The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA 152 North Central Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90013 October 29, 2007–February 11, 2008 The late 20th century art world had a bad conscience about high art which was vilified as serious, profound, mysterious, spiritual, elitist, pretentious, outmoded and labor-intensive. This led to infatuation with popular culture (silly, superficial, obvious, materialistic, … Continued

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 52nd International Exhibition of Art A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, June 11, 2007 under the title “Pax American in the Serene Republic” The Venice Biennale has been the Olympics of the visual arts since its inception in 1895. In odd years countries choose their artist … Continued

Truckee Meadows Community College 7000 Dandini Blvd Reno, Nevada 89512-3999 775 673 7000 March 5 to 30, 2007 A number of works address the preparation and the journey itself. These include most notably Conversation, which consists of eight tower-like structures surmounted by clay or bronze animals, mostly crows and hares. On one level, that of … Continued

The Koehnline Museum 1600 Golf Road. De Plaines, IL 847-635-2633. December 14 2006 – January 26, 2007 During the Modernist era many serious women artists were often excluded from art world consideration:  it was not until the Feminist movement of the 70’s that sculptors like Louise Bourgeious and Ruth Duckworth, who began their careers in the … Continued

ADM PROJECT 6015 Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles, CA  90038 323.467.7967 October 27th – February 3rd 2007 By TOBEY CROCKETT Andrew Krasnow’s retrospective exhibition, “Of The Flesh: Skin Works 1990-2005” at  ADM Project in Hollywood is an extraordinary exhibition, by almost any standard.  While the show also includes part of an older film depicting the … Continued

In his second dispatch from the Vietnamese capital, Joe Fyfe visits the studios of Vu Dan Tan, Maritta Nurmi, Phuong Nguyen Linh, Pham Ngoc Duong. I once visited a famous American painter, getting old by that time, who had spent his formative artistic years in Paris before returning to the U.S. Commenting on another American artist … Continued

Don Soker Contemporary Art 49 Geary Street San Francisco 415 291 0966 November 1 to December 14, 2006 Minimalism strikes me as being quaintly obsolete, deriving from a formalist aesthetic that indulges in endgame polemics, arrogantly defining itself as the logical terminus of all previous painting and as the ultimate position that painting can take. … Continued

Rienke Enghardt and Tran Trung Tin at Art Vietnam, Hanoi HANOI–Areas of the city feature numerous art galleries aimed primarily at the tourist business. Hundreds of insipid decorative paintings are for sale. Oddly, there is more than an occasional almost interesting one. Some of the more adventurous Hanoi artists also produce for the commercial painting … Continued

As Dine exhibits at the Morgan Library, a 2006 review of an Illinois show.

Western Project 3830 Main Street Culver City, California   90232 310-838-0609 www.western-project.com July 29–September 9, 2006 Tom of Finland invites an intimate, comedic gaze. If there were two keys words for his work, they would be “freedom” and “narrative,” rather than “hot” and “hunky” as some might hazard. True, the topics of a Finland portrait … Continued