Author Archives: jolanta

Seductive, repulsive and vividly fresh, Christy Singleton’s silicone sculptures of plastic, surgery-obsessed southern women personify “Silicone Valley,” a provocative exhibition at New York’s P. S. 1 Gallery. Silicone, as the title of the show suggests, is a synthetic material commonly used for plastic surgery, but it also refers to the geographical area of Silicon Valley […]

Mr. Young’s retrospective and first solo exhibition opens at P. S. 1 on June 24th and stays open through September 10, 2007. The exhibit will feature 25 works and survey two decades of the artist’s career from 1963 to 1980. Mr. Young first came to New York in 1960 to study art history at N.Y.U. […]

Shanghai-based artist Liu Deng loves clutter. He collects chess pieces and animal masks. Table lamps and rubber ducks. Action figures. Scarves. Things scavenged from the street. Things bought in a bazaar. Even objects from friends’ homes—which he’ll ask to borrow, of course. Only when he has amassed a respectable heap, will he sit down and […]

All my photo projects start the same—with a gradually developing obsession with something that crosses my path, whether it’s a book, a story, a documentary or an object seen in a museum. Gathering source material often leads me to make an extensive study of the related subjects. I try to categorize my sources, to sound […]

My work addresses issues of masculinity, amateurism, science, play and the quixotic quest for personal heroism that accompanies these subjects. I explore the culturally glorified narratives of scientific discoveries, feats of athleticism and heroic legends through the perspective of the amateur, who is motivated by love for the activity and a desire to achieve, but […]

I have two identities. One is as a director, the other is as a photographer. Video direction is the career through which I make a living, so this is why a lot of my habits from that side of things inevitably influence my other identity, as photographer. Therein lies my most notable qualities as a […]

When I was around seven years old, my parents bought me a purple pop-up viewfinder camera. I used to take this with me everywhere, photographing my seaside holidays, Sunday dinners at my grandparents and even my cats urinating. At ten, I got bored of carrying a camera around my neck and lost interest until it […]

I became interested in photography quite early, as a teenager. I grew up in a small town in Norway and so the local library only had a few photography books, and mostly in the ”how to take great photographs” section. But, if I heard about a book I wanted to read, the librarians would do […]

Mickalene Thomas has taken Blaxploitation images of the 70s and mixes them with her mother’s photographs from the late 70s. Thomas’ paintings are exciting, enchanting and invigorating. I met the artist in the Brooklyn studio where she makes her paintings, often in series—the “Brawlin Spitfire” images, portraits and the “Odalisques and She Works Hard For […]

Bears are perhaps not the most typical subject matter for an art exhibition. In fact, whenever a show bases itself on the premise of something real—something tangible like, say, bears—it catches me off guard. Accustomed as I am to press releases that read like BS-filled college art history papers trying desperately to catch up with […]