Saba Taj’s current solo show at Twelve Gates Arts deftly combines humor, beauty and violence in speculative collage work that explores earth’s social and biological future from a queer, brown perspective. Deborah Krieger takes in the Durham-based multidisciplinary artist’s subversive “of beast/ of virgin” and reports.
Read MoreRecent UArts graduate Heet Lee had her first solo museum show in Leipzig, Germany earlier this month and Artblog correspondent Olivia Jia, who visited her friend’s exhibition, tells us about it. Lee’s energetic and aggressive compositions draw imagery from a dizzying array of sources, both public and private.
Read MoreWill language go on if and when we do not? How does one speak of the future in a doomed world? Here Levi Bentley reviews a new book of poetry by Cynthia Arrieu-King that ponders these questions and many more. Out December 14, 2018 from Radiator Press (Philly’s newest poetry press) “Futureless Languages” is rooted in close observation of our trying times. Read on and pick up the book for yourself this Friday!
Read MoreLike many local artists, Janyce Glasper treks up to New York every now and again to see what’s new. Here she fills us in on the latest from Nina Chanel Abney, who has just started translating the aesthetic of her politically-charged collage paintings into monoprints. If your plans take you to the big(ger) city, you can view Abney’s powerful, ambiguous work for yourself at Pace Prints through December 15, 2018.
Read MoreWhen an under-appreciated woman artist finally gets her due, you know Artblog will be there to cover it! Here Andrea Kirsh tips her hat to the Barnes Foundation and their major retrospective of Berthe Morisot, on view through January 14, 2019. Morisot, who was one of a small number of female artists at the epicenter of the Impressionist movement, was also a true pioneer of form and technique.
Read MoreImani reviews Poorly Watched Girls, a series of multi-media environments created by Suzanne Bocanegra at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. This complex body of work, in turns mournful and playful, will be up through February 17, 2019.
Read MoreIn Part 2 of Andrea Kirsh’s annual roundup of the best in art books, there is something for everyone on your holiday gift list from lovers of figurative painting to abstract sculpture fans. There’s also something for everyone to learn, whether it’s about a previously under-appreciated regional artist or the most famous self-promoter in the history of Modern Art.
Read MoreDeb Krieger takes an early tour of The Complicit Eye, lauded ceramicist Kukuli Velarde’s first major solo show of paintings in Philadelphia. This provocative body of work, on view at Taller Puertorriqueño through April 30, 2019, reveals Velarde’s long-standing use of self-portraiture as a mode of intersectional feminist critique.
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