Page 18 - Rt Critic News Today

Somehow, community persists, whether it’s between an admin and their followers or generations of theatermakers. Through Admin Reveal and The Following Evening, Escarciga, Browde, and Silverstone offer a window into their conversations so that they might inform our own—in how we appreciate, contextualize, and engage with art.

Longtime readers of the Brooklyn Rail will remember the insightful critical contributions Sherman Sam regularly made from London—and occasionally from elsewhere: Dublin, Porto, his native Singapore—between 2006 and 2011. But they may not know his remarkable paintings, which have been seen in the US only a handful of times.

Should there ever be the need for an artist who can envision the apocalypse, Mat Collishaw would probably be the right man to call. This thought came up after I saw some of his work in Valencia, in the newly opened Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero (CAHH), a private collection gone public, with an impressive list of artists, both Spanish and international.

Sarah Rosalena’s exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art at the Pizzuti, In All Directions, sets out to make and break patterns. Motifs repeat throughout: stars, spirals, fluted horns, hourglasses, rings, and rectangles. These shapes emerge and reemerge across woven textile and coiled clay, glass beads and smoked stoneware.

Of no coincidence, the first series of the show in a mint green room is the “American People” series from early on in Ringgold’s career. Chosen as the exhibition’s namesake, the “American People” series stands out and has many works unique to the Chicago presentation curated by Manilow Senor Curator Jamillah James and Assistant Curator Jack Schneider.

The five large John Hoyland paintings recently on view at Hales Gallery showcase two major moments from the British painter’s early career. Created in the heady years between 1965-1970, the paintings date from a period of cultural cross pollination during which the artist maintained studios in both London and New York City.

According to Guzmán, the central inspiration for The Man Who Should Be Dead is hexagram 18 (Ku: decay) of the I Ching. The hexagram has a double message. Firstly, that something has been spoiled, and, secondly, that what has been spoiled needs to be worked on.

The fifth iteration of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5) performs similar acts of composition, bringing together uncertain, irresolute global futures by eighty-six thinkers spanning ten countries, curated by the city’s homegrown collective, Floating Museum.

“I am not what I am.” Ominous words spoken by Iago in Othello, but in the case of Richard Artschwager a definition of aesthetic principle. We can change the meaning of Shakespeare’s words by simply changing the context in which they appear, an idea that comes to the point of practically every piece included in David Nolan Gallery’s comprehensive yet comprehensible celebration of Artschwager’s centennial.

My time spent washing dishes at this eastern facing window is often contemplative. Lately my thoughts have been circling around the book I just read: a “Working Life” by Eileen Myles. The phrase that keeps intruding into my reverie is sumptuous novel. This book is like that.