Council often uses humor as a political tool to expose systems of power and inequality in a society in which even death carries a high price tag.
Dana Sherwood’s strange feminist fantasias, drawings and paintings of naked women posed, along with idyllic living-room sets, in the bellies of enormous animals [deserve mention].
Camp is commonly seen as the love of irony and artifice, a theatrical devotion to what the mainstream considers ugly and/or garish and gaudy. But in its original and Blackest manifestation, Camp is a way of looking, one that shifts whose gaze has power as well as who can be at the center of the political project we call beauty.
Coordinated by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and installed at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health Services is Amir H. Fallah’s stained glass installation in collaboration with Judson Studios.
‘Life is really weird and nobody knows what’s going on. One big thing that drives my work is how we all do things that nobody wants to do—nobody wants to go to war, and nobody wants to have a job—but we do them anyway. It’s weird and stupid but it’s human,’ [Couillard] said.
As Soleimani’s work looks outward at the global petroleum industry or political corruption in the United States and Iran, it also encourages viewers to turn inward, confronting the assumptions and blind spots that they bring to her images. I spoke with Soleimani about putting evaders of justice in the aesthetic hot seat, making activist art outside of the sentimentalizing traditions of the genre, and rehabilitating wild birds.
At Denny Dimin Gallery, the multidisciplinary artist Pamela Council told me that the work in their new solo exhibition—the first since signing on with the dealer—was “dark, maybe the darkest I’ve done.”
Fine art photographer and trained bird and wildlife rehabber Sheida Soleimani voiced objections to an opening event at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles, which incorporated the release of live birds.
Your list of must-see, fun, insightful, and very New York art events this month, including the Armory, Bushwick Open Studios, and the New York Film Festival.
In the heart of Carrizozo, Paula Wilson cultivates her art and life.
Artist Pamela Council is Building a Joyous, Camp “Fountain for Survivors” in Times Square: The sculptures will feature close to 400,000 acrylic nails.
Denny Dimin Gallery Announces Representation
Solo exhibition Bury Me Loose opens at Denny Dimin Gallery on September 10, 2021
Time Square Arts Announces Major Public Installation A Fountain for Survivors
If Natalie Baxter’s hexagon-tiled, bikini-baring, and yes, fringed, Housecoat III (2021), visible from the street like a window display, lures one in, Cynthia Carlson’s More Alarming Rumors (2021) will keep them hooked.
A round-up of this year’s best outdoor sculpture exhibitions.
Many of the artists in Fringe explore ideas around gender stereotypes through the re-appropriation of traditionally “feminine craft” techniques, while many use the idea of camp as a conceptual framework.
This very connection between the past and present prompted the Denny Dimin Gallery in Manhattan to organize the ongoing group exhibition, “Fringe.”
A more intimate and entirely irresistible group show—cleverly titled “Fringe”—is on view at the Denny Dimin gallery through Aug. 20.
“Many artists in Denny Dimin Gallery’s program have been significantly influenced by the movement…I also wanted to explore how some artists have complicated the gender identities of craft and how artists of diverse backgrounds have brought other important histories into their work, enriching the dialogue around the ideas of P & D.”
I’m starting to find how to make my own language and keep my abstract language, feeling like it can engage with the history of weaving at the same time.
“Textiles are so deeply ingrained into our culture, history, homes, and bodies. So if I’m using quilting, or weaving, or hand-dyeing fabrics, or embroidery, people often share their memories or experiences with these materials and are excited to contemplate them within the structure of painting and within my abstract shapes.”
The social-media-inflected mood of the sculptures is both matched and expanded on in White’s paintings, whose faux-wood surfaces inevitably evoke boarded-up windows.
“The same way I want to draw the animals in by enticing them with meatballs, I also want to draw people in by enticing them with the wonder of watching a raccoon tea party.”
Exhibition catalogs for Amanda Valdez: Gratitude, an exhibition at Denny Dimin Gallery, New York City, April 2nd – May 15, 2021.
