Akrylic

Video Art in the Digital Era

Randy Gladman — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:12:23 +0000

By Randy Gladman The glorious invention of digital editing software and plasma flat screen monitors in the 1990s injected new life into Video Art, a previously anemic and fringe visual culture format that had always struggled to compete with Painting, Photography, and Film, its more alluring cousins. Though a few artists working with clunky, low-res [...]

Why We Collect: The Unique Bond

Randy Gladman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:54:37 +0000

By Randy Gladman A vast array of analytical essays exists in the blogosphere that seeks to explain why we collect art. Like trying to understand why we fall in love, the gamut of explanations is at once highly diverse yet difficult to nail down. The need for decorative embellishment, the expected investment value, the putting [...]

Hydroponic Hot House: The Singapore Biennale 2011

Randy Gladman — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:25:57 +0000

By Randy Gladman Arriving a few days ago in this wealthy city-state at the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula in order to attend the third Singapore Biennale, I wondered what type of contemporary arts could thrive in a city whose well-earned reputation is one of fabricated perfection and paternal government control. Could unvarnished intellectual [...]

How Street Art is Taking its Seat at the Table of High Culture

Randy Gladman — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:27:20 +0000

By Randy Gladman The website of the Southeastern Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, recently posted a six-minute long time-lapse video of the production of an onsite mural painted by the artist Dalek (James Marshall) and his team of assistants. Created for the exhibition North Carolina New Contemporary, Dalek’s vibrant and kaleidoscopic [...]

The Three Ring Miami Art Circus

Randy Gladman — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:32:38 +0000

By Randy Gladman I’ve resisted attending the annual art carnival that is Art Basel Miami Beach since my last excursion in 2003. From that trip, during the convention’s second iteration, all I remember is a blur of expensive cars, beautiful women at exclusive parties in boutique South Beach hotels, and an ocean of vodka. (Some [...]

Interview with Gallerist Cristin Tierney

Randy Gladman — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 01:00:28 +0000

By Randy Gladman Some management gurus say there is no better time to start a new business than in the belly of a recessionary dip. While cautionary conservatism and fearful retreat seem to characterize conventional behavior during bad days, the contrarian view is that economic slowdowns are exactly the right times to gear up for [...]

The Artists Who Wield Ideas Like Burning Torches

Randy Gladman — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:40:14 +0000

By Randy Gladman Contemporary culture is at its best when it is fresh and stuffed with wide-ranging and original ideas. Many of the most interesting contributors to the current arts have a fierce facility with extreme variety. While many of us get trapped in whirlpools where our bright ideas get replayed until they grow dull, [...]

Inquisition of Conrad Black

Randy Gladman — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:28:42 +0000

By Randy Gladman Mexican beer company Dos Equis recently ran a wonderful advertising campaign, presenting “The Most Interesting Man in the World”. In these radio and television spots, a dignified, slightly accented, well-dressed, rough yet sophisticated man is described in impossibly exciting detail. “The police often question him, just because they find him interesting. His [...]

Rewind: Dalek

Randy Gladman — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:46:49 +0000

By Randy Gladman Dalek’s first solo exhibition in Canada introduced Toronto audiences to a Brooklyn-based member of a large underground urban art movement that is attracting attention in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. While the group is still effectively unnamed, the members of this loose affiliation—Shepard Fairey, KAWS, Twist (Barry McGee), Phil Frost, Evan [...]

Matt Bahen at Moore Gallery

Randy Gladman — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:15:38 +0000

By Randy Gladman One of the strange and disappointing characteristics of the Toronto art scene is the way our local and national art critics have a knack of missing important exhibitions. In 2004, Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini, hosted a museum quality posthumous exhibition of the work of Joseph Beuys, marking the twentieth anniversary of that legendary German [...]