Personal Politics
A century ago, early modernists fought against a complacently bourgeois, materialistic worldview. Some of these artists are rightly considered cultural heroes, others not so much. Creatives today, writes DeWitt Cheng, should in any case aspire to more than just good citizenship. More...
David Aylsworth
Working in the abstract with a build-up of multiple layers, David Aylsworth's paintings end up being bright, playful and suggestive. More...
Kent Monkman
Kent Moneyman's "Failure of Modernity" is a series of large scale paintings that read like a row of windows looking out on an embattled ghetto neighborhood that leave archetypes of modernist art history crippled. More...
Ryan Foster
What appears in the foreground of one of Ryan Foster's paintings may be pushed back in another. Backgrounds tend to be out of focus or otherwise distorted. Homeless or disabled subjects appear poignantly oblivious to the street life around them. More...
Across the Pacific
A selection of five Taiwanese artists forces us to drop any pre-conceived notions of what Asian art should look like. More...
“Our Stars, Our Selfies"
Forging a personal relationship with artists and artworks we love, or love to hate, is part of what makes the creative life so rewarding. And this is why Richard Speer finds our current craze for selfies--in particular "art selfies"-- so unnerving. More...
Kenneth Callahan
Perhaps the most multi-faceted talent to emerge and play a dominant role in the advanced art of the Northwest was Kenneth Callahan. More...
Chris Bradley
For Chris Bradley, ceilings are anything but monotonous or unnoticed. Replicas of unspecial ceilings are dropped from the heights of a hanger sized space, forcing an active engagement of eye and body while reflecting on idleness. More...
Joseph Lorusso
Joseph Lorusso produces tightly focused set pieces in subdued reds, browns and golds. They evoke intimacy with a dash of mystery. These narrative paintings are both theatrical and alluring. More...
Jean and Barbara Edelstein
This mother-daughter pairing brings together divergent aesthetic visions that both derive significantly from Asian traditions. Jean's accordion-fold scrolls reference Chinese "Scholar Books". Barbara's closely observed plants are both beautiful and meditative. More...
“Earthworks”
Madeline Dietz, Perla Krauze and Mario Reis bring an earthworks aesthetic into the relative intimacy of a gallery environment. More...
The Studio Visit: Five Helpful Hints
Matthew Kangas loves to see artists do well, and hosting a successful studio visit is one of those tools that can tie an artist up in knots. We some careful planning a potentially nerve-wracking experience can be both enjoyable and productive. More...
Ben Haggard
For five years Ben Haggard has painted numerous faces in Santa Fe, San Francisco and Berlin. About 200 of these adds up to--what? More...
Site Specific Sanctuaries
Art as a site of secularized religious experience gains new practitioners in noteworthy recent projects springing up around Texas. More...
David Maisel
Taken in Spain, David Maisel's aerial photographs record irregular patterns of human activity with an emphasis on the sort of earth tones associated with "The Fall." Heavy equipment down there looks tiny and helps make the images more painterly and interesting. More...
William LeGoullon
William LeGoullon's images of immaculately recorded bullets and bullet-riddled found objects lend poetic power to act after act of violence unleashed with a seemingly gratuitous sense of the joy of sheer destruction. The wantonness is repudiated by the beauty of the image. More...
Raphaëlle Goethals
The richly atmospheric encaustic and pigment paintings that comprise Raphaëlle Goethals "Echoes" are free, lyrical and quite disciplined. More...
Tim Hawkinson and Patty Wickman
The married couple of Tim Hawkinson and Patty Wickman do not pair aesthetically. Wickman's paintings express a deeply felt spirituality. Hawkinson's mixed media works examine the corruptibility of the human body. Both impressively engage the eye and raise important questions to reflect on. More...
Moving Day
For the second time in seven year the Art Institute of Chicago has shuffled the presentation of its permanent collection, and it all works. More...
