Upon completion of the mural at Mexico’s University of Michoacan in 1935, David Alfaro Siqueiros proclaimed, “It is my honest belief that Phillip Goldstein and Reuben Kadish are the most promising young painters in either the U.S. or Mexico.”

In two concurrent exhibitions at Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery, China Blue and Carol Salmanson push beyond the limits set by formalism, articulating a notion of space through sound and luminescence.

There were only three works on display in Reuben Kadish’s Holocaust Sculpture at the Yeshiva University Museum, but those three spoke volumes about the visceral force of an artistic maverick who unaccountably remains in the margins of post-WWII American art history.

This call is written from a deep feeling of frustration with things as they are in the art world, a feeling shared by many art critics today. Consequently, I believe that we as art critics begin to deal with a series of questions.

Set nearby the warehouse waterfront of Queens that is slowly being transformed into new urban developments, the SculptureCenter presents two exhibitions of equally grand scale that address pointed critiques of our postindustrial era. A monumental sculptural installation by Nancy Rubins and a large group exhibition titled Denial Is A River explore our collective iconography as it has been built up by the mass market throughout the last decade through physical and intellectual deconstruction, while suggesting new meanings with wit and cynicism.

While much of gay identity has been based within the modern image or film depicting either pornographic poses or sexual acts, the very nature of what it has meant to be gay has stayed outside the margins of mainstream society. American painter Thomas Eakins once depicted a group of nude men in “The Swimming Hole” (1884–85), who are portrayed collectively as young Adoni, either swimming or sunning within a serene landscape.

Currently on view at the Maya Stendhal Gallery until April 15th, Fluxus: To George With Love, From the Personal Collection of Jonas Mekas is brilliantly curated by Liutauras Psibilskis. One is at once reminded of George Maciunas’s radical and inventive spirit.

While trendy art centers like Chelsea and Williamsburg begin to look more alike as both continue to transform into icons of corporate gentrification, fresh ideas and artistic ingenuity can be found within the small unbecoming galleries that populate the East Village and Lower East Side neighborhoods.

With the opening of Manuel Pardo’s Metaplasmic, the Van Brunt gallery inaugurated its second space, located on 819 Washington Street, near the meat-packing district. Originally from Beacon, Carl van Brunt and Rose Burlingham decided to expand their operations to Manhattan, featuring an entirely different roster of contemporary artists.

As each day passes, automatism saturates deeper into everyday life. Natural spontaneity has been stifled by technological convenience, a fact frequently misplaced within individual routines. Ben Parry’s cluttered installations and prints are extremely witty and sensationalize the mundane through the construction of mechanically engineered performances.

There is no question that American policies and globalization have oppressed citizens in Second and Third World countries. The riots waged against the WTO convention in Seattle in 1999 protested the use of corporate sweatshops, where low-wage laborers have literally worked their lives away while creating commodities for Western capitalist markets.