Lilly Wei
Lilly Wei is a New York-based art critic and independent curator.
In Conversation
Suzanne Jackson with Lilly Wei
On the occasion of her solo exhibition, Listen’ N Home, at the Chicago Arts Club Suzanne Jackson spoke to Lilly Wei about her process of layering, the importance of titles, and the role history plays in her work and life.
In Conversation
MEL CHIN with Lilly Wei
Mel Chin is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist and activist. In addition to that, his work demonstrates a sense of play and poetry, a kind of quixotic romanticism that, however, does not preclude skepticism.
MoMA: How to Look at Modern Art-Wei
By Lilly WeiBy now, everyone knows that the renovated and greatly expanded Museum of Modern Art has re-opened, returning after a two and a half year residency—or exile, depending upon whom you’re talking to—in Queens. Leading the welcome home committee was The New York Times, which turned into The MoMA Times for the duration, reporting on every conceivable aspect of the project—before, during, after, still—omitting, it seems, only the brand of toilet paper available in the shining new bathrooms.
Crit Lit
By Lilly WeiCrisis has been the defining mode of our culture for so long that it seems a normal state. That said, I don’t believe that criticism, a hard-wired human impulse (wasn’t the Biblical lusting for the apple of knowledge the first step toward criticality?), is in particular crisis at the moment.
Bruce Pearson: Shadow Language
By Lilly WeiIn these recent paintings, the artist continues to steadfastly explore terrain that has preoccupied him for at least two decades. What he shows us is what might constitute a painting now, within a contemporary culture logged into perpetual overload in constant transition, which he both leans into and resists.
Shahzia Sikander: Havah…to breathe, air, life
By Lilly WeiIf you enter Madison Square Park at Fifth Avenue and 25th Street from now until early June, a resplendent, golden female figure confidently holding court from within a fenced lawn will greet you. Witness (2023) by Shahzia Sikander is impossible to miss.
Mia Westerlund Roosen: Aftermath
By Lilly WeiAftermath, Mia Westerlund Roosen’s fifth show with Betty Cuningham, is one of the sculptor’s most overtly political ventures, even if she has consistently advocated for feminist, environmental, and other topical issues over the years.
Katherine Bradford: Friends and Strangers
By Lilly WeiIt’s the high pitch of the colors of Waiting Room—the first painting you see upon entering the gallery—that will stop you in your tracks. The day outside was sunny, warm but the painting seemed even brighter, the brushy, scrambled yellows of the ground almost gilded, radiating their own heat and light.
Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Boy: Witness and Marker 2003 – 2018
By Lilly WeiBoyhood is the theme of this elegantly installed show although whether or not it is that of the artist Enrique Martínez Celaya is unclear—purposefully so.
CHRISTINE HIEBERT Reconnaissance: Three Wall Drawings
By Lilly WeiChristine Hiebert’s soaring installation, “Reconnaissance: Three Wall Drawings,” has been in residence on the top floor gallery of Wellesley College’s Davis Museum (designed by Rafael Moneo in 1993) for the past year.
Judith Murray: Continuum
By Lilly WeiJudith Murray is a New York-based abstract artist who, in the course of her long career, has shifted from a graphic, hard-edged style and sensibility to a more painterly mode, increasingly enamored, as is abundantly evident, by the luminosity and versatility of oils, her preferred medium.
Roots/Anchors
By Lilly WeiThe Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center is part of a vast, venerable, and somewhat unruly complex on the northeast shore of Staten Island. Melissa West, the director of the Newhouse, zoomed in on the site’s history to curate Roots/Anchors, an engrossing, multi-layered exhibition currently on view there.
DOUG WADA Americana
By Lilly WeiAmericana is the name of Doug Wada’s smart, smashing show of new paintings, which coolly depict spot-on artifacts/icons of postwar American life.
Richard Nonas: As Light Through Fog
By Lilly WeiFor Richard Nonas's seventh show at Fergus McCaffery, As Light Through a Fog, the works on view are divided between wall and floor, wood and steel, between pre-industrial and industrialized materials, nature and culture.
Studio in a School
By Lilly WeiIt was 1976 and New York City careened from one fiscal crisis to another. Upon opening The New York Times one morning, Agnes Gund, one of New York’s most beloved and generous philanthropists, learned that art classes in the city’s public elementary schools would be cut due to yet another budgetary shortfall.
