CRITICAL REFLECTIONS – bell hooks

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Artforum, November 1994.

… demands the articulation of an agenda. It is a space where one takes a stand, expressing and revealing points of view that are particular, specific, and directed—a great place to “throw down,” to confront, interrogate, provoke

with a realm of thought that may be contemplative but is active, not passive. As Michel Foucault writes, “Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate and enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action—a perilous act.” Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977, epigraph

Critical writing that remains on the edge, able to shift paradigms, to move in new directions, subverts this tendency. It demands of critics fundamental allegiance to radical openness, to free thinking. June Jordan has said that “if you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable

That moment when I whirl with words, when I dance in that ecstatic circle of love surrounded by ideas, creates a space of transgression. There are no binding limitations, everything can be both held and left behind. This intimate moment of passionate transcendence is the experiential reality that deepens my commitment to a progressive politics of transformation.

I write to live.

Unlights

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Robert Irwin
December 4, 2021–March 26, 2022
Sprüth Magers, Berlin

Capital, 2020

“Atop these commercially available objects, Irwin wraps a layer, or layers, of colored and metallic
gels, similar to those employed in theaters to give stage lights their different tonalities;
like a painter, he “blends” these hues through juxtaposition, anticipating the brilliant
visual effects that ensue and how our eyes perceive them. He also adds touches of
black and white in the form of strips of tape running vertically along the bulbs, as well
as on the sides of the light fixtures. These interventions create a feeling of depth and
recession that defy the relatively flat, bas-relief nature of the objects.”

via mitue.de

Posted in art

Staying South by Logan Lockner

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Art in America, November 17, 2021 10:53am.

Lockner’s article surveys a sample of artists based in the American South, Coulter Fussell, Katz Tepper, and Adler Guerrier.

This series of overlapping, sometimes contradictory impressions is perhaps best conveyed by Guerrier’s use of techniques such as solvent transfer and collage in works on paper that create ghostly, overlapping black-and-white images of both natural and urban landscapes, often punctuated by cascading geometric shapes or intricate compositions. These works temper representation with more opaque visual poetics, creating images of a place that feel both familiar and far away.