Gabriel Acevedo Velarde
Arratia Beer // September 11–October 18
At first glance, there seems to be little dialogue between Velarde’s geometric paintings and music videos, but upon closer examination, they playfully expose the failures of two modernist aesthetic strategies: abstraction and montage. “Sketches for an Airport’s Hallway,” a series of canvases, whose title implies banal corporate design, toys with the former. In his videos, Velarde employs the latter to criticize Peru’s consumerist modernity; yet the mesmerizing images set to catchy electronic beats provocatively drown out the message.
“Pictures, Before and After”
Galerie Buchholz // August 28–October 31
This fascinating tribute to art historian, cultural theorist, and activist Douglas Crimp brings together an array of objects and figures from Agnes Martin to Gran Fury, divulging the many aesthetic, social, and political issues that have occupied him during his long career. Unfortunately, the University of Rochester professor’s published texts lie in vitrines, restricting the viewer from accessing the works that make Crimp so deserving of the exhibition.
Fernando Bryce
Galerie Barbara Thumm // September 20–November 8
Newspaper articles, film stills, portraits, book covers, and advertisements dating from both World Wars fill the gallery, but only by way of Bryce’s mimetic analysis: his signature practice of copying archival material by hand. In reproducing these artifacts with such an imperfect process and installing them in politically divergent constellations, Bryce strips these images of their historical and mechanical authority, showing them to be just as subjective and suspicious as any scribbled note.
A version of this article appears in the December 2014 issue of Modern Painters magazine.
