The very first thing you see when visiting Stefan Stagmeister’s “The Happy Show” at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center is wall text boldly declaring: “THIS EXHIBITION WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPIER.” While the text may seem like a cheeky and sarcastic pre-summarization of the content, Stagmeister sets the stage for his internal conflicts.  The information presented on the walls ranges from dry, yet poignant data, to[.....]

For the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to choose Mike Kelley for their reopening exhibition was, to say the least, symbolic. The Stedelijk opened its newly refurbished and expanded premises in September last year, after years (and years) of highly controversial, heavily debated and stupendously overpriced refurbishments. The enormous white bath tub that is now hovering in front of the institution’s old facade, (brainchild of Benthem[.....]

Central to Doug Aitken’s “100 YRS” exhibition at 303 Gallery is a new “Sonic Fountain,” in which water drips from 5 rods suspended from the ceiling, falling into a concrete crater dug out of the gallery floor. The flow of water itself is controlled so as to create specific rhythmic patterns that will morph, collapse and overlap in shifting combinations of speed and volume, lending the physical phenomenon the[.....]

Imagine: you walk into a white room. One you can only enter wearing some of those sexy, plastic blue shoe protectors. An oversized flatscreen beams bright flickering light at the opposite wall. You sit down in front of the screen. The brightness is of an almost suffocating magnitude – there is so much light your eyes can’t cope. Instead of seeing light you start to[.....]

As a part of our ongoing partnership with Art Practical, today we bring you a conversation between writer Kara Q. Smith and R & R Studios, the collaborative office of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt. This conversation is published on the occasion of Art Practical’s Miami Issue, the product of a two-month residency at LegalArt earlier this fall. I met with Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt of R&R Studios, which[.....]

Later, the scientist recalled what he and his colleague saw in that vacuum tube in 1898. “The blaze of crimson light from the tube told its own story,” Dr. Travers wrote, “and it was a sight to dwell upon and never to forget.” Not only neon, but the other noble gases would soon find application in signage and trim; that is the short of how[.....]

Grasping the nebulous zone of art and politics can be arduous at best. The curatorial project of Agitated Histories attempts to do just that by compartmentalizing the political narrative. The Re-enactment, The Archive, The Persona, and The Intervention give some scaffolding from which the viewer can approach the work. The artists in this exhibition engage with the political, the social, and the personal through formal[.....]