Critics Page
On Flux
By Adriana Farmiga“Clean, Flux, Solder, and Heat”: the order of operations for joining metals. In this process of metalworking, flux is indispensable as a chemical agent that prevents funk and oxidation—though it should not be thought of as an antioxidant, like, you know, blueberries. You wouldn’t want to ingest flux: it is highly corrosive, and it can actually cause a bit of drama in your joinery if it’s used improperly, or without precision and purpose. But as a mediating material between a metal surface and solder, flux facilitates amalgamation, and it generally makes for better transitions in a state of heat and flow.
In My Dream
By Nayland BlakeIn my dream a fellow artist was hugging me and then I saw a member of my family wandering the street in a dress sewn from army surplus leather bags. It was sunny.
A Few Paper Clips and A Couple Million Years
By David BrooksFeeding on caterpillars, beetles, spiders, and spider eggs, the blackpoll warbler will double its body weight to fly 20,000 kilometers from its summer habitat of the Canadian boreal forests nonstop overwater to winter in the Amazon. Challenging our imaginations, this twelve-grams-of-feathers has the longest overwater flight known of any songbird.
The Price of Chaufa
By William CordovaThe price of Chaufa references Peruvian Chinese Fried Rice. The mix of ingredients and their multiple geographic origins, parallels. Complex and diverse societies are essential to existence. Sometimes this mix of diversity is so easy to see in a bowl of Chaufa that we just need to pause and appreciate it for what it is.
Reverse Pangaea
By Christian HincapiéI. There is a small park in the South Bronx, adjacent to the larger St. Mary’s Park that for a long time had a simple mural that read “I-Am-Park.” I always noticed and admired it as a clear affirmation of presence. I am park. Since I moved to the Bronx in 2014, there has been a push for gentrification and development both by the city and private enterprise. Things go away when there is development. This displacement, the impermanence of things, is one of the reasons I make my large scale rubbings.
Double Slit
By Fawn KriegerIn Quantum mechanics, the Double Slit is the name of an experiment that reveals the simultaneous nature of energy and matter, as well as the imprint consciousness has on our material world. Is the body a wave or a thing, an event or a subject? Do we move in stops and starts or is our lens too small to see the flow? Maybe we are always in simultaneous states of pause and action, if we could only see energy and matter at once.
Flux in 3 Parts
By Rindon JohnsonI do not pursue quietly, I devour. In winter, I flew to Berlin to see you. You told me about these fountains that you used to take the long way to see. The fountains were large stone cubes placed in the courtyards of all these new office blocks that went up around your eastern Berlin subway station. When the cubes were first placed they were new and beautiful.
WORD
By Michael JooWe’rethinkingaboutthedeaoffluxandfluxesasagamemechanicwhenwefirstglimpsedthewindfallitwasonlyaflashbutthereitwasTheskywasclearnocloudsandtherewasnodewThedaywasoutwewereupandthewaterwasmakinganefforttoboilwhenwenoticedthefluxcomingit'soneofthesewords
Al río / To the River
By Zoe LeonardFor the last six years, Zoe Leonard has been making photographs along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, particularly the many miles where the river is used to demarcate the border between the US and Mexico. The work is informed by the artist’s deep consideration of the river as a natural entity, and the human constructions engineered to control the movement of water, people, and commerce. The result of this durational engagement is a large-scale work, the first part of which is printed here: a series of eight close-ups of the river surface that expose and amplify the shifting tensions in the water's surface.
Siboney
By Joiri MinayaSiboney (2014) is an artwork where painting, video and performance document the movement and transformation of pigment, body, labor, desire, projection, representation. I spent a month hand-painting a design from a found piece of fabric onto a museum wall. I then poured water on myself and scrubbed my body against the wall, while dancing to the beat of the song “Siboney” by Connie Francis.
Club of Joe Schmo
By Louis OsmosisAllegiance seems to always be marked by its precarity, and precarity begets the asset. No value without speculation, no worth without conjecture. The movie trope of the perp storming through an airport terminal going about an act of quick change is fitting here since they usually end up looking like an art advisor. People flip like how art is flipped like how houses are flipped. Or like how the biggest short worked to short the biggest.
The Interconnectedness of Making Ice
By Elizabeth ShannonI will begin making ice any day now. After all, New Orleans and the region are approaching the most active part of hurricane season—August. The information begins flowing at the end of May, shortly after another season of spring festivals, which finally commenced this year with joyous participation.
In Conversation
Excerpt from Benjamin Patterson with Kathy Goncharov
By Sam VernonThe excerpt is from an oral history transcript of a recorded interview with Benjamin Patterson on May 22, 2009.
