October 2024 – BRIGHTSTONEMARBLE

Watering False Flowers: Erin M. Riley’s Textiles Debut in Paris

Years ago, in an interview with Erin M. Riley, she told us “For a long time, I tried to remain respectful, but finally realized that while my work is made on a loom, these pieces are not traditional by any means, and rather than call them tapestries, I have just started describing them by the materials they are made with. I do love talking with the students who are studying textiles currently. They are excited about the work I am making, and I am glad they can see a different way of using materials that have been untapped and underappreciated for so long.” Why this stood out to me, years later, as Riley opened Watering False Flowers in her debut in…

HUSKMITNAVN: A New Day @ V1 Gallery, Copenhagen

There is something so comforting about a HUSKMITNAVN show at V1 Gallery. Not that the work is comfortable, but that you know HUSKMITNAVN will paint about domestic life in a way that feels relatable, or create a collective sense of anxiety and humor in his illustrations. It’s comforting because you know he has an eye out for us, he’s paying attention, he gets it, he gets what is going on at home. He has always had an empathetic eye, and in A New Day, that understanding of the mundane being profound is ever so apparent. As the gallery notes, “There is a joyful defiance in A New Day, a sort of call to arms to appreciate and celebrate our daily lives. If…

GATS Comes Out at “Midnight”

The perks and drawbacks of being a masked figure are roughly the same: nobody can know you. While this anonymity frees graffiti artists like GATS (Graffiti Against the System), it also means the painter has had to connect with their audience beyond a personal identity. Over decades of painting city walls, warehouses, underpasses, and highways worldwide, GATS has built a community that instantly recognizes the bearded or toothed mask as representing the artist’s presence. In their newest solo exhibition with Harman Projects, Midnight, GATS recontextualizes the familiar masked face with a sense of play and irreverence, leaning into the freedom of being a masked figure themselves.

After 50 Years, FUTURA 2000 is Finally “Breaking Out”

Right from the jump; it’s all here. FUTURA 2000, the Bronx, graffiti, street culture, 50 years of art history…, like there are few art forms, and an artist for that matter, that represent a particular era (and the transcendence of said era to move through the years) quite like FUTURA. He and graffiti go together, even though FUTURA didn’t linger in graff for too long. He took the freedom, the expression of it, and took it with him. I think that is an important part of the lore of the great FUTURA; his is a story of taking the essence of a thing and moving it through his life, applying it to all endeavors while not repeating the act to…

JIM JOE’s “Practice in Public” is a Fascinating Exploration and Use of Public Space

It’s a process of patience. JIM JOE, famous in that he is famously mostly reluctant to take a spotlight or showcase himself in public, made an entire project in public. Perhaps the most public place he could, at the New York Public Library, exploring two branches located on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Street in their rich and vast resoruces of pictures they have in their archive. As the 2023 Picture Collection Artist Fellow, JIM JOE made all the works in this show, Practice in Public, now on view at Entrance, all inside the library. What is fascinating about this, even through his reinterpretations and reimagining imagery both obscure and iconic is the discipline in which JOE have himself.…