Critics Page
The Potential Worldings of the Kitbash
By Andrew Paul WoolbrightThe artist and critic Jesse Murry described “a breath that makes possible another breath.” How can our movements allow for other movements? As artists, how can our practices extend space for others as much as it asks for space; and give language and poetry to others as much as it asks for those things. I’ve been told I wear many hats, and I want to address the why of it for the first time, while also bringing together a small vibrancy of others who share in strange navigations and similar obligations with me.
Ode to the Vaporized Individual: Long Live the Whorish Porous
By Angela DufresneDead ringers shimmer and pulse—incessantly. Bastards love better. One cannot take it all in at once—you’d be a moron to try. You’d be a total fucking moron to pursue autonomy, yet most try, poor things. Thus the “long shot” must be coupled with numerous close-ups, pans and cuts, across bodies, so we are tethered to life, to the screens that make us, or worse, the families on the screens that makes us. jump cuts, pans, money shots, they kill us with us.
Worse Words
By Molly Zuckerman-HartungAs a teacher of painting I will sometimes assign a difficult text which induces a state of confusion in students. Confusion is a negative mood, and Karla McLaren writes of confusion that it requires one to “honor this time-out and stop looking outside yourself for answers.”
In Conversation
Alexander Galloway with Andrew Woolbright
Protocol is about many things, but maybe most directly about the history of control and the shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control. Can you explain what led you to want to write the book? And those historical differences, which I think are incredibly important?
In Conversation
Miguel Abreu with Andrew Woolbright
How did the show “The Poet-Engineers” come about? When I think of the Lower East Side, and I think about its difference and the texture of it, I think about Miguel Abreu Gallery, and I think about that show, in particular. It’s a show that still stays with me and I still consider and think about. And I think part of the reason is it really articulated a philosophy or it believed in an exhibition that was a way forward, or an examination of the present, or a series of possibilities. And I think that that oftentimes gets lost in things. So I just, I'm happy to be sitting down with you and wanted to know, how did this show come about? What I think is the perfect show.
On Hats
By Wallace WhitneyFor over twenty years, Canada has been artist led, as Sarah Braman and I still maintain studio practices in addition to the daily work of running the gallery. The most common question we get is how do you find time for the studio, the gallery, and family life? Honestly, the people that I know who are most successful do only one thing all the time. It is a personality type, different but as distinct as the trickster figure; but my alter ego isn’t Hermes. Maybe it’s a draft horse. I get a lot out of being part of a gallery, especially when the place is full and something exciting is happening. There are bumps and bruises as well, the price you pay to wear multiple hats. I suggest making sure one is a crash helmet.
Gern En Regalia
By Mario Miron and Zoe BrezsnyGern en Regalia: Zoe and I found the name on a trip back to the west coast where we went to visit a friend in LA and then Maui.
Coleman Collins with Brief Histories
A recent late afternoon. A brightly lit space, three white walls, plywood lined floor, afternoon sun streaming through the large windows looking down on busy afternoon traffic in New York. Off-center a large table with three half-empty cups of tea. Stage left, an upright old wardrobe faces out, with one drawer pulled halfway out, a small painting of an ear is lying within a mound of rice grains.
Lubov
By Francisco Correa CorderoRelocating Lubov to the border between the Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhood in 2019 wasn’t a choice. It was a survival and pragmatic decision after being kicked out from an office building in Tribeca for not paying rent on time. I was paying $300-500 at a time, whenever I could afford it; after almost two years they said I had to leave.
Europa
By Pali KashiIn March of 2020 I was about to sign a lease on a space down on the Bowery. I was pretty far along in the process until I realized it was a bad idea to start paying rent on a space while a global pandemic was unfolding. Maybe it was a sign from the universe? Safe Gallery was never meant to last as long as it did. At the onset I had meant to only do one exhibition. I had access to space and didn’t want to waste it, so I decided to show the work of a friend who had never shown their work before.
The Art of ...
By Yasmin KaytmazMy practice shifts frequently. I’ve always wanted to be one of those artists that moves freely from one material to the next with a clear and distinctive style, even while undergoing new material discoveries. I am not sure if I am or ever will be able to feel as free in my movement as I hope to, but my hands will always guide me. I often start thinking of the originality of an object; where it began and how it carries on in its copies.
M 2 3
By Theodore MauritzThe role of the gallery within culture is at once aesthetic, economic, and mystical; as it is tasked with preservation, collection, and refuge. M 2 3 functions as a reaction to, and reflection of, the current trends in dominant culture, as well as an intellectual awareness, and economy of artistic achievement. The gallery’s exhibitions form a resistance to presiding currents through its interest in linking the way work feels within an artist’s studio—an artist’s sense of gesture and investigation that galleries often try to simplify and reduce as it enters into the gallery space.
