MIGRANT UNIVERSE by James Foritano Bosnian-born artist Tanja Softic inscribes her 10 large works on paper with the delicacy of a miniaturist and the scope of a cosmologist. Grace and tension, intimacy and transformation vie with each other so energetically to claim the viewer’s attention that one feeling seems to ignite its opposite, one glimpse open a shutter upon another. Looking at “The Heart of the Matter” (2011), I can’t describe the sum of the materials — acrylic, pigment, chalk on paper mounted on panel as evoking more a soulful calm or an uneasy trans- formation. For moments, my apprehension rests on a waterfall of fruit-bearing branches, so boldly and delicately limned that I can’t suspend my belief in the hurly-burly of the present, the disruptions of time. And yet, even as I rest, a more restless dimension is knocking. From the lower right corner, stylized … [Read more...] about Tanja Softic
Issue Articles
Surveillance Society
IS THE TERM “PRIVATE CITIZEN” OBSOLETE? by Alexandra Tursi In every introductory art history class, students learn about “the gaze,” that is, who is watching who and when, how and why they are watching. As humans, we have endlessly gazed at one another. That gaze is politicized when it is the state focusing its lens on its people. I came face-to-face with this on a recent trip to the Terror House Museum in Budapest, Hungary, a space dedicated to exploring the state’s obsessive drive to monitor its own people. Today is no different yet, the nature of technology has changed the power dynamics. We live in a modern, networked society, in which state and non-state actors alike may gaze into the minutiae of the everyday man and woman and the everyday man and woman are more than willing to supply information (think of all those Facebook status updates!). STEALTH WAR Such is … [Read more...] about Surveillance Society
Uncovered Memories
MARGARET KRISTENSEN’S PUBLIC EXPERIMENT by Marguerite Serkin Margaret Kristensen knows the 1950s well. Although she is in her twenties, Kristensen’s eclectic collection of prints, created from negatives dating from the 1940s through the 1960s, are a frank and authentic lesson in the history of the times. “UNCOVERED: Collected Photo- graphic Memories” includes just a few of the over 1,000 negatives the photographer has collected in the past year. “Most of the appropriated images I work with are discarded family photos from the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s in the U.S.,” Kristensen said. “Because I am working with images that predate myself, I have a more in-depth reflection of time as the images are further displaced from my contemporary environment. Collecting negatives that have been discarded, I build a narrative between the individual images by combining aspects from different … [Read more...] about Uncovered Memories
A Shared Vision
FRIENDS FIND COMMON GROUND by Linda Chestney Sometimes in life it’s difficult to discern where reality ends and fiction begins. That’s sometimes true in the art world, too. “A Shared Vision,” currently at the Lyceum Gallery at Derryfield School, features photography that looks like painting along with painting that emulates photography. But it keeps you guessing even at close range. But whether the finished work is a photo or a painting, the results are sumptuous. Showcasing the work of photographer Robert Janules and painter Richard Widhu, the exhibition highlights the natural world both artists cherish in a way that is intimate and closely examined, yet at times abstract and diverse. However it’s labeled, the reality in the pairing is brilliant. The show is the brainchild of curator Andy Moerlein, an artist in his own right. Concurrently with the “Vision” show, his … [Read more...] about A Shared Vision
Catenaria
DOUG BOSCH THROWS US A CURVE by James Foritano Catenaries have been around long before Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defined them as “The curve formed by a perfectly flexible inextensible cord of uniform density and cross-section hanging freely from two fixed points.” Catenaries existed even before Galileo misidentified a catenary as a parabola and was then berated by his contemporaries with mathematical formulae that proved the famous astronomer so very wrong. The Spanish architect Gaudí used catenary curves, reversed, as arches in a much-photographed corridor of his Casa Milá in Barcelona. Going Gaudí one better, Eero Saarinen used a reversed catenary to frame the view westward from downtown St. Louis, and for good measure he installed tramcars inside so tourists could ride to the top of his “Gateway Arch” and attempt a glimpse of California. The … [Read more...] about Catenaria
Culture Club
CONTEMPORARY KOREAN ARTISTS MAKE A CONNECTION by Elizabeth Michelman Carol Rabe, curator at Pine Manor’s Hess Gallery, has brought together five Korean-born women artists working around Boston in different media: graphic art, photography, painting, fabric art and ceramic sculpture. Each has from five to eight works in this exhibition. Most of them have studied in the United States as well as in Korea. Several are mothers. One wonders what conflict these cultural transplants might feel between the authority of their discipline and their wish for freedom. Do they feel bound to cultural traditions? Do they parrot the new? Courting the soft word, they appear to draw on Buddhist philosophy, ancestor worship and Christian belief as well as art forms of both East and West. Their search for awareness and courage stirs moods and raises questions in our encounter with worlds like … [Read more...] about Culture Club