In her paintings, videos, and collages, Margaret Murphy either debases Catholic icons to the lowly status ordinarily set aside for mass-produced knickknacks — or she elevates dime-store trash to the celestial ranks usually reserved for patron saints and martyrs.
This is not the first confession I have made in my life, and it will not be the last. I had never visited the art gallery Curious Matter before September 2011. To date, they have organized 13 exhibitions that have featured more than 200 artists from Jersey City, New York, and abroad. Raymond E. Mingst and Arthur Bruso run the gallery, which opened in 2007.
How did Jersey City, population 250,000 — a city without a museum, music venue or dedicated bookstore — manage to edge out the likes of Boston and Philadelphia by placing tenth on The Atlantic magazine’s list of the top artistic cities in the United States?
Though it has been pigeonholed as the pastime of grandmothers, needlework has undergone a radical conversion in the last decade. Artist Do-Ho Suh presented a sewn full-scale model of his childhood home at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Chelsea this fall, and back in May, the artist known as Olek knitted a custom sweater for [...]
Tokyo native Hiroshi Kumagai moved to Jersey City in 1999, left for Brooklyn, and came back in 2001. This “artist-at-large” is currently best known for his vinyl-based work, which will be on display in Near Sighted, a solo exhibition inspired by roadside billboards opening this weekend at 58 Gallery. This is Kumagai’s third solo exhibition at 58 and his first since 2009, and is viewed as a homecoming of sorts for the artist.
This summer, artists Christine DaCruz and Doris Caçoilo traveled to Nicosia, Cyprus, as part of an artist residency program. Their resulting work is as much a meditation on conflict as a physical document of it.
Like Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, photography and painting have had a hot and cold relationship over the years. In the 1840s, most painters considered photography to be a dire threat to their livelihood. Today, the perception has changed. Many painters view photography as an essential tool in their practice.
Contemporary art has a history of rousing debate and inciting censorship. Look no further than Andres Serrrano’s photograph, “Piss Christ,” which depicts a crucifix submerged in the artist’s own urine or Chris Ofili’s painting, “The Holy Virgin Mary,” which combines a depiction of the Blessed Mother with elephant dung. To these examples, we can now [...]
Several Jersey City-based artists are featured in two exhibitions as part of the Hoboken Artists’ Studio Tour, which starts today. The event, now in its 31st year, is a four-day festival with open studios, gallery exhibitions, site-specific installations and live music. When the festival began in 1981, just ten artists participated. Today, the tour features [...]
At first glance, local artist Jon Rappleye’s complex menageries of exotic and everyday animals can strike the viewer as flamboyant, saccharine, even playful. On repeated viewings, his work reveals an artist whose devotion to portraying the natural world borders on the religious.
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