The Day Portraitlandia Stood Still
CHICAGO — Kirk Crippens’s photographic series Portraitlandia is a visual manifestation of that surreal moment when quotidian life, a hit television show, and a curious photographer converge. Shortly after he shot this series of typical Portlanders, he actually did...
Is High-End Art as Social Practice a Form of Commodity Activism?
CHICAGO — At its most rarefied levels, art as social practice seems oxymoronic. Is it possible to produce work that jars the elitist art world out of its aesthetic bliss while appearing on its sanctified white walls? Probably not. Cheryl Pope’s solo exhibition Just...
Tooth and Nail: China’s Resilient Holdouts
CHICAGO — A nail house is not a sharp object or an eyesore. It’s a site to behold, an abode that holds its ground. The term “nail house” is a literal translation from the word dingzihu (钉子户), a Chinese word meaning either a household or person who will not leave their...
Revealing Your Inner Selfie / Hyperallergic
This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic. CHICAGO — Selfies are private moments made available for public consumption. When the shutter snaps, the subject realizes that they’re ready to admit something about themselves that would otherwise remain hidden....
A Midsummer Group Show Dream / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — As we settle into midway-through-summer mode here in the city that does sleep sometimes, we spend more time hanging at the beach, BBQing with friends and generally chillaxing. With this slowing down of general movement comes the proliferation of — wait for...
The Masked Man of Honduras Brings Street Art to Its Knees / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — A Honduran street artist who goes by the name of Urban Maeztro, a translation of “Urban Master,” is covering the walls of the country’s capital, Tegucicalpa, with posters of art historical images holding neon weapons. A reproduced Mona Lisa grips a neon pink...
The Slippery Slope of Perspective / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Are you a viewer, voyeur, or just a wallflower? These interchangeable labels provide a curious starting point for ways to think about the relationship between the subject and the (art) object in Slippery Slope, a group exhibition at Woman Made Gallery in...
Bodies Left Behind / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — There’s always some sort of surprise awaiting you in the basement. Consent is not necessary here; you are allowed to freely descend the stairs of Woman Made Gallery, where two solo exhibitions by Brenna Conley-Fonda and Robin Hustle await. Both of these...
Validating Me and Myselfie / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — This week’s selfie series is curated entirely from submissions that you, dear internet reader, sent to me through the selfies [at] hyperallergic [dot] com email address. I was wondering if you’d accept the challenge to write, and indeed, you did. Thank you....
Ridin’ the Clit Rodeo One Phallucy at a Time / Hyperallergic
You thought that headline was a joke, right? It might be a phallucy, or a fallacy, or it could be just plain phantasmagoric, or phallocentric, or … it could be why you decided to stop for a minute and read this story. We live in a culture that rewards the act of...
As the Ottoman Empire Turns: Taner Ceylan on Occupy Gezi and Turkish Taboos / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Turkey erupted last month with people occupying Gezi Park to protest a project that would have pedestrianized Taksim, Istanbul’s main square. Prime Minister Recey Tayyip Erdoğan wanted to rip apart the park, which in the last few decades has been a site of...
The Artist Is Not Present But the Brand Sure Is / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — So much of performance, online and off, is essentially about energy. Marina Abramović knows this, and so after her 2010 endurance-based performance at MoMA “The Artist is Present,” she disappeared in order to train with shamans in Brazil where she learned...
Now Accepting Materials Toward a Theory of the Adult-Man / Hyperallergic
We turn our gazes toward men and masculinity, and suddenly everyone feels safe again. Consider The New Inquiry’s Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Man-Child, a response to the ongoing conversations around the French journal Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a...
Our Faces, Our Selfies / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Selfies are part of our voluntary self-exposure in an attempt to take back the images of ourselves, but in the process we also give ourselves away. In the world of online selfies, faces are the focus; bodies tend to appear as afterthoughts. We see a...
Crying Webcam Tears / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — I cry, you cry, we fuck each others’ feelings, we broke up, we got back together, and somehow it all ended up on Tumblr. What is crass and private is public and affective, considered just another aspect of affect, of gaining likes, retweets, and reblogs...
To Err Is Human, to Appropriate Divine / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — To steal, to remake, to remix, and to appropriate are all part of being a creative human being. We are inspired and influenced by the works of art we encounter. Imitation is arguably the best form of flattery, and thanks to the internet we can obtain images...
The Insta-Aesthetics of War / Hyperallergic
Explosives blow up skies the world over. From our smartphone-enhanced filter bubbles, we learn to consume these explosive images on social sites like Instagram, where the Insta-aesthetics of war know no global boundaries. Instagram offers a space for mediating the...
How Pop Art Got “Ripped Off” / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — A giant replica of the classic yellow rubber duckie drifted into Hong Kong’s harbor last month. Sailing across the water, bobbing about as if in a giant, public bathtub, the Pop art-inspired duck, created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman in 2007, is...
Mirrors Multiply the Selfie: The Doppelgänger Dilemma / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — The selfie is a mirror, an illusion of a mirror, an egotistical moment wrapped in time, and an embarrassing moment post-shave. But there is something curious about seeing your doppelgänger reflected back at you rather than running into him or her on the...
A Gallery Says Goodbye with a Family Show / Hyperallergic
KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Kaitlin O’Brien is 16, and she’s gonna turn 17 in August. Arguably her biggest accomplishment this year to date was curating Thanks for the Warning (ran through June 22), a 68-person show containing 86 artworks at the Dolphin Gallery, which her...