Cigdem Asatekin
is an art writer and painter based in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She publishes in Degree Critical regularly.
A Bridge Between You and Everything: An Exhibition of Iranian Women Artists
By Cigdem AsatekinOrganized by the Center for Human Rights in Iran and curated by Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat, A Bridge Between You and Everything features 13 contemporary Iranian women artists.
Julia Rooney: @SomeHighTide
By Cigdem AsatekinThe scale and imperfect edges of Julia Rooney’s paintings at Arts+Leisure are remarkable. Affixed to the window, a handmade, colorfully agitating QR code on a two by two-foot square canvas welcomes the viewer into the gallery. Inside the space, the size of the canvases diminishes, but their impact remains.
Saul Chernick: Enlightened Objects
By Cigdem AsatekinSaul Chernick’s Enlightened Objects are both physically and perceptively sensible.
Grayson Cox and Joan Waltemath: Apparatus
By Cigdem AsatekinApparatus, curated by the artist and writer A.V. Ryan, gathers together Cox and Waltemath’s work in a contemporary yet timeless setting, as it takes its main inspiration from the current global crisis surrounding COVID-19 and a Giorgio Agamben essay, “What Is an Apparatus?”.
Susan Bernofsky’s Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
By Cigdem AsatekinClairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser (Yale University Press, 2021) is an affectionate, precise piece of writing that illustrates a man of complexities both personal and professional. It is an intimate portrait of an artist, soul-crushing in its realism, with all its valor and rigor.
Lucy Ives’s Cosmogony
By Cigdem AsatekinCosmogony consists of 12 stories, every single one a profound narrative that takes a different form. When they get surreal, they are reminiscent of dream sequences. Even when they don’t, there is the slight hint of something unearthly, or at least uncanny throughout the book.
