Author Archives: jolanta

April Picks Christopher Chambers Still in jail. It’s been more than six months since Alfredo Martinez was arrested and incarcerated in an FBI sting operation for wire fraud in relation to his alleged forgery and sales of paintings by Donald Baechler and Jean-Michelle Basquiat, two of the top proponents of the school of "bad painting." […]

Film and Video Festival Speech Ultra Violet Before I begin, let me say how grateful I am to have an opportunity to address all of you at this the Black Maria Film and Video Festival and I wish to thank the organizers in advance for inviting me. You may secretly be wondering what makes me […]

Killed by Lightning a new film by Yevgeny Yufit, the master of necro-realis Alexandra Paperno Yufit continues making uneasy films. Certainly in view of the difficult situation of the Russian film industry, this can be described as admirable. He regards himself as an advocate of necro-realism–and is also the only film maker representing this tendency. […]

Re-Kreation and Comewhatmay at POST, Los Angeles Habib Kheradyar   "Re-Kreation" is a group exhibit of photography and video works. The exhibit is installed with a keen sense of site specificity in mind. A constellation consisting of thirty-eight photographs are strewn salon-style on one of the small gallery walls on the second floor at POST. One […]

SCI-ART: Exploring the Brain and the Role of the Artist M-1000 The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness. – Marchall McLuhan   In the ‘60s, Nam June Paik documented […]

"Loftiness against Impersonality" Slawomir Marzec The gallery BWA Lublin presents (February 2003) the exhibition that can be challenging at the moment, especially for the younger generation–it shows painting treated with an unusual seriousness. It is large retrospective of Ryszard Lis (1935—97), one of the most interesting–but still not sufficiently recognized–Polish painter. It is possible to […]

Magritte Show Nina Zivancevic It is rather boring to repeat oneself or to repeat other people’s interests and comments. It is equally uninteresting to get always and exclusively involved with the tradition in art; however, when the whole town talks about a show it is impossible not to get involved in a discussion. Partly also […]

UNREASONABLE ENGAGEMENTS. Perry McPartland At its high water mark of acceptance and supererogation, some marks of malaise seems to occur within the reigning cultural form. In its unchallenged authority, now stabilized and institutionalized, the rude vitality which originally fired it appears spent. Its forms cease to pulse and act merely as promulgation for their sponsoring […]

Nina and Torsten Roemer–Infinite Justice David Riff and Viktor Kirchmeyer After September 11th, once the dust cloud over Lower Manhattan had settled, the Bush administration’s paralyses gave way to a firm resolve: the Pentagon immediately began to draft plans for a military response, which it dubbed "Infinite Justice". This initial name was soon replaced by […]

The Light and the Eye Tony Zaza Had it not been for Sidney Janis, there would be no film culture to speak of. At the dawn of the 1960s, Janis, one of a seminal group of extremely influential New York gallery owners that included Leo Castelli, Andre Emmerich , and Tibor De Nagy, determined that […]