Tag Archive "kehinde-wiley"
Pier 94 – lights, action and some ho hum at the Armory contemporary
On the whole, we found the Armory Show contemporary pier (Pier 94) to be a disappointing mix. It felt like a cloud of low energy had descended and sucked the life out of the fair. Much of the sculpture and painting we saw seemed uninteresting–at least it didn’t interest us. Mostly photographs and video held our interest. Ivan Navarro’s light fence — which was so bright it might have been there to prevent the onset of SADs in the viewers — was no help. Ten minutes spent near its fluorescent rays contributed to our depression as we wandered around.
PAFA’s Summer Surprises and more
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in the past two years, has acquired work by five African American artists, four of them from the international and national art strataspheres. Their work looks spectacular in the show Summer Surprises, an exhibit that includes recent acquisitions of work by 11 artists, placing the 11 in the context of some earlier acquisitions also on display! The large contingent of artists of color working within yet challenging and stretching the academy’s reality-based tradition is the big news. The five with work acquired in 2010 and 2009 are Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, Mark Bradford, ... More » »
Rhymes with both and windy
Kehinde Wiley‘s first name rhymes with windy. Alec Soth‘s second name rhymes with both. Last week they were both in town to talk about their art work and to listen to their names mangled over and over.
Beautiful and not in New York
We dithered and waffled on what to see in our day trip to New York last week finally settling on shows in Chelsea and Soho that talked to our concerns about beauty in contemporary art. Beauty is back of course. That’s nothing any observer of the scene has missed by now, with gorgeous public art by Anish Kapoor and the embrace of beauty in even the most tetchy conceptual realms (Kara Walker). But is it “beauty” or beauty? Is it something wry and ironic or a new push to aesthetic pleasure. In a world of electronic and cyber-bombardment whose ... More » »
Mall rat report–trip to Washington D.C.
Sunny and in the 70s, it felt like summer in Washington, D.C. when Steve and I were there Oct 10-12 strolling the Mall, checking out the museums, seeing a play, eating at the eateries and packing into the Metro to get around. I’ve got many many photos at flickr and will here just mention a few high points of the trip. Steve’s slide, Everyone is descended from a loser,….showing feasible individuals with infeasible ancestors. Steve was giving a talk at Informs‘ annual meeting and amid the slides with their talk of genetic algorithms (GA’s) and infeasible and feasible offspring of ... More » »
Art in Miami; Etc.
There were 21 fairs in Miami last week besides Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB). Call me a slacker, but I only made it to 6. I quickly eliminated the specialized fairs (works on paper, photography [2], design) and picked the rest out of past experience and/or because I was likely to find Philadelphia artists or dealers. Thomas Schutte Grosse Geister #2 (Big Spirit #2) 2003, polished bronze, in front of the Cerealart display at the Rubell Family CollectionBreakfast at the Rubell Family Collection. That’s not a Richard Long (the Long was on the ground, a hundred feet away; no kidding!) ... More » »
Kehinde Wiley’s twin
We just signed up for Google stats, and imagine our surprise when some blog we never heard of turned out to be a key source of hits for us this first week. So we checked out Fette’s Flog-Aesthetic Los Angeles and found an image by chicken artist Eric Fausnacht (see artblog post) next to an image by hip-hop-meets-art-history artist Kehinde Wiley. The wallpaper’s a total match. So check the Flog’s Jan. 18 post. Sure enough, on the Muse Gallery member’s page, Fausnacht mentions Wiley as an influence, along with Jeff Koons, the king of kitsch.
