Tag: Contemporary Art
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Guideposts to Grace
This week I sat down numerous times to recall the highlights of 2021 and how they shaped my writing this year. So many of these positive memories were nearly eclipsed by personal loss and the neverending distractions from the news cycle. Throughout this year I found solace in the visual image. Art continues to be…
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Artist Corey Pemberton Offers Timely Meditations on Home in “creature, comfort” at CAM Raleigh
Los Angeles based artist Corey Pemberton’s latest body of work explores the intimate spaces and vulnerable places that define our notions of “home”. In his current solo show at CAM Raleigh called creature, comfort, Pemberton combines painting, photography, and hand blown glass to create visual environments that depict his subjects in both real and imagined…
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Artist a Day: Amoako Boafo
My Artist a Day posts at the beginning of the month centered on the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s where I focused on some of the artists that will be featured in the Broad’s upcoming Soul of a Nation exhibition. One of the most important themes to come out of that era…
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Unsynthesized Intuitions: Confronting Discomfort with Adrian Piper
As I left Adrian Piper’s “Concepts and Intuitions” at the Hammer museum, I noticed a series of wooden structures resembling voting booths positioned outside of the exhibit’s entrance. I walked into one of the private booths steadying myself as I prepared to write in the binder that was resting on a shelf in front of…
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Decoding Sunshine-Glenn Ligon at the Broad
Glenn Ligon baffles me—the more I look at his work, the less I understand, and because it’s so layered, I learn something new with every attempt I make to decode a piece. It’s a challenge I gladly accept. In the Broad’s latest group show called “A Journey That Wasn’t” Ligon explores the fluidity of time, race,…
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Same Ol’ MOCA
In 2009 MOCA had miraculously survived a financial crisis that left them vulnerable to bankruptcy and acquisition. After receiving an infusion of capital that required them to tighten their belts, the museum was anxious to move forward when they announced their new attitude under the guise of a turnaround campaign called “MOCA New”. When that…
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Artist a Day: Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson’s work body of multi-media work is so diverse it’s too hard to single out just one work for discussion, but I’m picking a piece she created in 2016 that I recently saw at the Tate Modern. Then and Now is an appropriated photo from the Detroit riots of 1967—a screen-printed tableau that’s split…
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Artist a Day: Rico Gaston
I love the graphic design elements in Rico Gaston’s paintings. My favorites include an ongoing series that marries collage and colored pencil on paper in images that radiate off the page. The black and white images of musicians, writers, entertainers, and activists are augmented by bold, colorful lines that amplify the subject’s energy.…
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Artist a Day: Jack Whitten
“There’s no destination, there’s only the journey.” Jack Whitten came of age in the South and was involved in the Civil Rights movement while he was a student at Tuskegee and Southern University. After a demonstration in Baton Rouge left an indelible mark on his psyche, Whitten left Louisiana to attend Cooper Union in New…
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New Orleans Unfolds as the Canvas for Prospect.4
Prospect.4 officially kicked off Saturday, November 18 and the roster of international artists in the city-wide triennial is chock full of familiar and new talent whose work I’ve long admired. I was able to get a digital copy of the event’s catalog and after sampling the work from some of the artists chosen for the…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 