Her 2016 video installation quotes the sitcom-as-form and also draws from a 1907 comedic short, Laughing Gas. Syms’s 4-channel installation follows the central character (an aspiring artist also named Martine Syms) on a journey home from the dentist after receiving “laughing gas.” Mixing multiple points of view, clips borrowed from TV, as well as layers of comedy, fiction, reality, and critique, Syms’ work also delves into issues of race, culture, and representation. For Los Angeles-based Martine Syms, popular culture, television, and the cultural histories woven through both are starting points for her interdisciplinary art practice.
Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles) uses video and performance to examine representations of blackness. Her artwork has been exhibited and screened extensively, including presentations at the Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, ICA London, New Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. She has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and MoMA PS1, among other venues. Syms’ recently presented exhibitions include Projects 106: Martine Syms, Museum of Modern Art; Borrowed Lady, Simon Fraser University Galleries, Vancouver; Fact and Trouble, ICA London; COM PORT MENT, Karma International, Los Angeles; Vertical Elevated Oblique, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York. From 2007-2011 she was the co-director of the Chicago artist run project space Golden Age, and she currently runs Dominica Publishing, an imprint dedicated to exploring blackness in visual culture. She is the author of Implications and Distinctions: Format, Content and Context in Contemporary Race Film (2011). Her first US solo museum exhibition Projects 106: Martine Syms, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in May of 2017. She is a faculty member in the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.
In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...
“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...
Johanna Calle’s Abece “K” (2011) is part of a series of drawings (compiled into an artist book called Abece ) based on the alphabet...
Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...
In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...
“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...
Comprised of fifty-one photographic postcards, Antin’s 100 Boots is an epic visual narrative in which 100 black rubber boots stand in for a fictional “hero” making a “trip” from California to New York City...
The fashion designer is selling off all the art inside his West Village townhouse at Sotheby’s New York to make way for a new collection....
Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility | Artsy Skip to Main Content Advertisement Art Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility Rawaa Talass Nov 16, 2023 5:13PM Diana Al-Hadid The Bride in the Large Glass , 2023 Kasmin Price on request Portrait of Diana Al-Hadid by Diego Flores...
MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...
While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...
Will Rogan’s video Eraser (2014) shows a hearse parked in a clearing amidst leaf barren trees...
In his evocative Landscape Paintings, McMillian uses second-hand bedsheets, sourced from thrift shops, as his starting point...
In collaboration with psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Leon Tan, Receding Triangular Square explores traditional Chinese and Taiwanese modalities of psychological healing as alternatives to dominant Western psychiatric and therapeutic practices...
In borrowing and subverting images from popular culture, Sadie Benning exposes the media’s role in constructing false and oppressive stereotypes of women, with regard to gender and sexual identity...