Sometimes it seems like Jenny Holzer has suffered the worst possible fate of a “prophetic” artist – banality. Her early aphorisms concerning torture and war are said time and again to be uncannily suited to the millennial world. But does it really feel uncanny? In Holzer we recognize our own intimations, the prophecy we all [...]
Author Archives: Asher Ross
Cultural Metonym: Maharam’s AF1
April 6, 2009 – 10:42 am
The sneaker as cultural artifact is a well-digested idea. The sneaker as art piece–perhaps that too. Wednesday night’s opening at Moss for Maharam’s newly-designed Nike Air Force 1 represented a further step toward sneaker as industrial design. The shoe is impressive. Designer Hella Jongerius has used her Layers technology to transmute the original buttery essence [...]
SCOPE New York
March 12, 2009 – 2:45 pm
I’ve had a grudge against big contemporary art shows. I almost never go to the New Museum, and I’ve opted out of the Whitney Biennial since ’05, but this year’s SCOPE made me wonder how much fun I’ve missed out on as a result. Martin C. Herbst showed a series on Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait that included [...]
When I Grow Up
February 20, 2009 – 11:55 am
Karin Dreijer Andersson’s solo project Fever Ray has released a second stunning video. I’ve been in love with and utterly intimidated by this woman for years, and I’m still not entirely sure she’s real. It’s like something is speaking through her. She’s a wraith. A threat. A naiad. Martin De Thurah directs. Album out in [...]
Since Forever is Gone
February 13, 2009 – 12:20 pm
Ruvan Wijesooriya, known for bringing gallery photography to the pages of Nylon, i-D and V Magazine, had no trouble packing the entire main gallery and bar of the Soho Grand, with an hour’s wait to get in. Gorgeous people, snifters of Patron. Since Forever is Gone is certainly the kind of show the Fashion Week [...]
Oh where are the cacti of yesteryear?
January 15, 2009 – 6:15 pm
The first thing you notice when you come into Marlo Pascual’s little room at the Swiss Institute is a chicken that won’t come out of its coup. Pascual has built a ramp that comes down an exaggeratedly long distance from the fowl’s portrait, which then crosses the room and runs right up the wall. As [...]
Sowing Circle at the Mangusta Loft
December 18, 2008 – 10:40 am
Is there a useful way to separate feminist art from art that is simply about women? Sowing Circle, the new multi-screen by Lilly Ludlow and Allen Cordell, takes place in an utterly feminine world, but its statement is no easier to grasp (perhaps by virtue of not being there) than its title. The multi-screen trope [...]
For the Vampire that Listens in the Snow: Let the Right One In
November 3, 2008 – 4:02 pm
While it was billed as a Swedish horror film, comes with the requisite blood and gore, and was released suspiciously close to Halloween, Let the Right One In is not a typical preteen vampire movie, per se — it’s simply a movie about preteens. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema gives us a broken, Cold War suburb [...]
