Shape-Sifter Pursuing the Unsavory (originally posted in The New York Times on January 2, 2013) SIPPING a soy latte at the Café Select in SoHo last week, Andrea Mary Marshall was the picture of propriety. Her name and faintly starchy manner conjured a schoolgirl in a sober gray jumper tamely reciting her catechism. She is all that, if only in her head. “Growing up, I wanted to be Catholic,” Ms. Marshall said. Visiting churches and admiring their ornate interiors “was an ecstatic experience for me,” she adde...
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Added by ARThood on January 9 — No Comments

Dear Daily, Art Basel Miami Beach is still hotter than the Miami temps! In its 11th year, the “Miami Madness” of incredible art and endless parties was aptly dubbed “art on adrenalin" by artist Stephanie Hirsh. It kicked off even earlier this year on Monday with the VIP vernissage of the newest art fair, UNTITLED, located inside a tent on the beach with an ultra-long queue to get in. But, it's really Wednesday of Art Basel Miami Beach that's the art world’s Black Friday. Instead of doorbuster sa...
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Added by Lisa Anastos on December 11, 2012 — No Comments

Artist Shannon Plumb's cinematic studies of life's various roles and characters explore the complexities embedded in the ordinary and extraordinary. Plumb is a one-woman show starring as all characters and acting as the creative force behind her films. The low quality production of the films and her elastic expressiveness as an actress adds to the charm of her work and pushes it beyond its obvious predecessors and influences.   Plumb's film Paper Collection, currently on display in the Stephan Stoyanov media gallery until Oct. 14th,...
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Added by Stephan Stoyanov on September 20, 2012 — No Comments

Artist Jen Mazza has received an exceptional amount of press on her captivating and engaging (and may I add SOLD OUT!) show. Mazza's "book paintings" are meticulous while being romantic, dark, and even sexy. Mazza explains:   "Because much of my work has taken inspiration from language and reading, the  idea of painting the  book seemed a natural progression. There  also  seem to be formal parallels;...
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Added by Stephan Stoyanov on September 20, 2012 — No Comments

We are on a highway to the bottom in America, and in the art world Jeffrey Deitch is leading the charge. What’s wrong with America? Some say wealth-obsessed, youth-focused, trend-addled materialism and the corrupting influence of money. Yet, those are precisely the colors of the flag under which MOCA sails with Deitch at the helm. More should be demanded of our cultural institutions. Much has been written about the state of MOCA, its stumbling exhibition program, and the forced resignation of its chief curator Paul Schimm...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on July 24, 2012 — No Comments

Keith Haring’s vision is fundamental to 80’s nostalgia.  His comic book characters are universally recognized, and with his first retrospective of early works at the Brooklyn Museum the artist will continue to be acclaimed.  Many can breeze through the show, enjoying the similarities to a schoolboy’s doodles.  More profoundly connected to adolescence, a deeper unspoken perspective of the world is illuminated. Once past the playful notions it is a brutal place, both in praise and criticism of his time. The 80&rsq...
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Added by Zev Eisenberg on March 16, 2012 — No Comments

As the contemporary art market moves creatively forward, tech-art is on the rise.  Famed veteran artists Jenny Holzer and Jim Campbell are both sought after for their LED installations.  Fairly unknown, but equally as impressive, are the works by Teddy Lo now on display at the Highline Loft’s group exhibition “Transmutation.”   Lo’s four impressive installations exist aside, in their own separate darkened room, confronting mood, color and time.  At first the works seem fairly standard – wit...
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Added by Zev Eisenberg on March 8, 2012 — No Comments

The renowned Chinese master of pyrotechnic spectacles will turn the roof of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s annex into a launch pad for whirling spaceships as part of a fireworks display to mark the opening of his first West Coast show next month. Rockets will shoot across a parking lot toward a crowd of onlookers. In an interview at his New York studio, Cai explains that he is keenly interested in extraterrestrials. A leitmotif of the MOCA show is “crop circles,” those patterns that mysteriously...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on March 6, 2012 — No Comments

Social Network For Artists (originally posted in VanityFairAgenda.com in December 2011) Question: What happens when you mix two New York social butterflies, Lisa Anastos, and Zev Eisenberg, with the city’s robust community of artists and collectors? Answer: The new social network and e-commerce site, ARThood.com. The duo created the site with the mission to connect new and emerging artists and give collectors an easy way to purchase or commission new work without the divide of gallery walls. I signed up as a member and came a...
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Added by ARThood on January 16, 2012 — No Comments

Dear Daily, Art Basel Miami Beach was the wildest hurricane of 2011 from the whirlwind of art to the windstorm of parties!  The 10th Anniversary of the grandest art celebration in the Unites States was even hotter than the Miami Heat. When the doors first opened for the VIP preview, the buying frenzy began, and with the stock market up by 400 points, the collectors were inspired. A Damien Hirst sculpture sold for over $2 million and Paul McCarthy’s “White Snow Dwarf (Bashful)” sold for $950,...
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Added by Lisa Anastos on December 7, 2011 — No Comments

Duchamp’s manufactured “readymade” urinals and shovels, Sol LeWitt’s written instructions for wall drawings, Joseph Kosuth’s blow-ups of dictionary texts -- these iconoclastic gambits can seem better suited to a seminar on epistemology or linguistics than to an art gallery. Who would want to live with these obscure and visually unrewarding artworks?  But some feel quite the opposite. They find beautiful things boring and the intellectual  challenges of Conceptual art exciting. The works th...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on November 4, 2011 — No Comments

Imagine the museum of the future. You step inside your home tele-dec and settle into an armchair that self-adjusts to your comfort settings. “Computer,” you command, “load the National Gallery of Art.” The room brightens and you find yourself in the atrium of the great Washington institution. In the air above the information desk a menu reads: Permanent Collection, Special Exhibitions, Timeline of Art History, and Lounge. “Timeline,” you say, and the great hall becomes a mist out of which emerges a se...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on October 3, 2011 — No Comments

Washington, D.C. is not renowned for private collections of contemporary art. The likes of Eli Broad, François Pinault, Steve Cohen, and Dakis Joannou make their homes elsewhere. But there are high-quality and innovative collections in the U.S. capital, and I recently profiled the couple that put together one of them. Daniel and Mirella Levinas fled the Argentine dictatorship and settled in Georgetown where they turned their white-brick mansion into a museum of mainly Latin American and Spanish art, with works by...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on September 16, 2011 — No Comments

Budapest is not exactly a hotbed of contemporary art. Curators there tell me people simply aren’t interested. Mounting a survey of artists from across Europe to mark Hungary’s recent  presidency of the E.U. seemed like a recipe for failure. The city's MFA rounded up big shots  like Jaume Plensa, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and two dozen others. But how would they get the locals to come look?The answer: they set the sculptures on the surface of a lake in a popular park! It’s part clever idea and part gimmick...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on August 23, 2011 — No Comments

Here’s the scene in front of the U.S. pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A sand-colored Armytank is flipped upside down with its turret on the ground. On top of its elevated undercarriage is a treadmill with an athlete dressed in red, white and blue and running in place, his action seeming to power the tank treads that roll with an ear-splitting clatter. The contraption — conceived by the artist couple Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla — constitutes an unsubtle critique of American values. The theme co...
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Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on August 8, 2011 — No Comments

Gay pride weekend kicked off with a celebratory cheer on Friday as the state passed the legalization of equal marriage for all! What better way to celebrate than to head to Kenny Scharf’s wild East Williamsburg basement and party it up with one of the world’s most renowned street artist? Scharf’s psychedelic murals coat city walls throughout the United States (most recently, his mural on Houston Street in New York was replaced by a less striking work by Chinese artist Liu Bolin). Playing off space creatures and popular cartoon...
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Added by Zev Eisenberg on June 29, 2011 — No Comments