Ksenia Soboleva
Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York based writer and art historian specializing in queer art and culture. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
In Conversation
Radcliffe Bailey with Ksenia M. Soboleva
Ksenia M. Soboleva sits down with Radcliffe Bailey to discuss the wide scope of multifaceted references in his artistic practice from ancestral deities to family travels. They dive into the important role that music plays in Bailey’s life and work, the potential for memories to function as medicine, and his intimate relationship to Atlanta, where the artist has lived almost his entire life.
In Conversation
Elle Pérez with Ksenia M. Soboleva
Elle Pérez locates intimacy that moves beyond bodily matter. Ranging from portraiture to landscape, their photographs capture the lived experience of bodies and nature, the transformations that occur across time and space. The distinct configurations in which Pérez presents their work in exhibition spaces offer a glimpse into the artist’s thought process, allowing the viewer into their creative constellation. I had the pleasure of being in conversation with Pérez on the occasion of their exhibition Devotions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as their inclusion in this year’s Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams. We spoke about their introduction to photography, its malleable qualities, and the ways in which thinking about gender has taken a backseat. Pérez generously described the process around Devotions, as well as the photographs in the Biennale, taking me on a journey to Puerto Rico and their first visit back after Hurricane Maria.
The Moon Seemed Lost
By Ksenia SobolevaThe dysfunctional moon described by Calvino’s story and the exhibition title could not appear more timely than today, as we face the instability of our own planet and society, our movement is drastically restricted, and we are forced to turn inward.
Nicole Eisenman: Untitled (Show)
By Ksenia SobolevaLast month, Eisenman opened Untitled (Show) featuring a total of twelve paintings and seven sculptures spread across two floors. The expansive room on the fifth floor presents a series of ten (mostly) large canvases depicting a range of subject matter.
Louise Fishman: Ballin’ the Jack
By Ksenia SobolevaWhat a brilliant cacophony of abstract gesture, I think to myself while taking in Ballin’ the Jack, Louise Fishman’s first solo exhibition at Karma Gallery in the East Village. The oil paintings on view in the main gallery revel in their messiness: thick strokes of paint crash into each other, clashing colors fighting for dominance, while the white gesso underneath reveals itself as a seductive promise of transcendence.
Looking Back / The 12th White Columns Annual
By Ksenia SobolevaThis year, the annual is organized by Mary Manning, an artist whose own practice revolves around mindful observation and the poetics of sequencing. Venturing out to see art during the pandemic became a welcome escape for Manning, while at the same time offering a space to contemplate everyday reality.
Gerald Jackson
By Ksenia SobolevaGerald Jackson’s elusive persona—he is known by many yet notoriously difficult to track down—is reflected in his multidisciplinary art practice, which evades easy categorization. Jackson steps back to center stage with the exhibition currently on view at Gordon Robichaux, the first full-scale presentation of his work mounted since the gallery began to represent him not long ago.
Marcia Resnick: As It Is or Could Be
By Ksenia SobolevaResnick’s portraits of iconic figures such as Sontag, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kathy Acker, and Gary Indiana, among others, have become well-known documents of a much-romanticized period in the history of New York. Yet few are familiar with the photographer’s multifaceted and wide-ranging practice beyond these portraits, something the curators of this retrospective, Resnick’s first ever, hope to change.
Flânerie in the Time of Corona
By Ksenia SobolevaBorn on Long Island in the 1960s, Fitzpatrick has somehow retained an unconditional enthusiasm for the simple textures of the world, a tendency that usually disappears with the onset of adulthood.
Barbara Hammer: Tell me there is a lesbian forever…
By Ksenia SobolevaCentered in the gallery rests a motorcycle, a relic of someone whose absence has been palpable since she left the realm of the living in 2019. Barbara Hammer is the subject of a museum-quality show, albeit in a gallery, curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden.
Kate Millett: Terminal Piece
By Ksenia SobolevaA palpable feeling of suspense suffuses the space of Kate Millett’s Terminal Piece (1972). 46 wooden chairs are installed in two long rows behind a parallel series of vertical wooden bars that span the length of the gallery. The lighting is dramatic, with seven light bulbs suspended from the ceiling illuminating the space within the cage-like structure, while the territory of the viewer remains dimmed.
Ebony G. Patterson: …to kiss a flower goodbye…
By Ksenia SobolevaIn her second solo exhibition at Hales Gallery, …to kiss a flower goodbye…, Ebony G. Patterson continues to explore the garden as a multilayered metaphor for the colonial histories embedded in the Caribbean landscape.
Ron Athey: Queer Communion
By Ksenia SobolevaThe fact that the world has had to wait until 2021 to see a Ron Athey retrospective is a tragedy. A queer icon who indisputably helped shape the role of the body in performance art, Athey has only recently started to receive long-overdue art historical recognition.
Samantha Nye: My Heart’s in a Whirl
By Ksenia SobolevaMarking a pivotal time in her career, Nye’s first solo exhibition My Heart’s in a Whirl is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Jonathan Berger: An Introduction to Nameless Love
By Ksenia SobolevaNot long before COVID-19 rendered in-person art viewing a faint memory, I walked into a dimly lit gallery where clusters of illuminated words appeared to float in space, like the digital rain of the Matrix. Yet unlike computer code, I could read these clusters of text—they were conversations, poems, confessions. “What can I ask you that nobody seems to ever ask you?” one began. “After months of being in that funk, I got accustomed to it,” another one continued.
Leidy Churchman: New You
By Ksenia SobolevaLeidy Churchman is a queer gift to the tradition of American landscape painting.
Silky Shoemaker: Billboard Project
By Ksenia SobolevaIf art is to play a role in political change, the first step is to get it out of the galleries and into the streets. Silky Shoemaker’s Billboard Project, a series of four graphically striking anti-Trump billboards installed in rural Pennsylvania, is one example.
Souls Grown Diaspora
By Ksenia SobolevaIt’s my first time at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, a cozy basement cabaret space that’s been around since 1983 and has retained much of its original charm. A dazzling woman wearing a shiny grey two-piece is scat singing to jazz music, performing the most creative cover of “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” that I have ever heard.
