The Brooklyn Rail

In Conversation

ANTONY GORMLEY with Allie Biswas

With sculpture as a primary medium, Gormley’s work explores the relationship of the human body to space and time, emphasizing the body as place rather than object.

In Conversation

RAQIB SHAW with Allie Biswas

Raqib Shaw’s narrative-fueled fantastical landscapes draw upon his homeland of Kashmir, making reference to issues of memory, history, and identity. The painter’s sources are far-reaching, ranging from his own studio in South London to ancient mythology and Hindu iconography.

In Conversation

MELEKO MOKGOSI with Allie Biswas

Meleko Mokgosi grew up in Botswana and has lived in the United States for over a decade. His large-scale, project-based paintings depict narratives from his hometown and the wider region of southern Africa, which he constructs using found images, newspaper clippings, and photographs taken on his travels.

In Conversation

TROY BRAUNTUCH with Allie Biswas

The photographic image has played a central role in the work of Troy Brauntuch since the beginning of his career. When he first started exhibiting in the late 1970s, the manipulation of an existing image formed the basis of his practice, and his inclusion in the now historic Pictures show at Artist’s Space, New York, in 1977, cemented his connection to the medium.

In Conversation

JULIE MEHRETU with Allie Biswas

Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa in 1970 to an Ethiopian father and an American mother. She grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, and now lives in New York. The following conversation took place over the course of a day in London, in October of last year, when an exhibition of Mehretu’s paintings was on display at White Cube.

In Conversation

WOLFGANG TILLMANS with Allie Biswas

Over the last two decades Wolfgang Tillmans has redefined what photography can look like within a fine art context, with his deceptively casual images of everyday human scenes and objects. His photos from the early 1990s of friends and rave culture catapulted him to fame, embodying the exciting and pioneering nature of his work.

In Conversation

ADAM PENDLETON with Allie Biswas

Words are essential in Adam Pendleton’s art. The artist’s engagement with experimental prose and poetry over the past ten years, along with his cross-referencing of visual and social histories, has made space for new types of language within conceptual art.

In Conversation

ZANELE MUHOLI with Allie Biswas

Defining herself as a visual activist, South African artist Zanele Muholi uses photography to record lesbian and transgender lives in her country. Provoked by a lack of LGBTQ visual histories, Muholi took it upon herself to create an archive of images that documented her community.

In Conversation

Fred Eversley with Allie Biswas

For his current exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery in New York, Fred Eversley has produced a new body of sculptures that realize ideas initially explored by the artist in writing some fifty years ago. The “Cylindrical Lenses,” which consist of six vertically-oriented structures measuring between seven and nine feet tall, mark the first time that Eversley has made free-standing, floor-based works in resin—a material that has been intrinsic to his practice since the very beginning.

In Conversation

HANK WILLIS THOMAS with Allie Biswas

Hank Willis Thomas has spent the last 10 years using the history of advertising as a primary reference. Working directly with print adverts, the artist uses his technique of “unbranding”—where every trace of advertising information is erased, leaving only the original image—to challenge perceptions of identity, commodity, and representation.

In Conversation

RASHID JOHNSON with Allie Biswas

Rashid Johnson has produced a diverse body of work over the last decade, since completing his MFA at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. He has been particularly recognized for his large-scale sculptures and installations, which are primarily abstract in nature, and which regularly employ a specific series of materials that includes shea butter, black soap, wax, and plants.

Notes from Abroad: Ad Reinhardt’s World Survey

By Allie Biswas

Ad Reinhardt’s commitment to learning about art, on the most global of scales, was unequivocal

Corinne on Gloucester Place, 1993

By Allie Biswas