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Today’s column is the fourth in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Aware of how difficult it can be to draw a convincing sketch of, say, a sailboat, during a game of Pictionary, many of us are awe-struck by an artist’s ability to create a painting that copies nature so exactly that it’s mistaken for a photograph. It takes years of careful observation and daily practice to master realist techniques. It isn’t easy.

Friday, November 14, 2008 at 2:00 PM
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

Today’s column is the third in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Last year, William Siegal moved his gallery from the corner of Palace and Grant avenues to a 5,000-square-foot space in the Railyard. The move allowed him to hang the Andean textiles and Meso/South American, Chinese, Southeast Asian and African antiquities he has assembled over three decades next to mid-century and contemporary art. This...

Friday, November 7, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

Today’s column is the second in a fourpart series about group exhibitions. These reviews illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

“Re-New,” the Santa Fe Community Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, highlights the diversity and breadth of New Mexico art and craft. According to gallery manager Robert Lambert, 78 artists submitted portfolios and additional artists were recommended or discovered. A curatorial committee of four arts professionals who represent local galleries and...

Friday, October 31, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

Today’s column is the first in a four-part series about group exhibitions. These reviews will illuminate the qualities that make (or break) a group show and the curatorial decisions that successfully frame multiple perspectives under a singular vision.

Eila Kovanen and Michael Wong were students at the San Francisco Art Institute when they met five years ago. “We were both trying to understand how to make work about our emotional experiences,” Wong stated in an instant message, “and we were thinking about how to do that as individuals and collaboratively.”

Friday, October 24, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

There is no other way to say it: this is a stunning exhibition. Constance DeJong’s works cause the viewer to forget the world and the self — to stop thinking. Using a reductive palette of materials, DeJong has created works that one might dare to call sacred –– sacred in that spontaneous, visceral way in which one experiences an object before a thought takes hold.

In her exhibition, “Shift,” on view at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art through Oct. 31, DeJong has reduced terror and beauty, dark and light, the somber and transcendent, into a sublime, aesthetic awe. It would be simple, and...

Friday, October 17, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

One of the pioneers of abstraction, the Russian-born Kazimir Malevich, coined the term Suprematism in 1915 to describe a type of artistic practice that rejected narrative, social or political content in art and instead championed works of pure form with spiritual qualities. Along with Piet Mondrian, he is often cited as a forefather of 1960s and ’70s Minimalism.

In his 1918 painting “Suprematist Composition: White on White,” Malevich tried to eliminate all superfluous elements, including color. This landmark work was followed by a series of plaster sculptures he called “architectons,”...

Friday, October 10, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

Three artists — David Jones, Patrick Kikut and Edgar Smith — have combined their perceptual and conceptual visions to explore the western landscape in “Artist Point” at the College of Santa Fe Fine Arts Gallery, on view through Oct. 17. According to Kikut, “the title ‘Artist Point’ designates a landscape as well as signifying the simple action of pointing to a particular place or thing.” What, exactly, are these three artists, who teach at the University of Montana and the University of Wyoming, pointing to?

David Jones’ sculptures are small, doll house-like scenes of landscape colonized...

Friday, September 26, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

Early in his career, Picasso didn’t believe in mixing politics with art. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, appalled by Franco’s actions, he became a passionate supporter of the Republic. But when asked to create an anti-war mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair, Picasso was reluctant. And then a small Basque village in northern Spain was bombed for over three hours, killing 1,600 people. Picasso, outraged, immediately began sketches for “Guernica,” the seminal anti-war artwork of the century. Picasso’s art did not stop any war, but it did stir people up, and...

Friday, September 19, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

The popularity of organic produce is due, in part, to the rise of genetically modified (GMO) foods over the past decade. In a country like the United States, where labeling of GMO foods is not required, it is likely that all but the most diligent organic consumers in America are buying and swallowing GMO products every day.

Genetic engineering has allowed scientists to create plants that produce human insulin and soybeans that won’t die even when drenched in Roundup. Charles Amtzen at Cornell University is working on “edible vaccines” placed genetically inside of bananas.

Friday, September 5, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe

Imagine being a 14th-century monk traveling across the country. At each stop along the way a temporary temple will be set up, including all of the ritual paraphernalia and everything needed for an altar. Today we have 18-wheeler trucks for fancy road shows, but centuries ago, everything was transported on foot and by horseback.

Welcome the thangka. Originating in India, thangkas, or scroll paintings on fabric, were used by religious pilgrims when giving talks on the basics of Buddhist philosophy. Nomadic Tibetan monks adopted the thangka as an alternative to the temple fresco. Once...

Friday, August 29, 2008
by Kim Russo • Journal Santa Fe