What does colonialism have to do with commodity culture? How does what we buy, or what we're sold, affect who we are? What are the lasting legacies of violent histories and how can they be redeemed today? Miguel Luciano contemplates these questions in his artwork. While he examines them through a local Puerto Rican lens, the issues he mines are relevant and urgent to all.
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"A Happy Feel-Good Emotion: Jack Hallberg's Touching Abstraction" by Katie Anania
2103... Jack Hallberg's acrylic-on-panel painting completed in 2006, seems above all else to illustrate the fantastically illusory qualities of paint. Orange and white bands swirl around one another, and the raised dots festooning the painting's surface give the work the appearance of being infected with candy buttons or psychedelic space pox.
Read More"Testing the Waters: A Video Installation by Ellen Zweig" by Corina Larkin
Like Calvino, Ellen Zweig understands that a person's own experience and culture determines his or her perceptions. With this in mind, she thoughtfully examines her interaction with Chinese culture.
Read More"For Jagannatha" by Stacey Allan
Jim Long's painting series For Jagannatha began with a discovery. On a visit to a friend's studio in 1988, Long found some used masking tape on the floor that was covered with translucent drips of paint, the byproduct of applying a ground coat to newly stretched canvas.
Read More"California Strange Fruit: Ken Gonzales-Day's 'Lynching in the West'" by Anna Meliksetian
At first sight, At Daylight the Miserable Man Was Carried to an Oak and Golden Chain, photographs by Ken Gonzales-Day, appeal to the senses as beautiful landscapes. That aesthetic appeal is challenged, however, by the knowledge that the distinctive trees at the center of these images have something in common: bodies once hung from their branches.
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