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E’wao Kagoshima, Monkey Smoking, 2007; image from Algus Greenspon

Is the difference between eclecticism and pastiche simply a function of framing?  When an artist works in many different styles, let alone mediums, and the results are gathered together in one place, the outcome we regard as a kind of willed eclecticism.  When those styles all appear in a single work, or when their allusions to other works of art, or artists’ styles, are so strong as to be quickly recognizable, it’s pastiche.  But what happens when the frame that keeps eclecticism distinct from pastiche begins to slip, when we find ourselves caught in the midst of a search (for a style) and a comment (on “style” itself) without knowing which is which, or even if the question itself is valid (after all, who would think to talk about “style” anymore)? Valid or not, it is a question that will confront any viewer of E’wao Kagoshima’s output since 1976, which is when the artist arrived in New York and began the various artistic campaigns that are well represented at Mitchell Algus’s (and business partner Amy Greenspon’s) newest enterprise…

Read the rest in the forthcoming April issue of ArtReview or on ArtReview Digital.

Image: Monika Sosnowska, 2010 (installation view), photo: Thomas Mueller. Copyright the artist. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth London, New York, & Zurich.

My review of Monika Sosnowska’s first solo at Hauser & Wirth, NY, is up at artreviewdigitial.com (requires registration).

My write up of Tony Cox’s show from back in October now up at artreviewdigital.com (requires registration), along with the rest of the December issue.  PDFs of this and other recent writing will be updated soon.

My cover piece on Ryan Trecartin, from the summer issue, is now up at Artreview Digital (requires registration) and on the Articles page here.

It is tempting to say that Carol Bove’s show at Kimmerich’s new space in New York was, quite simply, beautiful, and leave it at that. It would not be wrong, either, to state as much, though it likely would be to leave it at that, not only because a show like this, with its conceptual underpinnings (Bove became known for her acute arrangements of historically symbolic items, such as touchstone books and photographs from the 1960s) and manifest attention to detail (no arrangement of things in a gallery has ever been more ‘acute’ than they are here) is after so much more than any mere pronouncement on what can count as beautiful, or perhaps ‘tasteful’, today, but also because one gets the sense that this is exactly what such beauty, or perhaps ‘taste’, is being asked to do – that is, to compel us not to go too far with any kind of enquiry…

Read the rest at artreview.com

Here is a link to a brief piece on Luis Camnitzer’s new project.  It’s a more personal reflection than I’m accustomed to, but I don’t really see any other way this work.

New material and links to published writing now updated on various pages (at right), and a new conversation going on at Art World Salon.

Also, ArtReview’s Power 100 issue has just gone live here.