Mayhew has not been embraced by the art world because the trajectory he has pursued challenges the categories to which Black artists are consigned.
John Yau
John Yau has published books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His latest poetry publications include a book of poems, Further Adventures in Monochrome (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), and the chapbook, Egyptian Sonnets (Rain Taxi, 2012). His most recent monographs are Catherine Murphy (Rizzoli, 2016), the first book on the artist, and Richard Artschwager: Into the Desert (Black Dog Publishing, 2015). He has also written monographs on A. R. Penck, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. In 1999, he started Black Square Editions, a small press devoted to poetry, fiction, translation, and criticism. He was the Arts Editor for the Brooklyn Rail (2007–2011) before he began writing regularly for Hyperallergic. He is a Professor of Critical Studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University).
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Trompe L’oeil With a Touch of BDSM
Sarah Palmer melds a formal device of trompe l’oeil with her content, which largely relates to the objectification of women and how women choose to present or stage themselves.
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Dreaming in the Afternoon Light
Through her attention to detail and light, Hannah Lee transforms a banal view into something uncanny.
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Let Legibility in Art Be Damned
The slippage between legibility and illegibility in Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s work pushes against the assumption that a painting must acknowledge its surface.
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Liu Xiaodong’s Empathetic Eye
One of the underlying commonalities among the sites Liu has painted is the deleterious consequences of modernization on a traditional society or group.
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The Dreams and Demons of Bob Thompson
Thompson wanted to author a world where the struggle between chaos and order, structure and impulse, the rational and irrational is never settled.
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Poetry in the Expanded Field
An unclassifiable artist and a deep reader, Jen Bervin has expanded the notion of what it is to be a poet in the 21st century.
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The Joys of Watching Paint Dry
In contrast to the speed and bravura of gestural abstraction, new.shiver slows time, and invites viewers to ponder how one might shape time passing.
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Mie Yim’s Howls of Uncertainty
Her work derives its power from the instability of not knowing exactly what ground you’re standing on when looking at it.
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Matt Bollinger, Painter of the Forgotten
By dealing with class in his art, Bollinger touches on the strain infecting the current “us and them” situation in the United States.
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A Tension in Paint Befitting Our Times
Maia Ruth Lee wants viewers to make associations as well as recognize the unstable world in which she and many others live.
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New York Has Something to Learn From San Francisco
The city could use more political public murals like those of the artist known as Rigo 23.
