Review: Jesse Meredith: So That We May Fear Not at Finch Lane
In So That We May Fear Not at Finch Lane, photographer Jesse Meredith documents an American militia group and illustrates contradictory narratives of maleness and patriotism.
Mar 31
Review
Mar 22
Review: Breaking Up at Phoenix Art Museum
As war, climate change, and COVID-19 dominate the headlines, Phoenix Art Museum presents Breaking Up, an exhibition featuring women artists exploring fragmentation on personal and global scales.
Mar 16
Review: Dyani White Hawk: Speaking To Relatives at MCA Denver
Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) melds Indigenous patterns, materials, and symbolism with modernist archetypes in Speaking To Relatives at MCA Denver.
Mar 15
Review: Sara Hubbs: Soft Shoulder at Everybody, Tucson
Sara Hubbs’s exhibition Soft shoulder at Everybody gallery in Tucson pays homage to the inseparability of art and life.
Feb 25
Review: Emilio Lobato: Lessons Learned
ReviewColoradoVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
Facing shortages of his usual materials, Colorado artist Emilio Lobato turned to rubber sheets, household tacks, and porcelain strips. The outcome is work that is surprisingly multifaceted.
Feb 25
Review: In Memoriam: Carbon Paintings by Cara Despain
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
Cara Despain’s exhibition In Memoriam: Carbon Paintings at Utah’s Kimball Art Center confronted the pressing environmental and moral calamities of the American West.
Feb 25
Review: Mujeres Nourishing Fronterizx Bodies at MOCA Tucson
ReviewArizonaVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
A Tucson exhibition highlights Latinx women collaborating in the borderlands, creating an ode to shared power and place that nourishes brown bodies.
Feb 25
Review: Counter Mapping at 516 Arts
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
Counter Mapping, a group show of local, national, and international creatives at 516 Arts in Albuquerque, attempted to reclaim stories and ties to place for underheard populations, with mixed results.
Feb 25
Review: Crit Group Reunion
ReviewTexasVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
At The Contemporary Austin’s Crit Group Reunion, a generic and disjointed overview muted the spirit of what’s happening now in the city.
Feb 18
Review: Taiko Chandler at Denver Botanic Gardens
Taiko Chandler’s Denver Botanic Gardens exhibition provides a powerful framework for how to think differently about the world around us.
Feb 14
Review: Josephine Halvorson at Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Josephine Halvorson: Contemporary Voices at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe offers an intimate view of the Abiquiú desert.
Feb 09
Review: Marie Alarcón: Relocations at Roswell Museum
Roswell, New Mexico artist-in-residence Marie Alarcón explores the revolutionary potential of the end of the world in her solo exhibition Relocations.
Jan 17
Review: Carlomagno Pedro Martínez at Art Museum of Southeast Texas
Internationally renowned Oaxacan artist Carlomagno Pedro Martínez uses folk iconography to restage moments of Mexican history in barro negro (black clay) at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont.
Jan 05
Review: The Dirty South at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Artists in The Dirty South at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston work with materials and subject matter that reflect a century-long tradition of regional dialogue between Black visual art and music.
Dec 28
Southwest Contemporary’s Favorite Exhibition Reviews of 2021
Southwest Contemporary’s favorite exhibition reviews of 2021, from Ed Ruscha in Oklahoma City and Hong Hong in Houston to group shows in Albuquerque and Tempe, Arizona.
Dec 15
Review: Ciara Elle Bryant’s Server: Love Ta, Love Ta Love Ya at the MAC
Ciara Elle Bryant’s installation Server: Love Ta, Love Ta Love Ya at McKinney Avenue Contemporary collages photographs to create a visual bibliography while building a physical space for Black representation.
Dec 13
Review: Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia at Phoenix Art Museum
Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia takes an in-depth look at fifty years of works that highlight the Latin American artist’s compelling examination of life’s fleeting moments via multiple artistic processes and media.
Dec 06
Review: Gaku Tsutaja: Enola’s Head at Rubin Center
Gaku Tsutaja: Enola’s Head at UTEP’s Rubin Center recreates the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima—and tells a different history of the victims and survivors of nuclear warfare.
Nov 30
Review: Poetic Justice at the New Mexico Museum of Art
In Poetic Justice at the New Mexico Museum of Art, the social impacts and artistic contributions of Judith F. Baca, Mildred Howard, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith are on display.
Nov 23
Review: AH’-WAH-NEE at UNLV’s Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery
AH’-WAH-NEE brings together Indigenous women artists throughout the Southwest for an exhibition about feminine Indigeneity at Donna Beam Gallery at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Nov 19
Review: Temporary in Nature at Lisa Sette Gallery
Amid the escalating climate crisis, a dozen artists explore the impacts of human activity on the natural world during the Anthropocene era in Temporary in Nature at Lisa Sette Gallery.
Nov 15
Review: 2021 Texas Biennial at SAMA and the McNay Art Museum
The 2021 Texas Biennial explores cross-sections of identity and project optimism in A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon across five venues in San Antonio and Houston.
Nov 10
Review: Dawolu Jabari at Galveston Artist Residency
Dawolu Jabari's large-scale drawings in Lessons from Above: Constellation Quilts at Galveston Artist Residency embed Black history, mythology, and folklore into the fabric of the cosmos.
Nov 05
Review: Robert Burnier: Song Cycle at David B. Smith Gallery
Robert Burnier's exhibition Song Cycle at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver features small acrylic-on-aluminum wall sculptures folded into aesthetically and conceptually compelling shapes.
Nov 04
Review: 40 Years, 40 Stories at San Antonio Museum of Art
The San Antonio Museum of Art celebrates its fortieth anniversary with an exhibition showcasing the global and chronological breadth of its permanent collection.
Oct 29
Review: Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration
ReviewArizonaVol. 4 Winter 2021
The artists in Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration explore the relationship between visual culture and imprisonment at the Arizona State University Art Museum.
Oct 29
Review: Michael Menchaca: The 1836 Project at Artpace, San Antonio
San Antonio artist Michael Menchaca’s Artpace exhibition, The 1836 Project, is an immersive video installation employing poppy animation to take aim at “the colonial fantasies of the Texas creation myth.”
Oct 29
Review: Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America, 1940-1978
ReviewArizonaVol. 4 Winter 2021
A retrospective of German-American female photographer Marion Palfi at the Phoenix Art Museum, the first major exhibition since her 1978 death, places her towards the top of social research photographers.
Oct 29
Review: Source Material at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center
Source Material, an exhibition at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, features eight photographic projects that engage with archival imagery.
Oct 29
Review: Maja Ruznic: In the Sliver of the Sun
Vol. 4 Winter 2021New MexicoReview
Maja Ruznic’s exhibition In the Sliver of the Sun at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos was reminiscent of a dream state, a loose and subdued world of imagination, distant memories, and notions of home and family.
Oct 29
Review: Armor at Center for Visual Art
ReviewColoradoVol. 4 Winter 2021
Armor, a group exhibition at the Center for Visual Art in Denver, explored physical and metaphorical barriers in the art-making process.
Oct 29
Review: Hung Liu: Sanctuary at Turner Carroll Gallery
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 4 Winter 2021
Hung Liu’s Sanctuary at Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe illuminated and paid respect to the renowned artist and her moving works.
Oct 18
Review: Mimi O Chun: It’s all cake at SMOCA
Mimi O Chun: It’s all cake at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art magnifies societal ills and amplifies women’s issues through soft materials.
Oct 15
Review: Four Exhibitions in Mesa Explore Visionary Arts
Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona explores the Visionary Arts movement with exhibitions featuring Alex Grey and Allyson Grey plus several contemporary artists based in and beyond the Southwest.
Oct 13
Review: Peggy McGivern Retrospective at Taos Art Museum
Peggy McGivern’s retrospective at Taos Art Museum at Fechin Studio enters dreamscapes and everyday scenes, tracing forty years and more than seventy-five works by the Taos artist.
Oct 12
Review: Matthew Bourbon: Hive at the Fort Worth Community Art Center
Matthew Bourbon: Hive at the Fort Worth Community Art Center challenges us to settle our buzzing brains through bold color, composition, and paint-manipulation strategies.
Oct 04
Review: Rania Matar: SHE at Obscura Gallery
The photography exhibition Rania Matar: SHE at Obscura Gallery centers female complexity and empowerment.
Sep 29
Review: Hunt Slonem: Curiouser and Curiouser at K Contemporary
Hunt Slonem: Curiouser and Curiouser at K Contemporary in Denver features 200 pieces from the New York artist's career—including his signature bunnies.
Sep 23
Review: The Art of SA Eats/Sabor a San Antonio at the McNay Art Museum
The McNay Art Museum celebrates San Antonio food culture with The Art of SA Eats, an exhibition combining poppy depictions of sweets and recreations of old-school restaurants and signage.
Sep 22
Review: Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at MoCNA
At the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, worldwide Indigenous artists render the effects of uranium mining and nuclear bomb testing on their lands and people.
Sep 17
Review: Thais Mather: Western Blue at form & concept
Thais Mather: Western Blue at Santa Fe’s form & concept ponders the comprehensive characteristics of the color blue in a cunning display of sculptural installations, micro-pointillist drawings, watercolors, and holograms.
Sep 13
Review: Gulf Coast Anthropocene at Project Row Houses
Gulf Coast Anthropocene, the latest exhibition at Project Row Houses in Houston, features works that stray from traditional narratives of the climate crisis to center the Black and brown communities most at risk.
Sep 08
Review: Jerry Takigawa: Balancing Cultures
In Balancing Cultures at Foto Forum Santa Fe, Jerry Takigawa reckons with family history and trauma, and finds beauty in the process.
