Upon entering the Bed Stuy-based gallery American Medium — which sits just off Nostrand Avenue as a peculiar, fluorescent-lit dot in a sea of brownstones and Jamaican digs — one finds oneself confronted with the reverberating sounds of Adam Basanta’s sculpture “A Line Listening.”
SEATTLE — The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) attempts to confront the nuanced subtext of its vast collection of African masks in the ambitious and delightful exhibition Disguise: Masks and Global African Art. Recognizing that museums decontextualize ritual objects from their spiritual or narrative contexts, Curator Pamela McClusky states in the press release: “While masks were exported in vast quantities to become a signature art form representing the African continent in the 20th century, masquerades were left behind.”
LOS ANGELES — Jacolby Satterwhite’s solo exhibition How lovly is me being as I am is borne out of a maternal virtual hivemind. Satterwhite fills OHWOW, a spacious white cube in West Hollywood, with 10 large-scale C-prints from the series Satellites and En Plein Air, four nylon-and-enamel sculptures called “Metonym,” and the six-channel video “Reifying Desire.” The visual centerpiece of this show, for which it is named, is a purple-lit neon sign, which sets the tone for this exhibition’s breezy tour through a hyperactive virtualized video game imagination.