From the category archives:

Newswire

AC Repair: Toronto’s Littlest White Cube

by Rea McNamara on April 8, 2016
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Add AC Repair & Co. to the long list of galleries now setting shop in Junction Triangle, the city’s newest gallery district. Founded by curators Emma Clough and Jess Carroll, it’s a unique entry in the commercial gallery scene thanks to its small scale and non-traditional walls. It’s literally a 324 square foot garage, with no running water or toilet.

“We were inspired by galleries that were making creative use of unconventional space in cities outside the traditional ‘art capitals’, such as the recently-closed Appendix gallery in Portland, as well as Young World in Detroit,” says Clough and Carroll in an email interview with AFC.

This interest plays into Clough and Carroll’s sales strategy: keeping costs low so they can take a chance on selling work by artists lacking the “kind of commercial legacy that a lot of gallerists are looking for,” says the duo. “Toronto has a lot of great, young artists who find it hard to align themselves with commercial galleries as they find that they’re intimidated or their freedom is restricted. Because AC is such a small, raw space with low overhead, we have the freedom that a larger commercial gallery does not. We want to work with artists who are pushing the envelope.”

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Philosophers and Donors Invited to MoCA’s Living Room

by Paddy Johnson on March 30, 2016
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Say good-bye to the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MOCCA). Henceforth the institution will be referred to as “The Museum” — or The Museum of Contemporary Art, or “everyone’s living room”.

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A 10th Grader’s Artwork Is Setting Off a Shitstorm of Ridiculous Controversy

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 25, 2016
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On March 15th, an exhibition of high school students’ artwork went up in the atrium of Denver’s Wellington Webb Municipal Building. And now a lot of grown men are crying crocodile tears about it. An unnamed 10th grader responded to an assignment to recontextualize a piece from art history with contemporary themes by combining Goya’s “The 3rd of May 1808” with the more recent “A Tale of Two Hoodies” by Michael D’Antuono. Those paintings commemorate the execution of Spanish resistance fighters by Napoleon’s armies, and the murders of African American youth by police and vigilantes, respectively.

Predictably, the #BlueLivesMatter reactionaries are out in full force to cry victim.

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What is Going on at Art Basel Hong Kong?

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 24, 2016
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If you ask someone how the art market is doing in Hong Kong, get ready for an earful. We’re unfortunately not in town for Art Basel, so we can’t speak to that topic first-hand. But as a person with internet access, I’ve been bombarded with more contradictory facts and opinions (let’s be honest, mostly opinions) about the state of the unstable Chinese economy, the tastes of the Asian art market, and the manic-depressive cycles of art fair outlooks than I ever thought I’d need to know.

Below, we’ve aggregated some of the uneven reporting on Art Basel Hong Kong, including some quotes from director Adeline Ooi and other industry experts, to get a better idea of just what China’s market troubles mean for the art world:

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Electric Objects Announces $100,000 Fund for Commissioning New Digital Art

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 11, 2016
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Electric Objects, makers of an internet-connected digital art display that can be hung like a painting, have announced a new fun for commissioning digital artworks. The Electric Objects Art Club Fund will provide $100,000 for new projects in 2016.

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Letter from Stony Brook: Open Call for Cybernetics and Art Papers

by Rea McNamara on March 9, 2016
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When we last heard from our former senior editor Corinna Kirsch, she had filed last August an incendiary AFC Reports investigation into sexism in art writing, and then signed off to focus on her PhD in Art History at Stony Brook University. If you could glean from one of her best unrepresented artist pick from last year, her current research interests include intersections between art and technology since the postwar period. And she’s co-chairing a cybernetics and art panel this fall that’s soliciting an open call for papers.

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How an Art Exhibition in New York Led to Harassment from Chinese Authorities

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 26, 2016
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This story has all the elements of a 1990s cyberpunk thriller: hackers, foreign government agents, and multinational corporations. But this is terrifying reality in 2016. A collaboration between American and Chinese activists, artists, and programmers has resulted in FIREWALL, a pop-up internet cafe/art installation that lays bare the censored version of the internet mainland Chinese citizens have access to. When visitors search a term at one of the consoles, they see the results in both Google and state-controlled Chinese equivalent Baidu.. That gesture appears innocent enough—after all, FIREWALL merely presents the internet as curated by the Chinese state. Those very censors, however, seem pretty unhappy about it.

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Win a Private Consultation With El Museo del Barrio Curator + Two Tickets to Our Benefit

by Paddy Johnson on February 26, 2016
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Get your art seen by the best professionals in the business.

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New York Artist’s Bottle Project Drifts Onto French Shores

by Rea McNamara on February 24, 2016
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Two and half years ago, artist George Boorujy tossed a message in a bottle into Wolfe’s Pond Park on Staten Island. Last week, that bottle was found on France’s southwestern coast—ironically enough, by a French artist.

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Philadelphia Museum of Art Offers Membership Program to Artists

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 23, 2016
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The Philadelphia Museum of Art joins the ranks of institutions such as MoMA, offering a new discounted membership program for artists. Go to Philly! RUN!

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