This broad survey of textiles in contemporary art comprises thirty-six artists of various backgrounds, methodologies and concerns. The press release — written by The Shepherd’s artistic director and the curator of the show, Allison Glenn, guides visitors from one piece to the next by highlighting the wide scope of conceptual foundations at play. The themes range from the relationship between humans and technology to new interpretations of traditional techniques, the passing of time, the physical manipulation of fabric, familial connections, adornment, pedagogy, industrial weaving, and fashion...
Ashley Cook
March 28, 2025
The collection of works on view at Matéria Core City represents Mark Joshua Epstein’s ongoing inquiry into the creative practice and its relationship to the process of weaving. Facets of identity become unique tapestries of expression as color and shape are joined by cultural nuances in these thirteen compositions. While each one is playful enough to enjoy without context, the depths of the Jewish, Queer and Gen X experiences are hidden throughout...
Ashley Cook
March 13, 2025
Axel Livingston’s exhibition at The Barbershop satisfies an impulse to acknowledge the ongoing objectification and consumption of bodies through “ingredients” like gelatin, packaged egg, chicken feet, processed cheese and meat. Sculptural forms shrink-wrapped in plastic and cast in iron work with found objects and cryptic diagrams to solicit a feeling that may inspire veganism or a concern for civil rights. There is a thinned-out line between the concepts of “human” and “animal” here.
Ashley Cook
March 6, 2025
In 2024, Baldwin would have been one-hundred years old. His milestone birthday was celebrated all over the United States, and the world. In Paris, from September 9th to 13th, 2024, the James Baldwin Centennial Festival recognized his continued relevance by honoring his life and writing. The festival was organized by Tara Phillips, the eloquent and dedicated Executive Director of the Paris-based non-profit, La Maison Baldwin, which was established in 2016 to preserve James Baldwin’s memory and contributions to literature and political activism...
Roopa Chauhan
January 20, 2025
Corrosion has come to define this place that was once the center of the Industrial Revolution in the US, with its metals now tarnished by extreme neglect and its communities plagued by disinvestment. Detroit, Michigan and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania flourished as engines of technical innovation in America before waves of economic abandonment left them jobless. Curator Kemuel Benyehudah’s newest exhibition Echoes from the Rust spotlights artists from these two cities, whose work touches on engineering, manual labor, and community as foundations of their blue-collar culture.
Ashley Cook
January 2, 2025
Palm Treat’s anarchistic appropriation of popular culture entertains maximalism as part of their “anti-design” methodology. Whether it be calm or chaotic, cross-cultural syntheses usually challenge consumers to reconsider their established constitutions of beauty and usability.
Ashley Cook
December 2, 2024
Gallery Mouse has welcomed the transition from summer to autumn with an exhibition by Kelly Agius and Natalie Lerner. It Creeps In opens a conversation about pursuit, not as an essential aspect of the food chain but as an element of horror in storytelling...
Ashley Cook
September 30, 2024
There’s something circuitous about seeing masses of textile art, in the old Boyer-Campbell Building, in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood of Detroit. The building was once a factory and warehouse for an automotive supply company...
Lisa John Rogers
September 28, 2024
This exhibition by Maria Prainito-Winczner presents thirty individual works that collectively demonstrate the artist’s longstanding dedication to material and symbolic indulgence...
Ashley Cook
September 26, 2024
Currently on view at Matéria Core City are twelve paintings that illustrate the artist Ian Swanson’s newfound employment of texture after nearly a decade of increasingly subtractive approaches to material application...
Ashley Cook
July 16, 2024
Elizabeth Youngblood is a Detroit-based artist who has demonstrated a dedication to simplicity. Her exhibition Syntax at Stamps Gallery affirms her continued reverence for minimalist philosophies, presenting a survey of her work from the 1970s until now...
Ashley Cook
July 8, 2024
Too often, contemporary art about humanity’s demise uses raw data and overwhelming research in an attempt to explain the true horror of our imminent extinction. Jasmine Murrell, a contemporary artist from Detroit, who is based in Brooklyn, helps sieve through the collective anxiety by reminding us that in order to survive, we must stop the domination and let nature dictate the future...
Matthew Kyba
June 24, 2024
There is an almost scientific approach to object-making in Michael E. Smith’s current exhibition at What Pipeline. This is routine for this artist though; his consistently careful use of material and space indicate a dedication to poetry while unpacking the vastness of language and perception...
Ashley Cook
June 10, 2024
The Listening World at Louis Buhl & Co. is a display of paintings by artists whose practices have encouraged contemplation of nature as a welcoming home, accessible in its authentic entirety, just past the veil of civilization...
Ashley Cook
May 30, 2024
This year’s annual MFA show at the Cranbrook Art Museum showcases work from 59 artists—graduates from eleven departments at the Cranbrook Academy of Art...
Antonia Piedmonte-Lang
May 22, 2024
The current exhibition at What Pipeline features the work of four artists from varying backgrounds and generations, emphasizing their continued effort to explore the breadth of art history, locate critical points of reference and present them as outlets to prompt contemporary conversations. The works in this show oscillate around each other like satellites, offering hints here and there to guide interpretation...
Ashley Cook
January 12, 2024
On October 28, 2023, one of Detroit’s newest galleries, Matéria Core City celebrated the opening of Split, a solo exhibition by Detroit-based artist and curator Jova Lynne. Photographic and sculptural elements are spread throughout the gallery in a minimalist tone, with pops of yellow, copper, gold and silver enriched by the whites of the walls. The simplicity allows for a serenity that supports the conceptual focus of the show, healing...
Ashley Cook
January 4, 2024
A liveliness radiates from the vivid, energetically charged works by Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC) members, currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Featuring 37 artists, the exhibition marks the progress of the past three years of the program, which offers artistic guidance and exhibition opportunities for adults with disabilities in the Metro Detroit area...
Marissa Jezak
January 1, 2024
The collection of photographs exhibited at Belle Isle Viewing Room marks a notable moment in the gallery’s effort to bring extraordinary work to the contemporary art scene in Detroit. For their final show, they present Joanne Leonard, a world renown photographer whose work spans decades and leaves a trail of influence in its path...
Ashley Cook
December 4, 2023
A sizable group assembled in the backyard behind Spaysky Fine Art in Hubbard Farms for Matteus Huvaere’s anticipated performance Honoring the Heatwave: I Have to Save my Family. Huvaere and I recently met onset during a music video shoot. Huvaere was the talent, I was the movement director...
Biba Bell
December 1, 2023
Born in Detroit, the artist Austin Martin White’s first show at Petzel Gallery debuts a materially layered body of work navigating the complex histories of identity...
Chris Pinter
November 3, 2023
Made by American artist, Yashua Klos, these pieces explore how identity is assembled not only from within, but also from without: “one’s identity cannot be separated from the geography around them. Just as the environment is built by people, the environment in turn – builds us,” says Klos...
Roopa Chauhan
October 10, 2023
Most pieces written on the work of Luc Tuymans approach his paintings from the conceptual. Treading in the land of images, how they function, his contribution to that epistemological body etc. This consistency amongst critics and scholars makes sense to me, especially in 2023 where very few people who write about artwork see it in person. But in the context of Luc T., his work in person sings an entirely different song...
Chris Pinter
September 14, 2023
On March 11, Belle Isle Viewing Room hosted its second dual opening event with the work of Yeager Edwards greeting visitors who then traverse the space into B. Scoba’s exhibition before taking a moment to reflect on these two artists who were selected to exhibit side by side...
Ashley Cook
April 10, 2023
Amber Codiñera Locke’s first solo exhibition since moving from Detroit to Los Angeles evokes the conversation about place as an essential part of an artist’s practice. The forms, colors, subjects and brushwork varies to meld these two worlds as her views transition primarily to the west coast and its own distinct relationship with the natural world...
Mary Kate and Ashley
March 20, 2023
When viewing bree gant’s Wend, currently on view at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, I reflect on our bodies in relation to space. Interior space, space within our bodies, exterior space, space our bodies take up in the world and the infrastructural space our bodies are confined by...
Chris Pinter
February 27, 2023
On January 14, two separate exhibitions opened simultaneously at Belle Isle Viewing Room. Most recently, what used to be the workshop of Pence Fine Art became a second showspace for the gallery, and this would be the inaugural event where two separate artists would show their work side by side...
Ashley Cook
February 16, 2023
In his solo exhibition Butch Boy Fantasy at What Pipeline, Detroit, Genevieve Kuzak’s photographs and video position the viewer as spectator in a diary of intimate portraits exploring the intricacies and flux of gender and human sexuality...
Marissa Jezak
January 12, 2023
This place has been relatively neglected compared to the well groomed public park across the canal; to find the location for the show, we toured the landscape of high grass, fallen trees and broken concrete paths. Marissa Jezak was the curator of the show, inviting artists who she felt had an affinity for magic, folklore and craft...
Ashley Cook, Genevieve Goffman, Oda Haugerud, Marissa Jezak, Madeline Kuzak and Jackie Valadez
October 31, 2022
Tables and Chairs is Quintessa Matranga’s second solo exhibition with What Pipeline and is currently on display, viewable until Saturday, October 29, 2022...
Ashley Cook
October 24, 2022
Tim Johnson’s approach to art-making based on nostalgia and sensorial memory is at play in his most recent solo exhibition, Speed Bump at No Place Gallery in Columbus, Ohio. ...
Mary Kate and Ashley
September 19, 2022
Upon entering the gallery, artist Alexandra Virginia Martin presents us with a problem. There are two hanging sculptures located just inside the door. These sculptures block our passage and our view of the rest of the space. As viewers we must choose whether to contort our bodies to maneuver between these two hovering green latex vessels or to pass through by committing the cardinal sin of art viewing and touch the art...
Kurtis Greene
August 22, 2022
By collapsing their personal histories with Sexton’s biography and mathematical theories of motion, Ouyang explores the body as a vehicle of self-mutability, temporal transference, and rapturous discovery...
A review of the most recent exhibition at No Place Gallery in Columbus, Ohio
Stephanie Kang
March 28, 2022
Despite 2021 being a watershed year for many Detroit-based artists’ representation at the fairs, it seems to have gone largely unremarked upon. By my count, works by thirty three Detroit artists made their way down to Miami this past December, represented by twelve galleries across all the major fairs...
Nolan Simon, edited by Rachel Pontious
January 31, 2022
Gen Kuzak’s most recent pornographic film The French Boys premiered at the Cranbrook DeSalle Auditorium in Bloomfield Hills on October 14, 2021. The film features a transmasculine couple in Paris, France who responded to Gen’s call for actors after having also become fans of his work in recent years...
Ashley Cook
December 2, 2021
Brown’s work exudes a genuine sense of warmth and affection for her subject matter that is evident in the amount of labor invested in these works. Hundreds of earrings and chicken heads had to be cast individually in brittle plaster and then inlaid into these tablet forms. The care shown and labor exerted is presented as if they are love letters to all of the women who have adorned themselves with these ornaments throughout history....
Kurtis Greene
October 4, 2021
These nine small gouache paintings presented at Belle Isle Viewing Room were made as part of a larger series that will debut at The Contemporary Dayton, an upcoming solo show featuring over 200 new pieces by George Rush...
Ashley Cook
September 27, 2021
The high contrast between the contexts of the gracefully dilapidated domestic space and the fragile glass works seems to invent a place where the architectural structure feels, in-fact, to be more delicate than the artworks inside.
Ashley Cook
September 13, 2021
The common theme amongst the mindset of these artists is in their communication of an experience similar to seeing the world through a sheer translucent veil. Whether intentional or not, the recognition of the relationship between the inner and outer world is at play, and there is no filter that is attempting to hide this current state of mind.
Ashley Cook
April 12, 2021
"The five wall works presented in The Ritual of the Mask are intimate paintings made of paper, fiberglass and wood. McGhee refers to these shaped artworks as ‘crushed paintings’....."
Ashley Cook
March 29, 2021
VeilsFINAL/LifePrevailsPromo.jpg "Life(Pre)Veils.BryanCorley")
What is the role that image making plays during the process of grievance, catharsis and even in the production of acceptance or new hope? This question seems to be something that is emerging when viewing the work of Bryan Corley in the exhibition Life (Pre)veils at Cass Cafe. On view are 19 works that seem to be on some kind of dissected journey through different histories from art to mythology to meme culture, combining them all into an amalgamation that mirrors the contemporary “melting” pot of meaning that is this internet saturated world of symbols....
Bryan Corley in Conversation with Ashley Cook
March 15, 2021
We often see the curatorial arts rely heavily on white-walled galleries and cube-like centerfolds embellished by cocktail parties and small talk. The simpler the space, the easier for the viewer to digest the art, correct? With conceptual art cementing its place within the contemporary art world, the traditions of art institutions, as well as the art market, are in question. How do we make art spaces more accessible to a broader audience, therefore easing the process of artists’ presentation of work?...
Lydia Kuzak
February 8, 2021
“Bower of Bliss is an enchanted setting in the epic poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. In her book Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia theorizes that Spenser’s bower of bliss represents a feminine space of sexual domination: a shady, womb-like enclosed area where the hero is seduced away from his quest and kept in a state of ‘languid indolence and passivity’ by a sorceress who erotically drains his energy"...
Ashley Cook
January 4, 2021
For those who are aware and conscious, this is not a new conversation. The title of this exhibition by Sean Maxwell at Granny’s Chandelier (October 16th - November 10th) points unapologetically to a discourse that is fundamental to the development of the “free world” that we call the USA; this discourse I am talking about is one that has been sustained by and for the voices of those who believe we can do better, for centuries...
Sean Maxwell in conversation with Ashley Cook
December 14, 2020
The interplay between something completely untouchable and something utilitarian provides an avenue to imagine a more playful yet still functional reality. Could we really live like this? What would reality feel like if industrial design more commonly teetered into surreality?...
Ashley Cook
November 30, 2020
The work presented in their most recent exhibition Outer Heaven at No Place Gallery in Columbus, Ohio holds a sense of stoicism above their previous exhibitions...
Ashley Cook
November 16, 2020
Art Mile is an exhibition that took place online from July 29 to August 5, 2020. It was founded in order to “champion Detroit’s vibrant and diverse arts community, by promoting public programs and online acquisitions.” With over 50 different galleries and project spaces participating, Art Mile was able to function as one of the few local exhibitions that has worked to highlight hundreds of artists’ work, presenting the broad scope of what is happening within the local art scene, in a simultaneous and relatively concise way...
Ashley Cook
August 10, 2020
James Oscar Lee's n u l l Account opened on February 15th at 1201 Bagley Street in Detroit, a location which was formerly the Engine Company No. 8, built in 1908 and functioned as a firehouse until 1982. Initially, it could be interesting to consider the relevance of choosing this location, which was in relatively raw condition, to host a contemporary painting show, but, throughout the history of Lee's practice, he has commonly chosen to exhibit his work between off site “found” spaces throughout the city and proper gallery spaces....
Ashley Cook
June 22, 2020