Author: Lyz Bly, PhD

Winter/Spring at moCa: a Look Ahead

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Opening on Friday, January 24 are three exhibitions: Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature; Birthing Beautiful Communities: Dear; and (curated by MOCA’s recent hire, Curator and Deputy Director, DJ Hellerman) Harminder Judge: Bootstrap Paradox. This is the first U.S. exhibition by British artist Harminder, whose vibrant plaster-and-pigment pieces merge painting and sculpture, embedding paint in form, making fields of sinuous […]

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Attempt to Imagine: Possibility for Repair, at CIA

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Possibility For Repair, on view at the Reinberger Gallery through February 9, opened just three days after the November 5 election. The show is an attempt to imagine reparations for the systemic elite white supremacy and unchecked, hegemonic European-Christian values that buttresses our collective American histories. Artists Lyndon Barrois, Jr., Mark Thomas Gibson, Sarah Kabot, M. Carmen Lane, and Jessica […]

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Uncensored: Liquid Sex at Art on Madison

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  Nico Pico Train’s “Uncensored: Liquid Sex Series” (on view through March 30 at Art on Madison) ingeniously poses more questions than answers about sex, American-style, circa the fall of 2018 and the winter of 2019. Her images of bodies and their parts in various states of sexual arousal make for a stunningly beautiful, yet awkwardly candid portrayal of sexual […]

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From Woman XII at Lakeland

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If we learned anything about women and gender-queer folks over the last two years and two months, it is that we are resilient, powerful survivor-warriors. What seems clear both locally and globally for women in living in the Orange Era, is what artist Barbra Kruger plainly stated 30 years ago in her stark photo text piece: “Your body is a […]

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Outsider: The loss and lost work of Dwayne Pigee (1974 – 2016)

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  Humans are complicated, flawed, and nuanced beings. Artists are no exception, and oftentimes  personal struggles, even mental illnesses, are central to our fascination with them and their creations. We make sense out of the world through narratives, and artists are our cultural alchemists, transforming emotion and thought into physical form, which are beautiful, and often emotionally evocative. To know […]

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Frank Green (July 28, 1957–January 23, 2013)

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In art and in life, Frank Green made it his mission to push boundaries and make people uncomfortable. In the early nineties he butted heads with Thomas Mulready, director of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, over the length of his performances. Frank wasn’t interested in editing his work to fit anyone’s schedule. While this made for a tense  relationship between two doyennes of the city’s performance […]

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