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LIFE AS A HUNGRY GHOST

Written by Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts

Andy Li's The Hunger (2018). Fabric, grommets, stitching. 32"x24". At Extension Gallery, Exotics Etcetera show, 2018. Image courtesy of Heather Kapplow.

Extension Gallery’s 2018 season is off to a haunting start

 

Extension Gallery has been quietly filling the gap in emerging art presentation in Allston that’s been left vacant more or less since Allston Skirt Gallery and Pan 9 went the way of all things (in these rapidly gentrifying lands).

 

Its programming this year ...  read more

GALLERY REVIEW: Joan Jonas: Ice Drawing—Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Written by Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts

Joan Jonas, Ice Drawing, 2012, installation consisting of video (color, silent, projected through structure) and structure with metal armature and hanging crystals, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 

Enter through the Seeking Stillness exhibition if you can—Jonas couldn’t have asked for a better prelude to her work. The artifacts you first encounter in the darkened, theatrical Krupp Gallery greet you as if you were an archaeologist. They were used as tools for something, but what?

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GALLERY REVIEW: The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766-1820—Harvard Art Museums

Written by Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts

Robert Dunkarton after John Singleton Copley, Abraham's Sacrifice, 1797, mezzotint on paper mounted on canvas, 26 1/4 x 19 3/4 inches, courtesy of the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, transfer from Harvard University, gift of Gardiner Greene

 

In the early days of the republic, the Philosophy Chamber at Harvard College housed an assortment of natural specimens, scientific instruments, and various objects of curiosity and delectation. This was a place to apprehend the logic of the universe and to ruminate ...  read more

GALLERY REVIEW: Steve McQueen: Ashes—Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

Written by Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts

Steve McQueen, Ashes, 2002–15, istallation view, the 56th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, All the World's Futures, Venice, 2015, courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London, © 2016 Steve McQueen, photo by Francesca Buccaro

 

In 2002, Steve McQueen met a charismatic fisherman named Ashes in Grenada. When the British artist returned to the island eight years later, Ashes was dead, gunned down by a drug kingpin after the fisherman discovered a cache of narcotics on the beach.

 


 ...  read more

GALLERY REVIEW: Dana Schutz: Dana Schutz—Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

Written by Filed Under: A+E, Visual Arts

Dana Schutz, Carpool, 2016, oil on canvas, 66 x 108 inches, collection of Carole Server and Oliver Frankel, courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York, © Dana Schutz

 

Dana Schutz has not yet painted a canvas that didn’t make me wish that I was looking at a Judith Linhares instead. That said, I’m glad I could see any Schutzes at the ICA, which wouldn’t have happened if it were up to some local busybodies bent on punishing ...  read more