Three different exhibitions—Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet’s The 99 Names of God, Moreshsin Allahyari’s Re: apologies to the many wonderful Iranians and Christopher Blay’s Machine Time are on display at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary through December 8. Both Birk/Pignolet and Allahyari examine mis/perceptions of the Middle East, addressing the ramifications of political warfare. Meanwhile, Blay [...]

The word “cosmopolitanism” conjures up worldly, cultured and possibly elitist connotations. The idea that all humanity belongs to a single moral community is a lesser-known definition of the word. Theoretically I buy into that idea, but on a practical level, trying to achieve consensus on the definition of morality would prove impossible. Curator Ben Lima’s [...]

The end of September hailed the 25th anniversary of the Dallas Video Festival. Changing the venue to the Dallas Museum of Art proved to be a smart move. Despite the bad storms, attendance was up from the previous year at the Angelika. Artistic Director Bart Weiss outdid himself yet again. The programming combined innovative, edgy [...]

I had the pleasure to travel to Mozambique this summer to visit some friends, who had recently relocated there. We stayed outside the capital city Maputo in the town of Matola. In researching Mozambican art, I found information on the two most renowned artists—sculptor Chissano and painter Malangatana (both have museums located in their former [...]

Featuring seven artists’ work in two galleries, the exhibition City Zoo marks the debut of Brand 10’s new space—And X. Conveniently located on the I-30 service road, And X’s mission is to showcase large-scale sculptural and video installations, as well as host collaborative or collective artist groups. Artists will be invited to spend a few [...]

Jackie Tileston’s latest exhibition Freefall at Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas includes paintings from 2007 to present. I’ve followed Tileston’s work for the past ten years and I never get tired of looking at it. The artist draws inspiration from a variety of sources including abstraction, physics, traditional eastern imagery and contemporary visual culture. Co-mingling [...]

Colette Copeland and her video camera visit Dallas artist Ryder Richards in his studio.  

Two weeks ago, I took a road trip to the coast to jury a student exhibition at Rockport Center for the Arts. I spent Saturday in downtown Corpus Christi which was deserted. Boarded-up, empty buildings dotted the urban landscape. I visited two galleries while in town. K Space featured intaglio prints by San Antonio artist [...]

  I first met Jill Magid in the Fall of 2006 when we team taught an interdisciplinary studio course for visual studies majors at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the past few years, her work has garnered much attention including exhibitions at the Tate Modern, Whitney Museum and Yvon Lambert in Paris. When asked to [...]

  The College Art Association Conference was a great excuse to play in L.A. for a few days. Arriving at the swanky L.A. Marriott Live hotel, I immediately noticed the intersection between art, design and advertising. The bathroom lobby resembled a pink Dan Flavin installation. Huge Guess banners filled the lobby walls and columns. Guess [...]

My grumble with College Art Association conferences is that historically the programming primarily targets art historians. Last year’s New York conference was a notable exception with some of my favorite artists on the roster. Shirin Neshat participated in a panel on censorship. The Guerrilla Girls performed. A panel on the artist as critic/critic as artist [...]

I have followed Glenn Ligon’s work over the past twenty years. He’s not known for his subtlety. In fact, he deliberately provokes his viewers. Given that his work examines race, gender and politics in such raw and unblinking ways, I admit I was pleasantly surprised that The Modern was willing to take the risk of [...]

The exhibition In the Interest of Time presents three projects by the Brooklyn collaborative Smudge Studio, comprised of artists Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse. Their primary subject is the landscape, and their approach includes embodying the roles of scientist, historian, anthropologist and, of course, artist. Their process is a performative journey, navigating, investigating and documenting [...]

February 2, 2012. By 6:30 pm, the line waiting for the Shepard Fairey talk was already a block long. Thankfully, my RVSP and press status allowed me instant entry. After securing a seat, I went in search of a beer—finding instead another long line of people waiting for Fairey to sign their books. I spoke [...]

I was prepared to hate the Gaultier exhibition at the DMA. I have a complicated relationship to fashion. I studied fashion design and merchandising at Pratt Institute in New York. When I realized that instead of designing couture under my own fashion label, I’d most likely end up designing underwear for plus-size women, I switched [...]

Video exhibitions tend to be hit or miss. As someone who makes, curates and writes about video, I have seen my share of mediocre video work. Most recently I wrote about the Memery exhibition at Mass MoCA, in which nine primarily video artists explore Internet memes and memory in visual culture. (A meme is a [...]

Fort Worth Contemporary Art’s exhibit of Angus Fairhurst’s bronze gorilla sculpture entitled A Couple of Differences Between Thinking and Feeling pays homage to the YBA artist who tragically died in 2008. Post-death, we cannot help but anthropomorphize and project the artist’s depression and loneliness onto the magnificent sculpture. The gorilla, regal in stature, stares at [...]

Last night I attended the 360 Speaker Series at the Nasher Sculpture Center featuring SMU Art Chair Michael Corris in conversation with famed art critic and author Dore Ashton. I left feeling so energized. Ashton is a gifted storyteller. In relating her experiences with the Abstract Expressionist painters of the 50’s, she made art history [...]

Every writer has her biases and I’m no exception. If someone were to ask me if Abstract Expressionism were my favorite art genre, I would vehemently shake my head “no.” So it surprises me that I’m having such a lovefest with the expressive work of  L.A. artist Mark Bradford at the DMA. In fact, this [...]

My husband is like the other 99.5% of Americans who go to the movies to be entertained, not to think. So it is with some trepidation that I asked him to accompany me to the Contemplative Cinema event at the Texas Theater earlier this month. The short 45-minute screening and beer allowed in the theater [...]