Loop: Substance and Circumstance. Olga Balema
Repetition is the stuff of everyday life; it’s what we do. Even when I’m mixing it up, there’s a subjective…
351 SUMMER 2025
New World Order. A Conversation with Agnieszka Polska
One cannot think of the contemporary grotesque without cuteness. Morally vacant, cuteness fuels the slot machines of internet scrolls, firing…
Membrane As Ledger. Lyric Shen
“If place is always retrospective, how do we begin? With blatant flaws.”1 – Lisa Robertson Lyric Shen’s oeuvre seems to…
Institut Funder Bakke, Silkeborg. A Conversation with Andreas Führer
What do we do with what we are born into? This question lingers in the air at Institut Funder Bakke…
“Painting After Painting” S.M.A.K. / Ghent
A recurring refrain in recent decades is that painting is dead. And yet, it continues —sometimes loudly, sometimes zombified. “Painting…
Fog Work. A Conversation with Daiga Grantina
Daiga Grantina’s 2020 exhibition, “What Eats Around Itself,” at New Museum in New York — my first encounter with her…
Mean Time Between Failure. A Conversation with Racheal Crowther
Racheal Crowther attempts to materialize the immaterial across her largely installation-based output. Recent work examines how the five bodily senses…
Klára Hosnedlová “embrace” Hamburger Bahnhof / Berlin
Klára Hosnedlová’s “embrace,” which inaugurates three years’ worth of Chanel-sponsored programming in the Hamburger Bahnhof’s main hall, foxes formal categorizing…
In Medias Res. Sofia Defino Leiby
I first met Sofia Defino Leiby pre-pandemic, on a bus as part of a crowd, and she mentioned that she…
“The Gatherers” MoMA PS1 / New York
What are the stakes of insisting upon political hope, in all its felt potential for redeeming past injustices, when progressivism…
Compose Yourself. Alexandra Metcalf
Upon first encounter, the work of British-American artist Alexandra Metcalf captivates with its unapologetic femininity. Her paintings have a distinctly…
Performing the Grotesque: Trans and Gender Nonconforming Artists and the Aesthetics of Bodily Excess
“I am not tragic. I am not beautiful. I am not a symbol. I am simply too much — too…
“Corps et âmes” Bourse de Commerce / Paris
In Kerry James Marshall’s seminal 1986 work The Wonderful One, the figure is an ineffable silhouette: its dimensionality is reduced…
The Conditions that Shape. Sophie Friedman-Pappas
On the Greek island of Tinos, centuries-old dovecotes — white stone towers originally used to harvest pigeon droppings as fertilizer…
“HEAD FOR THE HILLS!” Hammer Museum / Los Angeles
The Hammer Museum group exhibition “HEAD FOR THE HILLS!” takes its title from John Knight’s 1974 untitled slide projection piece.…
Never Let Go. Sidsel Meineche Hansen
Immersed in a perpetual hypnagogic state, Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s Grumpy (2025) is an eviscerated yet undead killjoy – an agential…