Hello again,
SO MUCH has been going on and I’ve hardly found time to send a message. The newsletter is VERY alive. After taking a month and a half off post-concussion I hit the ground running so fast that I ended up starting a job and a busy semester (taking a lot of finance and history). More on that will come soon, along with some fresh NFT takes.
Until then, four exhibitions to checkout. Please be sure to visit the final exhibition, which is online and able to be enjoyed wherever you’re reading this.
Social exhibits
The exhibitions I saw this month stood out for their divergent social proposals. They evidence a spectrum of social potentials for art exhibitions, informed by traditional gallery standards.
Social Works: Curated by Antwaun Sargent at Gagosian, open through Sept 11th.
Social Works is the most obviously interested in these relationships, “considering the relationship between space and Black social practice." Theaster Gates's tribute to the godfather of house music Frankie Knuckles promotes an inviting, enriching, and resonant potential for the gallery space. While a DJ spins records from Knuckles’s personal record collection, visitors can examine Lauren Halsey’s mirrored black history wall of respect (II), or explore the contours of David Adjaye’s meditation on black architecture and earth, Asaase. In a separate room of the exhibition, visitors are invited to take produce from Linda Goode Bryant’s mixed media installation Are we really that different?, an architectural garden in the gallery which was, for me, ridden with introspection.
Lucy Raven at Dia:Chelsea, open through January 2022.
Lucy Raven's exhibition utilizes scale and movement, lending itself to discourses of experiential and interactive art. The show includes two large scale installations: the former features four automated stage lights on motor heads rotating around a massive black box-like gallery space. Sometimes you’re in the light, other times you’re a spectator of it. The second work is a video on a large curved screen. It allows viewers to be a fly-on-the-wall in front of a seemingly gargantuan industrial process. By the end I was convinced that we are awfully small.
Matthew Wong: Footprints In The Wind, Ink Drawings 2013-17 at Cheim & Read, now closed.
Matthew Wong’s ink drawing show was one of my favorites, showing off a less-recognized side of his practice. The exhibition is most traditional of those I’ve included in this newsletter, and for good reason: the show likely utilizes a more traditional gallery layout to simply present the works in a more academic context. Wong’s tragic death in 2019 shocked the art community, and I’m glad this show got to see the light in such a compelling, dramatic setting. His vibrant paintings are a must-see if you are not yet familiar with them.
Three artworks I’d recommend seeing are Heliocene (2021) by Natalia Stuyk, Living Doesn’t Mean You’re Alive (2021) by Kumbirai Makumbe, and Solar Time Ritual (2021) by Taína Cruz. It’s a website, go see for yourself!
Thanks for reading.
Yours,
Gabe
How (and why) art museums, auction houses, and galleries collaborate