Tony Conrad. Aural Symbiosis
I met Tony Conrad the first time while playing the carillon at Saint Thomas Church one afternoon between 5:00 and…
Features
The Mask and the Motor
Around 1968 Raul Guerrero purchased a Yaqui ceremonial mask from a dealer in indigenous artifacts (and purported warlock) working out…
Scene of a Scene
OMNES VIAE ROMAM DUCUNT — all roads lead to Rome. In the case of Tobias Kaspar this may hold true,…
Bruce Nauman: Being is Nothing
The Absurd Wouldn’t it be convenient to introduce this essay by noting a general euphoria surrounding Bruce Nauman in the…
The Everyday Right Outside The Door
Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, US; lives in New York) interrogates the nature of painting by creating assemblages that dynamically…
Piper’s Threat
In a 2003 letter titled “Dear Editor,” Adrian Piper asks, in various permutations, that no modifier indicating her political identity…
Playas Only
At the end of March, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., opened the exhibition “No Spectators:…
The Way Men Never See Women
Two long tunics made by artist Luchita Hurtado hang in my closet. One is ribbed and purple, and the other…
Retrofitting for Eternal Youth
Who is hotter: Betty or Veronica? This is the unanswerable question at the heart of the Archie comics franchise. The…
Symbolic Violence/Physical Violence
After his Leichtmetallräder (2016) and Snowflake (2017) series, Yngve Holen (b. 1982, Germany/Norway; lives in Berlin) has turned again to…
Material Soul
What does my body know of photography? — Roland Barthes The opening moment of Quentin, a 2010 video by Josh…
Inside Joke
The second chapter of Gargantua consists of fourteen stanzas of nonsense verse, a slapstick parody of Roman mythology and history…
Savage Space
Anna Uddenberg’s figurative sculptures — often lithe, dressed in complex and revealing garments, and contorted improbably into suggestive or explicit…
Mass Freedom
The debut Telfar collection in 2005 featured hoodies sutured into quasi-ponchos, cardigans truncated into near-crop-tops, and drawstring sweatpants elevated into…
Signature Styles
Up-and-coming “abstract” painting makes headlines mostly for being trended and flipped by the changing powers that be, meanwhile being decried…
Backdoor of the World
There is a void in the wall precisely where a colorful pencil drawing by Inuk artist Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) was…