Art writing around town

Two of my favorite artists Nick and Sheila Pye received a very very nice write up in ArtInfo recently. 

She leads him across a floor strewn with broken glass, intentionally causing him to cut his feet. He makes her jump rope blindfolded in a circle of fire until she collapses. They wet their underpants and lick each other’s eyeballs. Such are the actions performed by Nicholas and Sheila Pye, a married couple from Canada whose practice encompasses film, performance, video installations, and photography, through which they explore what happens when people fall in and out of love.

Read the rest of the article HERE. The Hirshhorn has intelligently acquired a couple of their works, as have I.

Michael Pollack curated a stellar show for FotoweekDC at Pyramid Atlantic that got a nice little write up in the Falls Church News-Press. "Victoria F. Gaitán provides the show stealer here."  I agree!

Blake Gopnik reports in The Washington Post that the National Gallery of Art has acquired a fabulous contemporary work by Byron Kim, on view now in the East Building.

"Synecdoche," by the 48-year-old Korean American artist Byron Kim, recently went on view to the public, filling a huge wall on the lower level of the East Building. The piece should raise eyebrows and questions, even some ire -- which shows just how good it is.

Like a lot of the best fine art, the premise behind the piece could hardly be simpler: It consists of a grid of 429 panels, each one 8 by 10 inches. Kim has painted each panel a single shade of pink or brown or tan that is meant to reproduce the skin tone of a different person who sat for him. A grid of names on a nearby wall lets us match sitters to their color patches. Lorna Simpson, the well-known African American artist, turns out to be dark-chocolate brown. The late Marcia Tucker, founder of the New Museum in New York, is a pale beige. Kim's unfamous relations tend toward pale olives and dark buffs.

A simple premise, yielding tangled thickets of meaning.

I have a feeling that this piece is one of those where someone will inevitably say, "I could have done that."  And then I have to say, "But you didn't come up with the awesome idea nor did you think of the brilliant way to express that idea."  The rest of the article HERE. 

Modern Art Notes first reported the acquisition of "Synecdoche" back in October HERE.