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

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

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

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