Hyperallergic
Best of 2016: Our Top 15 Brooklyn Art Shows
December 23, 2016
We could never leave Brooklyn and still miss a slew of shows in our home borough. From outdoor art along the waterfront to group shows in Bushwick and ambitious political projects at Dumbo nonprofits, there was no shortage of great work in Brooklyn in 2016. Read full article>
ArtNet
14 Emerging Women Artists to Watch in 2017
December 21, 2016
The following artists, from South Africa to South Brooklyn, have been responsible for some truly thought-provoking works this year. Artnet News is excited to see what they do next, as they expand their practices and get their first solo show, their first big grant, or their first public art showing at an art fair. Read full article>
Dixon
The Bushwick Art Scene
December 16, 2016
56 Bogart, also known as The BogArt, has acted as the neighborhood’s de facto arts center for more than a decade. The building currently houses 18 galleries and numerous artist studios and workshops in a massive, five-story warehouse stretching from Harrison Place to Grattan Street. Owner Ted Hovivian acquired the warehouse in 1983, and while small manufacturers populated the building early on, as those industries became rarer, he welcomed in artists. By all accounts, he genuinely likes having artists and galleries in the building. He told The New York Times, “The personal benefit is that they produce beautiful works, and tend to be really nice people.” Read full article>
Art Zealous
Voyeurism & Stories of Shadows with Artist Adrienne Elise Tarver
December 15, 2016
If you do one thing before you leave town for the holidays, it should be to go check out Adrienne Elise Tarver’s newest show, Stories of Shadows at Victori + Mo. With this exhibition, Adrienne Elise Tarver expands upon the narrative of Vera Otis, a character based off of a black and white portrait photo she found of a woman in a thrift store. Tarver named her character Vera derived from the Latin word veritas for truth as a reminder that nothing in presented narrative is true. We caught up with Tarver to discuss her background, influences and voyeurism. Read full article>
Blouin ArtInfo
Adrienne Elise Tarver at Victori + Mo Gallery, New York
December 8, 2016
The works in this exhibition is an expansion of the artist’s ‘Eavesdropping’ series, which explores the voyeuristic notions of insider, outsider and others. In this series, Tarver created an imaginary character named Vera Otis based on a found photograph of a black woman. “Stories of Shadows” will narrate more of the noir-ish mystery of Vera’s life through eight immersive video works, depicting her home environment, played on a loop and projected on the gallery wall. To complement the moving image works, a deconstruction of the bedroom from the model house featured in the filmed vignettes will augment the narrative built around Vera’s identity. Read full article>
Brooklyn Magazine
Look Harder: Good Art Things to See This Week
December 7, 2016
In this two-part solo show (the second part is planned for February) Adrienne continues her navigation of Vera Otis, an elegant, mysterious woman with fantastic posture who loves sunglasses and expensive furniture. Vera always seems to be alone, if she’s there at all; Adrienne films her house (eight videos will loop throughout the gallery) and displays portions of it (miniature dioramas) for our voyeuristic pleasure. Read full article>
ArtNet
Editors’ Picks: 6 Things to See in New York This Week
December 5, 2016
Don’t feel too bad about the voyeuristic nature of Adrienne Elise Tarver’s new video work, eight video vignettes of rooms in someone’s home. The artist has constructed an entire fictional persona for the resident, named “Vera Otis,” based on a found photograph of an anonymous black woman in glasses. According to the gallery Otis, whose name is a play on the word veritas, “acts as a surrogate for Tarver who, as a woman of color, finds Otis’s life a comforting place to imbue her hopes and fears upon.” Read full article>
Peripheral Vision
The Numinous Artwork of Adrienne Elise Tarver
December 3, 2016
Tarver’s foundational numinous object was found at a thrift store. Amid the second-hand items, her artist’s eye focused on a photograph. In the image, a young, black woman wearing glasses sits on a chair and stares directly back at the camera. The numinous connection between the sitter and her life had been severed, the memories lost. Her name and history is unknown. Instead, the photograph had become just another object in the thrift store. That photo with its simple composition nonetheless held a particular attraction for the artist. Read full article>
Art Medium
Forming Mystery and Figuring Out the Figure in “The Captive” at Victori + Mo
November 8, 2016
In the dimmed and darkened space of Victori + Mo, all of the pressure is on one piece: Myles Bennett’s “The Captive” – a 5 layer canvas painting formed from 90 feet of fabric and bolted to a panel high along the wall. The gallery itself is painted over in a slate black; to me it feels like you’re inside one of those old-timey pinhole cameras. Read full article>
Art Zealous
Art Zealous’ 30 Under 30-ish: Part 1
September 20, 2016
The art world has cultivated a slew of creative-minded individuals – but some of these people take their passions to new heights and become innovators. The list goes on and on: curators, art advisors, painters, street artists, gallery owners – all contributing their vision and originality to the world. These progressive, goal-oriented and dedicated minds are climbing the ladder to success wrung by wrung, and we at Art Zealous find it imperative to root for them on their way up. Read full article>
Blouin ArtInfo
5 Can’t Miss Gallery Shows in New York
September 14, 2016
With “American Vanitas,” Nanashe proves himself a master of the winking conceptual prank. A working refrigerator stocked with cold Budweiser cans — rebranded America, mind you, for this pre-election summer — also contains a speaker playing Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” used by Bill Clinton for his ‘92 campaign. Read full article>
Hamptons Art Hub
NYC Galleries Scene – Exhibition Openings Through September 10, 2016
September 7, 2016
September sees an explosion of art in New York. While the opening of the season might not launch until the third week, the first two are no slouch with more new shows opening than one can attend in a single evening. Following are our picks for new shows with receptions opening through September 10, 2016. Read full article>
Art Jobs
Conceptual Artist Explores Contemporary American Culture With A Little Irony: An Interview With Joe Nanashe
August 31, 2016
1. Tell us about your upcoming solo exhibition “American Vanitas” at VICTORI + MO. Are we in for any surprises ?
It’s a surprise, the whole show! Photographs, sculptures, videos… You haven’t seen any of the work yet. Maybe something up my sleeve.
Read full article>
Bedford and Bowery
America, the Deflated Banana: Joe Nanashe’s American Vanitas
August 11, 2016
Do you like art that grapples with how artificial our culture has become? Even better– would you like to see the art crowd in Bushwick confronted with a portrayal of American hipster contradiction? If so, you’re in luck. Because this September, Joe Nanashe, a conceptual artist who sorta fits that bill himself as an Ohio-born transplant now based in New York, is debuting his solo show American Vanitas at Bushwick’s Victori + Mo gallery this September. Read full article>
The Creators Project
’30 Under 30ish’ Art Show Sends Up Arbitrary Lists
August 5, 2016
The ’30 under 30′ lists by publications like Forbes and Time Magazine are perhaps the ultimate demarcations of status for young professionals and leaders. Although these lists were once focused on entrepreneurs, activists, and tech innovators, they now branch out to categories that are arguably more difficult to concretely quantify success in, like art and style. To highlight both the absurdity of creating these lists for artists and also the contradictory desire within young artists to be part of them, Brooklyn gallery VICTORI + MO has organized a 30-person group exhibition cheekily titled 30 Under 30ish. Read full article>
The Coveteur
Where To See The Best Contemporary Art In New York
July 8, 2016
We know, in the sense that everyone just knows, that New York is a good place for art—as in a good place to see it. And we head out every month or so to take in whatever it is that’s at the Whitney or MoMA or New Museum. But the gallery scene is a whole other story. Unlike vintage stores or underground boutiques, which we can list off like we live at them (we kind of do), art galleries are a somewhat intimidating mystery—albeit one we’re dying to crack. Which is why, when Helen Toomer, the director of Pulse Contemporary Art Fair, offered to give us a rundown of her favorite galleries in the city, we immediately agreed. Read full article>
Art F City
This Week’s Must See Events: Summer Art Party!
July 5, 2016
The art world continues its post-holiday slow period with an absence of big-time blockbusters but plenty of smaller shows. No big loss. This week we’ve got a party as art performance courtesy of BHQFU and a party for art, to celebrate the on-going contributions of the Black Contemporary Art Tumblr. There’s also an elaborate multi-media play at Flux Factory. Pretty much everything they do is a party. Let’s get to it. Read full article>
Art F City
Scary Stories To Tell In A Gallery: An Interview with Langdon Graves on “Spooky Action At A Distance” at VICTORI+MO
June 24, 2016
Walking the darkened halls of 56 Bogart Street, a pulsating pink glow radiated from the open door of Victori + Mo. I felt like I was in The Shining’s Overlook Hotel and told artist Langdon Graves as much when we met to speak about her current exhibition Spooky Action At A Distance. “Yeah,” Graves responded, “That’s not the first Kubrick reference I got.” Read full article>
ONS Manual
Spooky Action at a Distance: Langdon Graves
June 22, 2016
When’s the last time you heard a good ghost story? Artist Langdon Graves’ most recent exhibit “Spooky Action at a Distance”— a title that we’ll let Langdon herself explain below — is an exploration into the fragile cycle of memory, and an inquiry into the unknown. Graves tells us she has always been fascinated by belief — most of her work focuses on subjects like religion, folklore, and mysticism. For the work featured in “Spooky Action at a Distance,” Graves attention is concentrated on the supernatural, tapping into her grandmother’s stories of ghosts and spirits she’d encountered in her lifetime. Read full article>
Bedford and Bowery
Spooky Action at a Distance: an Art Show Haunted By Grave Ghosts
May 17, 2016
A new show at Bushwick gallery Victori + Mo approaches the supernatural from a firmly grounded perspective. By exploring the ephemerality of memory and the power of belief, artist Langdon Graves walks a tricky line on the edges of the occult while still keeping a healthy dose of skepticism. Graves has long been fascinated by belief in all its forms– her work has often focused on various religions, peoples’ relationships with religion, placebos, and mind-body healing practices. “One thing that I usually incorporate in my work is a very scientific approach to all these things. I do a lot of reading, a lot of research,” she said. For the work featured in this show, Graves became interested in “brushes with supernatural.” Read full article>
Artsy
OMG It’s Nic Rad’s New Solo Show, “Perennial Millenial”
May 7, 2016
Brooklyn-based artist Nic Rad wants you to meet Jackson Johns. Jackson has already googled himself three times today. He’s waiting for someone to like his latest selfie. He’s considering changing his avatar to reflect his support for a recent political cause. Jackson is smart. You likely already know him. If you’re a millennial, you might even be him. Read full article>
CULT FACTORY
Cult Chat with Nic Rad, Christina Mannino
April 27, 2016
For the past few years I’d mostly known Nic as the cool and mysterious artist-beau of Brooklyn. I knew Nic was good, very good (having googled to check out his work I found his Hope Soap project), but there was still so much more to learn about his clever mind. Well, here it is. With a new exhibition up at VICTORI + MO, I got a chance to sit down with with this visual conversationalist at his Brooklyn studio and talk it out. Get the scoop on Nic’s inspirations, favorite local hangouts, and what lies ahead in his full Cult Chat. Read full article>
BUSHWICK DAILY
Seeing is Believing: 5 Art Shows Which Question Reality
March 31, 2016
Give your thumbs a break, and let you eyes do all the work at this aptly named exhibition featuring a series of “gestural assemblages” that seem to both deride as well as celebrate to the fullest extent the millennial obsession with the self through a glorified appropriation of pop symbols, emojis, and textual characters. Rad’s rich, textural pieces truly rejoice in the elevation of the banal, transforming much too frequently used phrases such as “say something” and “haha” into mind-warping explorations of self-identity. Read full article >
ART F CITY
This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Roleplay Edition
March 28, 2016
Spring is in the New York air, and with it, a sense of fantastical possibility. Tuesday, head to BRIC to hear from powerful women in the music industry who overcame the glass ceiling to live the dream. Wednesday, Simone Subal Gallery has a show of reality-warping paintings and Thursday the New Museum is hosting a panel discussion with artists who try to do it all. Friday night, Nic Rad’s solo show at Victori + Mo imagines an art-historical alter ego to combat zombie formalism with Ab-Ex passion and millennial pop references. At Bannerette, Ash Ferlito and Clare Torina explore the potentials of oil and other media in a playful two person show. End the night drinking maybe-imaginary beer at Brooklyn’s ALL WHITE MALE ART SHOW(don’t worry, that name’s just a fantasy too). Read full article >
VICE – The Creators Project
Desire and Advertising Create a “Plasti-Saccharine-Hallucinatory” Dreamscape
March 25, 2016
The current state of our ever-digitized reality blurs the lines between the actual and the virtual. In Brian Willmont’s most recent solo show, Chaos and Wild Again, at Brooklyn gallery VICTORI + MO, he reflects on our shift towards a purely digital culture with abstracted graphic works that reference a Pop-purloined aesthetic tenet central to the Internet Age. Read full article >
HI-FRUCTOSE
Brian Willmont Interprets the Digital Experience in “Chaos and Wild Again”
March 25, 2016
Brooklyn based painter Brian Willmont had mostly been making gouache on paper paintings for years and then began to reduce his work, pushing the narrative out of individual pieces. His paintings today share a graphic and theatrical quality with his references, citing obscure movies and novels, such as Suspiria and Blood and Guts in High School, among his inspirations. Read full article >
The Stylish Flâneuse
BRIAN WILLMONT: CHAOS & WILD AGAIN
March 23, 2016
The Spring Equinox arrived this past Sunday in its most unconventional and undesirable way. Mother Nature played a practical joke in the form of a cold and windy day with some snow flurries that felt more like the start of winter. Until the weather start feeling like it should be, I am going to fake it till spring actually makes it via Brian Willmont’s colorful season appropriate exhibition, Chaos and Wild Again at Victori + Mo gallery. Read full article >
The Stylish Flâneuse
Armory Week 2016
March 9, 2016
Next stop was the Armory’s affiliated younger and more adventures sister fair, Volta NY, an invitational fair that showcases projects from solo emerging contemporary artists. Volta’s solo project focus helps rekindle the fundamental reason of art fairs, the celebration and promotion of the artists and their works. Read full article >
Mariscotti Art
Spotlight on VOLTA 2016
March 6, 2016
This week saw the opening of highly anticipated VOLTA, the Armory Show’s invitation-only, sister art fair, packed with viewers eager to see what’s on view from the 100 exhibitors in attendance. Organizers described the eighth edition of the New York iteration as the most diverse yet. What sets VOLTA apart from the numerous art fairs dotting Manhattan this week is its focus on lesser known and emerging artists, as well as the fact that each gallery shows only one or two artists per booth. The unique format allows for the introduction to a wide range of new talent while simultaneously affording an in-depth look at individual artists’ works. Read full article >
Art Zealous
The Eye-Popping Booth at VOLTA with Affordable Art
March 5, 2016
VOLTA, is the invitational fair of solo artist projects and has been dubbed the fair “by galleries, for galleries”. If you have a chance to check out the fair, which is calling Pier 90 its home till Sunday, you will probably notice a very vibrant, colorful booth. No, you’re not hallucinating, it’s Bushwick-based gallery Victori + Mo‘s. They have outfitted the entire booth, down to the wallpaper with the artwork of Brian Willmont. Read full article >
ArtNet News
VOLTA 2016 Features a Wide Range of New Talent
March 3, 2016
Last night’s opening of VOLTA, the Armory Show’s invitation-only, sister art fair, was packed with viewers eager to see what’s on view from the 100 exhibitors in attendance. Organizers described the eighth edition of the New York iteration as the most diverse yet. What sets VOLTA apart from the numerous art fairs dotting Manhattan this week is its focus on lesser known and emerging artists, as well as the fact that each gallery shows only one or two artists per booth. The unique format allows for the introduction to a wide range of new talent while simultaneously affording an in-depth look at individual artists’ works. Read full article >
BUSHWICK DAILY
Weekend Art News: All the Shows Plus Armory Late Night is Back This Saturday
March 3, 2016
Enrico Gomez said it just right in the latest Wagmag newsletter: the art world is head over heels crazy this week over Armory, with several Bushwick galleries showing at Pulse, VOLTA and SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Over the years a selection of art spaces around the neighborhood have collaborated to celebrate Armory Arts Week by way of Armory Late Night, taking place in both Bushwick and Ridgewood. Read full article >
ArtNet News
Look Out For Hip Galleries and Politically-Charged Artwork at VOLTA 2016
February 29, 2016
Since its New York debut in 2008, VOLTA has developed a reputation as the Armory Show’s hip cousin. Situated on Pier 90, just steps away from the main fair, the invitational fair boasts a lineup of edgy galleries and art spaces, with thoughtful presentations concerning the work of only one or two artists. Read full article >
ArtNet News
Editors’ Picks: 10 Must-See Art Events This Week
February 22, 2016
Brian Willmont’s paintings combine surrealism and pop in a unique mode of graphic abstraction that’s tough to ignore. “Chaos and Wild Again” features new work by the Brooklyn-based artist that explores the symbolism behind pretty, familiar images like rose buds and water droplets. Read full article >
Artsy Editorial
Frank Zadlo Reinvigorates Landscape Painting at VICTORI + MO
February 8, 2016
One of the most classical artistic genres—landscape painting—isn’t often seen on the contemporary art circuit. In his new show at Victori+Mo Contemporary, Frank Zadlo revisits the genre to explore the ways in which contemporary culture is changing our understanding of landscape. The expressive, swirling works hung around the space (rendered in gouache, video, and even cement) underscore the ephemerality of the natural world. Read full article >
BUSHWICK DAILY
A Resolute Set: 12 Art Shows to Kick Off 2016
January 7, 2016
Needing art so bad after the holidaze? We’ve been feeling the same. This weekend starts another new year with a resolute set of Bushwick art openings and collaborations with the Williamsburg galleries. With the volume of shows going on in the neighborhood, the new year may show just how much Bushwick is a neighborhood meant for art, people, growth, culture, and anything and everything we could possibly have in 2016. Read full article >