Author Archives: jolanta

Apart from scientific research, conservation, exhibitions, and art education, the collecting of works of art is one of the fundamental tasks of a museum. In many countries one sees cutbacks or at least a freezing of funding levels when it comes to state support of museums. In contrast, expenditure for the maintenance and operation of […]

While Beatrice Burel’s paintings have the swirling energy of many abstract works, they also suggest something quite different: the murmuring of numerous voices beneath each layer. The artist’s work has changed greatly over the years, and is seldom truly abstract. She courageously goes beyond the given and familiar, pioneering new techniques and materials in order […]

Although the word “ornament” is one of most important keywords of Postmodernism, it seems only a few critics or art historians in the field of contemporary art have tried to find new meanings for this word. Lately, however, there are some tendencies that can only be described as nothing but “ornament” in Japanese contemporary art. […]

I always believe all that exists has a reason for being, both visible and invisible. Some things can be controlled, but most of them are intangible or unknown. I love the mystery of things and believe its holiness, sacredness, and marvelousness. Oh, songs of spiritual practitioners! How amazing life is! When I realize it, how […]

When I began graduate school, I also began working in the sex industry as a way to finance my education without having to work full-time. During the three years of developing my work while under the intensive supervision of the institution, I recognized more and more within myself a conflict raging between my “public body” […]

I have always traveled extensively and experienced different cultures and social contexts. This has shaped my understanding in the scope between the concerns of individuals in their unique situations and the individual within a broader socio-political condition. In 1984 when I was living, working, and studying in America I was employed as well as a […]

For his first solo exhibition Sterling Ruby & Robert Mapplethorpe at Xavier Hufkens, Sterling Ruby engages with the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. The artist visited the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York to personally select the photographs. Ruby presents a new body of works, including a suite of collages, ceramics, and poured urethane sculptures. In […]

Gerhard Richter opens his exhibition with a large-scale, almost monochrome painting, a painting—pale—of which underlying chromatic structures are layered with translucent veils of white paint with an occasional break on the canvas to suggest, perhaps, that even if there is nothing within nothing, there is a piercing shred of a void. Appropriately, the subtitle of […]

The Museum of Modern Art presents the first major museum retrospective of the artist Gabriel Orozco, who since the early 1990s has forged a career marked by continuing innovation, and has become one of the leading artists of his generation. On view until March 1, this mid-career retrospective examines two decades of Orozco’s career in […]