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We Went To…

We Went To Mexico: Reading Comprehension Test

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on February 3, 2016
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We’re in Mexico looking at art. We love it!

Today, a look at two shows, one successful, the other not. Our reviews of Josef Strau at House of Gago, and José León Cerrillo at joségarcía after the jump.

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We Went to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on January 7, 2016
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We went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, an action-packed tale of a desert orphan who meets a droid on a quest to help a group of freedom fighters destroy a weapon that can blow up planets.
Paddy: If this basic plot summary sounds remarkable for its lack of imagination, you’re not the only one who feels that way. The movie looks and feels like the original trilogy, but throughout, I found myself mentally editing the script, and re-imagining its scenes. Not a good sign.
Michael: This felt like a movie where about 1/1000th of the makers’ time and energy was budgeted for writing, and all other effort went into production. It’s more akin to watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade than a work of narrative fiction.

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We Went to No Man’s Land: Women Artists from The Rubell Family Collection

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on December 21, 2015
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At the Rubell Family Collection, dozens of contemporary women artists working in every conceivable medium left us very impressed.

Michael: Here, the blue-chip market and a private collector managed to accomplish something many institutions or independent curators haven’t—presenting an all-female show that feels as if it has nothing to prove.

Paddy: I still can’t get over how many monumental art works in this show so effectively dominated the space that you’d literally feel awestruck by their presence.

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We Went To San Juan: Alternative Galleries Save Austerity Hamstrung Triennial

by Dianne Bras Feliciano and Pedro Velez on November 13, 2015
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Dianne Bras Feliciano and Pedro Velez visit The 4th San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, La Productora and Recinto Cerra.

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We Went to North Carolina: The Weirdest Contemporary Art Museum in the South

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on October 28, 2015
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Pretty much everyone we spoke to while we were in North Carolina was excited about Point & Counterpoint at SECCA. And for what it is—a group show of artists whose work was not selected for any kind of commonality past being a recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship—it’s not hard to see why. The show was so masterfully installed by SECCA curator Cora Fisher that it’s hard to imagine most of the work ever looking better than in that context.

That said, we were a little underwhelmed by a lot of the work on view.

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We Went to North Carolina Part 1: CAM, Lump and Flanders Gallery

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on October 27, 2015
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Two weeks ago Michael and I headed to North Carolina to visit a friend and do some studio visits at University of North Carolina Greensboro.  We ended up with an epic tour of North Carolina, from Raleigh to Winston Salem (for context, that’s about the distance from Philadelphia to Washington, DC). In part one, we’ll discuss our highlights from Raleigh.

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We Went to Regina Rex and 247365 for Representations of Representations

by Michael Anthony Farley Whitney Kimball on September 11, 2015
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Wednesday night, we ran around to almost a dozen openings in the Lower East Side. Yesterday, we discussed huge, space-transforming installations. Today, we’re looking at two solo shows where the medium was the message: Henry Gunderson at 247365 and Corey Escoto at Regina Rex.

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We Went to the LES and the LES Went All Out

by Michael Anthony Farley Whitney Kimball on September 10, 2015
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This week, the art world came back from its summer vacation with a bang. Nearly every gallery in the Lower East Side opened their fall season last night with theatrical staging. From ball pits to frame a Baldessari to fooding a gallery basement, big productions were the look.

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We Went To Baltimore Part 2: Too Many Semi-Finalists in the Sondheim Semi-Finalist Exhibition

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on July 21, 2015
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MICA
1300 W. Mount Royal Ave.
Baltimore, MD
Sondheim Semi-Finalist Exhibition
What’s on view: 54 Semi-finalists for the Sondheim Prize held inside several MICA Galleries. Lots of sculpture, lots of photographs, and a few paintings that made the short list for the Sondheim Prize, an annual open call juried exhibition for baltimore-area artists. (This includes artists living in cities like Washington.) There’s no theme, and no attempt to forge one. All the galleries were crammed with work.

Michael Anthony Farley: Really, I think everyone has the same complaint every year: there is just too much stuff! No matter what strategies are employed, the show just always feels overhung and uneven.

Paddy Johnson: Honestly, I think you’re being overly-generous to this show. It was terrible.

Find out why after the jump.

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