When the Vancouver Art Gallery revealed their conceptual design for a new building earlier this week, it was evidently a far cry from their current neoclassical courthouse. Gone are the ionic columns, ornate marble and porticos; instead, Swiss architectural firm Herzog and de Meuron has developed a soaring, wood-wrapped structure with boxy levels that recalls West Coast […]
The week leading up to the press preview for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art marked a change of seasons. (Disclosure: Biennale curator Juan Gaitan is a friend, and participating artist Judy Radul is my partner.) Gone were the cold winds and grey skies of winter; in their place, golden mornings, tawny afternoons and […]
There is good deal of irony in the manner in which Vancouver’s Jeff Wall presents his photograph “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999–2000)—printed on a transparency and mounted on a light box. “The large-scale image is illuminated from behind by fluorescent lights, which Wall began using after seeing light-box advertisements in the late 1970s,” according […]
Michael Snow is an unusual case of an artist best known for his least conventionally accessible works. Snow’s legacy will always be defined by in his groundbreaking structuralist films, especially the 1967 masterpiece Wavelength, even as opportunities to experience those works as they were meant to be seen become increasingly rare. (Snow has wryly addressed this […]
Yuxweluptun’s abstract paintings can seem off-kilter with his figurative works but, in fact, they share features. Dubbed “Ovoidism” by Yuxweluptun, the works employ the figure of the ovoid, although here, it is the sole graphic element. He also uses a more limited palette in the abstracts and, unlike the smooth surfaces of the landscapes, the […]
Mirrors can invert, distort, reveal and register experiences. Sculptor Anish Kapoor’s reflective work Non-Object (Pole) (2008) refracts a spectacular view of the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus Sea from the marble terrace of the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul. The mirror, in this case, operates as a kind of cultural and pictorial index, recording not […]