Artblog | Reviews

March 20, 2019 by Flora Ward

BalletX Spring Program plays with Cy Twombly, Memphis Jookin, and ends on high note

Flora Ward visits BalletX’s Spring Series, reviews the three pieces in the program and articulates the show’s highlights and a few shortcomings with poetic descriptors. She applauds the shadowy finale, which left her speechless. This series ended on March 17th, 2019, so make sure to catch BalletX’s Summer Season, coming up July 10-21.

March 14, 2019 by Samuel Brown

Joakim Ojanen’s anxiety-ridden characters, sexualized undertones, at The Hole NYC

Samuel Brown writes a thoughtful review of Joakim Ojanen’s recent show “Snake Pit” at The Hole NYC! Buy yourself a bus ticket and catch this quirky show– a world building installation filled with odd, anxious, cheeky, and playful characters– before April 14th, 2019!

March 13, 2019 by Andrea Kirsh

Public artist of bridges and space and concerns for community, Siah Armajani at the Met Breuer

Public art nerds! Artblog contributor Andrea Kirsh penned a thoughtful piece on “Siah Armajani: Follow This Line” (on view NOW at the Met Breuer!) Armajani, who was forced to leave Iran in the 1960s for political reasons, creates witty works that comment on American building forms and pose questions about social interactions with public spaces. Don’t miss “Siah Armajani: Follow This Line” on view until June 2nd, 2019!

March 1, 2019 by Logan Cryer

Women’s Mobile Museum closes with powerful exhibition of self-representation at Philadelphia Photo Arts Center

Logan Cryer writes an insightful appreciation of the Women’s Mobile Museum culminating exhibition. The group photography show by — and depicting — women involved in the year-long project at PPAC, has some great self-representation, and Logan concludes that photography is the best medium with which to examine issues of who is normally represented in art works and who is normally excluded. The exhibition is up at PPAC through March 30.

February 26, 2019 by Andrea Kirsh

Cecilia Vicuña’s marvels in About to Happen at the Institute of Contemporary Art

In her review of Cecilia Vicuña exhibition, Andrea Kirsh calls the works — little cobbled-together objects tacked to the walls or arrayed on a low platform on the floor — marvels. But these objects are not nothings to throw away but objects with magical shadows and poetic meanings, and their mystery delights.

February 25, 2019 by Samuel Brown

Artists’ fundraiser Prints for Protest at Second State Press helps many of today’s protest groups

Sam Brown sees a provocative show at Second State Press of printed posters made by the group “Prints for Protest.” He appreciates how many different ways artists in the show connect with protest issues alive today.

February 24, 2019 by Levi Bentley

Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s book “M Archive,” speculative fiction with Black feminist point of view

Levi Bentley examines the complex melange of past, present and future in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s book, “M Archive,” a work of speculative fiction that argues that Black feminist thought holds the “connection and knowledge and care of the earth and its people together through all time,” as Bentley says in their immersive review.

February 22, 2019 by Deborah Krieger

Neighborhoods in conflict and the role of the artist, in Guadalupe Rosales’s solo show at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery

What is the role of an artist when their old neighborhood is gentrified by art galleries and the neighborhood doesn’t want them there? This highly topical question, and others, are examined by Guadalupe Rosales in her splendid “Legends Never Die: A Collective Memory,” at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College. Deborah Krieger writes a great personal take on the show.