Beginning in mid-May, 46 locally-based artists will inhabit the walls, floor and ceiling of Ivan Stojakovic’s Mixed Media Space gallery located in his expansive Groundart Studios building in North Adams, Massachusetts. The exhibition seeks to serve specifically as a survey of the ever-growing artist population in North Adams, documenting the interchangeable, perpetual process of absorbing the influence from the larger institutions such as MASS MoCA while building self-sustainability and giving weight to the broader local artists’ community. Through the upcoming “Art Now in North Adams” exhibition, the curators, Anna Salmeron and Sanja Stojakovic, will create an additional vortex of exposure, building upon the already existing and flowering gallery energy present in the small and compact city. As North Adams is enjoying a revisioning with local businesses walking hand in hand with the … [Read more...] about ART NOW IN NORTH ADAMS
Reviews
DELIGHTFULLY OVERWHELMING
Alia Farid’s latest large-scale installation, “Talismans (Kupol LR 3303),” was created primarily with a material called Kupol LR 3303 which is a resin manufactured by the United Oil Projects (UOP). Farid collaborated with UOP in Kuwait to fabricate the material. The exhibition, curated by Meg Rotzel, the curator of exhibitions at Harvard Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, is on view through June 21 in the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, located in Byerly Hall. Farid returns to Radcliffe after a year-long residency in 2023-2024 where she worked on “Amulets,” now on view in a large-scale outdoor exhibition at Stanford University. “Talismans (Kupol LR 3303)” is also presented in conjunction with additional work from Farid’s series in the United Arab Emirates’ Sharjah Biennial 16. “Talismans” features photographs selected from Farid’s maternal archive. … [Read more...] about DELIGHTFULLY OVERWHELMING
SPACE TO REFLECT
The “MATRIX” is an ever-evolving exhibition space at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Launched in 1974 through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the space was envisioned as an experimental platform for contemporary art. Over the last five decades, “MATRIX” has presented more than 1,000 works by over 160 artists, many of them early in their careers. The gallery has consistently served as a site for work that is challenging, provocative and firmly grounded in the present, frequently asking viewers to reconsider the boundaries of art itself. In the current “MATRIX” exhibition, multidisciplinary artist and writer Steffani Jemison presents a richly layered inquiry into knowledge, perception and the symbolic language of the moment. The questions at the heart of this exhibition are: “How do we move? How are we moved by each other?” These questions serve as both a … [Read more...] about SPACE TO REFLECT
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
I recently went to see artwork in the studios of Nora Valdez and Nirmal Raja in advance of their month-long solo exhibitions at Boston Sculptors Gallery. Both are mid-career artists whose work reflects focused and mature intention. Both are first generation immigrants. Raja is originally from Chennai, India, Valdez from Villa Mercedes, San Luis, Argentina. Although the artists are of singular vision, it is also true that their respective aesthetics loop through some of the same conceptual terrain — plying the immigrant experience and feminism. Both explore ideas of belonging, distance and time. In conversation, Raja and Valdez individually mentioned the feeling of being “between two worlds.” They are citizens of the United States but live with influences and strong emotional ties to their countries of origin. Running from May 8 through June 8, “Nirmal Raja: Grace and Grit” is the … [Read more...] about BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
NEVER SLOWING DOWN
On one of the coldest days in February, even by Vermont standards, I stepped inside the Burlington City Arts gallery to find my senses stirred by the dramatic, enigmatic and visually seductive semi-abstract landscape paintings of Bunny Harvey. I forgot about the -7 degrees Fahrenheit outside. The exhibit consists of close to 20 recent large-scale oils on canvas as well as two works on paper made for this event. For those who have followed Harvey’s prolific four-decade-long career, it will be evident that her works here have a new level of intensity that invite the viewer to engage, connect and discover a unity with the natural. world beyond the scope of spoken narrative Many of the landscapes suggest a body of water — a stream, a creek, maybe a pond, gleaming in sunlight or shrouded in fog on an overcast day. These watery surfaces anchor the composition. Motion and energy in these … [Read more...] about NEVER SLOWING DOWN
A FIRST LOOK
What makes a photograph special? That it provides a clear, static documentation of notable events worth cataloguing; for its artistic merit which, like a lightning-rod, can conduct particular feelings less abstract than those received from a painting or sculpture; or simply that it allows us to hold on to something physical, giving false permanence to the ultimate intangible force in our lives: time? Boston’s Panopticon Gallery is one of America’s oldest spaces dedicated exclusively to the showing of photographs. Having bounced around the city over the past 54 years, the gallery is now located in the Hotel Commonwealth, and this February it opened a new space, The Wall, in conjunction with two exhibitions: “First Look 2025” and “First Look: A Second Glance.” Alexa Cushing’s story at Panopticon began in 2018. After the retirement of the gallery’s previous owner in 2023, the MassArt grad … [Read more...] about A FIRST LOOK