'Sixties Surreal' at the Whitney

 By Isabella Mendez

The exhibition explores the profound cultural changes of the sixties in America through a surrealist style. The diverse array of artists offers many perspectives on topics like the Civil Rights Movement, space exploration, war, and feminist sexual revolutions. 

Each section of the exhibition echoes the "unreal" feeling that surrealism promotes: first, three large camels greet you at the entrance; then, a dark room filled with psychosexual work that explores the normalization of female and male anatomy; next, more structural work; followed by political and feminist work. The floor plan and layout of the exhibition can feel disorienting, and the deep purple and vibrant orange chosen for some walls add to the "unreal" feeling. However, I did appreciate the exhibition's approach in showing parts of history in a way that shows what has brought artists together as they face different issues.

Works featured by Luchita Hurtado, Martha Rosler, and Barbra Hammer explore the feminist movement through dynamic painting, photography, and even film. Works by Kay Brown, Shawn Walker, and Romare Bearden explore the Civil Rights movement through captivating photography and collage. Sculptures by Robert Arneson explore the psychosexual with a play on words in his sculptures, "Klick" and "Call Me Lover." 

Overall, while there were various takes on surrealism, it was interesting to see artists' voices united through the Whitney's curation, which suggested a new history of the sixties.

Sophie Calle: "On The Hunt" (Revised)

 Sophie Calle’s curiosity about people - specifically ordinary, everyday people - is undeniable. She has an ability to turn her subjects into art without asking much of them at all. She presents to us what is already there, and what has always been there, and allows us to see it with a whole new perspective. 

Calle may appear to be a journalist more than a visual artist, but every written page is strong enough to stand on its own. Seeing her work in a gallery setting was a new experience, and because most of her work takes the form of writing paired with photography, in a volume that can be slightly overwhelming. Select pages of her pieces are framed, some with very small text, the pages filling an entire room. Due to this, her work isn’t received well if the viewer is under a time constraint; there is a lot to take in.

One of her most memorable works was The Address Book (2012). After finding a lost address book on the streets of Paris, Calle set out to create a character profile of the owner. She interviewed each of the contacts and eventually constructed a portrait of him through his associates. The work became a eulogy for a living person; his own words completely absent from his life story.

Calle is an artist through and through. While her pieces can be enjoyed in a gallery, they can also be consumed alone, over time, using the solitude of the reader. 

Alix Cléo Roubaud "Correction of perspective in my bedroom"

Alix Cléo Roubaud

Correction of perspective in my bedroom

Galerie Bucholz

Curated by Hélène Giannecchini

Gigi Moss

            Walking into Galerie Bucholz, a single window filters a small amount of natural light into the room. The photos of Alix Cléo Roubaud are small, even in the delicate glass framing them, they take up little more space than a sheet of copy paper. Laterally displayed at eye level, they invite the viewer to examine up close. In this gallery stark LED lights against  cold white walls and dark grey carpet create a strange liminal space, as though I have stumbled upon an empty or abandoned office space. The environment highlights the haunting quality very present in some of Roubaud’s photos, and juxtaposes the emotion and sentimentality in the others. One of the throughlines of this body of work is that all the images have been shot in the bedroom of her Paris apartment, then developed in the bathroom. Her bedroom, a deeply personal space in contrast to the sterility of the gallery, becomes an embodiment of her consciousness as the room transforms in each image - some very grounded in the physical space and others where the room disappears completely and the subject rests against the white of the paper in no environment at all. In this gallery there are no distractions, the viewer must concentrate on the images and the feelings they stir. The softness and ambiguity in her images evokes feelings of familiarity and memory while staying inventive and curious. In her diaristic work, a documentation of life in this one space, the images act as representations of memory as it transforms with time.

Formal Wear by Diane Simpson

Walking into Diane Simpson’s exhibition, viewers encounter a series of sculptures that blur the boundaries between the two-dimensional planes and three-dimensional space. Constructed from corrugated board, fiberboard, aluminum, brass, linoleum, and galvanized steel, these forms shift under changing viewpoints, generating a sense of disorientation. The material qualities recall everyday life and domestic contexts, yet the geometric abstraction disrupts direct recognition— a chair’s slats spiral like a vanishing staircase, a column stands wide yet impossibly thin. This tension between familiarity and estrangement highlights Simpson’s interest in how utilitarian materials can be reorganized into new architectural forms.

The exhibition continues on the lower level, where Simpson reveals her meticulous process. Axonometric drawings, garment sketches, and archival photographs reveal how each piece originates from historical women’s formal wear. Corsets, bonnets, collars, and hoop skirts become the basis for sculptural frameworks, allowing viewers to see the structural logic shared by clothing and architecture. For example, a bonnet rendered in brass tubing becomes an arched, open form whose negative spaces imply the absent head.

Moving between floors, viewers trace the transformation of pattern into geometry, and garment into architecture. The human body itself is absent, but its implied presence emerges through the negative space of sculptures. Simpson presents an original and inspiring reimagining of how the overlooked structures of daily life and wears shape identity.

"Formal Wear Diane Simpson," at The American Academy of Arts and Letters

Underskirt, 1986 

Oil stain and paint on MDF, cotton mesh 

Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago

    Diane Simpson’s Formal Wear, spread across two floors at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, felt like walking through a spatial sketchbook, each work translated from drawing into geometry. The show traces Simpson’s decades-long dialogue between clothing and architecture, showcasing how the nature of fabric can serve as both a support system for the body and an expression of form.

    I was especially drawn to the play of distortion in her pieces, the way geometries become fluid and,-softened, while maintaining their complexities. Underskirt (1986), with its green lattice and gauzy cotton scrim, looked like scaffolding and fabric that was beautifully suspended. Amish Bonnet (1992), is perched on a shelf, with brass tubing bending into an almost breathing curve. Lastly, Window Dressing (2007–08) composed of hard industrial materials like - aluminium, wood, and industrial fiber - somehow evokes the softness of cloth, creating tension between rigidity and drape. Her works reminded me of industrial design prototypes, objects whose precision carry quiet emotion. 

    

    Simpson’s mastery of materials is evident in her work, which is controlled yet deeply human. Her sculptures don’t imitate garments but reimagine how structure might inhabit space as if it were built to stand on its own, inviting interpretation rather than delivering a fixed message. In Formal Wear, Simpson transforms geometry into something that evokes warmth, proving that discipline and distortion can coexist beautifully.

Window Dressing, Window 6: Collar & Bib-Deco (2007/2008)
Linoleum, paint on aluminum and wood, industrial fiber
Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago

Rodrigo Hernández: A Personal Constellation of Images

 Chrystal Gayle

October 17, 2025

Blog Post Entry Assignment

Rodrigo Hernández’s first exhibition at ChertLüdde Gallery offers a focused, poetic journey through material, myth, and memory. Known for working across painting, relief, sculpture, and installation, Hernández builds what he calls a “personal constellation of images,” a title borrowed from a poem by Bernadette Mayer. It captures the show’s drifting, dreamlike rhythm, where meanings shift and overlap.

Walking through the exhibition felt like entering a space where restraint and imagination meet. Many works shimmered with subtle gold tones that gave them an ancient yet refreshing presence. In one piece, a small brass figure emerges from a hammered surface. Its tiny scale and smooth, continuous curves create a feeling of vulnerability and quiet reflection, as if the form is caught in a moment of inner stillness.

Another relief, also in gold tones, leans toward an architectural composition. Layered planes create rhythm through repetition, while tight spacing introduces a sense of containment. At the bottom, a lone human figure walks beneath the towering shapes. The contrast in scale makes the work read like a meditation on how individuals move through memory or history, navigating structures far larger than themselves.

Hernández’s careful layering gives the exhibition a cinematic quality, as if time unfolds through overlapping images rather than a straight line.

Weather Report by Shara Hughes

    

    Shara Hughes' exhibition at the David Kordansky Gallery features nine paintings of imaginary landscapes representing Hughes’ internal psychology of being human. Each landscape is created instinctively and allowing for mistakes to create works that come purely from her inner world. The vertical orientation of the paintings is meant to be immersive for the viewer, to fully experience Hughes’ true emotions.

   “MaMa” (2025) is one piece representing a forest with many emotions within it. There’s intensity and beauty in the vivid, warm colors and quick brushstrokes in the center of the piece, but also a quieter and sadder feeling in the dull, cool colors and slow brushstrokes on the outsides of the painting. The inclusion of various flowers and trees represents the constant evolution of nature and its reflection of emotions like beauty, pain, peace, and sadness, which reflects the unchanging nature of humans and the emotions we feel.

  The exhibition space is organized to allow viewers to move from one painting to the next to explore Hughes’ representation of the complexity of the internal human experience. The gallery's open space is split by a wall in the middle, making the spaces feel smaller and adding to the intimate experience. Shara Hughes’ exhibition is very well executed in the presentation of her expressive paintings that pull viewers into the imaginary landscapes and help give us a deeper understanding into her inner world of human psychology.

FINAL VERSION