Ocula Report 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life 15 Feb 2019 : Natalie King for Ocula 'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
Ocula Conversation Ellen Altfest The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...
Ocula Report Colomboscope 2019: Cross Currents and Dissonance 8 Feb 2019 : Nada Raza for Ocula On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...
Ebony G. Patterson, Of 72 (detail). Exhibition view: Ebony G. Patterson, Of 72, Institute for the Humanities Gallery at the University of Michigan (11 January–9 February 2018). Photo: Sarah Rose Sharp.
In 2018, artists and curators across the United States have been crafting brilliant exhibitions across the US, exploring themes of identity and community in innovative ways. Ebony G. Patterson made a maximalist tribute to victims of violence in her home country of Jamaica, while Joel Otterson crafted work recalling his parents' professions as a seamstress and plumber. Indigenous artists took the stage at the Anchorage Museum's Unsettled and Jeffrey Gibson's This is the Day at the Wellin Museum. The enthralling official Obama portraits, painted by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, were revealed at the National Gallery in DC, putting Black fine artists into the national consciousness. This list is an insight into the tastes of our US writers and the shows that moved them.
Artist Profile Jeffrey Gibson 
Related Press Iranian-born artist Shirazeh Houshiary: ‘Numbers are beautiful to me’ Financial Times : 9 February 2019 The secluded London studio of Shirazeh Houshiary foxes my Uber driver entirely. But I shouldn't be surprised that the Iranian-born artist is off-grid. Among a heap of volumes that litter her studio floor is Reality is Not What it Seems by Carlo Rovelli, the quantum physicist whose luminous texts explain why Newtonian laws of space and time can only...
Related Press Nari Ward on folk art, found objects and creating havoc with his work Time Out : 5 February 2019 Born in Jamaica, Nari Ward burst on the international art scene in 1993 with a DIY installation of hundreds of discarded baby strollers in an abandoned Harlem firehouse, garnering critical acclaim.
Related Press Catherine Opie at Lehmann Maupin Art in America : 1 February 2019 A paranoiac's map of doomsday Los Angeles was the opening salvo in Catherine Opie's exhibition The Modernist. Declaring a new, experimental direction for the artist, the five-by-eight-foot collage combined photographs of the city's iconic midcentury architecture with ominous newspaper clippings and frenetic, hand-drawn flames.
Related Press At Chelsea Galleries, Three Artists Subvert Aesthetics L'OFFICIEL : 30 November 2018 With the impending winter melancholy yet awaiting behind glitter-laden holiday vitrines and a few illusively warm afternoons, art galleries contribute to the season's festivities with ambitious solo exhibitions, showcasing the newest by art world key players and emerging talents. Bookended by the fall's back-to-school shows and Art Basel Miami,...
