Reba Maybury Turns Eager Submissives Into Her Artistic Tools in “The Happy man” at Company Gallery

Take the watch. Pocket it. Nobody, not even the nit-pickiest gallery worker, will notice it’s missing. Until too late, that is. It’s barely noticeable anyway, plunked at the edge of a puddle of shucked clothes—a crumpled Van Heusen suit, a snaked tie, itty black undies tucked into dress pants, and brown leather shoes due for … Continue reading →

What Do Roy Cohn and Jack Smith Have in Common?: This Movie…Well, and Performance

Long beaded necklaces, faux pearls, brooches, golden baubles, jingle-jangling bracelets, and an assortment of other ornate, tacky costume jewelry tossed in a clicking-clacking heap inside of an unused toilet. That is the sublime image—the pinnacle of the trash aesthetic—that I’ve been unable to get out of my head since attending a screening of Jill Godmilow’s … Continue reading →

Culture Vultures Say Cheese: Filthy Dreams’ 60th Venice Biennale Fashion Report

I’m just back from the 60th Venice Biennale pre-opening. Expect my not-quite-a-review review on the main exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, soon. But first, here is my second bi-annual Venice Biennale Fashion Report! Half the thrill of attending the three-day pre-opening of the Venice Biennale is communing with perhaps the most internationally diverse … Continue reading →

Kim Gordon’s “The Collective” Is Breathing Down My Neck (And I Like It)

I’ve only visited Los Angeles once despite frequently returning to its sprawling noir imagery in some of my most beloved films and music. Yet, none of these—not even our Lady of Southern California, Lana Del Rey, or the master of its surreal seedy underbelly, David Lynch—has ever truly articulated my experience of contemporary Los Angeles. … Continue reading →

Is Mary Boone a Bloodsucker?: PTSD Flashbacks Induced by a New Vampire Weekend Song

Millennial band Vampire Weekend’s song “Mary Boone,” the eighth track off their recently released album Only God Was Above Us, has me reveling in nostalgia for and reliving the trauma of the ‘80s in New York. It’s surprising, considering that band members Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson were only born in the mid-‘80s. … Continue reading →

I Wanted to Hate Bianca Bosker’s “Get the Picture”

Volunteering to have your face sat on in public is all it takes to earn my respect. Apparently, anyway. The act of being smothered by a highly sought-after “ass influencer” at a gallery performance was the exact moment when I had to hand it to writer Bianca Bosker: she has dedication. In her art world … Continue reading →

Birth Scenes in Body Horror Movies Have Nothing on Clarity Haynes’s “Portals” at New Discretions

A minuscule flushed hand with five chubby fingers sticks out of a slick reddened birth canal as if waving from a seeping open wound. A rubber-gloved palm grabs the neck of a splotchy greenish-purple head, its rubbery face smushed and eyes slammed shut with yellow viscous fluid running from its nose. Another grumpy face, this … Continue reading →

Burning Love (And Evidence): “Love Lies Bleeding” Is a Lesbian True Romance

Little wet gelatinous orbs of yellow egg yolks, slopping over one another on the top of a trash heap, have never looked so erotic as in a memorable montage in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, dutifully separated from their whites for a healthier breakfast by Kristen Stewart’s reserved, choppy mulleted gym manager Lou for her … Continue reading →

Wild Gods: Adam Steiner’s “Darker with the Dawn: Nick Cave’s Songs of Love and Death” and “Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”

“Once upon a time, a wild god zoomed…” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ new song “Wild God” may be one of the more confounding in their forty-year run. Of course, there is no shortage of perplexing songs in the band’s extensive catalogue from the backbreaking labor of “Well of Misery” to the soupy stringed … Continue reading →

Unseen World: Katelyn Eichwald Keeps the Mystery Alive in “Talisman” at Fortnight Institute

Until dashing into Katelyn Eichwald’s solo show Talisman at Fortnight Institute to avoid standing in a downpour like an asshole outside of the opening of La MaMa Galleria’s Every Woman Biennial, I would have firmly declared myself anti-poetry in galleries (apart from readings or performances, of course). The poetry creep has been a long time … Continue reading →