“Big City” at Phoenix Art Museum: There isn’t a single image of the PHX among the cityscapes and urban life scenes drawn from PAM’s permanent collection. That’s odd, seeing as how we’re the nation’s fifth or sixth largest metropolis. The omission is partly because of the age of the work,…
Most Americans don’t think much about China. The nation that’s home to 20 percent of the people on the planet is a murky place that hovers behind low price tags and bird flu. Few of us think of China as a producer of first-rate contemporary art that gazes out at…
If you want to see how a painter’s brain is different from the gray matter of people who don’t know which end of a paintbrush to hold, go look at Jennifer Bartlett’s retrospective at Bentley Projects. The show, composed of 30 paintings, sculptures and constructions chosen by the artist herself,…
Ruben Maqueda at Museo Chicano: Ruben Maqueda brings contemporary kick to some of the work in this show of photography and folk art. His glitter-bedecked, candy-colored photos of descansos are digital age-meets-dollar store, a knowing wink at the anti-intellectualism that runs beneath much folk art. And his Day of the…
Hector Ruiz is one of the most talented artists in the city. His visceral woodblock prints, woodcarvings and papier-mâch&ecute; installations show what life in America in 2005 is like for anyone who isn’t a white male. He also runs a gallery in an old auto repair shop on Grand Avenue,…
There isn’t a single image of Phoenix in the “Big City: Cityscapes and Urban Life” exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum. Which is odd, seeing as how there are only a handful of cities in the country bigger than this one. Don’t we rate at least one tiny watercolor in a…
“Private Pictures” at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art: Some superstars of photography come together in this exhibition of images owned by Arizona collectors. Classic photos by Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Cindy Sherman, Henri Cartier Bresson and Tina Modetti prove there are people in this state who have a lot of…
Live in the Southwest long enough, mi’ja, and you would rather eat live fire ants than look at one more gallery full of quaint, decorator-friendly Latino folk art. Ruben Maqueda makes art in this tradition, but mercifully, Maqueda manages to bring some contemporary kick to “Tradiciones de Mi Gente (Traditions…
Stella Lai at ASU Art Museum: Lai’s deceptively pretty paintings are about how ugly it is to be a woman or an animal in her native Hong Kong. Sad yellow chicken carcasses and plump pink pork chops morph into faceless silhouettes of swimsuit-clad women, and a roasted pig, cherry tomato…
A trio of female authors reading their novels at an event called the First Fiction “Diva” Tour must be a chick-lit thing, right? Wrong. Not one of the debut novelists featured on the tour writes about weight-obsessed women with lamentable love lives and penchants for Jimmy Choos. All three authors…
Colin Chillag’s paintings at Modified Arts make you feel like you’ve seen them before, in an earlier life. The one of a grandmotherly woman holding a baby is eerily familiar, as is the one of the middle-aged couple standing in front of an elaborately decorated cake. We’ve all lived these…
Some superstars of photography come together in a fascinating exhibition of photographs at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. “Private Pictures: Photography From Arizona Collections” features work by classic shooters like Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Cindy Sherman, Henri Cartier Bresson and Tina Modetti. It’s a greatest-hits show, the art world…
Michael Eastman’s “America” at Bentley Projects: The ambient desolation of Michael Eastman’s photographs of empty streetscapes and seedy interiors seems prophetic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s leveling of New Orleans. At least two of the photos in this exhibition were made in the city, pre-storm. His portrait of a…
Sculptor Melissa Martinez, 29, combines materials like cactus needles and concrete into stark, elegiac pieces about the natural world vanishing beneath the pavement of our eternally expanding city. The Chicago native came to the Valley a dozen years ago to get a degree in sculpture from Arizona State University. She…
Navajo artist Will Wilson knows about the pain of surviving cultural apocalypse, and how difficult it is to keep one’s traditions relevant in a strange new world. Native Americans have been struggling with this since Columbus dropped anchor in the Caribbean. Forcible removable from tribal lands, devastating epidemics, lost wars,…
At first glance, Stella Lai’s paintings look like benign decorations, all delicate flowers, bright colors and pretty Chinese calligraphy. Look closer, and you’ll see her Asian-influenced pieces are actually about how rotten it is being a woman or an animal in her native Hong Kong, where the culture is apparently…
You can’t chuck a Grand Canyon snow globe in the Southwest without hitting a Luis Jimenez sculpture. His biliously colored, Pop Art-goes-Chicano depictions of cowboys, horses, Indians and other iconic figures of the West are a fixture of university concourses and art museum sculpture gardens from Phoenix to Houston. Jimenez…
Michael Eastman’s “America” at Bentley Projects: The ambient desolation of Michael Eastman’s photographs of empty streetscapes and seedy interiors seems prophetic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s leveling of New Orleans. At least two of the photos in this exhibition were made in the city, pre-storm. His portrait of a…
Nelson Garcia at the Chocolate Factory: You can feel the throb of the tropics in Phoenix artist Nelson Garcia’s surreal abstractions. Vivid colors undulate and biomorphic shapes seem to quiver with life in paintings and prints that show what his native Cuba feels like. The cigars, the heat, the humidity,…
The Arizona Print Group and Writers Bloc team up for “Urban Legends,” an exhibition of prose, poetry and prints about those apocryphal stories that float around the culture and illuminate our fears by their very silliness. You know the ones: poisoned ATM deposit envelopes, the escaped serial killer with a…
Michael Eastman’s unpopulated photographs of empty streetscapes and seedy interiors occupy the same desolate ward as Edward Hopper’s diner and Walker Evans’ still lifes. Boarded-up theaters, abandoned houses and shabby rooms tell of entropy, imploding communities, empty dreams, and a center that cannot hold. You know the drill. That’s why…
“Hector Ruiz: La Realidad (Reality)” at the Heard Museum: Phoenix artist Hector Ruiz fires a shot between the eyes of American values with wood carvings, block prints, and mixed-media assemblages that address racism, border issues and capitalism. A King Kong-size blonde crushes a hapless businessman in her manicured hands in…
