cultural Transference at EFA Project Space, curated by Sara Reisman. Over the years, I watched in awe as Firelei’s work expanded and deepened in formal explorations...

Artist Jeffrey Gibson Merges His Queer and Native American Identities — Coco Romack
OUT Magazine, 10.30.2018

With massive garments and technicolor paintings, artist Jeffrey Gibson is here to inspire.

Raised fist: Tommie Smith and his “moment of truth” at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics — CBS News
CBS News, 10.28.2018

At the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, artist Glenn Kaino is offering a fresh take on one of the 20th century’s best-known images: Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the Olympic medal stand in...

High exhibit examines Smith’s iconic Olympic salute — Neighbor Staff
Neighbor Newspapers , 10.25.2018

More than a half century before former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee when the national anthem was played before his game to protest human rights abuse in the world, 1968 Olympic gold-medalist sprinter...

Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today —
Apollo Magazine, 10.24.2018

This exhibition reconsiders the history of modern painting, in terms of the evolving depiction of the black model. It begins with a focus on Laure, the often-overlooked maid in Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), in order to explore...

The Andy Warhol Museum wows with the glitter and grit of Devan Shimoyama: Cry, Baby — Amanda Waltz
Pittsburg City Paper, 10.24.2018

The first solo museum exhibition from Devan Shimoyama features paintings, sculptures, and photography.

Amid Rising Calls for Social Justice in America, the Clenched Fist is Appearing in Artwork and Museums — Victoria Valentine
Culture Type, 10.23.2018

A 100-foot-long sculpture composed of 150 suspended forearms with clenched fists is on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. “Bridge” (2014) is the first artwork Los Angeles-based Glenn Kaino made in collaboration with gold-medal sprinter Tommie Smith.

Amid Rising Calls for Social Justice in America, the Clenched Fist is Appearing in Artwork and Museums — Victoria L. Valentine
Culture Type, 10.23.2018

THE CLENCHED FIST, a symbol of Black Power and strength in the face of adversity, is showing up in museums. The historic gesture reflects the current moment in which many groups, frustrated with the political...

Matisse to modernity: the evolution of black female models in art — Nadja Sayej
The Guardian, 10.22.2018

There are paintings by female artists such as Mickalene Thomas, who recently captured Cardi B for the cover of W Magazine’s art issue. In Din, une très belle négresse, from 2012, is a portrait of a black woman painted colorfully in retro garb. “She takes 19th-century black women portrayals, but shows them in expressive ways, with rhinestones, afro wigs and a 1970s look,” said Murrell. “They’re women portrayed as sensual but in control of their sensuality, in a manner that shows a black woman who wants to be herself.

Devan Shimoyama with his 2018 work 11 ‘Cry, Baby’: Devan Shimoyama’s young career takes off with solo show at The Warhol — M. Thomas
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10.19.2018

Paintings by Devan Shimoyama at The Andy Warhol Museum mesmerize through electrifying color, bedazzling glitter and implicit mystery. But there’s more to the work of this young artist, a fast-rising star in the contemporary art scene.

Life-altering protests as relevant today as they were 50 years ago — Daniel Bates
The National, 10.17.2018

A new exhibition revisits and reimagines the ‘Black Power’ Olympic protests by Smith and Carlos

The Meaning of Metal: Richard Hunt Balances Natural and Industrial Through Sculpture — Jessica Smith
Flagpole Magazine, 10.17.2018

A true pioneer of public art in America, Chicago-born sculptor Richard Hunt has created over 130 large-scale commissions during his career, which has spanned the past six decades. While always maintaining a strong interest in linear forms, he incorporates seemingly disparate influences—biology, zoology, classical literature, music and history—into interesting works that pull the eye in and allow the mind to wander and make sense of their abstracted forms. Welding metal as his medium, his body of work explores the reconciliation between the organic and industrial.

Life-altering protests as relevant today as they were 50 years ago A new exhibition revisits and reimagines the ‘Black Power’ Olympic protests by Smith and Carlos — Daniel Bates
The National, 10.17.2018

Fifty years ago this month, Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the winner’s podium at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico and raised their black-gloved fists to the sky. Their Black Power protest about...

Arts review: In depicting women in her life, painter Mickalene Thomas prefers flash, depth — Nancy Gilson
The Columbus Dispatch, 10.14.2018

Thomas presents herself, her mother, her lovers and other women she admires in striking portraits that reveal intense communication between Thomas and her subjects — and social and cultural commentary to her audience. The intriguingly titled “I Can’t See You Without Me” consists of 30-plus works by the Brooklyn-based artist. The exhibit continues through Dec. 30 at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts. Each of the center’s galleries is devoted to one of Thomas’ muses or Thomas herself.

The painter reimagining rarely seen Warhol work with black drag queens — Lexi Manatakis
Dazed Digital, 10.12.2018

Artist Devan Shimoyama uses rhinestones, glitter, sequins, and bright fabric to create poignant dialogues around the queer, black male experience

Mickalene Thomas Makes a Muse of Cardi B — Jasmine Weber
Hyperallergic, 10.10.2018

Mickalene Thomas’s bright-shining stardom in the art world has collided with that of rap superstar Cardi B in the most recent “Art Issue” of W Magazine. The collagist, painter, photographer, videographer, and occasional performance artist has made the...

High Art: Cardi B and Artist Mickalene Thomas Collab for W Magazine — Maiysha Kai
The Glow Up | The Root, 10.09.2018

Something incredible happens when black women join forces. We’ve become accustomed to considering our collaborations another iteration of “black girl magic,” but truthfully, it’s more like “black girl Voltron,” an amalgamation of forces so powerful that they are undeniable. All that to say, there’s something we can’t help but love about Cardi B being photographed by acclaimed artist Mickalene Thomas for W magazine’s Art Issue.

Cardi B Channels Hollywood’s Legendary Latina Glamour Queens in W’s Art Issue (excerpt) — Diane Solway
W Magazine, 10.09.2018

For her W cover shoot, Cardi B was photographed by the artist ­Mickalene Thomas, channeling Latina glamour queens of a bygone Hollywood era such as Maria Montez, Chelo Alonso, and Rita Moreno.

Warhol Museum Draws Parallels With Devan Shimoyama’s “Cry, Baby” — Amanda Reed
Pittsburg Current, 10.09.2018

“Cry, Baby” uses self-portraiture to challenge contemporary views of African American masculinity and boyhood, turning a typically hyper-masculine social space into a queer fantasy with floral capes, glittery hair and skin in shades of green, gold and fiery red. This creates two worlds, according to Beck: a queer reimagining of an African American barbershop and a fantastic utopia.

Artist Embraces Alternative Perspectives on Race — Andew Ptaschinski
Carnegie Mellon University, 10.09.2018

"What Devan is doing now is creating a space to embrace alternative perspectives on race," said Jessica Beck, the Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Warhol, visiting scholar at CMU's School of Art and curator of Shimoyama's show.

Props, Assists and Situations: Jessica Stockholder at The Contemporary Austin — Tatiana Ryckman
Glasstire, 10.06.2018

The promotional photographs for Relational Aesthetics, Jessica Stockholder’s show at The Contemporary Austin at the Jones Center, share some compelling features with the works themselves — they confuse the eye. It’s no accident.  “I don’t think in...

Chicago Roundup (Excerpt) — Orit Gat
Art Agenda, 10.05.2018

Another Chicago-based group is shown at Kavi Gupta; “AFRICOBRA 50” (which stands for African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), curated by the co-founding member Gerald Williams, includes paintings, sculptures, and clothes by 12 artists largely...

The High Museum of Art celebrates Tommie Smith and the power of protest — Cassidy Sparks
RollingOut, 10.04.2018

Decades before Colin Kaepernick took a knee, Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos made a powerful protest in front of the world at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico. Smith had just won the gold medal and Carlos the...

‘90s Club-Kid Meets Modern Abstraction In Jeffrey Gibson’s Solo Show — Carol Kino
WSJ Magazine, 10.04.2018

WHEN Jeffrey Gibson’s first show at New York’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co. opens on October 18, it will be the culmination of a banner year. Since last fall, the artist, who’s 46, half Cherokee and a...

Monique Davis takes helm of Center for Art & Public Exchange (Excerpt) — MBJ Staff
Mississippi Business Staff, 10.04.2018

Julian Rankin has served at MMA since 2010 in communications, community engagement, and leadership capacities. His departure from MMA for WAMA comes at the conclusion of a dynamic year for CAPE, which included newly engineered...

Miami’s MOCA Presents Chicago-Based AfriCOBRA Collective During Art Basel Miami Beach 2018 —
ARTFIXdaily, 10.04.2018

In celebration of Art Basel Miami Beach 2018, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) will present a groundbreaking exhibition celebrating the Chicago-based AfriCOBRA collective, in conjunction with the group’s 50th anniversary. AfriCOBRA will be on display at...

Artist Mickalene Thomas Opens Up About the Importance of Diverse Bodies In Her Work — Kimberly Drew
Harpar's Bazaar, 10.03.2018

Fashion magazines give us an opportunity to imagine a life more glamorous than our own. But the reality is that the fantasy on offer has been largely monolithic: usually white, often thin, and nearly always...

5 Lessons in Feminist Art (Excerpt) — Jenna Adrian-Diaz
The Cut, 10.03.2018

Mickalene Thomas reinterprets 18th- and 19th-century Romantic paintings, placing black women front-and-center in carefully staged portraits. Morris: “The image is of her mother, who was a very important inspiration and muse for her. In this case,...

Even as Brexit Looms, Galleries Notch Sales on Frieze London’s Opening Day (Excerpt) — Judd Tully
ARTNews, 10.03.2018

There were discoveries to be had at Chicago’s Kavi Gupta, which was showing rare works by AfriCOBRA artists, who are making big waves in the traveling show “Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age...

Review: Political protest the focus of High Museum’s ‘With Drawn Arms’ — Felicia Feaster
Atlanta Journal Constitution , 10.02.2018

An art exhibition centered on a gesture, “With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith” at the High Museum of Art focuses on a formative moment of American political protest.

The High’s Latest Exhibit Reinterprets The 1968 Olympic Protest — Patrice Worthy
WABE 90.1 FM, 10.02.2018

The latest exhibition at the High Museum of Art titled “With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith” expands the dialogue around the meaning behind that 90-second protest by opening it up for reinterpretation to a new generation. The exhibit opened Saturday, and it’s the first time Smith, a resident of Stone Mountain, has told his side of the story.

Native American Tradition Meets Modern Aesthetics in Jeffrey Gibson’s ‘DON’T MAKE ME OVER’ — Suna Cha
The Hoya, 10.01.2018

‘As cold rain drowned the streets outside with somber, gray tones, Jeffrey Gibson’s “DON’T MAKE ME OVER” infused Georgetown University’s newly built exhibition space with vibrant colors and sound. The Maria & Alberto De La...

High Museum’s latest exhibition, “With Drawn Arms,” speaks to #TakeAKnee and #BlackLivesMatter — Kelundra Smith
Atlanta Magazine, 10.01.2018

Stepping off of the elevator onto the second floor of the High Museum of Art’s Ann Cox Chamber Wing, nearly 150 gold-painted arms raised with the Black Power fist are suspended in the air. Connected by cables, they form a shape that looks like a mix of Newton’s Cradle and a helix of DNA. The piece by Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Glenn Kaino is called “Bridge,” and was the artist’s first collaboration with Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith.

Exhibit explores themes of race, stereotypes, community and love — Tara Thomas
WJTV, 09.29.2018

JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The Mississippi Museum of Art is now showcasing works by artist Jeffrey Gibson and his use of 1960s and 70s language and singer-songwriters from the eras. According to a press release,...

Exhibition reflects on 1968 Olympic protest and its legacy — Kate Brumback
Midland Reporter-Telegram, 09.29.2018

ATLANTA (AP) — Nearly five decades before NFL players took a knee to protest police brutality and social injustice, African-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos defiantly raised black-gloved fists during an Olympic medal ceremony...

Exhibition reflects on 1968 Olympic protest and its legacy — Kate Brumback
The Harold-News, 09.29.2018

ATLANTA – About five decades before NFL players took a knee to protest police brutality and social injustice, African-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos defiantly raised black-gloved fists during an Olympic medal ceremony to...

Chicago Expo Highlights Art, Design, and Architecture Throughout the Windy City (Excerpt) — Book Mason
Architectural Digest, 09.28.2018

Just inside, Firelei Báez’s compelling tapestry-like installation stands out on a white wall. “Firelei’s work has taken a new sculptural, architectural direction that is really exciting,” says her dealer, Wendi Norris, who has her own...

What Not to Miss at Frieze London (excerpt) — Adam Heardman
MutualArt, 09.26.2018

From the 4-7 October, the art world descends on London's Regent's Park for Frieze Art Fair, one of the biggest events in the cultural calendar. With countless booths, exhibitions, talks and live events, even a seasoned fair-goer can feel overwhelmed. To help, here's the MutualArt pick of just a few highlights on offer, for collectors and spectators alike.

Black Girl Magic, Mickalene Thomas, and Being My Own Muse — Jasmyne Keimig
The Stranger, 09.21.2018

In MUSE: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête at the Henry Art Gallery, the New York-based artist, who is best known for her huge multi-textured paintings, focuses on her photographs and video artworks that include her friends, lovers, and even her mother.

In Conversation: John Edmonds and Mickalene Thomas — Michael Love Michael
Paper Magazine, 09.19.2018

The duo candidly discusses everything from taking the time to illuminate the varying facets of blackness through art, to how Edmonds finds his subjects and his use of light to capture their inner glow, to curation of the self in the digital age.

ART REVIEW ‘3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art, 1964-1980’ Review: A Celebration of the Weird (excerpt) — Peter Plagens
The Wall Street Journal, 09.18.2018

Better still is Brown’s 1974 “Autobiography in the Shape of Alabama (Mammy’s Door).” It’s an oil painting, with one of Brown’s patented simplified landscapes of rolling hills and silhouetted trees, on a format that’s reductively...

‘Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side’ sheds light on overlooked art, design — Kyle MacMillan
Chicago Sun Times, 09.14.2018

This eye-opening exhibition focuses on a bustling mix of about 50 artists, many of whom were influenced by and responded to the racial tensions and socio-political tumult that coursed through these two transformative decades of the late 20th century.

How Firelei Báez Uses Yoruba Icons and Her Afro-Caribbean Heritage in Her Profound ‘Joy Out of Fire’ Murals — Jasmin Hernandez
Artnet News , 09.14.2018

The themes from all of these works continue to come together in Báez’s upcoming fall show, her first with Chicago gallerist Kavi Gupta, which opens September 15. “We’re very excited for how the show will be contributing to a larger dialogue in her practice that’s also been engaged by her other recent projects, such as her showing at the Berlin Biennale, or her Studio Museum project at the Schomburg Center,” Gupta explained by email.

RETROSPECTIVE From the Archives: Mickalene Thomas on Why Her Work Goes ‘Beyond a Black Esthetic,’ in 2011 — ARTnews
ARTnews, 09.14.2018

Currently on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, is a survey of Mickalene Thomas featuring more than 50 of her paintings, sculptures, and installations. Titled “I Can’t See You Without Me,” the show includes many of Thomas’s portraits, which often depict black women in settings that appear to be collaged. With this show in mind, republished below is Barbara Pollack’s profile of the artist from the January 2011 issue of ARTnews. “I am interested in the sense of perseverance in women’s lives, the feeling of winning in one’s own life,” Thomas tells Pollack. “That kind of strength in a woman is something I gravitate toward.” Pollack’s profile follows below. —Alex Greenberger

Radiant and Radical: 20 Years of Defining the Soul of Black Art — Holland Cotter
The New York Times , 09.13.2018

In the Los Angeles work, hard distinctions between representation and abstraction are moot, as they are in a lot of art made in Chicago by members of AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), who specialized in pattern-intensive dazzle. One of the show’s inspired sights is a pairing of hand-painted revolution-themed dresses by the AfriCOBRA artist Jae Jarrell with pointillist portraits of Angela Davis and Malcolm X by her husband, Wadsworth A. Jarrell.

An Artist Pays Homage to Her Glamorous, Dying Mother — Emily Pothast
The Stranger , 09.12.2018

In MUSE, on view at Henry Art Gallery through September 30, Thomas's photographs are exhibited as artworks in their own right. They are both visually striking and astonishingly intimate, revealing the kinds of details that can only be captured by the camera. I

The Man Who Raised a Fist, 50 Years Later — Tik Root
The Atlantic, 09.11.2018

The arms are not just any arms, but fiberglass casts of Smith’s actual right arm, made from a silicone mold that Kaino took a few years back. Dozens of replicas are now strewn across the studio, in various states of preparation.

Wexner Center art exhibition to empower women, challenge art history norms — Michael Lee
The Lantern, 09.10.2018

Femininity, race, sexuality, art history, identity and power. These are the themes explored in New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas’ new exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

A Good Year for Younger Artists, Immigrant Citizens and Outrage Image — Holland Cotter
The New York Times , 09.06.2018

I plan to catch up with the Chocktaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson in his traveling survey at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, or in a smaller solo at the Wellin Museum in Clinton, N.Y. (both open Sept. 8).

Chicago and the Age of Black Power: An Interview with AfriCOBRA Founding Member Gerald Williams — Vasia Rigou
New City , 09.06.2018

One of the AfriCOBRA principles of design, along with unabashed use of color, lost and found line, frontality of the images, was “mimesis at midpoint,” which has been the least talked or written about. When one hears attempts to answer the question what that means, answers vary. I’ve been seeking ways to clarify that principle which I feel does not have to have the predictable subject matter based on political, social and biological references commonly associated with work by African-Americans.

Previewing the Wellin Museum’s new exhibit: Jeffery Gibson’s “This Is The Day” — Karina Bayrakdarian ’21, A&E Contributor
The Spectator , 09.06.2018

This Is The Day combines pop and queer culture along with historical and contemporary references to his Native American heritage, including the 19th century Ghost Dance and the effects of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Through painting, sculpture, embroidery, beaded works, stained glass, and video, the works in the exhibit explore his continued interest in the act of self-adornment as a historical and contemporary occurrence.

How to Succeed as an Artist While Living outside of Art-World Capitals (excerpt) — Tess Thackara
Artsy, 09.06.2018

What follows are some points of advice on how to navigate a pathway to career stability while living away from the whirlwind of the art world’s capitals—culled from conversations with artists who have done just that.

Stockard Channing, Mickalene Thomas and More on Fulfillment (excerpt) — The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal , 09.05.2018

Art fuels inspiration; it can be impactful and transformative. It transcends the viewer and generates a safe space for people to have a discourse or a shift in understanding without having to worry about being politically correct.

From Mark Bradford in Baltimore to Victor Hugo in LA: 33 Museum Shows Around the US Worth Traveling For (excerpt) — Caroline Goldstein & Sarah Cascone
Artnet News, 09.05.2018

We've looked beyond the Big Apple to find the most exciting museum shows opening in September and October around the country. Here are some of artnet News’s highlights of museum shows opening across the United States as we kick off a new season:

Artist Mickalene Thomas: ‘It was always a political statement’ — Julie L Belcove
Financial Times, 08.31.2018

In October, an exhibition at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, Posing Modernity: The Black Model From Manet and Matisse to Today, featuring Thomas’s work, will attempt to resuscitate that history.

Art 50 2018: Chicago’s Artists’ Artists (excerpt) — Kerry Cardoza, Lindsay Hutchens, Ciera McKissick, Lee Ann Norman, Jameson Paige, Elliot Reichert and B. David Zarley
Newcity Art, 08.30.2018

Fortunately, as our art historical legacies prove, Chicago has always been a place for artists to thrive amongst communal support, undertaking creative experimentation with a collective drive whether or not institutions are paying or paying attention. If the histories of Chicago’s artistic movements can teach us anything, it is that Chicago is a home for artists who take risks and make their own ways. This year’s Art 50—our pick of Chicago’s artists’ artists—is dedicated to them all, past, present, and future.

A look at painter Mickalene Thomas’ lesser-known photography at Henry Art Gallery — Gayle Clemans
The Seattle Times, 08.28.2018

The visual and thematic exchanges between their work and Thomas’ are intuitive and self-evident. Shared motifs include foregrounded portraits, people who take on personas or pose with mementos, formally dramatic compositions and intimate, domestic moments

Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians member showcases art at Mississippi Museum of Art — Meridian Star
Meridian Star , 08.25.2018

Chronicling a pivotal moment in the artist’s career, when his contemporary artistic practice converged with his Native American heritage, “Jeffrey Gibson: Like A Hammer” explores the universal themes of race, power, control, stereotypes, and colonialism, as well as love, community, strength, vulnerability, and survival.

Andy Warhol’s Trans Subjects Finally Get Named (excerpt) — Elizabeth Hoover
Paper Magazine, 08.24.2018

Currently, Shimoyama is painting his own series of drag queens of color, one of which will be inserted into the Ladies and Gentlemen installation. "Drag queens have superheroic tendencies," he says. "They wear spandex, have alter egos, do their duty out of necessity for the greater good (giving the gays a space and secret coded language).

Adrift in Abstraction, Young-Il Ahn at Kavi Gupta — Chris Miller
NewCity Art, 08.22.2018

In Young’s paintings, the water just sits there in a strict orthogonal grid: quivering, infinite, undifferentiated and quietly alarming. There is no escape. Your life is insignificant.

The art of sustainability: This Mumbai-based artist makes art out of waste — Chinki Sinha
India Today, 08.16.2018

Manish Nai, the Mumbai-based artist, who works with recyclable material in a compressed city is looking for freedom. In many ways, the ephemeral patterns formed on the net, which is part of his latest work, is a commentary on the state of temporariness in a city like Mumbai, it's poor and it's waste, it's construction sites and it's transport trucks.

Jeffrey Gibson: Violent Histories, Brighter Horizons — Christopher Green
Frieze , 08.03.2018

The Cherokee/Choctaw artist explores the contemporary possibilities of Indigenous art at Denver Art Museum.

From the Archives: Jeffrey Gibson on His ‘Visceral Materials,’ in 2013 — Elisabeth Kley
Art News, 07.27.2018

Currently on view at the Denver Art Museum is Jeffrey Gibson’s first mid-career survey, “Like a Hammer,” which brings together 57 of the artist’s wall hangings and sculptures, many of which combine elements of punk and his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage. With that show in mind, republished below is a profile of Jeffrey Gibson that originally ran in ARTnews’s December 2013 issue.

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s First U.S. Marathon Announces Participant List — Broadway World
Broadway World, 07.26.2018

"Creative Chicago will feature many of the dynamic individuals who make our city a powerhouse for creative ventures," says Chicago Humanities Festival Marilynn Thoma Artistic Director Alison Cuddy. "Foundational artists such as Art Green of the Hairy Who and Gerald Williams of AfriCOBRA,

India’s First Sculpture Park Is Set in an 18th-Century Fortress — ELIZABETH FAZZARE
Architectural Digest, 07.24.2018

Stroll through the extensive grounds of the 18th-century Nahargarh Fort in Jaipur, India, and you may spot objects much more contemporary. At the heart of the fortress is the 1892 Madhavendra Palace, a former seasonal retreat for King Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh and his nine wives, where nearly every structural surface seems to be covered in intricately painted decorative murals.

Mother as muse in a powerful show of Black beauty — Michael Upchurch
Crosscut, 07.23.2018

Every artist who ever lived has had a mother. But not many have had a mother like Mickalene Thomas’s. Sandra Bush was a six-foot-one runway model who, in her later years, became her daughter’s muse. Bush isn’t the only woman portrayed in MUSE: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-a-tête. But she has pride of place.

Lighting of eternal flame highlights Special Olympics 50th anniversary celebration — Meghan Dwyer & Bill Kissinger
WGN 9 Chicago, 07.20.2018

CHICAGO — The celebration of the Special Olympics’ 50th anniversary continued Friday in the city where it all began.

Jeffrey Gibson Challenges the Parameters of Native American Art — Kealey Boyd
Hyperallergic, 07.19.2018

Like a Hammer is the first exhibition that exclusively focuses on Gibson’s work produced after 2011, a turning point in the artist’s career according to the show’s curator, John Lukavic. Gibson previously made paintings that were intense in color and somewhat narrative.

‘Eternal Flame of Hope’ sculpture erected to honor Special Olympics’ 50th anniversary in Chicago — Evelyn Holmes
ABC 7 Chicago, 07.18.2018

“A 30-foot steel monument was erected Wednesday outside Soldier Field to honor the 50th anniversary of the Special Olympics, which was first held in Chicago at the stadium.”

A Canadian Museum Promotes Indigenous Art. But Don’t Call It ‘Indian.’ — Ted Loos
New York Times, 07.13.2018

A current show at the Denver Art Museum, “Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer,” through Aug. 12, was organized by Mr. Lukavic. He noted that the museum, which was founded in 1893 and established a Native arts department in the 1920s, was one of the first that treated Native American works as art and not as ethnographic material.

New Triennial Offers Artists the Canvas of Cleveland — Hillarie M. Sheets
The New York Times, 07.11.2018

“The art world loves to flock to exotic locales for shows and fairs. Will it come to Cleveland?” “Fred Bidwell, a collector and philanthropist here, is betting it will, to the tune of $5 million...

Cleveland Hopes to Become the Next Venice — Kelly Crow
The Wall Street Journal, 07.11.2018

“Cleveland wants to be known for more than its craft beers and Cavaliers—especially now that LeBron James is leaving town. This weekend, the Ohio city on the southern banks of Lake Erie will launch a...

“Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer” at the Denver Art Museum Through August 12 (excerpt) — Sarah Cascone & Caroline Goldstein
Artnet News , 07.10.2018

Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson destroyed much of his early work before recommitting to his artistic practice in 2011. That date marks the starting point for this exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, which is known for its commitment to showing Native American art.

Two new shows at Contemporary Arts Center look at identity from different angles — LEYLA SHOKOOHE
CityBeat, 07.09.2018

“Can I Pass?” melds two tests of racial “passing” into a larger contemplation on self-identity. The first test is whether or not a person’s skin is lighter or darker than a paper bag, which translates to passing or not passing for being white and all its attendant implications. A similar Caribbean-born test uses hair blowing in a fan’s breeze, with denser hair resisting the wind and thinner hair moving easily.  

Judy’s Hand Pavilion arrives at Toby’s Plaza as part of citywide contemporary-art exhibition — The Daily
The Daily, 07.05.2018

Tasset created the piece in honor of his wife, Judy Ledgerwood, a contemporary abstract painter. FRONT and the Putnam Collection of Case Western Reserve University jointly developed the project.

Fiberglass Beasts of the Wisconsin Wild — Phillip Barcio
Hyperallergic, 07.01.2018

Dismembered Paul Bunyan was tossed asunder in this field more than a decade ago. It is the mold for “Paul” (2006), a public sculpture FAST fabricated for the artist Tony Tasset. Installed in the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park south of Chicago, “Paul” slouches forlornly, dragging his axe in the dirt, his wrinkled face worn from the burden of manifest destiny.

Henry Art Gallery: MUSE: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête open at the Henry on July 14 — Xavier Lopez
Seattle Pi, 06.27.2018

While working across multiple series, much of her photographic work functions as a personal act of staging and reappropriation. With each series, she grapples with and asserts new definitions of beauty and inspiration. Thomas’ portraits draw equally from 1970s black-is-beautiful images of women such as supermodel Beverly Johnson and actress Vonetta McGee; Édouard Manet’s odalisque figures; and the mise-en-scène studio portraiture of James Van Der Zee and Malick Sidibé, to mention a few.

Sculpting a Chicago Artist Richard Hunt and his Teachers: Nelli Bar and Egon Weiner —
Art Design Chicago, 06.26.2018

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago cultivated artist Richard Hunt in the 1950s by the guidance of two dynamic teachers. Nelli Bar taught Richard Hunt during his adolescence, and Egon Weiner was his...

From the community: Art Design Chicago: ‘Sculpting a Chicago Artist’ comes to Oakton July 12 — Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune, 06.26.2018

Hunt, an African-American from Chicago's South Side, is one of the city's most prominent sculptors, with more than 125 works on public display.  He was appointed by former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson as one of the first artists on the governing board of the National Endowment for the Arts. Hunt received the lifetime achievement award from the International Sculpture Center in 2009.

Giant hand sculpture by Chicago artist Tony Tasset arrives at Uptown for FRONT Triennial — Steven Litt
Cleveland.com, 06.25.2018

When finished, the 7-ton work will stand 21 feet high and be visible from Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road. The hand will function as a shelter while also providing fodder for thoughts on the nature of monumentality and power, and depictions of the human body in art. FRONT, which runs from July 14 to September 30, is a global exhibition with works by more than 100 contemporary artists on view at more than two-dozen collaborating institutions and outdoor spaces across Northeast Ohio, including major museums and galleries.

Jeffrey Gibson’s DAM Exhibition Breaks Open Race, Identity And Masculinity ‘Like A Hammer’ — Stephanie Wolf
Colorado Public Radio, 06.25.2018

Gibson talked to Colorado Matters about his creative process and how he draws inspiration from traditional Native American artisanal techniques to the works of James Baldwin. The artists describes his works as "futuristic artifacts," made clear by his beaded punching bags and reworked trading post blankets.

Tommie Smith’s Iconic Protest Salute Immortalized in Gold by Glenn Kaino — Colossal
Colossal , 06.25.2018

Through the conversation, Kaino convinced Tommie to collaborate on a project that would remove the icon (the arm) from his body and help him see the salute the way that others do. Back in Los Angeles, after experimenting with what Kaino believes to have been the arm of an Aquaman figure, they got to work casting Smith’s arm and clenched fist.

An Artist Finds Inspiration in Women of Color Throughout History — Tess Thackara
New York Times, 06.19.2018

In her latest body of work in New York City, Báez, a 36-year-old Dominican-born New York-based painter, has found her own way to nurture relationships between historical women of color. The result of months of research, Báez’s shrine-like tribute, a Studio Museum commission curated by the institution’s Hallie Ringle and titled “Joy Out of Fire,” brings together African-American and Afro-Caribbean women who are represented in the Schomburg’s extensive archival holdings.

Mickalene Thomas Photographs a Week in Her Life, in Polaroids — Alice Newell-Hanson
New York Times, 06.18.2018

The artist Mickalene Thomas, best known for her vibrant paintings of women in lushly patterned living spaces, owns some 15 Polaroid cameras. She has seven or eight of the brand’s bellow-lensed Land Cameras in different colors.

Parcours, Hardcore: A Look Around Art Basel’s Public Section, with Works by Pierre Huyghe, Jessica Stockholder, Nina Beier, and More — Andrew Russeth
Art News , 06.14.2018

Also great: Nina Beier’s incredibly bizarre bucking-bull sculptures, accompanied by Mars bars; Jessica Stockholder’s explosively colored works affixed to architecture around the area; and Simon Denny’s pieces, versions of the board game Life, which he’s reimagined as a kind of exposé on cryptocurrency, one of which has been installed in a gaming shop with a perfect name: Fantastic Empire.

Manuel Mathieu: ‘Life experience sometimes forces you to see things that you wouldn’t otherwise have seen’ — Emily Spicer
Studio International , 06.13.2018

Mathieu’s accidents and his country’s history have soaked into his canvases, which are haunted by twisted cadaverous figures and amorphous shapes. Mathieu likes flowers, but even floral forms are flattened and stretched, as though they have been steamrolled or pressed and sliced into cross-sections, lending tension and threat to something as everyday as a bouquet. Violence is done to everything

Art Review: Hard-Hitting Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Denver Art Museum — Michael Paglia
West Word, 06.13.2018

For nearly a century, the Native Arts department of the Denver Art Museum has played a pivotal role in recasting the art of the American Indian. Starting in the 1920s with visionary curator Frederic Douglas, the DAM regarded the pottery, weavings, metal works and other objects made by Native Americans as fine art prized for its aesthetic qualities rather than simply artifacts that illuminated the anthropology of the tribes, as was then common.

Review: Parcours at Art Basel 2018 — Gareth Harris
Financial Times, 06.13.2018

Jessica Stockholder’s colourful sculptures entitled “Three squared on the river bank” (2018) “throw a different perspective on Basel,” Leuenberger says. “The works are not necessarily beautiful — they’re disruptive.” They lean against or are wrapped around city landmarks, such as a gargoyle sculpture on a bridge, impinging on the landscape in a playful, gently provocative way.

Creating a new Krasl: Art center breaks ground for revamped campus — JOHN MATUSZAK
Herald Palladium , 06.09.2018

With the arching Hunt sculpture, the Krasl will become “the gateway to the cultural corridor” of the community, said Tami Miller, the center’s assistant director. People will be able to walk under the sculpture, view it from different angles, and even sit on its pedestals, Miller said.

NEW YORK “Multiply, Identify, Her” — Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Art Forum, 06.02.2018

The other muse, the legendary singer Eartha Kitt, is, by contrast, totally inescapable. You hear her even before you descend the stairs to the gallery where the show is installed, belting out the lyrics to “Angelitos Negros” (Black Little Angels), as part of Mickalene Thomas’s winning eight-channel video installation of the same name, composed in 2016.

Inka Essenhigh — Alex Jovanovich 
Art Forum, 06.01.2018

When I come across a work of art as weird and seductive and startlingly beautiful as an Inka Essenhigh painting, I haven’t the faintest desire to engage my critical faculties. I just want to be overcome by the supple, erotic strangeness of her surrealist narratives; the chitinous sheen of her works’ surfaces; her Prada-meets–Star Trek palette; and the gelatinous, ectomorphic figures. You want to dissolve into an Essenhigh painting, in the same way that she dissolves virtually all solidity within her forms and spaces. Every body, every thing looks as though it’s made of melted caramel, or flowing silk, or liquid latex suspended midair, or some sinuous, alien protein.

My Big Break: 7 Artists on Early Milestones That Changed the Course of Their Careers (excerpt) — Art Net News
Art Net News, 05.31.2018

My first big break? When Klaus Biesenbach organized the commission of Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires for the front window of the Modern, the Museum of Modern Art’s restaurant. It was a site-specific project installed from 2010 to 2013 and it was shot in the MoMA sculpture garden; the same location where many phenomenal women artists had performed and exhibited before me.

The Politics of Contemporary Abstraction: A Conversation with Clare Rojas and Jeffrey Gibson — Phillip Barcio
Momus , 05.31.2018

It’s a frustrating hallmark of these overheated times, the notion that one shouldn’t make abstract art in this political environment. I recently asked two politically-engaged abstract artists – Clare Rojas and Jeffrey Gibson – to share their thoughts about the politics and commitments of contemporary abstraction.

Don’t Stop Believing, with Artist Glenn Kaino — Charlotte Burns
Art Agency Partners , 05.31.2018

The visionary American conceptual artist’s work has led him to become an off-Broadway producer, a performer, a magician, a social activist and the technological innovator who helped legalize the music download platform Napster.  A “horrible” trip to an art fair in 2008 caused Kaino to close his studio for a year, unhappy with “how much influence an overall, overriding economic system” was having on art making. He decided instead to “go hang out with a bunch of magicians and see what happens—because they know something about believing”. 

‘Soul of a Nation,’ Critically Acclaimed Exhibit Celebrating Black Power, Comes to Brooklyn — Andrea Leonhardt
BK Reader, 05.30.2018

In Chicago, a group of artists formed AfriCOBRA, whose philosophy aimed to empower Black communities. Works by its founding members will be on display, including Gerald Williams’s Say It Loud (1969), whose vibrant colors, graphic lettering and use of black figures were emblematic of the AfriCOBRA style. In New York, painters incorporated symbols of protest, solidarity and Black pride, while many organized for institutional inclusion.

CLARE ROJAS’ NEW SOLO SHOW EGRET MERGES ABSTRACTION AND STORY — Phillip Barcio
Ideel Art, 05.25.2018

In Egret, her new solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago, Clare Rojas challenges one of the basic misconceptions about abstract art—that non-objective images cannot tell stories. The term “narrative art” means art that conjures up some kind of a tale—like a painting of a commonly known literary scene, or a sculpture of heroic figures from history.

As the NFL Cracks Down on Protest, the High Museum Celebrates an Historic Act of Athlete Activism — Eileen Kinsella
Art Net , 05.24.2018

Bridge and several new works will be on view for the exhibition. They include drawings by Kaino and Smith, excerpts from an original documentary about Smith’s life and his collaboration with Kaino (directed by Kaino and Afshin Shahidi), objects from the Tommie Smith Archives, and a series of drawings contributed by students from across the US.

BEVERLY FISHMAN’S ELECTRIFYING NEW MURAL IN DETROIT — Juztapoze Magazine
Juxtapoze Magazine, 05.22.2018

Beverly Fishman recently unveiled this 170 foot x 60 foot mural in downtown Detroit. The mural adorns the side of the Detroit City Club Apartments, and was commissioned by their owner Jonathan Holtzman in association with the Library Street Collective.

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.

Denver Art Museum to host first major exhibition from American Indian artist Jeffrey Gibson — John Wenzel
The Denver Post , 05.16.2018

“Like a Hammer,” which promises to feature Gibson’s most acclaimed work, is curated by John Lukavic, associate curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum. Specifically, the exhibit will “chronicle a pivotal moment in the artist’s career when his contemporary artistic practice converged with his Native American heritage,” according to the Museum.

The Powerful Women of Firelei Báez — Roxana Fabius
Contemporary And, 05.15.2018

The location for the exhibition Joy Out of Fire and the collaboration between the museum and the Schomburg Center has been fundamental for the creative process of Báez, who has dedicated her work to women of African-American descent and the stories found in the archives of the Schomburg Center with the assistance from archivists and researchers at the institution.

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.

Denver Art Museum debuts first major exhibition featuring artist Jeffrey Gibson — Art Daily
Art Daily , 05.14.2018

"Like a Hammer will feature works from one of the most important periods of my career so far,” said Gibson. “The exhibition begins with artworks that I made just after nearly giving up making art altogether due to feeling misunderstood as an artist and struggling to establish a personal language that describes my experience without compromising it. The objects, sculptures and paintings I've made since 2011 document this journey of establishing my own forward-looking voice influenced by all that has come before me." 

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.

Angel Otero shares his top picks from Frieze New York — Gabriella Angeleti
The Art Newspaper, 05.03.2018

The Puerto Rican painter Angel Otero, who “never usually comes to fairs—it’s just a very tense environment”, perused the packed aisles of Frieze New York’s VIP preview on Wednesday (2 May) to share his thoughts on some must-see works at the fair.

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.

Jeffrey Gibson at Denver Art Museum — Blouin Artinfo
Blouin Artinfo, 04.24.2018

The universal themes of love, community, strength, vulnerability, and survival are also reflected in many of the artist's works. In 1995, Gibson earned his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago and Master of Fine Arts degree from the Royal College of Art. His works have previously been shown at National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, among others.

Denver Art Museum to Debut First Major Exhibition Featuring Native American Indian Contemporary Artist Jeffrey Gibson — Art Fix Daily
Art Fix Daily, 04.19.2018

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer will reveal how the artist draws upon his heritage and remixes his older works to create a distinct visual vocabulary in artworks that explore his multi-faceted identity and the history of modernism. Gibson’s abstract works take inspiration from his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, pan-Native American visual culture, alternative subcultures and the artist’s experiences living abroad as well as popular culture.

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." 

DENVER ART MUSEUM TO DEBUT FIRST MAJOR EXHIBITION FEATURING AMERICAN INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ARTIST JEFFREY GIBSON — Native News Online Staff
Native News Online, 04.13.2018

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer will reveal how the artist draws upon his heritage and remixes his older works to create a distinct visual vocabulary in artworks that explore his multi-faceted identity and the history of modernism. Gibson’s abstract works take inspiration from his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, pan-Native American visual culture, alternative subcultures and the artist’s experiences living abroad as well as popular culture. Materials used in the works on view will include rawhide, tipi poles, sterling silver, wool blankets, metal cones, beads, fringe and sinew.

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 (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.

10 of the Most Remarkable Artworks at the 2018 Armory Show (excerpt) — Andrew Goldstein
Artnet News, 03.09.2018

In its debut under new director Nicole Berry, the Armory Show did not seem to miss a beat in its tumultuous change of leadership but instead seemed to pick up some jazzy new rhythms, a thoughtfully slower tempo, and a scattering of lovely melodies. Brighter carpeting on the floors and airier aisles brought on by fewer booths lent an upbeat sensibility to the proceedings on the New York piers, sweetening ones spirit of discovery. And there were plenty of gems to find in the fair’s nooks and crannies. Here are some of the most absorbing artworks in this year’s edition.

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.

From the Personal to the Political, 19 Artists to Watch Next Year — Holland Cotter
The New York Times, 12.27.2017

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.

JEFFREY GIBSON BREAKS THE RULES AT THE DENVER ART MUSEUM — Ted Loos
Cultured , 12.01.2017

A strong Native-American conversation in the art world is something that is still very new these days. But it’s growing. The Jimmie Durham show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which ended this winter, was one powerful example. And the next link in the chain is “Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer” at the Denver Art Museum (May 13 to August 12), which travels to the Seattle Art Museum next year.

Gay Artist Reimagines the ‘Hyper-Masculine’ Black Barbershop — Kevin Truong
NBC News, 11.28.2017

“Titled “Sweet” and on display at New York’s De Buck Gallery until December 9, the series of paintings and mixed media art pieces were inspired by conversations Shimoyama had with other gay black men about...

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.

CLAIRE SHERMAN: WEST RIDGE Exhibition to Open Next Month at DC Moore Gallery — BBW News Desk
Broadway World, 10.12.2017

Sherman's paintings of exposed islands and chaotic forest interiors challenge us to encounter unpredictable, wild nature through the emphatic materiality of paint.

Funeral Mountain: Claire Sherman at Kavi Gupta — Kevin Blake
Bad At Sports Contemporary Art, 10.12.2017

In Claire Sherman’s most recent exhibition at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, I saw this kaleidoscopic vision of the way one sees conflated with the imaginative experience of being present in one’s memory.

Review: Claire Sherman/Kavi Gupta — Kelly Reaves
Newcity, 10.12.2017

Claire Sherman’s current show, “Funeral Mountain” blends Romantic-era geological drama with mid-century action painting, modernizing it by default in the process.

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.

Artist Glenn Kaino & Olympian Tommie Smith Launch Kickstarter Campaign — Katy Donoghue
Whitewall , 10.02.2017

Artist Glenn Kaino recently launched a Kickstarter campaign with Olympian Tommie Smith. The two are looking to fund the collaborative aspect of the exhibition, “With Drawn Arms,” which opens at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta on September 29, 2018. Smith is known for the powerful gesture of raising his fist on the podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

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...

Goings on About Town: Claire Sherman —
The New Yorker, 10.24.2016

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...

Look: West Ridge — Dan Piepenbring
The Paris Review, 10.18.2016

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,...

‘Devan Shimoyama/Salomón Huerta’: Two artists’ portraits of the soul — David Pagel
The Los Angeles Times, 01.21.2016

With just the right mix of purposefulness and playfulness, the two-artist exhibition “Devan Shimoyama/Salomón Huerta” at Samuel Freeman gallery sets visitors to thinking about what it means to be human while leaving us free to...

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...

Artists Pick Artists: Claire Sherman — Rob Colvin
Hyperallergic, 02.11.2015

Her recent bodies of work are in reference to (and in tension with) the landscape, as they fixate on particular visual events in nature and find ways to transpose and recompose the discreet entities at work within them.

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...

CLAIRE SHERMAN Sempervirens — Sarah Goffstein
The Brooklyn Rail, 10.12.2014

Sherman, like the early renegade female travelers she admires, has been making it a priority to visit such iconic landscapes. The resulting paintings give us an experience analogous to what Fuller described, because their powerful sense of abstraction immerses us in environs that eclipse our understanding.

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.

The Art of Inspiration —
Chicago Tribune, 07.07.2012

“Traveling to find images to work from, Sherman finds that usually the unanticipated shots are the most interesting ; a strange pit, say, or the cracks and fissures in Yellowstone’s acidic ground; and often it’s...

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,...

Strong Exhibits for a February Spring — Paul Klein
Huffington Post, 02.18.2011

“Claire Sherman’s new paintings at Kavi Gupta are impressive. Elegant, considered and thoughtful paintings, they expose their meticulous rendering and rehearsal through drawing to panel to completed canvas. The technique and the energy are palpable; the mark-making...

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.

You’ve Seen the E-Mail, Now Buy the Art — Jori Finkel
The New York Times, 02.04.2007

Despite the fact that digital images are unable to adequately showcase the energetic brushwork of Claire Sherman’s paintings, collectors still clammer at the opportunity to acquire a piece as soon as they are available.

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...