Alejandro Garcia Contreras: ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

     Upon entering the exhibition space, you are met with mountains of concrete casts, sand scattered around the floor, and a framed screen centering it all. The room's gray walls and spotlights almost cage you in, combined with a closer examination of the cement shapes revealing faces and skeletal shapes all work in giving the exhibit an inherently uneasy atmosphere. 

  Mexican artist Alejandro Garcia Contreras’s ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?(2024) at Pioneer Works immerses you into its themes from the second you enter the exhibition. Centered around ideas of personhood and self-identity, Conteras has a variety of recognizable imagery that resonates with the viewer and serves as not only a means for Conteras to reflect on himself but for the viewer as well.  By looking closer at these first unrecognizable concrete forms you start to pick out familiar faces like Mickey Mouse or Sailor Moon. This choice by Contreras helps the viewer find themselves within the work and allows them to reflect on why the images are recognizable to them. Contreras is pointing at media's influence on our identity and personhood and how these mas symbols of popular culture act as a way for people to relate to and resonate with the works, making them feel included as they can think, “I know that character!”

Conteras further solidifies these ideas of self-reflection through the specific choice of making the space feel like an active archeological site.  The sand across the ground crunches under your feet as you traverse the space making you feel as though you are entering a space belonging to the works rather than the works simply occupying the space. This archeological motif is further successfully driven home with the center work of the gallery being a floral porcelain skeleton centered on a thick layer of sand. Meant to represent Contreras himself, the work acts as a literal representation of self-discovery and exploration.

"Floridas"-Anastasia Samoylova And Walker Evans

The exhibition, situated within The Met and surrounded by traditional 1800s paintings, sets itself apart by invoking a distinctly modern and somewhat ironic atmosphere. The show begins in a narrow corridor displaying newspapers, magazines, and postcards, all centered around the theme of “Florida.” They guide visitors away from the classical art they’ve just encountered and into a carefully curated narrative of place and perception.

The artworks come from two artists: Walker Evans, a documentary-style photographer, and Anastasia Samoylova, a photographer and mixed-media artist. Together, they craft a portrait of Florida, forming a contradictory dialogue between fantasy and harsh reality. Florida emerges not only as a travel destination with postcard-perfect beaches and tourist havens, but also as a site where hurricanes, sea-level rise, and ecological fragility happen. The artists employ a variety of techniques to expose the underlying tensions, such as photography, collaging, and the application of acrylic paint overprints

The walls are painted in vibrant, chromatic hues of green and pink, serving as an unconventional prelude. The bubblegum pink and lush green hues evoke the vibrant kitsch often associated with Florida’s tropical allure. However, the deeper pink wall tone does not match the shade featured in the title text, thus the earthy carpet sets a sense of underlying unease.

Among the various sections, the opening corridor emerges as the most successful space. It offers a broader vantage point and frames the subsequent experience with context and complexity. This corridor allows viewers to move into the show with an informed understanding of Florida’s layered identity with the textual information, archival materials, and thematic orientation. In comparison, the inner spaces felt disappointing, with not strong enough work.

Jessy Hu #

Is Biobank a Home? by Heather Dewey-Hagborg at the Cooper Hewitt

Is Biobank a Home? by Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an immersive installation that reflects on the agency of human DNA as it circulates through facilities called “biobanks”, which house the genetic information of millions of citizens, without their consent or knowledge. 

The exhibit is situated within Andrew Carnegie’s former nursery at the Cooper Hewitt, adding another layer of meaning to the work. From the stained glass collage of Dewey-Hagborg’s biopsied tissue to the brightly illuminated light of the “biobank” shelves, the installation is a carefully considered sensory experience. The piece is complete with a spoken word audio of the artist's exchanges with medical institutions. The sterility of its representation makes the viewer feel uneasy upon entry. The vials of red substance decorate the shelves of a labyrinth-like space, contrasting with the sterility of starch-white walls of the room. The architectural consideration of space within the installation creates a claustrophobic feeling of enclosure, reflecting the limits of agency imposed on data that we have no choice but to share with medical institutions.

The exhibit challenges the notion of what we call home and points out the inevitable intersection between our bodies, ubiquitous surveillance and data collection. Bringing to light an issue of personal agency, Dewey-Hagborg recreates a restricted space and peels back a layer of privacy. 

- Ekaterina Maisheva #

Jewish Museum's "Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston"

 An exhibit titled “Draw Them In, Paint Them Out,” focuses on examining Philip Guston’s influence on Trenton Doyle Hancock and how their work aims to comment on White Supremacy in the history of the U.S. It is important to note that Guston is a white Jewish man while Hancock is a black man, yet, they both use symbols of white supremacy to understand their own role in complicity and suppression is the system.

To continue, both artists utilize satire to comment on structures of white supremacy, weaponizing art to combat social justice issues. The main focus of the show is to understand how Hancock used Goston as an inspiration for his own work. Interestingly, they both seem to include alter personas in which they can creatively express themselves and how they view the system, in this case white supremacy and all it has been fundamentally ingrained in society. For example, Guston’s piece “The Studio” (1969) features a KKK member painting a self-portrait, in which Guston sees himself as this KKK member. In much of the content at the exhibit, there were many KKK members present in the works, but, Guston makes the distinction that he recognizes his own complicity in white supremacy. In contrast, we see Hancock taking a similar approach, inserting himself in the works to understand how he battles white supremacy.

Finally, both are successful in capturing the severity of the effects of white supremacy. The satirical style in which they create aims to create a less intimidating atmosphere in which they manage to exaggerate shapes to signify the severity of the crimes committed in the name of white supremacy. WC 273

Eva Goldstock Vazquez *

The Studio (1969) by Philip Guston

"Dream House" at the Mela Foundation

     Upon entering Dream House, the viewer is immediately bathed in bright pink LED lighting. The air is thick with the scent of incense and the carpet feels soft and inviting. The sound, a cacophony of droning, vibrating tones, is intense, bordering on overwhelming. The volume is so high that it becomes difficult to concentrate on anything beyond the immediate sensation of noise. The vibrations in the air, coupled with the scent of incense, create a meditative atmosphere that is encouraged by hallucinatory artwork and cushions on the floor. The space embodies a tension between chaos and clarity where the focus is on the neurological effect of the space—how it feels to be immersed in a sensory world.

    Given its historical context, Dream House is more than just a display of sound and light. Created by minimalist composer La Monte Young and his partner, artist Marian Zazeela, Dream Hous has been an ongoing work since the late 1960s, rooted in the countercultural ethos of the time. The installation draws from the exploration of spatial and sensory boundaries, with an intention to transcend the normal experience of reality and tap into a heightened state of perception. In that sense, the Dream House is not just an artwork but a living, evolving environment—a physical manifestation of their artistic and philosophical vision.

   The Mela Foundation’s Dream House is a disorienting experience that pushes the boundaries of what art can be. It’s not a space to simply "see," but to feel and to be felt by. Whether it provides clarity or overwhelms the senses, it demands full commitment, making it an unforgettable experience for anyone willing to engage with it.

-Jessica Chadwick#

"Shifting Shorelines" at Columbia's Wallach Gallery

     

It could be argued that the central artist in this show at Columbia's Wallach Gallery is the Hudson River itself. The exhibition brings together works of art, cultural objects, and science to demonstrate the cycle of devastation and reclamation seen across the shores of the Hudson. This show came at a time when ecological disasters rear their ugly heads across the country - wildfires in New York and New Jersey and back-to-back hurricanes in Florida.

The layout takes viewers through this cycle, constantly offering juxtapositions - like a before and after the influence of human industry and exploitation. In this fashion, visitors are first met with a comparison of Thomas Cole’s 1838 oil painting “North Mountain and Catskill Creek” and the 1880 oil painting “Lower Manhattan from Communipaw New Jersey” by Thomas Moran. These two works offer separate perspectives of idealization and reality, which set the tone for the remainder of the show.

"North Mountain and Catskill Creek" by Thomas Cole, 1838, Oil on Canvas 

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"Lower Manhattan from Communipaw New Jersey" by Thomas Moran, 1880, Oil on Canvas

Historical lessons about the Hudson are woven into the viewer experience through eye-level plaques and informative wall text for each piece. As enjoyable as the overall art historical experience was, the space felt over-curated. There is a lack of breathing room between the works, leading to an almost overstimulating sensory experience. There is an immense amount of material to see, but is all of it entirely necessary? It is difficult to fully digest the comparisons offered up by the exhibition when it is difficult to separate the elements from one another. However, the show remains one of the least tone-deaf I have seen; everything speaks to something and the acknowledgement of first-nation contributions are prevalent. It is relevant, useful, and has the capacity to inspire as art should.

- Alex Lopez-Martinson*

 

Baby Blue Benzo by Sara Cwynar,  52 Walker St. Library

Baby Blue Benzo by Sara Cwynar opens up in a large, carpeted space with a smaller room in the middle, a hidden entrance on one side. Walking around the venue, you almost feel exposed, the surprisingly tall walls for a SoHo gallery are adorned with printed images rising up the ceiling. Inside the seemingly little room, a massive horizontal screen stretched wall to wall, projecting a sort of video collage shot on film. The visual centerpiece of the work, and the show itself,  is a cardboard model of the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, one of the most expensive cars ever sold to date. The screen is adorned with photos and video of models, beauty products, medication and countless other objects. The video almost gives one a feeling of discontent, as you sit watching an assault of a cycle of endless consumerism and consumption. The show drew more connections than just a take on consumerism and value, however. I later learned more on the reason behind her inclusion of images of Benzodiazepines, not only shown because they share a similar name with the Benz car, but also because they were a crutch once used by the artist herself during difficult times. A visit to the space could not be regretted as the show is limited, in both time and access.

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KADER KAYSER class 2