"About Armadillos and other Topics" by Sara Roffino

Added on January 14, 2016 by CUE Accounts.

This essay was written in conjunction with Tamara Johnson: No Your Boundaries, on view at CUE February 13 – March 23, 2016.

If the challenge is to situate oneself within one’s present, the tools Johnson uses to do so are rope, silicon, paint and wood. It’s not hard to imagine that the time she spent staving off boredom at the granite warehouse has contributed to her becoming a sculptor: It is through building objects, and parsing their material qualities and the significance of their existence, that Johnson negotiates her own space within the world.

"Unsettled" by Anna Tsouhlarakis

Added on November 7, 2015 by Admin.

This essay was written in conjunction with Athena LaTocha: Curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, on view at CUE November 7 - December 19, 2015.

Athena LaTocha speaks about growing up in Alaska and her relationships with the land, the people and her family. While many artists may downplay their beginnings, it became clear this was an important primer for the language LaTocha would come to use in her creative process.

Adela Andea

chukwumaa

Elnaz Javani

Michael Borek

Rodrigo Valenzuela

Golnar Adili (foreground) and Alejandra Regalado (background)

"Migrations" by Ian Epstein

Added on July 22, 2015 by Admin.

This essay was written in conjunction with Country, Home, on view at CUE September 5-October 10, 2015.

Migrations create lacunae. They cause erasures. They occur for reasons that are obvious and obfuscated in equal measure. They ensnare people in webs of unfamiliar language and trauma, forcing engagement with unknown rules and routines. They scrub the lived histories off of people on their way from one nationality to another. Migration has a way of twisting specificity from stories, removing the details, like a wet cloth expels a liquid. Yet art is capable of expressing this loss; it can untwist the cloth.

"Collage and the Landscape of Familiarity" by John McKissick

Added on March 25, 2015 by Admin.

This essay was written in conjunction with Mira Burack: from the bed to the mountain. On view at CUE Art Foundation, May 2nd through June 6th, 2015.

from the bed to the mountain evokes Mira Burack’s home in the foothills of the Ortiz Mountains of New Mexico. Elaborated through photocollaged installations and collections of found objects, this landscape of familiarity includes both intimate domestic space and the natural world. Inside and outside meet in the mountainous wall mural leafed together from cutout photos of a rumpled comforter. In her work, the way to place passes through sleep.

"Boyhood" by Torey Akers

Added on February 5, 2015 by CUE Accounts.

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

Added on January 7, 2015 by CUE Accounts.

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.