London’s New Generation of Abstract Painters

September 2024

  • “Juggling odd jobs is not just common for most young artists in New York, it is an initiation rite—an age-old gauntlet through which all strivers must pass. For a long time, the resources proffered by the city offset the sacrifices required to live here. In New York, contemporary art is palpable, plentiful and mostly free. There are elite colleges, world-class institutions, even old-school artist communities like Westbeth. You can make it here. But [there's] a new set of challenges facing young, city-bound creatives today, particularly those trying to course-correct careers waylaid by the pandemic and its economic aftershocks…”

  • “I’ve never known an art world in which Roberta Smith wasn’t broadly – anecdotally – considered to be the doyen of working critics. My own writing career began shortly after she was named co-chief art critic at the New York Times (the first woman to hold the title) in 2011, and, even then her pre-eminence seemed almost boringly uncontested. In 2019 her peers agreed, voting her the country’s ‘most influential’ art critic by a wide margin. (The five writers ranked below her were all men; three have Pulitzers.) By the time she announced her retirement from the Times last week, nothing had changed: Smith’s reputation appeared unimpeachable…”

Ick Art: Why a Rising Generation of Female Sculptors Is Embracing Body Horror 

August 2023

Yasunao Tone, the Pioneering Composer Who Changed Music Forever

  • “You can learn a lot about Kayode Ojo’s work by watching people interact with it. That’s especially true inside “EDEN,” his new exhibition at 52 Walker, New York, where visitors navigate intricate assemblages of stemware, jewels, and other expensive-looking wares with the trepidation of a tourist at Tiffany’s. It’s funny at first. After all, most of the shiny objects that make up the artist’s sculptures are not genuine items of luxury, but budget imitations—rhinestones, not diamonds; acrylic, not crystal. Then again, that’s the rub: even if these things are cheaply made, they have, through the context of the gallery, been turned into art. And in this case, that art costs between $20,000 and $75,000…”

March 2023

  • “There have been a number of horror and thriller movies over the last half decade to adopt an art world milieu or cast an artist as a central character. Why are so many filmmakers turning to this trope? And what does that say about our industry?”

Ballet Dancer-Turned-Artist Madeline Hollander Sees Choreography Where Others See Only Chaos. She’ll Help You See It, Too

May 2021

  • “Sara Cwynar’s studio is on the third floor of an artist-filled walkup in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood. It’s a small space that’s relatively clean and organized, which is a mild surprise given that Cwynar’s pictures often seem like the work of a hoarder…”

Pierre Huyghe: Sculptor of the Intangible

March 2017

March 2024

Kayode Ojo’s Glittery Readymades May Be About Capitalism or Fetishism—But He Won’t Tell You Which

March 2023

Surrealism in the Age of AI

April 2024

  • “In recent years, a growing number of painters have been unpacking the same themes of feminine etiquette and presentation at the heart of Demure Fall and the Venn-diagrammed microtrends before it, from Cottagecore’s playful reclaiming of farm fashion to the alt-right fundamentalism of Tradwives. But for these artists, something bigger is in the air…”

Painters Were Obsessing Over the ‘Demure’ Trend Long Before TikTok Did

September 2024

  • “In recent years, painters such as Jadé Fadojutimi, Rachel Jones and Flora Yukhnovich have each become true-blue art stars—the kind whose work can fetch seven figures at auction—while like-minded painters such as Sarah Cunningham, Li Hei Di, Pam Evelyn, Francesca Mollett and Sophia Loeb appear poised to follow a similar trajectory…”

In the Studio: Sara Cwynar

October 2019

  • “Now, exactly one century removed from the genesis of this art form, we find ourselves contending with the emergence of another: art made by artificial intelligence, or AI. In all kinds of little ways, the latter feels eerily evocative of the former. Like Surrealism, AI art is automatic and disembodied, at home in the space between language and image. Its schemes are described as dreams, and one of its prominent programs is named after Salvador Dalí. Even the idea of an invisible electronic apparatus that transforms ones and zeros into bizarro images sounds like something a Surrealist would cook up…”

A Few Thoughts on Roberta Smith

  • “Imagine a meat locker or a mad scientist’s lair: that’s what the New Museum’s fourth floor looks like today. Plastic-lined scaffolding forms a dank, fetid room within a room that appears to sweat. Inside, a torqued rod wrapped in ropy limbs—entrails, perhaps, or tentacles—twists slowly and menacingly, tangling in on itself until it looks like it’s about to break. Then, all of a sudden, the appendages snap free and spray clay on anyone there to bear witness. The sense of release is orgasmic—and gross…”

  • “Imagine erratic static, metallic squeals and cacophonous spikes of white noise harsh enough to make you fear for your hearing. It all sounds like a broken CD that’s been crudely reconstructed and shoved back into its player. In fact, that’s exactly what it is. Solo for Wounded is a two-part, 48-minute musical piece by the Japanese-American critic and composer Yasunao Tone. To create the work’s almost unendurable sound, Tone poked pinholes on strips of scotch tape and slapped them on the underside of a copy of Debussy’s Préludes – then recorded the results…” 

Why Are So Many Contemporary Horror Flicks Set in the Art World?

October 2021

  • "Flatwing, the new film from Madeline Hollander on view now at the Whitney Museum of American Art, is ostensibly about dance. But technically, there is no dance in it. This is often the case for the 35-year-old professional dancer-turned-artist. Where you and I see chaos, Hollander sees choreography: New York City traffic, flood mitigation systems, environmental change. The product of extensive research, her work transmutes the abstract patterns that govern our daily lives into elegant dance performances, heady gallery installations—and now, for the first time, film..."

  • "There is virtually no art world convention that Pierre Huyghe has not sought to redefine. From customs of exhibition display, materiality, and medium, to the very ways in which we define contemporary art, Huyghe has broken the rules with his signature macabre flair. Given the scope of his vision, it might not be surprising that he is also one of the most decorated artists of his generation, having been honored with several of the industry’s most prestigious international awards, including the Kurt Schwitters Prize, the Contemporary Artist Award, and the Hugo Boss Prize. Though it is a little ironic, too—that an artist whose whole practice is devoted to challenging the stiff institutional structures of the art world be so successful on a prize circuit often criticized for recapitulating the status quo..."

Collectors stampeding to Lucy Bull's 'visionary' abstractions

May 2024

Young artists on why they are sticking it out in New York

May 2024

  • “Some artists prefer to keep home and work separate. Not Lucy Bull. In-progress paintings are everywhere in the 34-year-old’s lofted, two-storey home in East Los Angeles: on the walls of her street-level studio, yes, but also in the kitchen, on a couch, even beside her bed one floor above. The artist’s painstaking process makes working on several pieces at once a prudent use of time, but it is more than that. Bull likes to live with her paintings, so that she can constantly flit between them with fresh eyes. Some she labours over for months; others come “fast and weird”, she says. “They’re like the good shits,” Bull jokes of the latter group…”