Page 25 - Rt Critic News Today

Tiny impalpable details are the things that construct identity, especially when they exist in a hostile environment. A gold earring, chosen by its wearer versus a strip of gold brocade, imposed on the wearer by the state, is just one pair in a list of long thoughtful shots, visual comparisons, woven together by Carey Young in her 49-minute video Appearance (2023).

One bright light I came upon recently was an ambitious series of filmed performances that were released on this year’s solstice, though recorded in February 2022. It involved six duos, grouped by instrument—performed by some of the best improvisers out there—interacting with the sound-sculptures of the extraordinary designer Harry Bertoia.

The Brooklyn Rail is a journal committed to providing an independent forum for visual arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and beyond.

Sandra Cinto has given a gift to New Yorkers. As winter weather stakes its claim on our collective mood, Cinto has managed to capture the warmth of her São Paulo, Brazil, studio in an aptly titled solo show May I Know How to be the Sun on Cloudy Days at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. In new acrylic paintings, Cinto depicts luminous skies, landscapes, and oceans of blue and gold filled with fine, yet densely populated lines that reveal clouds, spiderwebs, mountains, and waves.

Though the advent of social media has created a brilliant democratic openness, those same social media also carry a lot of destructive tendencies. Many of us remember that we once received thoughtful letters from people who agreed or disagreed with what we may have voiced in an essay, an exhibition, or a lecture; and we knew that those complimentary or dissenting responses each required a certain amount of time to compose.

David Trinidad is the author of numerous books of poetry. A native of Los Angeles, he currently lives in Chicago.

John O’Connor encrypts and encodes the complexity of our moment into ciphers of drawing. His exhibition Man Bites Dog Bites Man at Pierogi Gallery in collaboration with L Space feels akin to listening to the radio on a late-night drive, like O’Connor’s practice is tuned to that space on the dial between radio towers, where the drift from one message cuts in across another as magnetic fields begin to shift.

Extraordinary artist, beloved friend, fierce comrade sister.

Anyone familiar with Paul Pfeiffer’s pioneering moving-image work knows that he has been out ahead of “the culture” for more than twenty years. Yet the manipulations and labors he thought to exert on at-one-time recalcitrant film and video frames have now been incorporated into platform and persuasion technologies that have touched us all, whether we’re aware of it or not.

In my larger body of work, “One Should Not Look At Anything,” I have explored the written word of Wilde’s poetry through highly constructed portraits and still lives made in my studio.