Reviews
Masqueraders: Na Chainkua Reindorf and Simone Leigh at La Biennale di Venezia
Christopher Squier
Masqueraders: Na Chainkua Reindorf and Simone Leigh at La Biennale di Venezia
Christopher Squier

This essay examines the hybrid space where textiles meet architecture, unraveling national iconographies and insignia through works at the 59th Venice Biennale by artists Simone Leigh and Na Chainkua Reindorf. In installations of glass beads and raffia thatching, respectively, these artists propose a fluid notion of the nation that is personal, gendered, clandestine, and subversive.

Christopher Squier
Microdosing in the Forest of the King: A psychedelic journey into the work of Roy De Forest at the Oakland Museum
Matt Goldberg
Microdosing in the Forest of the King: A psychedelic journey into the work of Roy De Forest at the Oakland Museum
Matt Goldberg

The Summer of Love was fifty years ago. 2017 is the Summer of Roy, so I took a trip down the rabbit hole into the Forest of the King.  

Matt Goldberg
Wong Kit Yi // Futures, Again // P! Gallery, New York
Harper Brokaw-Falbo
Wong Kit Yi // Futures, Again // P! Gallery, New York
Harper Brokaw-Falbo

Artist Wong Kit Yi finds moonlight in the Arctic,  hope in the lunatic and asks "how can you put the river in the freezer?" 

Harper Brokaw-Falbo
Torn Seams and Sound Scores at Gallery Wendi Norris
Christopher Squier
Torn Seams and Sound Scores at Gallery Wendi Norris
Christopher Squier

Gallery Wendi Norris’ exhibition Seeking Civilization: Art and Cartography ostensibly questions how mapping practices have been reformatted to reflect changes in citizenship, power, and nationhood. The exhibition draws its frame of reference from Robert Storr’s 1994 exhibition Mapping at MoMA, which included one of the same works featured here. The refrain by seven artists—the majority living within the rapidly shifting geography of the Bay Area—is one which situates us within a complex of overlaid cartographies, which cannot be delineated by the clear partitions and broad strokes of traditional mapping. Instead, these artists transform the flat surface of various maps into rugged terrain, full of fissures and interruptions.

Christopher Squier
Totally Turned On, Entangled in Celestial Bodies
Tim Kopra
Totally Turned On, Entangled in Celestial Bodies
Tim Kopra

Alice Combs’ immersive installation at Counterpulse presents a tangled, contemporary reality, in which its subjects are always “turned on.” Tim Kopra ponders the potential of the technology that we often obscure, but need in order to carry out our daily lives.

Tim Kopra
From Base to Brim: A Consideration of the Vessel
Kathryn Barulich
From Base to Brim: A Consideration of the Vessel
Kathryn Barulich

Araujo’s skillful and sometimes difficult work is unique in its capacity to connect to the audience via aesthetic, spiritual, political, cultural, and emotional forms of knowledge. The work nuances and expands upon our relationship with the natural environment, pointing to contemporary religious, political, and cultural practices of both violence and veneration.

Kathryn Barulich
Mallrats: Viewership in the Era of the Art Fair
Matt Goldberg
Mallrats: Viewership in the Era of the Art Fair
Matt Goldberg

In a booming gallery scene, how can we support and promote diverse works? Matt Goldberg examines what it means to be an art viewer and what we want out of our art spaces.

Matt Goldberg
Matt Goldberg
“The Off Switch” – James Turrell at Pace Gallery, Palo Alto
Matt Goldberg

Matthew Goldberg reviews the James Turrell show at Pace Palo Alto. 

Matt Goldberg