while reading the checklist at a gallery group show i saw (b. 2000) and had to sit down
07.03.2025 22:18
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while reading the checklist at a gallery group show i saw (b. 2000) and had to sit down
laura owens makes work at the intersection of isabella stewart gardner museum and photoshop
The wonder of the regional art museum: defector.com/the-wonder-o...
a photo of a monitor playing an animation showing some outcroppings the wilderness, one of which has a castle on it. the subtitle says “too much”
do i really have to post about the same thing i wrote on instagram, twitter, AND bluesky ?
when museum guards tell me to wear my backpack on the front, i want to tell them i can safely keep it on my back because as a gay person i have enhanced spatial awareness
the show is so successful, i think, because it acknowledges that materials and mediums are the main concern of artists' work, without shutting down other discourses and histories
"The Living End" recognizes how the regeneration of painting through performance and video of the 1960s and 70s was rooted in a critique of white men's dominance of the medium
it also includes many artists of color, trans and queer artists, and women. it doesn't put identity at the center but it doesn't ignore it, either--
i didn't want to get into it in the review itself, but while writing this I was thinking a lot about Dean Kissick's "Painted Protest" and the reaction to it. "The Living End" is a great example of an exhibition that addresses the present while making meaningful connections to history
but Jamillah James, curator of "The Living End," had a brilliant insight that never occurred to me.. she saw performance video as a way for artists to treat painting's gestures as a kind of material, and connected that to the imitation and automation of painterly gestures in contemporary software
the exhibition responds to some things I've been thinking about a lot this year, namely how artists are making the connections between art history, particularly the history of painting, and digital media. I wrote an essay on the topic that Eyebeam published in September: eyebeam.org/software-as-...
of all the exhibitions about art and technology i've seen, "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020" is my favorite. I reviewed it for my newsletter: www.patreon.com/posts/heres-...
the discourse around AI is full of hysteria and hype so i felt encouraged to see museums doing what they should be doing--presenting more thoughtful approaches that help audiences make sense of how AI functions and what it can do. i hope there's more of that in 2025
as part of Frieze's year-in-review coverage I wrote about how museums presented the relationship between art and AI in 2024: www.frieze.com/article/year...
misha
My piece highlighting Gen AI “myths” in terms of how we talk about the technology, and what purpose those myths serve, is my self-serving contribution (looking to post a bunch from other folks today too). www.techpolicy.press/challenging-...
but it could be an episode of Elsbeth
yeah i think it was calculated to cause a stir and that’s part of the problem
it’s a bummer that the art world won’t engage in any conversations that aren’t about “identity.” the backlash to dean kissick’s essay just proves his point
these were in ps1’s show about the iraq war five years ago!
also it includes my thoughts on bluesky and why i hate it but will keep trying to use it
anyway, the picks are Sara Cwynar at 55 Walker, wangshui at kurimanzutto, Dean Kissick on the art world's problems, Erin Kissane on the dark forest internet, and "World Computer Sculpture Garden," a group show on the Ethereum blockchain. enjoy
there are some thematic echoes among the entries that express the overall outlook of my newsletter: trying to figure out how art and criticism can engage with contemporary media instead of withdrawing into the cloisters
yesterday I sent out a newsletter with the third edition of my recommendations of art to look at and things to read. the first two were for subscribers only but i liked how this came out, so i decided to make it public: tinyurl.com/a7hksm95
i’m organizing a reading group to discuss Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy, meeting both in New York and online. get in touch if you want to join! www.patreon.com/posts/rough-...
and for the record i do believe it’s important for institutions to present underrecognized histories, though the best way to do that is through substantially researched historical exhibitions and not as part of a biennial smorgasbord
true. i generously read him as critiquing the curatorial framing of these practices (which does often come across as tokenizing) rather than the artists/artworks themselves, but the distinction gets blurred at times
though i also recognize that from my vantage point of someone who writes mostly about art and technology i am often thinking about “the digital divide,” as claire bishop put it—the art world’s reluctance to engage with digital media. and that makes me more sympathetic to the argument dean makes here
and maybe he didn’t pick the most representative selection of exhibitions, but i do think he identifies some trends that can be widely observed
