Author Archives: jolanta

With an airy coolness and subversion, Bob Gramsma brings his architectural installation Schwamendingen, OI#0485 to Haswellediger Gallery in Chelsea, New York. An architectural structure of over 200 glass windows and doors salvaged from an old house in Zurich layered into walls, floors and ceilings, this installation stood aloof from being categorizable as a pavilion, a […]

The "Everlandia" project is a collaborative undertaking intended to explore the private world of our imagination and express it in form of tangible, pictorial images. This collection of images creates a publicly accessible virtual world which reflects the private imaginary worlds of its creators, and invites us to explore our own imagination and join in […]

This penetrating volume must not simply be approached as a contradiction of terms reflecting the paradox inherent in its subject matter. A larger truth is introduced by the title: the separate but parallel streams of conceptual and performance art in the formation of postmodernism not only reflect but reinforce the body/mind split in the culture. […]

The following was written in regards to a pair of exhibitions I curated this year. The first, "synthetic aesthetic," opened at the LAB gallery in midtown Manhattan in January, and the other, "plastic fantastic," at the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art in Long Branch, New Jersey, April—May. About three years ago it occurred to me […]

Amanda Besl’s tiny figurative oil paintings combine stark contrast, vivid color and gorgeous texture with the immediacy of photography. She creates images of startling beauty and menace, evoking the swirling blend of childish vulnerability and adult sexuality that defines female adolescence. Besl’s use of paint and her tactile surfaces serve to transform each photo into […]

The art of Arthur Simms is versatile, rough, edgy, bold, haunting, rather primitive in technique–which gives the work its charm–highly reflective, and at times, intimidating. Through his art, he wishes us to feel what he feels–experience his life, his history, and compare it to our own. He challenges the viewer’s instincts with the foreign and […]

In "Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art," the second part of the "Russia Redux" exhibition that premiered in the fall, curator Elena Sorokina assembled works by 13 artists and two artist collectives in a conceptually tight and intellectually intriguing exploration of space. Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art Isabelle Dupuis Muratbek Djourmaliev and Gulnara Kasmalieva, Transsiberian Amazons, […]

Life moves at a different pace in amusement parks. We visit them for the free fall of the rollercoaster, the dizzying centripetal spin of the teacups and the breathtaking heights of the ferris wheel. Amusement parks invite us into a fantastical world where we can break the rules, codes and taboos that govern everyday life: […]

A young tree whose blossoms, leaves and branches are hindered from further growth by a metal fence has been a recurrent image in Betty Bee’s paintings. The subject itself offers a significant insight into the mind of an artist whose work is attached to her psyche. This wire mesh symbolically both confines and protects her […]

I find it rare to encounter exhibitions that elicit an uneasy or anxious feeling. "Disturbance" (Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA), a video installation by Bob Paris, consisting of five separate but connected works, does just this, while producing an environment that is both welcoming and unsettling. Uncomfortably Hypnotic Ron Johnson Bob Paris, Still from Disturbance: 22 […]