Inventur, Culture Hustlers, and Sandrine Schaefer Inventur: Art in Germany, 1943-55—Harvard Art Museums Five years in the making, Inventur examines German artistic production in the decade-plus of recovery after World War II. It takes its name from a Günter Eich poem that describes his meager belongings, including a “precious nail / I keep concealed […]
LIFE AS A HUNGRY GHOST
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 […]
GALLERY REVIEW: Annette Lemieux: Mise en Scène—Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
They barely move, but are distinctly not still, hovering above with all of the tension of a cat about to pounce—but never pouncing—on a mouse that is you.
GALLERY REVIEW: Joan Jonas: Ice Drawing—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? The “what,” as it always is with […]
GALLERY REVIEW: The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766-1820—Harvard Art Museums
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 on divine influence in the natural world. It was also a […]
GALLERY REVIEW: Steve McQueen: Ashes—Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
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. Ashes’ tale is the subject of a two-sided video installation […]
GALLERY REVIEW: Dana Schutz: Dana Schutz—Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
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 her for her abortive Emmett […]
GALLERY REVIEW: Writhe & Resolve: Aspects of Arcadia—Matter & Light
Aristotle Forrester’s churning canvases take an abstract-expressionist attitude to an effort to depict Arcadia, the pastoral vision of harmony that has been a mainstay of the Western imagination since the Renaissance. This is an apt way to go about it in 2017, given that the details of such a place only ever seem to […]
GALLERY REVIEW: Anthony Palocci Jr.: It Can’t Rain All The Time—How’s Howard?
Snooze, a tight painting of an alarm clock reading 6:03, commences Anthony Palocci’s group of thirteen paintings. Is that 6:03 am or pm? It feels either too early or too late. This bit of agita followed me as I wended around the walls of How’s Howard?’s show of Palocci’s 11×15 gouaches. Stand with a […]
GALLERY REVIEW: Phyllis Berman and Anne Lilly: Stillness—Room 83 Spring
Phyllis Berman and Anne Lilly take polar-opposite approaches in their exhibition at Room 83 Spring, yet their dual showing is surprisingly fluid in its move from one artist to the next. Contrast Berman’s quasi-trompe l’oeils of pendulous plumb bobs to Lilly’s sometimes mind-bending kinetic sculpture and you might expect a vibe of two […]
