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TURNER PRIZE: RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU ARE AN ARTIST
In Britain, October is more than the ninth month of the year, but boasts the opening exhibit for the Turner Prize finalists short-listed for the award. For |
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ADIA MILLETT'S SPACE BETWEEN
This is the house that Adia built. This is the lamp that sits in the house that Adia built. This is the space that surrounds the lamp that |
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RENEE STOUT’S DAILY BREAD
If you ask Renee Stout about her work she might first tell you that she is a "healer" or a "medicine woman" and in the same breath she |
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The Cave Canem Song
Every year, for ten, plus a year, Cave Canem fellows return to their respective cities from the week long summer retreat in Greensburg, Pennslvania, speechless or singing the |
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SERVE THIS ROYALTY, RIGHT?
Nope. Though sampling is most often coupled with paying or demanding royalties, it would be an unsightly accusation for oil portraitist Kehinde Wiley or Cody ChesnuTT’s "Headphone Masterpiece”. |
| Obsidian Arts Holds its Horses
Minneapolis-based Obsidian Arts, Inc. has been planning its six-block public art juggernaut Exploding Language for well over a year, and although the exhibition had been scheduled to run |
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Aaron Douglas is Back...in Kansas
In this hyper-realistic world, it's sometimes reassuring to see great 2-d, flattened work, for instance the work of Aaron Douglas, portrait and silhouette master of the Harlem Renaissance. |
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Symbols of Africa--in D.C.
You know what would be dope? If every black tattoo artist, graphic designer, and tagger in the greater D.C. area, hit up the Inscribing Meaning exhibit at National |
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Feminist Fervor in Spain
A show of Carrie Mae Weems, Faith Ringgold, and Fatima Tuggar would be a brilliant accomplishment on its own. Each woman articulates a relationship to blackness and the |
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Konte Remembers New Orleans
Bracketed by textured walls that in many ways resemble Keba Konte's work, a collection of faded, tattered and dyed ironing boards, car seats, and found luggage are assembled |
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Alexis Peskine's Not-So-Wretched Earth
On November 8, 2005, Jacques Chirac, former PM of France, declares a state of emergency, a product of the riots born in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris. In |
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(Afro) Cuba's Art Convergence
Not too long ago, Code Z noted Obsidian Arts, Inc.'s Afro Cuba: Cognoscenti, which flashed the light on Cuba. Every once in a while, the stars will align |
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Occidental Artists in Brooklyn
We've been alerted to under-the-radar curator Heather-Marie Davis and now note her new show The Occidental Artist at NURTUREart in the still white-hot Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. Davis, |
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Early Basquiat on the Block
Jean Michel Basquiat's seminal work "Untitled" from 1981 is one of several modern masterpieces set to go on the auction block at Sotheby's in New York in its |
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Mutu Cuts and Pastes in Atlanta
Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu is scheduled to appear at SCAD Atlanta on May 15 in conjunction with her solo exhibition at the ACA Gallery of SCAD opening later |
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Know That
A while back, Code Z hipped you to Obsidian Arts, Inc. right here. Well Our Minnesotan friends are at it again. Curator and artist Christopher-Aaron Deanes has selected |
| It’s Finally Here, and the Sky is Falling!
We at Code Z had to prevent ourselves from pulling out our red, black and green liberation jumpsuits that we had been saving for such an event after |
| Word on the Street: 3x Dope
From barbershops to the boulevard, brothers drop knowledge and build bridges. And from now until July 29, three artists will be expanding those convo's at the Nasher Museum |
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A Conference Blooms in April
Every spring people flock into Washington, D.C.—and it's not for the National Cherry Blossom Festival alone. Since 1990, artists and arts cognoscenti have been descending on the nation's |
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We Have Momentum
Momentum is defined as "mass in motion." Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D artwork or model positions in order to create an |
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What's Cooking
What's cooking? Well, a lot of things are on simmer, but we would like to sample a dish from NYC's The Kitchen as they serve the Just Kick |
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Art I Facts: We Are
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the emotions associated with such photos are surely innumerable, not unlike the word "home." Down home, Old home, back |
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Abstracting Humor
Comics--often called The Boondocks, the Sunday-paper funnies, anime, manga or, formally, sequential art--no longer merit a simple smirk or chuckle to escape reality, but is aggressively addressed it |
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Walker x Walker
Kara Walker, one of the youngest artists ever to receive the MacArthur "genius" grant, has gotten in plenty of hot water for the uncompromising use of perversion, scatology, |
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Catch 22
At the start of his funky groover "Mind Power," the late Godfather of Soul, James Brown, said “It is what it is.” And we here at Code Z |
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Against the Grain
If you get out of the house on occasion, chances are that someone somewhere will do or say something that will agitate, confound, or inspire you. Counter-Intuitive: Engaging |
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Afrofuture
First we want to say that we know what it's like to be sleep-deprived, so we're all the more grateful to Kenyan artist Jimmy Ogonga for staying up |
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ReLAXation
Artistic collaborations are a wonderful way to support and nurture the creative community. LAXART understands and celebrates this theory. This Los Angeles non-profit contemporary art space offers a |
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Truffling
Okay, we can't imagine how this has slipped through the cracks, given that our friends at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco's Mission District have been bugging |
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Cityscapes
Back in our December countdown, we offhandedly suggested that Julie Mehretu might be one of the single most important artists of the 21st century. We may have overstated |
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Beyond the Exit
Always the innovators, never the intimidators, and twenty-five years later still the renegades. What or who is this? It is the one and only EXIT ART, which since |
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Rock Steady
We've been tracking the curatorial and artmaking activities of New Jersey-based visionary REBORN pretty much since Code Z opened its digital doors some six months ago (where does |
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Of Beginnings
It is said that good things come in pairs. The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is proving this expression to be true. The late artists and educators, |
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The Art of Kissing
No one forgets a first kiss, a caress from a loved one, seeing soft light touching a focused subject in a photograph or hearing the perfect note pleasantly |
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Face Off
Two shows at G Fine Art in Washington, DC suggest that Black faces can’t be taken at face value. Iona rozeal brown marked out a territory of iconography |
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Alien Invasion
What is your greatest fear? For some, it's heights, for others closed-in spaces, and still others dread something far more paranormal: aliens. Whether you believe in them or |
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Crowned Head
The good die young, but the great are celebrated long after they are gone from this world. In that vein, the Puerto Rico Art Museum and ArtPremium Magazine |
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Respect the Architect
Who am I? What am I doing here? And what does it mean to be an artist? All of these are relatively lofty questions, but not impossible to |
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California Love
Just when we think we've heard the last of them, the folks over at Guerilla Café in Berkeley, USA fill our inbox with yet more interesting events that |
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Slam the Louvre
Quick, what do you think of when we say "Le musée du Louvre," or simply The Louvre, as the French-challenged among us call it? A few things usually |
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Jo Berg Bound
As each year passes, many are considering South Africa one of the top five destinations for visual art, music, theater and television. So we weren’t surprised when we |
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The Games We Play
Exit Art opens the season with three exhibitions and several public programs that explore various media that range from installation, poetry, and collage to video, painting, and performance |
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Passage
Code Z would like to pause for a moment in memory of Benny Andrews (1930-2006), one of the forefathers of modern Black visual culture in the U.S. We |
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Painted Ladies
We've recently learned that our friend Wangechi Mutu is among the over one hundred women artists to be featured in the Brooklyn Museum's spring exhibition Global Feminisms, which |
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Betwixt and Between
Given that artist Cauleen Smith and poet A. Van Jordan both had a love for the language of cinema, their collaboration on an installation was probably inevitable. The |
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Old School, New School
Much is often made of the lack of discourse between the old guard and the "young bucks" coming up. This battle is constantly happening in barber/beauty shops, places |
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Call and Response
The toughest part of writing about Noelle Lorraine Williams, working under the moniker of REBORN, is figuring out what title to append to her name. For now, we've |
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If it Ain't Baroque, Don't Fix it
When we caught this brotha on Today being interviewed by the walking hairstyle known as Matt Lauer, we were afraid he might be reaching the point of overexposure. |
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Letterpressed
We're glad to see Carl Pope is still stirring shit up in the art world. Carl is perhaps best known for his engrossing (some would say "excruciating") video, |
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Civic Duty
We've been clocking Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu since her graduate school days at RISD, but really took notice when she broke through in the Studio Museum in Harlem's |
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Ride the Wave
Yesterday, we mentioned how many of the historical records of World War II stop short of mentioning the involvement of African soldiers. Phillip Harvey, the founder and editor |
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War Wounds
Guilty as charged. We realized that when imagining World War II soldiers, we invariably picture various Americans, Europeans, Japanese, and a few sundry others. With his new project, |
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Back in Da Day
Brian Hebert of the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta, Georgia says that the years '86 to '88 constitute two years; we say that's three years. We'll have |
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Reconstruction Set
We swear the city of Houston is not paying us any kickback money for continually talking about the art going on in that city, but dangit, we've seen |
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Prophetic
A few weeks ago, we briefly mentioned the artwork of Githinji Wa Mbire as the exhibition currently on view at Berkeley, California's new caffeine-enabled hotspot, Guerilla Café. Well, |
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Peachy
Okay, so we let the cat out of the bag a few weeks back when we told you that Charles Huntley Nelson was one of the artists chosen |
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True Africa
When it comes to art from the African continent and images of the Continent, the current zeitgeist in the west is to finally question what is meant by |
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Dizney Land
We never knew until we snagged the press release from White Walls Gallery in San Francisco, California, that Brett Cook-Dizney was actually born Brett Cook, and that the |
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Reading the Riot Act
On September 22, 1906, Atlanta exploded into racial violence fueled by a cocktail of sensationalized rhetoric from politicians and unsubstantiated news stories about a black crime wave. The |
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Bargain Basement
We told you about L.A. artist Rodney McMillian's Minneapolis appearance at the Walker Art Center a few weeks back. Now the artist is back home at Susanne Vielmetter |
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Crushed
We've decided Joost O. Bosland is our new best friend for sending us information from the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. (Actually, we just sorta like saying |
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HisSpace
We at Code Z had always planned to have a community network system in which artists can create a MySpace-style profile with their art, writings, and other information |
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Kat's Meow
Go ahead. Click on the thumbnails. And make sure someone happens to be walking by when you do it. It'll make you look cool. Vonetta Jenkins is a |
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Sheriff Hlobo
Joost O. Bosland of the Michael Stevenson gallery recently chastised us for our recent run of U.S.-focused arts coverage. (This, right after the In the Lab founder let |
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Over-Kiln
We're noticing family resemblances among a variety of artists working in the mold of the bizarre, the alien, and the misshapen. Take the collage work of our good |
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Walk This Way
We recently called out Minnesota's black artists for claiming they were out of the loop on black visual culture. Now we've got more evidence that they are right |
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Native Son
They say you can never go home again, but Houston native Charles Huntley Nelson will be doing just that when he returns to his home city to install |
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Rebirth/Afterbirth
We've decided that New Jersey-based Noelle Lorraine Williams is not so much artist as she is one-woman industry and shamanistic visionary. Under the moniker of REBORN (yes, all |
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Viva Minneapolis
Bill Cottman is keeping up with artists half his age in incorporating new media and technology into his work. Scratch that: he's surpassing a good number of them. |
