NYT Art Review | Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West

Mythic West of Dreams and Nightmares

By Ken Johnson/ New York Times


c) Stephen Shore

MOMA exhibit visit here

March 29, 2009–June 8, 2009

Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West examines how photography has pictured the idea of the American West from 1850 to the present. Photography's development coincided with the exploration and the settlement of the West, and their simultaneous rise resulted in a complex association that has shaped the perception of the West's physical and social landscape to this day. For over 150 years, the image of the West has been formed and changed through a variety of photographic traditions and genres, and this exhibition considers the medium's role in shaping our collective imagination of the West. (excerpt press release)

Untitled (Cowboy), 2003
c) Richard Prince


c) Robert Adams



Marilyn, 28 Years Old, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1990-92
Philip-Lorca diCorcia

The Art of Dinh Lê/ Aidekman Arts Center/ Tufts

A Tapestry of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Lê
January 22-March 29, 2009
Tisch Gallery


Mot Coi Di Ve
Dinh Q.Lê

Lê’s tapestries and video installations reveal a two-decade-long introspective journey in which the artist has brought his vision to bear on the dislocation and cultural displacement he experienced, first in fleeing his homeland, then with his immersion in American culture, and ultimately upon the return to his estranged and yet familiar country. Through his art, Lê has sought to negotiate the differing perspectives he holds—Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese, and American—on Vietnam, the American-Vietnam War, and his place in the two societies in which he finds both belonging and alienation.

The Imaginary Country, 2006
Dinh Q. Lê , Three-channel video installation made in collaboration with Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Ha Thuc Phu Nam

By literally and metaphorically weaving together images that speak for his conflicted cultural identity, Dinh Q. Lê’s work allows us to experience the uncertain balance of personal memories within a collective memory forged largely by cinematic constructions. The works in this exhibition embody Lê’s vivid sense of the struggle to find one’s own place within the framework of superimposed, alien, and collective identity. (press release excerpt)

Untitled, 2008/ From the series Hill of Poisonous Trees

Cate McQuaid
Globe Correspondent
Photo tapestry explore war and identity

Visting artist LAURA MCPHEE

The Art Institute of Boston
March 24, 2009


© Laura McPhee, 2008
From the series Guardians of Solitude
On view at Bonni Benrubi, NY until April 11, 2009

Laura McPhee earned a BFA in Art History from Princeton University in 1980, where she studied with Emmet Gowin and a MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. McPhee was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and Fellowship in 1998 for work in India and Sri Lanka and a residency in Idaho from Alturas Foundation 2003-2005. She was also awarded a New England Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 1995 and a John Simon Guddenhaim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 1993.

Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

Smoke above Fisher Creek, Valley Road Wildfire
40,838 Acres Burned, Custer County, Idaho, 2005
From the series River of No Return
© Laura McPhee

She is the daughter of award winning author John McPhee and photographer Pryde Brown, sister of novelists Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, architectural historian Sarah McPhee, and Joan Sullivan, founding principal of the Bronx Academy of Letters.


Sluices at a reservoir, part of a two-thousand-year-old irrigation
system now updated, near Badulla, Sri Lanka 1998
From the series No Ordinary Land
© Virginia Beahan & Laura McPhee

NYTimes on Larry Gagosian

Pulling Art Sales Out of Thinning Air
By David Segal, NYT


Charlie Powell, New York Times

Bill Burke Visit to AIB on March 17th

Holzer at the Whitney

The Films of Werner Herzog @ the MFA

March 11 to 21, 2009


Aquirre: Wrath of God, 1972
Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog (b. 1942) is a director, screenwriter, and actor whose perspective on the world has earned him critical and popular acclaim. Whether shooting in Antarctica, Alaska, the Peruvian jungle, or Wisconsin, Herzog’s films often focus on characters with seemingly impossible dreams or those who have a unique and unusual talent. Since his first film Herakles in 1962, Herzog has made over 50 films. This eight-film retrospective is only a glimpse of Herzog’s extraordinary imagination and vision.

Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art/ PEM

To watch video click on image

The Peabody Essex Museum
Mahjoing: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection

(press release excerpt)
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, an assemblage of provocative works organized by the Berkeley Art Museum. Featuring paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations and video, Mahjong reflects four decades of artistic exploration.
The last forty years of unprecedented social, political and economic transformation forged a generation of Chinese artists unlike any who came before. From times of restriction and relative obscurity, through more recent years of increased artistic freedom and record-breaking international auctions, Chinese artists observed the changes around them and navigated their own internal landscapes. Now China is home to one of the most dynamic and innovative contemporary art scenes in the world.


From Family Tree, 2000 (9 photographs)
Zhang Huan

Miracles and Exorcised Demons: “Drei” (i.e. “three”)

Roaring Twenties, Otto Dix, 1927-28

An Exhibition In Stuttgart on the Triptych in Modern Art

by Birgit Sonna in the Goethe Institut Journal/ The Arts

Boris Mikhailov - At Dusk

DEWEER Gallery
Belgium
February 22 to April 5, 2009


Untitled, 1993
From the series At Dusk
© Boris Mikhailov

At Dusk (1993) consists of 13 panoramic photographs, tinted with blue ink. The photographs remind us of the second World War. It is a dark and dramatic depiction about some of the artist's personal recollections of the war, during which Mikhailov was evacuated to the Ural. He remembers being brutally woken up in the middle of the night by wailing sirens. The dark blue tints refer to these traumatic experiences and also to the capitalist system that was rapidly taking control of his post-communist country at the time he made the series. At Dusk is one of Mikhailov's most striking body of work. (text taken from actuphoto).


Untitled, 1993
From the series At Dusk
© Boris Mikhailov

More information on Mikhailov visit HERE

David Hilliard @ Carroll and Sons

Being Like

Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston

February 18 – March 28, 2009
Reception Friday Mar 6, 5:30–7:30

David Hilliard Photographs

"For years I have been actively documenting my life and the lives of those around me, recording events and attempting to create order in a sometimes chaotic world. While my photographs focus on the personal, the familiar and the simply ordinary, the work strikes a balance between autobiography and fiction. Within the photographs physical distance is often manipulated to represent emotional distance. The casual glances people share can take on a deeper significance, and what initially appears subjective and intimate is quite often a commentary on the larger contours of life.
For me, the construction of panoramic photographs, comprised of various single images, acts as a visual language. Focal planes shift, panel by panel. This sequencing of photographs and shifting of focal planes allows me the luxury of guiding the viewer across the photograph, directing their eye; an effect which could not be achieved through a single image.
I continually aspire to represent the spaces we inhabit, relationships we create, and the objects with which we surround ourselves. I hope the messages the photographs deliver speak to the personal as well as the universal experience. I find the enduring power and the sheer ability of a photograph to express a thought, a moment, or an idea, to be the most powerful expression of myself, both as an artist, and as an individual."

Visiting Artist LISSA RIVERA

The Art Institute of Boston
Tuesday, March 3, 2009


Assignment, Brighton, Massachusetts, 2005
From the series Public Education
© Lissa Rivera

Art in Context is proud to present AIB's photography alum Lissa Rivera. Lissa graduated from the Art Institute of Boston in 2006 and is currently pursuing her MFA in photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Sylvia Plachy named Rivera one of the 25 Under 25 Up-and Coming American Photographers. Her work has been shown at the National Museum of Woman in Arts, Washington D.C., the Tisch School of Arts, NY, the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA, and the Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA, among others. Rivera is the recipient of several awards including the 2008 Aaron Sisking Award and the 2007 Woman to Watch Award. She is represented by Gallery Kayafas.


Alumni Room, Beta Gamma Epsilon, Northeastern
From the series Greek Letter Societies
© Lissa Rivera

The bodies of work Public Education, Privat Education and Greek Letter Societies were created while studying at the Art Institute of Boston. Lissa's new work is currently on exhibit in fourselves at the Art Institute of Boston Gallery at University Hall at Lesley University. The exhibit is open until April 11; the opening reception will take place on March 5, 5:30 to 7:30pm.


Carve, 2008
New Work
© Lissa Rivera