The origins of these paintings began with my black and white “Nowhere” paintings, which depicted the lonely haunted backwoods in a non-specific time and place. I have always been heavily influenced by black and white horror movies, which presented a subtle yet palatable vision of anxiety and suspense. The environment itself is culled from such […]

Artist Irina Nakhova exists in the liminal space between places and identities.  She is a Russian artist now living primarily in America who still spends extended periods in Europe and Russia. She was raised under the Soviet system, a member of the close-knit avant-garde there who experienced the freedom that followed Perestroika. She is an […]

Birgir Snaebjörn Birgisson (b. 1966) is an Icelandic figurative painter whose work hints at minimal thoughts as presented by Kasimir Malevich in the 1920s. An artist that over a period of time took his works through a cleansing process by rejecting duality and embracing absence of color, pure white, pure light. Yet, different from the […]

And if all art were just one big joke? If the painters sacred to tradition were just pranksters, and there were as many canvases as jokes? The Occident was tempted by this: Wittgenstein dreamt of a book of philosophy that consisted solely of jokes. Painters like Leger, Dubuffet, Warhol and others delighted in jokes. And […]

In Chinese, there is an expression: “The whole world is drunk and I alone am sober.” This phrase conveys something of the poignancy and conflict of the observer who stands outside the group, looking in: one who may benefit from the clarity of perspective but also feels the sting of estrangement. Wang Ningde is an […]

Hundreds of migrant laborers packed the exhibition hall at Jianwai SOHO provided by culture-savvy real-estate magnate Pan Shiyi. Many dressed in their finest attire, especially the young ones who aimed to show the assembled hordes of media at the UNESCO "Together with Migrants" Festival that "mingong" (the common term for migrant "peasant-workers") have style and […]

When artist and photographer Shirin Aliabadi lifts the Islamic veil of a contemporary Iranian woman, she exposes a surprise; blond hair, blue, green or gray contact lenses, an occasional facial piercing and, most importantly, surgical nose tape. In the eyes of a contemporary Iranian woman, a nose covered with a surgical tape is beautiful. It […]

China is transforming rapidly, opening its doors and absorbing everything foreign. The field of contemporary art is catching up quickly in the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but in a second tier city like Nanjing the scope of contemporary art work is comparatively limited. With my own interests and background; being fluent in both […]

China is transforming rapidly, opening its doors and absorbing everything foreign. The field of contemporary art is catching up quickly in the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but in a second tier city like Nanjing the scope of contemporary art work is comparatively limited. With my own interests and background; being fluent in both […]

On the eve of the debut of “The Venus Revolution” I caught up with Hotep, founder and CEO of Skinnymen Productions, a multimedia edu-tainment company in Atlanta, GA, for an in-depth discussion about this innovative and edgy multi-media art exhibit.Nancy Gilliam: Could you please explain to our readers exactly what “The Venus Revolution” is?Hotep: “The […]