I Get Around

The latest issue of Big Red & Shiny includes my review of the DeCordova Museum's annual summer exhibition. A snippet:

The main problem with the 2006 DeCordova Annual Exhibition, aside from its predictable unevenness, is that the work within doesn't interrelate very well. Each of the thirteen artists selected (counting a two artist team) presents a body of work that seems to inhabit its own world. There are some common themes, to be sure. According to the museum's summer newsletter, these include "the social and visual impact of science; the dynamic relationship between architecture and experience; the visual power of language; increasingly diverse uses of drawing; and ordered and disordered systems within nature". These are all more or less relevant, as far as such abstractions go. Still—and though I realize it is entirely typical of survey shows like this one—the show feels more scattered and diffuse than it needs to be. All of this is particularly difficult for the reviewer, who wants to make such a show seem more coherent and collectively meaningful than it is in the flesh.

Here is the whole thing. For those of you who don't know, BRS is a great online arts journal based in Boston, Massachusetts and focusing on the art scene there.