Art in America - Most Recent Conversations Posts

Days of the Commune: An Interview with Zoe Beloff

Jennie Hirsh — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:20:00 +0100

During spring 2012, Beloff directed a series of remarkable performances of Bertolt Brecht's 1949 play The Days of the Commune, which was set in the 1871 Paris Commune. Echoing the values at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Beloff's production was not a single performance of the play.

Beyond Vernacular: An Interview with John Outterbridge

Austin Considine — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +0100

High-profile exposure has been a long time coming for Outterbridge, underscoring the critical ghettos into which the mainstream American art world continues to relegate much black American art.

Becoming Adults: The Paintings of Elena Sisto

Julian Kreimer — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:45:00 +0100

April is a big month for Sisto. She's having first New York solo show since 2004, the traveling exhibition "Between Silver Light and Orange Shadow," which originated at Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design, made a stop at the University of Florida's University Gallery in Gainesville and is now at New York's Lori Bookstein Gallery (through May 25). She also was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Born Digital: Rhizome's Heather Corcoran

Leigh Anne Miller — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:40:00 +0100

Aside from maintaining Rhizome's website, Corcoran is most concerned with the conservation of the kind of "born digital" work Rhizome promotes.

Drawing Democracy: Robert Longo at the Aldrich Museum

Aimee Walleston — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:45:00 +0100

Politics—and their attending monoliths—are endemic to a recent series of drawings by Robert Longo, "God Machines." The newest addition to the series, which also includes depictions of places of worship, isCapitol (2013), an enormous seven-panel charcoal drawing of the U.S. Capitol Building.

Playing Telephone: An Interview with Amalia Pica

Courtney Fiske — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:40:00 +0100

Images associated with listening-cups pressed to the wall, a makeshift antenna, earplugs cast in metal-thread through the work of London-based, Argentinian-born artist Amalia Pica. It's an unusual preoccupation, particularly for an artist whose work extends the legacy of Conceptualism, which, at its most stringent, posited art as something purely ideational, unbound by the exigencies of shape and form.

Industrious Revolution: An Interview with Justin Matherly

Brienne Walsh — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:30:00 +0100

Even though the objects on view are all made with modern-day industrial materials such as concrete and metal, walking into "All industrious people," an exhibition by Justin Matherly at New York's Paula Cooper Gallery (through Apr. 27), feels something like entering a show charting an archaeological dig at an ancient site.

Return: An Interview with Yael Bartana

Tracy Zwick — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0100

Recently acquired by the Guggenheim, where it was screened last year, the 60-minute work centers on Bartana's semi-fictive Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), which calls for the return of 3.3 million Jewish emigrants to their "ancestral homeland."

The Collecting Life: An Interview with Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner

Austin Considine — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0100

The book is, on one hand, a lively and accessible history of art collecting, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries. On the other, it's something of a best practices guide for budding collectors.

Going Against the Grain: Interview with Sebastian Errazuriz

Carol Strickland — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:00:00 +0100

Some of those included in "Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design" blur the artist-designer distinction. A prime example is Sebastian Errazuriz, who expands the concept of furniture, blending utility, expressionism and personal vision.

Rirkrit Tiravanija Lights Stockhausen at the Armory

Ross Simonini — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:00:00 +0100

The music, a 70-minute excerpt of the late composer's 29-hour opera "Licht," was intended to be performed in a specially designed chamber with octophonic (8-channel) sound. Tiravanija conceived of a circular stage with a lunar surface to include both the audience and the performers, all-white smocks to be worn by all attendees, and a light show that approximates an eclipse.

June Yap's Asia

Richard Vine — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:07:00 +0100

June Yap recently spoke to A.i.A. about her curatorial objectives for "No Country," her vision of the culturally diverse region it surveys, and the overall goals of the Guggenheim UBS Map Initiative.

Haunted: Q&A with LaToya Ruby Frazier

Greg Lindquist — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:00:00 +0100

A recent graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, in New York, Frazier has had her work included in the recent New York survey museum exhibitions "Generational: Younger than Jesus" (2009), PS1's "Greater New York" (2010) and the Whitney Biennial (2012).

Links: Q+A with Noah Davis

Yael Lipschutz — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0100

A.i.A. sat down with Davis in what he calls the Underground Museum, his experimental art space/studio/residence in L.A.'s Crenshaw district, on the eve of "The Missing Link," his solo exhibition at Roberts & Tilton [through Mar. 30].

Set-Up: Q+A with Andrew Berardini and Lauren Mackler

Catherine Wagley — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0100

Mackler, who runs the shape-shifting east L.A. project space Public Fiction, and Berardini, a writer who often folds fantasies into his art criticism, had thus twice been asked to curate exhibitions in Italy. But neither is interested in creating conventional thematic group shows, nor are they that interested in "bringing L.A. to Italy." So they tried to do something more inventive. The Turin show involved placing mirrors on the floor of the church, then arranging sculptures and paintings above the reflection of the church's fabulous vaulted ceiling.

Beauty and the Bees: Q+A with Wolfgang Laib

Ross Simonini — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0100

Though trained as a doctor, Laib changed his direction after medical school and began creating his now iconic "milkstones," slabs of polished marble with a thin layer of fresh milk sitting atop their surfaces. His work emits a subtle spiritual resonance, as does Laib himself, who speaks simply and with monastic restraint. In addition to his home in Hochdorf, Germany, he divides his time between an apartment in Manhattan and a small village in India.

Transcendence and Transformation: Q+A with Bill Viola

Camille Hong Xin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, "Bill Viola: Liber Insularum" is a major exhibition that includes 15 installations. The Reflecting Pool (1977–79) is the only early work, but its technique and theme are as current as the rest of the pieces. While reflection, time and human connection continue to be the themes in the show, other selected pieces from the "Passions" series (2000–2002) focus on the in-depth study of various extreme expressions and their detailed emotional transformation, as in The Quintet of the Astonished (2000) and Observance (2002). There are also five pieces from Viola's "Transfigurations" series (2007-2008) depicting people at the threshold between life and death.

A Year in Notes: Q+A with Richard Birkett

Courtney Fiske — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0100

The Annual's seventh edition, up through late February, is the effort of Richard Birkett, a transplant to New York from London and the curator at Artists Space. As in previous iterations, the installation is dense and deliberately open-ended. Neither press release nor wall text attempts to tell a narrative using the works on view, placing the onus on the viewer to string disparate projects.

Frustrating Desires: Q+A with Martha Rosler

Courtney Fiske — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0100

Conceptual artist, political activist and cultural theorist Martha Rosler held her first garage sale in 1973 in the art gallery of the University of California at San Diego, where she was then a graduate student. Publicizing the event in local media as both a sale and an installation, Rosler arranged personal items alongside donations from friends and colleagues, and projected slides procured from an estate sale of exemplary white, middle-class American families.

Artistic Positions: Q+A with Luc Tuymans

Kara Rooney — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0100

A.i.A. spoke with Tuymans about the exhibition, its personal significance for the artist, and his views on the politics of privacy.