Aspen Museum of Art
Writers from Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille to Lewis Hyde have contributed to the notion of art as a veiled gift, with strings attached. Generosity and withholding are not antitheses; many of the best artworks are both withholding—in their minimalism, obscurantism, or elusiveness—and, despite their outward reserve, unexpectedly generous.
Read the rest of this entry »Canal Projects, New York
The story, as literary theorist Peter Brooks has observed, is today’s dominant cultural form. To Brooks, this “overabundance” of narrative is worrying: he criticizes the deference of virtually all strands of culture (not only literature, TV, and movies but art, museology, and—especially—news media) to the persuasive rhetorical power of the story.1 I share many of his concerns. “The universe is not our stories about the universe,” he writes, “even if those stories are all we have.”2
Read the rest of this entry »Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
My attention is more or less guaranteed by any exhibition that offers, within the initial sweep of its first gallery, a painting of an airport luggage carousel; a near-monochrome canvas, composed from grubby, rectilinear sections; a close-up picture of a blowjob; and a boisterous abstraction incorporating a tail-wagging dog and a swipe of glitter.
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Jonathan Griffin 