I hope that Anthony E. Boone will not take it as a grievous offense when I suggest that his artwork could easily hang in a corporate atrium. (Perhaps it already does somewhere.) The sinuous quality of his lines, the soothing feeling of his juxtapositions of color, and his studied sense of composition add up to a […]
Eye Level
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Jersey City Artists Show at Manhattan’s Ivy Brown Gallery
Call it coincidence or call it causal. Either way, it can’t be denied that the neighborhoods of Manhattan that are most saturated with art, and art galleries, are the easiest ones to access from Jersey City. The PATH train stops in Chelsea twice. The first platform in Manhattan is right on Christopher Street. Depending on […]
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Color and Influence at New Shows at Firmament Gallery and Hamilton Square
Serious artists hope that their work will be influential. Few artists, however, would call themselves influencers. In 2023, we’ve come to understand the term as a bit of a slight. An influencer isn’t necessarily a creator. She’s a person who uses new media to compel her following to make a particular choice — a consumer choice. […]
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Images of the City from Jim Fischer and Project Greenville
Jim Fischer loves snow. Pictures of it at least; the Jersey City artist may not appreciate shoveling it, but he’s a sure hand at depicting it. Snow swirls through the pleasantly proletarian “Forty-Eight Views of Brownstone Brooklyn” — a show that is exactly what it sounds like it would be. It lays heavily on the […]
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The Pompidou Centre is Unnecessary
A European star was coming to Jersey City. Rem Koolhaas, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect and one of Time Magazine’s 2008 picks for the world’s most influential people, announced his intention to build a fifty story tower on the lot that was once home to the Arts Center at 111 First Street. Architecture News wrote that Koolhaas’s interest […]
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“Pompeii: The Immortal City” at Liberty Science Center
Pompeii is gruesome. There, in the terrible shadow of Mount Vesuvius, thousands of imperial Roman townspeople asphyxiated under a ten-foot blanket of volcanic ash. Two millennia later, archaeologists are still reconstructing the city and refining what we know about the cataclysm. We know Pompeii residents tried to escape and were unsuccessful. Centuries-old impressions of bodies trapped in agony […]
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Drama, Anxiety and Beauty at Art Fair 14C
On the lacquered floor of the gigantic Jersey City Armory (678 Montgomery St.), scores of participants set up for a crowd of spectators. But despite the overhead scoreboard, wooden bleachers, and anticipation in the air, this is no sporting event. Instead, painters, sculptors, photographers, multi-media dreamers, and creators of unclassifiable what-is-its — most from the […]
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“Your Home Is My Home” Shakes Up Dineen Hull Gallery
One of the greater ironies of art in Jersey City: the three truly incendiary group shows mounted during the pandemic era have all hung in our most moneyed institution. “Implied Scale,” a condemnation of waste and a passionate staredown directed at habitat destruction, “Land of the Free,” a searing examination of the border and the […]
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BARC The Dog at Deep Space Has Plenty of Bite
I. Avatars If you’ve played an online game — and social media is an online game — there’s a good chance you’ve participated in an art project. A modest one, one circumscribed by the game’s parameters, but a common act of creation nevertheless. You’ve made a small digital stand-in for yourself, dressed it up, equipped it, […]
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A Brief Encounter With Xiaoqiang Li at Novado Gallery
Some abstract works register an immediate impression but don’t hold attention; the pieces in Li’s exhibition don’t demand scrutiny, but they certainly reward it. The longer they’re observed, the more they seem to breathe.