Fear and Loathing at :)

Drawn by an over-900 people attending Facebook events page and a plug on GAYLETTER two months ago, I wandered into the opening of :) by FriendsWithYou at The Hole and left feeling a mixture of what Dr. Hunter S. Thompson described as “fear and loathing.” Now, a few days before the exhibition’s closing, I revisited :) to see if my opinion of the art would change without the unseasonable near 100 degree heat, crowded gallery and drunkenness. It didn’t…. READ MORE.

Courtney Love’s Hole Inspires Art Show

With the exhibition Pretty on the Inside, co-curators KAWS and Erik Parker reveal that they must be fans of the Courtney Love-led band Hole’s debut album and song for which it is named, but they also make us wonder about the show’s connection to the music…. READ MORE.

Art Blog Art Blog Art Space

Williamsburg artist Joshua Abelow makes some pretty cool work. When he’s not in the studio he’s working on his website Art Blog Art Blog. Most of us now spend a great deal of our lives online, so its no surprise that the artistic process has begun to bleed over from the studio into the web…. READ MORE.

Summer Guests in Bushwick

The mercury in your thermometer can easily climb to 100+ degrees during these dog days of summer in north Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. The concrete streets are helplessly desolate and even the Bushwick pigeons seem to have given up. Bushwick has been quieter lately, and the local art scene might have been hiding in the close proximity of blasting air conditioners most of the time, but even with all these factor you can definitively say that it certainly is not dead. In fact, several prominent Bushwick galleries and art spaces opted out of the summer break and have been serving up refreshing art options…. READ MORE.

Thinking About Art and Devotion

Art as a messenger of belief is nothing new. From the obvious ostentatious examples like the Sistine Chapel, to the much more ephemeral Buddhist sand mandalas, faith has often driven artistic creation. Yet, can art be a system of belief in itself? The artists in Architecture of Devotion at the Gowanus Ballroom definitely put a lot of faith in their own creative views as they all respond to this history of artistic devotion…. READ MORE.

Speechless: David Deutsch at Southfirst by Hrag Vartanian

Speechless is a new and evolving series that will review, discuss and comment on art works and exhibitions using images, screenshots, videos and other visuals. Our inaugural edition explores David Deutsch’s Nothing Real at Southfirst…. READ MORE.

Peruvian Adventures in Brooklyn, a Graphic Review by Hrag Vartanian

Many of you will know that I’ve been critical of the conventional art review and how it doesn’t appear well suited to a lot of art that is produced today. So, in the interest of trying new art review forms, I’ve given a shot at using the graphic novel format for my review of Celso’s ¡No Habla Español! at Pandemic Gallery in Williamsburg.

His graphic sensibility seemed a perfect fit for this style. I couldn’t resist producing a short review of the show in this pop culture-friendly form…. READ MORE.

The Awkward Joys of Anamorphosis by Daniel Larkin

A towering nude man greets every visitor to Sperone Westwater gallery on the Lower East Side. This ten foot tall figure, also known as “Jim Revisited”, made in 2011, looks so realistic that it stops nearly everyone dead in their tracks upon entering the gallery. The people-watching is great as viewers trade surprised glances and funny comments, all while staring wide open with disbelieving eyes. This is the type of art that boggles the mind; it provokes the question of how the hell the artist pulled it off. Rattling off the list of banal materials — silicone, pigment, hair, aluminum and fabric — does little to capture the convincing illusion that artist Evan Penny conjures, but it does testify to his deft artistic mind that achieves much more than most with these materials…. READ MORE.