Pointed engagement of social commentary, coupled with experimentalism with the presentation of photography as a medium are both hallmarks that define the artwork of photographer and installation artist Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. Through January 9, 2022 at Newport Art Museum, audiences can experience Matthew’s mid-career retrospective, “ReVision,” curated by Dr. Francine Weiss. The show is installed in four museum galleries that are located in the John N.A. Griswold House. The galleries relate a range in approach by the artist, from intimate dissolving animations on small wall hung iPad screens framed as traditional photographs, to monumental projected videos and more traditional appearing photographs. A simple looking, but complex to achieve, installation by Matthew fills one gallery and includes digitized World War II film footage projected onto dhotis, traditional Indian clothing … [Read more...] about A BLURRING OF EDGES: MATTHEW’S IMAGES OF SOCIAL COMMENTARY AT NEWPORT

The Addison Gallery of American Art on Phillips Academy’s Andover, Massachusetts campus is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. Impressively, its collection includes nearly 22,000 objects that span a timeline that begins in the early 18th century and ends today. As if that weren’t enough, admission to the Addison is notoriously free. My visit felt as expansive as its collection; meandering through the space felt less like a gallery visit than a trip back in time, to be sure. The purpose of my visit, however, was singular: to explore the gallery’s latest exhibition “Language, Sequence, Structure: Photographic Works by Lew Thomas, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Hal Fischer,” which will be on view through January 23. With the promise of these three artistic powerhouses on display, I had little doubt of returning home disappointed. This prediction was correct. Thomas, … [Read more...] about A REBELLIOUS ELOQUENCE: “NEW PHOTOGRAPHY” ON DISPLAY AT ADDISON GALLERY

Just at the tipping point of the 19th into the 20th century, Paul Gauguin gave us an operator’s manual for humankind in a painting he brought back to Paris from Tahiti: “Where are we going? What are we? Where do we come from?” He had trouble unloading his painting, for keeps — too many questions — until Boston’s own Museum of Fine Arts bought it in the 1930s, where it’s now a staple of modern art. The manual, though reluctantly at first, was picked up by other artists who wanted to be thoroughly modern. And these artists ran with it in every direction, from modern to postmodern — onwards. “Excerpts from My Studio,” the art of Donald Langosy, now on view at the Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, traces one of those trajectories, in all its twists and turns, in all its personal vicissitudes. And it’s a dinner plate heaped, in … [Read more...] about PAINTING A DAILY SHOW OF STRENGTH: DONALD LANGOSY’S HOME AT MULTICULTURAL ART CENTER