The AFC Staff

The Best 25 Shows of 2015

by The AFC Staff on December 31, 2015

2015 was great for art. For all the bitching that went on about art fairs, the dominance of the market, and sub-par museum shows (cough, cough Björk), I saw more great shows than I have in my ten years working as a critic in New York. Rather than try to whittle our picks down to a few select shows, we wrote up every show we thought was truly exemplary.

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The Best Unrepresented Artists of 2015

by The AFC Staff on December 28, 2015

As 2015 comes to a close, the internet is awash with “top 10” and “best of” lists. But one art world metric of success that’s under-discussed (and nearly-universally sought) is gallery representation. So we’ve asked past and present AFC editors to weigh in on the artists that commercial galleries haven’t snagged exclusive contracts with yet—despite acclaim from critics, museums, and audiences. In the interest of gender parity in the notoriously sexist world of gallery representation, we’re each selecting one male-identified and one female-identified artist.

To that end, here are the best and brightest boys and girls who’ve yet to be drafted

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The Best of the Web, 2015

by The AFC Staff on December 23, 2015

Millions of years from now, aliens and artificial intelligence will be confounded by the follies, foibles and idiosyncrasies of the human race. Henceforth, the 2015.

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Announcing Double Crossing Brooklyn at The Brooklyn Museum

by The AFC Staff on November 9, 2015

The Brooklyn Museum continues its long tradition of focusing on Brooklyn-based artists with a follow up to our landmark survey, “Crossing Brooklyn,” with a new show featuring works by over forty-five artists who live and/or work in Brooklyn. “Double Crossing Brooklyn: 6th Annual Real Estate Summit,” on view Tuesday November 17th featuring practices that span what Johanna Drucker has called “complicit aesthetics’ to Julia Bryan-Wilson’s identification of “Occupational Realism” the artists in the exhibition operate in the field of real estate that seek to erase boundaries between art and Capitalism. While most of the exhibition will take place in the museum’s galleries, there will also be counter programming off-site in the streets and public spaces of the Brooklyn Museum.

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Wednesday Links: Bullshit Aristocracy

by The AFC Staff on September 2, 2015

Ew. Rats the size of cats

A rare victory of this sort: Cooper Union’s Board of Trustees and New York’s Attorney General have reached an agreement that will allow the art and architecture school to work towards offering free tuition again after years of fiscal mismanagement. Amazing! [Hyperallergic]
USC still has only one MFA student enrolled for its fall semester. After six months of acrimony between Dean Erica Muhl, and a would-be second year class that dropped out in its entirety, it seems the damage has been done. Perhaps this will be a lesson to other administrations seeking to cut programs and stipends that have been promised: don’t do it. [L.A. Weekly]
MUTANT RATS. These rats strung up outside Baruch Houses in the Lower East Side look enormous (cat sized). We’re hoping this is just because the framing, but there’s a smaller rat for scale. Lower East Side galleries, write in! [Bowery Boogie]
Today’s hate read: 14 Young Power Players Posed to Become the New Art World Aristocracy. Artnet places Maria Baibakova, the 29 year old daughter of Russian oligarch Oleg Baibakov, at number six, and quotes her in artspace, “Through my selections—the very act of choosing an object—I am suggesting that it represents a part of me, and that’s very interesting.” I bought three bananas/objects on the way into work today and now I’ve eaten them. They are a part of me. FASCINATING. [artnet News]
A round-up of the most anticipated openings to check out during Berlin’s abc art fair: Hito Steyerl will have new video works at KOW Berlin and Camille Henrot is showing a new installation featuring e-Bay sourced items at König Galerie. [artnet News
A peek inside the collaborative relationship between Neil Farber and Michael Dumontier, founding members of the Royal Art Lodge. [Canadian Art]
Last week, open e-print archive ArXiv posted “A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style”, revealing the ways in which a convolutional neural networks — basically Google Deep Dream — could be used to process images within an hour in the style of famous artworks. It’s like Photoshop layer styles, but next level: your snap, in both the representation of style and content, gets transformed to the effect of Munch’s “The Scream” or Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. Imagine what will happen when technologists will run a neural algorithm through sound? [Medium]
Baltimore cops arrest artist and activist Kwame Rose, the hero (and artist, activist) who confronted Geraldo on camera during the Freddie Gray protests. More details TK but he’s on the ground with what looks like a taser on his back. [Deray McKesson] Speaking of Gray, take a look at the info sheet BALT (the Baltimore Action Legal Team) put together about the pre-trial hearings. [BALT, h/t Deanna Haggag]
EMI Production Music is extending an olive branch to DJs everywhere by initiating a six-month amnesty on undeclared samples from its music library. Starting this month, the amnesty is an attempt by EMI to create not only awareness for their catalogues — which includes the vinyl crate diggers favourite KPM — but also send a message to artists that they’re willing to negotiate fairly rather than hit them with a royalty back claim. (Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Admiral Ackbar is having a strong reaction to this news.) [Billboard]
Art critic and reporter Brian Boucher gets a mention in a New York Post article about Bill de Blasio’s unscripted chat on Twitter yesterday. He is quoted as “twitter user.” [New York Post]

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Celebrating Amazon Prime Day

by The AFC Staff on July 15, 2015

It’s Amazon Prime Day, a new shopping holiday that promises “more deals than Black Friday.” We care because if you click on our affiliate links, then we receive something like 20 cents per transaction. Also you can get a Kindle for only 49 bucks today—regularly $79—so guess what we’re getting?

Anyway, we found some art-related deals, and a few WTFs. Here’s our shopping list.

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