The pain stirred by injustice is far larger and heavier than the sum of its parts, and thus—when you are not completely creatively immobilized by it—you are liable to end up trapped in one of its narrower emotional corners, taking exploitative black-and-white photos of “the Victims,” or penning your manifesto in a vain attempt to say it all. I must admit: I found myself repeatedly drained by this very attempt to articulate the efficacy of Iván Sikic’s work. For Sikic wields time, context, and symbolism as DaVinci wielded figure, shadow and composition, to disrupt hyperlocal norms and cast light upon issues of oppression and greed at large (in as few “strokes” as possible, too). In effect, each of Sikic’s works exemplifies a dual-functioning that I believe is critical to the “success” of any artwork attempting to combat the morally corrupt, two-headed monster that is greed and oppression: to confront and to heal. [Excerpt]

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Everything Should Be Both, Always: An Interview w/ Gabriella Moreno

Vantage Art Projects, November 2020

Trusting her impulses to guide her hand, eye, and subject matter, Moreno draws to unpack the significance of specific objects and experiences throughout her life, evoking universal feelings of uncertainty in the process. Mirroring this strange homeostatic tension between validation and uncertainty is the tension between the spontaneous vigor of Moreno’s linework and the steadfast autonomy of her figures. For me, this confidence-in-contradiction awakens the inner knowledge that peace of mind means not having to settle one’s mind or body at all. Knowing that there is nothing to be settled or conquered, Moreno’s works unfold the great expanses of meaning hidden within the most intimate spaces and innocuous objects. I knew that, like Moreno’s figures, our conversation would do what it wanted. [Excerpt]

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Lexicon for Tracy Abbott Szatan: a Sontagian Review

Vantage Art Projects, November 2020

Glass. Listening to Szatan speak about what initially attracted her to the idea of handcrafting her own glass lenses is a spiritual experience by proxy, sort of like listening to your stoic older brother’s voice shake as he reads his wedding vows aloud. What attracted her to glass? Tracy paints me a picture: “When you fire clay in a kiln, its molecular structure is permanently altered.” Ceramics can never be turned back into clay. “But glass,” she says with reverent enthusiasm, “is molecularly irregular, like water. So in a sense, glass can live many, many lives.” And since glass can live multiple lives, Szatan’s glass lenses may as well be literal reincarnations of the glass prisms that Sir Isaac Newton held up to the sun 300 years ago. If Newton’s glass prisms showed us that white light can be dispersed into the colors of the rainbow, Szatan’s glass lenses show us that light can be collected and dispersed in countless other ways. Like Newton looking upon his rainbow or that fallen apple beneath the tree, Szatan looks upon her materials with an affinity for nature’s invisible secrets. [Excerpt]

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On Anna Fusco’s Found Paper Drawings

May 13, 2020

When this arrived in the mail today I showed my roommate. Like many people who are unsure of how to enter into viewing contemporary art, he glanced at it for a second and then immediately asked: “What does it mean?” I told him to look at it. Observe the facts of it. What do you see? What is it doing? I walked him through what I see it doing when I look at it: I see a sheet of hotel stationary, three swaths of color that appear to have been scribbled onto the paper by a subconscious hand. The penciled words TIME FOR A LITTLE ANARCHY stir up feelings of both surrender and drive. I feel a sense of voyeurism, as if I am looking at an artifact from the exact hotel room where X person stayed right before he lit himself on fire in a crowded hall. What I love about @lordcowboy ‘s works is their power to effortlessly conjure characters and fabricate moments that still evoke real feelings. While the heavy, jagged application of color carries an aggressive quality that feels authentic, the inexplicable presence of the colors quietly reminds me that it was an artist who made this, and that sense of authenticity was likely the intent. It does not detract from the experience, but deepens it. There is a mastery of seeing demonstrated by the choices the artist makes. To extract hotel stationary from the world and honor it as a surface worth making sellable art on means first being able to recognize the ordinary as extraordinary. Then—from what I know about her process—Anna Fusco reproduces snippets of marginalia from her own private journals onto these sheets of paper. Because hotel stationary literally conveys place and time, the words and drawings she puts on them re-enter the unabstracted world. On this sheet of hotel stationary, an abstract thought grows limbs and a backstory. That this little piece of art can do all that is what I find so incredible. “So that’s what it means for me but it might mean something entirely different for you,” I said.

In conclusion, buy art. Not only does it feel good to support artists but it feels priceless to own art you love. And lastly...judge a work not by what it “means” but by what it does.