Cristina Rivera Garza’s Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country

By Yvonne C. Garrett

OCT 2020 | Books

Across some 200 pages, Garza applies a lingual scalpel to the narrative of systemic violence: a narrative enacted on both sides of the border by governments, law enforcement, drug cartels, and the media who sensationalize, erase, or ignore the violence. She

CARLOS REYES:
West Side Club

By Vijay Masharani

APR 2018 | ArtSeen

In his first exhibition with Bodega, Carlos Reyes showcases a series of sculptures constructed from wood salvaged from the sauna of the West Side Club. Described on the club’s website as a “premier social relaxation club for gay and bisexual men,” the West Side Club has been at its Chelsea location since 1995.

HELEN O’LEARY: 
Home is a Foreign Country

By Ann McCoy

JUNE 2018 | ArtSeen

Helen O’Leary’s work, which has its formation in Irish linguistics, gives us an inspired version of an Irish art rooted in a sense of place in rural Ireland. The late nineteenth century Gaelic revival (Athbheochan na Gaeilge), advocated for a return to the Irish language, and O’Leary’s psyche is firmly planted in that tongue. O’Leary’s art originates from a life lived on a farm in rural Ireland, and a spiritual connection to that land and rural way of life. In a time when many younger Irish artists have adopted critical theory, digital technology, and international styles severed from their cultural roots, O’Leary’s work possesses a life-lived authenticity and hands-on craftsmanship that sets it apart.

Side Issues

By George Rush

OCT 2020 | Critics Page

With the notable exception of the brilliant Beverly Fishman, who encouraged us to question all forms of painting, my education didn’t really consider the sides of paintings. They were painted white—that ever-problematic stand-in for neutrality—or stained by action on the front, but more often simply ignored.