Kim Jones at Pierogi

Allow me a moment’s nostalgia. Perhaps it isn’t so strange how accustomed we all became to the Mudman. It was 1980’s New York; New York then as opposed to New York now. There were still transvestite bikers, and the guy doing the ceramics thing all over the East Village. There was the Duckman wandering lower […]

House Party by Andrew Ohanesian at Pierogi / The Boiler Space

The House Party, Andrew Ohanesian, Pierogi/The Boiler  by Nick Van Zanten             The The House Party, Andrew Ohanesian’s “full-scale, participant activated installation” at Pierogi’s The Boiler space in Brooklyn is impressively effective in creating a displacement and a forum for discourse.  The effect on the viewer is total, and achieves exactly what the artist aimed […]

Notes on dOCUMENTA (13)

The orientation of dOCUMENTA (13) is global, it reaches new centers of interest such as Afghanistan, Canada and the Middle East and it includes many emerging artists who are absent on top-100 career lists. Not only artists but also scientists and scholars have contributed to this Documenta – “from activist to zoologist” as artistic director […]

Mia Westerlund, Sculptures

Although many aspects of Westerlund’s oeuvre employ a minimalist aesthetic—large holistic shapes often serially repeated (more of this later)—in these new pedestal-based forms she seems to allude to an earlier Abstract Expressionist mode. In imminent danger of toppling, they convey an asymmetrical precariousness that recalls Agostini, Roszak, Ferber , rather than Judd or Andre.

Sarah Sze – Infinite Line

I admire Sarah Sze for her sculpture, but it was the promise of seeing how she might translate her art into flatwork that drew me to her show currently up at the Asia Society, Infinite Line. The show presents the two as distinct bodies of work, in two separate galleries on opposite sides of an […]

Lee Bontecou’s Nostromo

— so foul a sky clears not without a storm (Shakespeare) Preparations: Take a walk in the common space of Olmsted’s horticultural park, central to Manhattan island geography. Linger for a moment at Willowdell Arch to appreciate the  stone voussoirs that line the arcade and support the rusticated underpass; and then allow a few additional […]

Foreign Correspondents

Click on the image to read the review.

BRIAN GAMAN

Brian Gaman once tried to make eyeglass lenses by casting the glass himself.  They cracked; he left them unpolished.  He kept the bridge and arms off the frame, leaving just two black-rimmed circles.   And oh yes, did I mention, he made them nearly two feet high each? They lean casually against the wall. You would […]

Louise Lawler, Fitting at Metro Pictures , and Practice

Thoughts on seeing Fitting At Metro Pictures — Louise Lawler’s show of pictures of installed and stored artworks — straight ones and others run through Photoshop so that they match the proportions of the walls they are affixed to height to height and width to width.  One — odd maybe — why not change the […]

LEE UFAN & HANS-PETER FELDMANN at the GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM by Nick Van Zanten

The two main shows up now at the Guggenheim, a Lee Ufan retrospective and Hans-Peter Feldmann’s Hugo Boss Prize show, are quite worth seeing.  Hans-Peter Feldmann’s work in particular seemed to give museum-goers pleasure, as I noticed many of them rubbing up against the walls of money and posing for pictures in front of it.  […]

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Romanov Grave is a group of artists who write reviews and curate exhibitions. Some of us prefer to remain anonymous.

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