The Histrionics is a satirical rock band of conceptual performance artists who appropriate popular songs in order to mock academic and commercial art paradigms. That being said, though, the most important thing about this group is the same as any other band—they know how to put on a kick-ass concert. Last summer they played a […]

Nicholas Weist: The Peres Projects program has outposts in four cities internationally, although strangely most are in the cities’ respective Chinatowns. Are you sesame chicken or orange beef? Javier Peres: Well, not so strange for me. Everyone knows I have a huge Asian fetish. Well not really a fetish, more like an addiction. My mother […]

I can’t remember the first time I read Proust—a fact that’s ironic on a number of levels. I’m pretty sure it was sometime during the summer of 2004, the summer after my first year of grad school. A friend who is something of a Proust evangelist forwarded me a Word document full of his favorite […]

I first began to recognize my role in and approach to art-making after reading Edward Said’s Orientalism.  I was in college and had seen the work of many artists (from students to well known artists on the biennial circuit) who were approaching identity politics in a direct and in some cases, exploitative manner.  Especially among […]

Two “golden ages” of sexuality come together in Paul P.’s tender drawings of sinuous, slightly gawky young men. Rendering his subjects in cinematic close-up, the young Canadian artist complicates the figures’ origins, 70s gay porn, with the grandeur and heightened sensibility of late-19th-century portraits. His subject matter recalls North America before AIDS while his style […]

History and memory are seldom directly experienced. Re-enactments represent an artistic scrutinization of media images, replacing these images with a direct and often visceral experience while at the same time pointing out the way in which media shapes our collective memory. In a re-enactment, the audience, which normally remains passive, or at a certain distance […]

Ward Shelley is an artist’s artist. His pieces make you stop and consider every work you have ever seen, everything you have ever read about art. Shelley’s work is intense and challenges, almost dares, the viewer to question content, intent. In 2004, he literally holed up in Pierogi gallery, climbing throughout the gallery walls, living […]

In my experience, telling a person that he isn’t fun doesn’t do too much damage to his ego. Although it is, of course, totally uncool to be un-fun, it’s not exactly the most pointed of insults. The feeling is vague, the critique general, and the whole thing begs the return, “Is that really the best […]

The complex sculptural work of Italian artist Gianfranco Meggiato has a primordial life and a spirituality all its own. His bronze-latticed spheres and melting, magma-like cubes create an emotionally charged impact, reminiscent of the sun’s ever-burning but life-giving surface. These bronze orbs call to mind the power and immensity of the universe that surrounds us. […]

I was born in England in 1944. I worked and exhibited in London and Southern England until moving to New Zealand in 1973. Since my arrival, I have lived and worked as a full-time painter in Christchurch. I moved to New York in 1989, where I worked fro a year and exhibited in Manhattan and […]