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Articles by Gregory Volk
The Unruly Ceramic Beings of Kathy Butterly
Installation view of Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes (all photos Gregory Volk/Hyperallergic) SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Kathy Butterly’s marvelous retrospective Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes spans 32 years of small-scale ceramic sculptures — and “small-scale” puts it mildly. The first work in the exhibition, “Eddy’s Skirt” (1994), around eight inches tall and three inches wide and deep, is a mesmerizing treasure. It has also rarely been seen by the public since its gallery debut decades ago.
The Ukrainian Pavilion’s Deer Seen Around the World
VENICE — On Tuesday, May 5, the day before previews began at this year’s Venice Biennale, Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine, targeting, as is usual, civilians and civilian infrastructure. Twenty-seven people perished, and well over 100 were injured.
The Memory of a Nation Finds a Home in Lviv
LVIV — The city of Lviv has been a hub for Ukrainians fleeing Russian assaults and brutality since 2014, serving as a home to humanitarian projects like Superhumans and Unbroken that provide rehabilitation, support, extensive therapy, and prosthetics for war victims. Though it has not suffered nearly the volume and intensity of Russian attacks as have regions further east, it is far from immune to the current war.
New York City Shows to See This Week
There’s so much to stimulate the eye and mind in museums and galleries this week that it’s a joy to behold. I spent way too much time marveling at 1970s notebook sketches by graffiti artists at White Columns, while our writers sought out awe-inspiring artists, past and present, such as Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and Claudia Alarcón.
Weaving That Opens to the World and Heavens
The first time that I and many others encountered the wonderful, semi-abstract, vividly colored textile artworks by Claudia Alarcón and the art collective she helped form, Silät, was at the 60th International Art Exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale. A multigenerational collective of 100 Indigenous Wichí women weavers from northern Salta, Argentina, Silät came together in 2023 when a previous group disbanded.
Ukrainian Artists Address the War Head-On, Obliquely, and Grittily
We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider supporting us as a member. Join Us KYIV and LVIV, Ukraine — On my first night in Kyiv, there was a far-off explosion. Russia had launched 53 Iranian-made Shahed drones and five cruise missiles at Ukraine. Most were shot down, but one struck an industrial facility in Kyiv Oblast, on the outskirts of the city.
A Collective Portrait of Contemporary Ukraine
On a three-week trip to Ukraine last spring, I experienced the innovative and engrossing exhibition , which felt like a labyrinthine voyage of discovery. It featured 166 photographs by twenty-four younger Ukrainians, the “next generation,” according to curators Isabella van Marle and Sonya Kvasha, of photographers and lens-based artists. This was a relatively rare and extremely welcome exhibition in Ukraine, where the art world has long skewed toward painting and sculpture.
The Echoes of Russian Atrocities in Two Venice Pavilions
VENICE — Two imposing pavilions in the Venice Biennale’s Giardini, the Polish and Russian, made dramatic changes late in the game, both opting to exhibit foreign artists. The first is excellent, the second exceptionally problematic. Figurative painter Ignacy Czwartos was originally selected to represent Poland.
Lesia Khomenko Distills the Resolve of Ukrainians
According to the , Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine has resulted in some 6.5 million refugees, mostly women and children. Millions more have been internally displaced. Then there are the dead, both soldiers and civilians. The accurate number is tough to come by, but it is likely upwards of 80,000. And counting.
A Maypole Dance for Dogs in Queens
While I had vaguely heard of the Maypole dance over the years, the first one I experienced in person involved schoolchildren in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. My son had enrolled as a fifth grader in Brooklyn Waldorf School that year. Throughout the world, the Maypole dance is an annual Waldorf school rite. I never imagined how much this joyful celebration, often on May 1 or “May Day” — with uncertain but likely pagan European origins — would affect me.
10 Art Shows to See in New York This January Original
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You’re crashing from your holiday sugar high and the warm days of spring feel light years away; January sure can feel like the gloomiest month of the year. But it doesn’t have to be! Not if we make it our New Year’s resolution to see more art. It’s also a perfect time to catch up on exhibitions that opened in the fall madness, some of which are still on view.
By Hrag Vartanian Verified, Valentina Di Liscia Verified, Katherine Kelaidis, Thomas Micchelli, Gregory Volk
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Hyperallergic
Verified
A Poignant Meditation on the Dance Marathon Original
LOS ANGELES — Long before reality television series like the ever-popular Naked and Afraid, true crime shows, and WWE and MMA extravaganzas entertained millions with the suffering (whether feigned or authentic) of others, there was the wildly popular yet short-lived phenomenon of dance marathons in the 1920s and ’30s. Throngs of paying customers watched contestants dance to the point of slumping exhaustion, or worse — not just for hours, but for days, weeks, even months.
Rowan Renee Unearths Green-Wood Cemetery’s Forgotten Lives
It is not often that an art exhibition radically alters one’s understanding of, and orientation within, a major urban landmark. Rowan Renee’s multifaceted The Perimeter Path in Brooklyn’s renowned Green-Wood Cemetery is definitely one of those times. Numerous well-known people are interred at Green-Wood and many visitors flock to their graves: Leonard Bernstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets (of Brooklyn Dodgers’ fame), Governor DeWitt Clinton, among others.
Adirondack Life Magazine
One of the most beloved rituals in this, the season of campfire nights, is hunting for a proper roasting stick, whittling it to perfection, then charring your own bun-sized dinner over the flames. But here in the birthplace of the American vacation, our love for the most All-American of eats goes well beyond the campground.
Adirondack Life Magazine
by | August 2023, History Last summer, I was delighted to discover an article in this magazine about how the Caroga Arts Collective is bringing a musical revival to long-shuttered Sherman’s Amusement Park in Caroga Lake. Caroga Lake, my mother’s small hometown in Fulton County, has been dear to me my whole life. I lived there summers with my family when I was young. Many of my relatives were year-round residents; some still are. Sherman’s is also dear.
A Cabinet of Curiosities, Minus the Cabinet
Skip to content I will be upfront: Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan, a collaboration between artist Nina Katchadourian, the Morgan Library & Museum, and Morgan curator Joel Smith, is one of the most unusual and engrossing shows that I’ve encountered in years. Katchadourian began by asking several of the curators to choose an item from the Morgan’s vast collection that they cherish; some of these works are in the show.
Adirondack Life Magazine
Longtime Adirondackersget attached to places the way they knew them, mostly for sentimental reasons. In my case, more than 20 years ago I met my now-husband in the second-floor lounge of Lake Placid’s old Northwoods Inn. That hotel has been around a while, before Placid hosted the ’32 Winter Olympics, as Main Street began filling in with accommodations and shops, precursors to the bustling strip we know today.
How Fireflies Find Love with the Language of Light
by | June 2023, Nature and Environment Photograph from Shutterstock Yellow-green sparks shimmer among shadowy pines overlooking my backyard on the outskirts of Saranac Lake. It is a warm June evening, and the humid air hangs heavy with the fragrance of mountain maple blossoms and last year’s fallen pine needles. More such flashes beckon from the quiet tree-lined road that circles Moody Pond, and I follow.
What Is Hospitality in an Era of Crises?
BUFFALO, New York — I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, at the University at Buffalo’s CFA Gallery and Anderson Gallery, is both exceptionally apt and prescient. It also underscores the potential of university museums and galleries, including those far from the art world limelight, to mount daring, innovative shows that most mainstream museums wouldn’t touch.
Pussy Riot Rocks Reykjavík
Skip to content REYKJAVIK — Shortly before its current exhibition opened, Kling & Bang’s website was hacked, presumably by Russians, who inserted a crude, anti-Ukrainian message. Apparently, Vladimir Putin and his minions consider Velvet Terrorism – Pussy Riot’s Russia to be a serious threat, even at an artist-run gallery in faraway Iceland.
Two Sparse Brooklyn Exhibitions Probe the Elemental Forces of Life
Two impressive shows inaugurate Smack Mellon’s innovative Close Reading exhibition series, spotlighting an “under-recognized, early to mid-career artist,” accompanied by a related group exhibition. Sound artist Luba Drozd is the first feature artist. Her expansive installation in Gallery One, largely made of bare-bones construction materials that emit complex, fluctuating sound, is also her first large-scale solo show in New York, her adopted city.
Ken Lum Holds Up a Mirror to the World
Skip to content This is the first solo show in New York in some 10 years for acclaimed Canadian artist, writer, curator, and educator Ken Lum, whose iconic 1989 photo and text work, “Melly Shum Hates Her Job” (not exhibited here), achieved cult status in The Netherlands (and elsewhere) and ultimately inspired a major Rotterdam museum to change its name.
Multifaceted and Cathartic Experiences in the works of Jónsi and Camille Norment
“Listening In” is a column dedicated to sound, music, and listening practices in contemporary art and its spaces. This section focuses on how listening practices are being investigated and reconfigured by artists working across disciplines in the twenty-second century. This year the column is curated by Barbara London and explores how artists continue to investigate sound by incorporating up-to-the-minute software and electronic apparatuses to their practice.
Ascending Into the Realm of Naudline Pierre’s Mystical Paintings
Naudline Pierre’s debut exhibition at James Cohan gallery’s two Walker Street spaces has a spot-on title: Enter the Realm. Encountering her dynamic, intensely colorful oil paintings, sculptures, and works on paper is like entering a spiritually charged, alternate world full of mind-bending activity, one with its own unique cosmology and iconography.
Terry Adkins's Objects of Wonder
Skip to content It is striking when an artwork from several years ago, conceived in very different circumstances, becomes searingly relevant right now. This is the case with conceptual artist Terry Adkins’s mesmerizing 41:37-minute stereoscopic digital video Flumen Orationis (from The Principalities) (2012). Upon entering his at Paula Cooper Gallery, the video is visible in the distance, covering much of a large back wall.
For An Icelandic Conceptual Art Pioneer, Home Was His Inspiration
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland — My educated guess is that Birgir Andrésson (1955-2007) — one of the most significant and innovative Icelandic artists of the past several decades — will be unfamiliar to most Hyperallergic readers. Often called a conceptual artist, Andrésson exhibited internationally in his lifetime (and continues to be exhibited), including representing Iceland in the 1995 Venice Biennale, but most of his shows were in Iceland, far from the art world limelight.
An Artist Honors Iceland's Wild Nature from a Distance
In November 2019 — which seems like another world ago — Jónsi had his first solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Los Angeles. It was also the first solo show anywhere for this acclaimed singer/musician and co-founder of the great Icelandic experimental rock band Sigur Rós, known for his ethereal, soaring falsetto and for playing his electric guitar with a cello bow. Combining sculpture, sound, scents, and architectural interventions, his exhibition was flat-out marvelous.
The Profound Soul of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller
At once enthralling and unsettling, this three-part exhibition by Canadians Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, memorably titled After the summer of smoke and fire, is spot on for our anxious (to say the least) times. Escape Room (2021), in the gallery’s semi-darkened back room, is a stunning new installation that includes enticing, yet foreboding, architectural models and dioramas meticulously handmade by the artists from sundry materials.
A Group Exhibition in Iceland Trades Local Character for International Appeal
REYKJAVIK — I first visited Iceland in 1999. I immediately fell in love with this unique island nation, with its remarkable landscape. I have since visited many times and have twice backpacked the renowned Laugavegur trail, which starts at Landmannalaugar, with its hot springs and colorful rhyolite mountains, and continues to otherworldly Þórsmörk in the south. I was also riveted by the country’s contemporary art, which wasn’t quite like anything I had encountered.
Ragna Róbertsdóttir’s Landscapes in Lava
REYKJAVIK — The Fagradalsfjall volcano is currently erupting quite close to Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik, drawing throngs of rapt visitors. With ever-shifting displays of primal power, including molten fireworks and spectacular lava flows, this is the first eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula in some 800 years, although abundant lava formations and moss-covered lava fields attest that volcanic activity has been commonplace in this area for millennia.
Bearing Witness to Breonna Taylor’s Life and Death
LOUISVILLE, Ky — At this moment in America, it is hard to imagine a more consequential exhibition than Promise, Witness, Remembrance at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville —Breonna Taylor’s hometown. The exhibition brings together new, recent, and, occasionally, older works, some from the museum’s collection, by both national and local artists — all but one Black.
The Commanding, Flamboyant Joyce Pensato
Way back in 2007 — which seems like another world ago — I wrote the catalogue essay for Joyce Pensato’s first exhibition at Petzel Gallery, titled The Eraser (December 19, 2007–February 2, 2008).
Ragnar Kjartansson’s Extravagant, Enthralling Bliss
Since last September, Luhring Augustine Bushwick has hosted The Pleasure Pavilion, a series of nine three-week shows in which gallery artists are in dialogue with a surprising centerpiece: the tawny, sandstone-and-brick facade of a late 18th- or early 19th-century Indian pleasure pavilion.
Cathartic Art for Precarious Times
Last April, during the terrifying early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was sheltering in place with my son, rattled by incessant ambulances, anxious about everything, and obsessively consuming any and all news of the virus, I received several emails from Fred Tomaselli.
Rivane Neuenschwander's Sensuous Reflections of a Harrowing World
Rivane Neuenschwander, “Trópicos malditos, gozosos e devotos 15″ (Tropics: Damned, Orgasmic and Devoted 15) (2020), wool, acrylic fiber, cotton, 66 7/8 x 89 3/4 inches (courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles; Photo: Pierre Le Hors) Rivane Neuenschwander’s Tropics: Damned, Orgasmic and Devoted at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is an exceptionally pertinent exhibition in this fraught time.
A Survey of American Art That Isn't Just Coastal
Suchitra Mattai
, “Exodus” (2019
), vintage saris from India; Sharjah; and artist’s Indo-Guyanese family; and rope net, 180 x 480 inches (image courtesy K Contemporary Art and the artist
.
Minimalist Art that Speaks for the Birds
Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Cleaning the Atlantic Puffins, Tufted Puffins, and Common Murres’ Exhibit (2019), HD video with sound (production still), 8:31 minutes (looped), from the series “The Violence of Care” (2019) OMAHA, Nebraska — It is not exactly whopping news that reliably red, heavily agricultural Nebraska sports many powerful Republicans, including its governor, both US senators, and all three congressional representatives.
Seeking the Soul of Iceland
Jónsi, “Hvítblinda (Whiteout)” (2019),
Twelve-channel sound installation; ten speakers, two subwoofers, aluminum, LED lighting, ozone scent. Dimension variable
. Duration: 20 minutes. Installation view, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019 (
Photo by Jeff Mclane
. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles) LOS ANGELES — Twenty years ago (on October 30, 1999, to be exact) I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, conducting research for an article on contemporary Icelandic art.
The Cosmic Vessels of an Adventurous Glass Artist
Josiah McElheny, “Three Twilight Labyrinths” (2019
), handblown mirrored glass, transparent and low-iron industrial mirror, blue mirror, oak, blue dye and stain, electric lighting, hardware, architectural intervention made of sheet rock, metal studs, plaster and latex paint
. Dimensions variable with installation. Running length of triptych: 24 x 111 x 2 in. Dimensions of individual “paintings”: 24 x 37 1/2 x 2 in. (Left); 24 x 31 1/2 x 2 in. (Center); 24 x 26 x 2 in (Right). (© Josiah McElheny 2019.
Ragnar Kjartansson’s Panorama of Love and Death
Ragnar Kjartansson, “Death is Elsewhere” (2019) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 7-channel video installation (image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s nine-channel video installation The Visitors(2012), drew throngs of rapt viewers during its extended run at Luhring Augustine Gallery in 2013. Many viewers took in the entire 64 minutes of the work; that’s most unusual for such a lengthy video. Quite a number (I was one of them) did so repeatedly.
Four Spots in the Venice Biennale to Stop You in Your Tracks
“A Temporality,” Mongolia Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019; interactive sound performance by Mongolian throat singers and Alva Noto (photo: Namuun Batbileg) VENICE, Italy — There are thousands of artworks by hundreds of artists in and around the Venice Biennale, in the main exhibition, May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff, in the national pavilions in the Giardini and dispersed throughout the city, in the many collateral exhibitions, and any number of other important shows.
Nina Katchadourian Makes a World on an Airplane Seat Tray
Nina Katchadourian, “Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #6” (2011, from “Seat Assignment” project, 2010–ongoing), C-print, 13.75 x 10 inches (all images courtesy the artist, Catharine Clark Gallery, and Fridman Gallery unless otherwise noted) Nina Katchadourian just may be something of a national treasure. She’s an idea-driven artist with visual flair, one whose refreshingly idiosyncratic works employ humor and antics yet have a deeply serious streak.
Nari Ward’s Angels in America
“Nari Ward: We the People” at the New Museum, New York: installation view: “Hunger Cradle” (1996), yarn, rope, and found materials, dimensions variable photo: Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio (all images courtesy the New Museum unless otherwise noted) Way back in 1996, three friends — Janine Antoni, Marcel Odenbach, and Nari Ward — presented a memorable exhibition, 3 Legged Race,in an abandoned 19th-century firehouse in Harlem.
The Extraordinary Marcia Hafif
Every now and then the art world seems to collectively smack its forehead, having suddenly realized that yet another under-known artist who, after years far from the limelight, might just be not only very good but exemplary. I’ve noticed that this tends to happen quite a bit more often with female artists than male. Marcia Hafif, who died last April at the age of 88, is such a figure.
The Overdue Skyrocketing of Simone Leigh
Simone Leigh, “100 (Face Jug Series)” (2018), salt-fired stoneware (all photos by the author unless otherwise noted) Simone Leigh has been exhibiting steadily since the early 2000s, yet she has spent much of her career pretty far from the limelight. This is hardly surprising, and not only because Leigh (who was born in Chicago to Jamaican parents) is female and black, I mean given art world and art market biases.
Yayoi Kusama’s Mesmerizing, Meditative Garden
The Rockaway Peninsula, often called simply the Rockaways, is a remarkable part of New York. This narrow strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay features dense urban neighborhoods, expansive beaches, a fragile coastal ecosystem and, of course, the magnificent ocean. Throngs flock there in the summertime, although I am also a big fan of comparatively empty autumn and early spring visits.
Tomás Saraceno's Sculptures Touch the Sky
The centerpiece (in my opinion) of Argentine sculptor Tomás Saraceno’s enthralling exhibition, Solar Rhythms at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, is not in the center at all but instead in the upstairs project room: two black-and-white HD videos, shown consecutively. Both are quite short, stark, lush, and mesmerizing.
From the Green Market to the Gallery Wall
I wanted to write about German artist Karin Sander’s exhibition Kitchen Pieces at Carolina Nitsch in New York from the outset; it’s that novel and striking. The exhibition opened during art fair week, when one gazillion (or more) artworks flooded New York, all competing for attention at the fairs and in exhibitions. Sander’s were among the most startling and compelling I saw — if not the most startling and compelling.
Carrie Moyer Reaches for the Stars
With an acclaimed appearance in the last Whitney Biennial, and now two concurrent one-person exhibitions at DC Moore and Mary Boone, painter Carrie Moyer is enjoying what she modestly called, in a conversation with me, “a moment.” That may be, but I suspect this moment may well be a long one. Moyer’s new acrylic paintings, exuberant and protean, revel in color and visual pleasure, scrambling distinctions between abstraction and representation. They are thrilling, and they matter.
A Mega-Gallery Marks a Quarter Century
With five New York spaces, outposts in London and Hong Kong, 165 employees, more than a half-billion dollars in sales last year alone, and a Renzo Piano-designed flagship slated to open on 20th Street in 2020, it’s no wonder that David Zwirner Gallery is routinely, and sometimes derisively, called a mega-gallery, and Zwirner himself a mega-dealer and art czar bent on conquering the art world.
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