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Artscope Magazine | November/December 2024

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Audio/Visual

THEATERS OPEN THEIR VAULTS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

// Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, Movie, Theatre

by J. M. Belmont

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, live performance has been put on ice. But even though theaters have closed their doors, many are rummaging through their video archives and making productions from the past available for online viewing. Artscope has picked some of the best companies in this country and around the world that have opened their vaults for the locked-in public. THE NATIONAL THEATER: One of the United Kingdom’s most lauded theaters has begun a program they call “National Theater At Home.” An extension of their popular “National Theater Live,” which had broadcast plays live from London’s South Bank to cinemas across the globe, “At Home” will be offering a production a week. Currently showing at time of posting is the company’s frightening and technologically innovative adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Frankenstein, starring Benedict … [Read more...] about THEATERS OPEN THEIR VAULTS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

REFLECTIONS FROM UNDER THE RUG SHOP: A PERSPECTIVE ON COVID-19 FROM INSIDE ARTSCOPE MAGAZINE

// Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, News, Uncategorized, Visual Arts

by Hannah Carrigan

In many ways it seemed as though something in the universe had been telling me the coronavirus pandemic was to come. I miraculously chose this semester to take a leave of absence from my college (which is five miles west of New Rochelle, the epicenter of the New York outbreak) and to spend it, instead, at Artscope Magazine’s “underground bunker” (so nick-named for its location under a rug shop). At the beginning of the pandemic I joked that COVID-19 was a form of divine intervention… a “Noah’s arc-type situation.” I don’t know if that’s what this is exactly, but I do know that what is happening now is both an ecological/biological and social/cultural episode.  The pandemic did not come as a surprise to everyone. The first recorded travel-related COVID-19 case came to America on January 21, while the outbreak in Wuhan had been ongoing since December. People like Bill Gates have been … [Read more...] about REFLECTIONS FROM UNDER THE RUG SHOP: A PERSPECTIVE ON COVID-19 FROM INSIDE ARTSCOPE MAGAZINE

Lennie Peterson, Philip Glass, Giclée print and gator board (left); Josephine Baker, brush, ink, and acrylic on weathered canvas (right).

Synesthesia: Music-Inspired Art and Mindscapes by Lennie Peterson at the Narrows Art Center

// Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, Exhibits, Interview, Visual Arts

by J. Fatima Martins

Lennie Peterson’s “Synesthesia,” on view through October 15 at the Narrows Art Center in Fall River, Massachusetts, is a must-see exhibition of over 40 original mixed-media drawing-paintings (and a few reproductions of originals in Giclée on board), a hanging sculpture and a behind-the-scenes video of Peterson at work. In the video, we see Peterson creating with a live-performance format, which he is now famous for doing, and get a glimpse of some of his lesser known and fascinating practices. There is a revelation in the video: he takes a substrate and places it in water and sand in a beach environment, allowing the materials to arrive at a natural unrehearsed condition. This act is important because it is Peterson’s fundamental guiding force — flow. The exhibition itself features some of Peterson’s best-known and best-loved portraits of many iconic musical figures, including … [Read more...] about Synesthesia: Music-Inspired Art and Mindscapes by Lennie Peterson at the Narrows Art Center

Yinka Shonibare’s “The American Library” installation at Cleveland Public Library’s Brett Hall.

REVIEW: FRONT INTERNATIONAL: CLEVELAND TRIENNIAL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

// Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, Exhibits, Movie, Theatre, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

The FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, which opened on July 14, presented a new take on art exhibitions in this nation. In Cleveland, a city with multiple art venues, Akron and Oberlin with art, history and spaces of their own, 110 artists at 28 locations, including a Frank Lloyd Wright house, two churches and one decommissioned steamship, presented film, video, installation, painting, sculpture, performance and community art. Open until September 30, each venue contributed to a critical mass of art in three Northeast Ohio cities. The brainchild of Frederick Bidwell, an art collector on the board of The Cleveland and Akron Art Museums, FRONT refers, he said, to the Erie lakefront that Cleveland embraces, and to its standing at the forefront of art in the region. Artistic director Michelle Grabner, a celebrated painter and professor at the Art Institute of … [Read more...] about REVIEW: FRONT INTERNATIONAL: CLEVELAND TRIENNIAL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

George Herold, Beverly, cast aluminum finished with coral red car paint on a white plinth, 2011/2017.

Parcours at Art Basel 2018. The good and the bad.

// Art Basel Switzerland, Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, Exhibits

by Nancy Nesvet

Last year, the Parcours sector at Art Basel was so good I did not think it could be topped, and I was right. Perhaps overconfidence, or the fact that the really good projects were done last year emerged, but this year’s Parcours just did not measure up to the quality of the projects from the last two years. The highlights of the sector were video and sculpture, with the best Julian Charriere’s film, An Invitation to Disappear (2018), with techno beats, backgrounding strobe sequences, and a visual grid of a plantation that recalls the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia 200 years ago. The similarities between environmental disaster and party lights and sounds creates an edginess in the piece. With Cate Blanchett featured in thirteen roles, Manifesto, a film by Jullian Rosefeldt (2017) presents the philosophies of artist manifestos including Fluxus, Dada, and surrealism acted in … [Read more...] about Parcours at Art Basel 2018. The good and the bad.

INVIGORATING THE SENSES: ON AND ON AT WHEATON

// Audio/Visual, Exhibits, Issue Articles, January/February 2018, Visual Arts

UNIVERSITY SPOTLIGHT ON & ON: ARTS WITHOUT END & COLOR-ISM BEARD & WEIL GALLERIES WHEATON COLLEGE 26 EAST MAIN STREET NORTON, MASSACHUSETTS JANUARY 24 THROUGH FEBRUARY 23 by Suzanne Volmer The professional hats worn by Elizabeth Keithline include artist, public art consultant, critic, writer and teacher. This past autumn, she was appointed as interim director and curator of the Beard and Weil Galleries at Wheaton College, and she opens 2018 with “On & On: Arts Without End” and “Color-ism.” The galleries at Wheaton present consistently outstanding programming, and Keithline delivers in that mold. Speaking with her in advance about “On & On,” she expressed enthusiasm for the show as a power punch to invigorate the senses during winter. Keithline described the exhibition as being “about time as it moves, [and] the ‘electric on’ [or] ‘turned on’ [light bulb effect] — … [Read more...] about INVIGORATING THE SENSES: ON AND ON AT WHEATON