This essay was written in conjunction with Dylan Spaysky: taz, on view at CUE Art Foundation, March 21 - April 24, 2015.
Dylan Spaysky makes boy art. That isn’t meant to be pejorative. A jagged tower of plastic cups does its best to stand up straight. A seeping mosaic fountain appears wide-eyed and broken as it huddles at our feet. Spayksy’s small sculptural investigations limp behind Americana’s downbeat, crunching the residue of middle-class security underfoot in the process. Clumsy wrenches, festooned with glitter, yarn, and plastic wrap—often funny, never satirical—suggest a shared adolescent deflation, some smudge adulthood left behind.
"Ernst Fischer 18%" by Brienne Walsh
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 More"Three-dimensional Allegory: Lucia Love’s Reflecting Pool" by Louis Doulas
This 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 More"On the Work of Julia Hechtman" by Evan Smith
This 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 More"Dina Kelberman's I'm Google" by Stephanie Barber
This 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.
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Lucky Pierre, Last Meals
Human Nature by Lilly Lampe
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
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