This essay was written in conjunction with Ernst Fischer: 18%, on view at CUE Art Foundation February 7 - March 14, 2015.
Through the lens of a camera, an object is captured. But what happens when you zoom in on an object to such a microscopic degree that the picture no longer resembles the thing it’s supposed to portray — or even its molecular components? The image collapses in on itself, until it is nothing more than a pixelated, flat plane that transmits no information.
Read MoreThis essay was written in conjunction with Lucia Love: Reflecting Pool, on view at CUE Art Foundation November 1 - December 11, 2014.
Lucia Love’s 2014 installation, Reflecting Pool, at CUE Art Foundation is theatrical and dramatic, and unlike most conventional exhibitions, in which the default setting is a brightly lit white cube, hers is a darkened, immersive environment, shadowy and murky, like a dream, or rather, like a nightmare.
Read MoreThis essay was written in conjunction with Julia Hechtman: Suddenly Everything Has Changed, on view at CUE Art Foundation December 18, 2014 - January 31, 2015.
In her subtle, meandering book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, essayist Annie Dillard explores the forested surroundings of her home in rural Virginia, recording in exquisite detail the biological routines, transcendence, cruelty and beauty at work in the natural world. Dillard’s personal account winds in and out of observation of the outside world and contemplation of her own interior life and faith.
Read MoreThis essay was written in conjunction with Dina Kelberman: What Is In It, on view at CUE Art Foundation September 6 - October 18, 2014.
Smoke becomes fibers and fibers become wood and wood wood packaged and packages packed packages which become buckets which sit on bleachers which surround stadiums which call to grass which calls to painted lawns of chemical colors and turn romantic in the night.
Read MoreLucky Pierre, Last Meals
In Human Nature and Conduct (1922), American philosopher John Dewey writes, “By killing an evil-doer or shutting him up behind stone walls, we are enabled to forget both him and our part in creating him. Society excuses itself by laying the blame on the criminal.”1 In this statement, Dewey emphasizes society’s tendency to vilify the convict, an act which both absolves others from their role—indirect, institutional, or otherwise—in the creation of criminals, and effectively excludes the criminal from society.
Today there are over 200,000 people in federal prisons and over one million in state prisons in America.2
Read MoreThis essay was written in conjunction with Margaret Cogswell's RIVER FUGUES: Moving the Water(s), on view at CUE Art Foundation April 26 - May 31, 2014.
Margaret Cogswell’s two installations—Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues (2014) and Moving the Water(s): Wyoming River Fugues(2012)—play sound and image off one another to show the social and physical effects of water’s commodification on the land and citizens of the United States. Drawing on documents, interviews and historical records from the past hundred years in New York and Wyoming, these works present an immersive visual and aural score regulated by a metronomic beat.
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