From the category archives:

Guest Blogger

Jesse P. Martin: More Doors

by Jesse P. Martin on August 24, 2011
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Last summer, while visiting my parents in New Jersey, my mom gave me a copy of Kafka's The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces. It's a slim tome sporting Kafka's greatest hits, full of strange manners and clean cruelties. It reads something like a mutant antique: musty but weirdly fresh, arcane and possibly very dangerous.

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Nate Hill: Art, Spectacle, and the Media

by Nate Hill on August 11, 2011
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Most people do not care about art. They watch TV, they fuss over their cats, they drink with their friends. As a result, artists who want their work to reach those outside the art world usually need to do a lot of legwork on their own.

Art has to come to people, because people have shown they're not going to come to art. Presenting artworks only to the already-defined art world assumes art needs that context to affect people, but that's not true. Good work speaks with a clarity and force that doesn't need to be framed by the art world, and should be spread to as many people as possible. One way to appeal to the non-gallery going population is to create a media spectacle — it's a proven way to draw attention and distinguish oneself from the competition. With so many artists working today, it would be dumb to ignore the spectacle's possibilities.

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Jorge Pardo at Friedrich Petzel

by Tom Moody on July 1, 2010
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Many people in New York know Jorge Pardo’s work because he designed the last ground floor exhibition for the Dia Foundation’s 22nd Street location, before that space went to rot to make way for Dia Beacon. Pardo’s colorful, Jim Isermann-like floor tiles were visible through the windows for years. His installation at Friedrich Petzel, which closed June 19, will not leave such an indelible impression.

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We Get Mail

by Tom Moody on June 30, 2010
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We’re still working on getting the comment system fixed but in the meantime a few comments came in that I’ll respond to in the main post. My Jorge Pardo review will wait until we can have a proper pile-on.

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Comment Issues – Please Stay Tuned

by Tom Moody on June 29, 2010
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We’re having some problems with the new comment system. Older comments are disappearing from recent threads. Paddy is working on the problem and missing comments will be manually replaced tomorrow. In the meantime…

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Heather Rowe at D’Amelio Terras

by Tom Moody on June 29, 2010
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Heather Rowe’s exhibition at D’Amelio Terras, which closed June 19, offered a poMo counterpoint to Anne Truitt’s highMo across the street at Matthew Marks. Where Truitt gave us skyscrapers we weren’t supposed to compare to skyscrapers, Rowe gave us a funhouse that that wasn’t fun.

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Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks

by Tom Moody on June 28, 2010
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Matthew Marks Gallery’s show of Anne Truitt’s work closed June 26. Viewing it opened a time portal back to the late ’60s, when Clem Greenberg’s grip had loosened in New York but still held provincial Washington DC in a vise-like clutch.

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