Criticism
Browse selected reviews since 2016 here, and access a full list with links on my CV.
The quotes on this page are my own. To read other critics’ reviews of shows that I’ve curated, browse the curatorial section.
“The best way to explore this exhibition is to tune out its staccato rhythm—its sightlines can be jarring, its conceptual leaps rough—and zero in on individual artworks.”
Off-Center: New Mexico Art, 1970-2000 at New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary, Southwest Contemporary.
“I entered the exhibition expecting a clash of titans, but instead witnessed a mercy killing—not of Smithson the artist, but Smithson the icon.”
Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson at SITE Santa Fe, Southwest Contemporary.
“Before entering the show, I imagined slogging through the muddy palette of Socialist Realism. Instead, I found dozens of underground party scenes made brighter and more effusive by their reactionary origins.”
Multiple Realities at Phoenix Art Museum, Southwest Contemporary.
“The problem with curating in the spirit of Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ (‘the centre will not hold’ and all that) is the risk of simply mirroring the moment, with its visual avalanche, channeled but not quite controlled by algorithms.”
All Art is Virtual at Art Vault, Hyperallergic.
“It’s a contemporary angle on domestic horror — a house breached and externalized — but there are elemental and sublime forces at play, too.”
Ideal Home at Ogden Contemporary Arts, Hyperallergic.
“The show examines mid-century set pieces — large and small cultural testing grounds — that shaped material culture at the time and have influenced dominant notions of American history and identity ever since.”
Nora Wendl and Mitchell Squire at Sanitary Tortilla Factory, Southwest Contemporary.
“Breeze is on a tactile search for her ancestors, rethreading her genetic expressions over and over in pursuit of intrinsic knowledge.”
Nikesha Breeze at Harwood Museum of Art, Southwest Contemporary.
“The stories of these women form a delicate web that could easily blow back into this institution’s basement, especially when a massive solo show by Larry Bell arrives in June.”
Work by Women at Harwood Museum of Art, Southwest Contemporary.
“The show fits a thematic ‘throw’ and ‘catch’ into every corner of the first two galleries… but its true brilliance comes at the halfway point, heralded by a deceptively awkward bit of wall text.”
Contact at New Mexico Museum of Art, Southwest Contemporary.
“The show’s curatorial arc feels warped, awkwardly caught between older varieties of futurism and a contemporary mode of looking forward.”
Future Shock at SITE Santa Fe, Southwest Contemporary.
“These are paintings as Hollywood summer blockbusters, capturing moments of unbridled emotion but also teetering under the weight of their own scale.”
Kent Monkman at Peters Projects, Southwest Contemporary.
“We see through Woodman's eyes as he tries to dive past the troubled surface of Martin's mind and into the quiet infinity that she captured in her artwork.”
Donald Woodman at New Mexico History Museum, Visual Art Source.
“A body of work should be more than the sum of its parts. I returned to these concurrent exhibitions a number of times, experiencing them through different gallery programs. In the end, one formed a powerful gestalt; the other did not.”
Jill O’Bryan and Madelin Coit at Center for Contemporary Arts, Southwest Contemporary.
“Apparently, though, pillaging from other artists is a hard habit to break. The group’s works are slicker, dumber versions of pieces by a number of performance art pioneers.”
LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner at Historic El Rey Theater, Santa Fe Reporter.
“Tramp art has been called garish in appearance, Byzantine in design and tacky in constitution. These judgments echo a larger clash between fine art and folk art...”
No Idle Hands at Museum of International Folk Art, Visual Art Source.
“LaTocha’s work depicts the landscape as though we’re inhabiting the artist’s body as she collected the dirt. … I wonder if displaying it under a walkable plexiglass stage might further her artistic mission.”
Athena LaTocha at Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, art ltd.
“As a whole, the show plays like a West Coast version of Nan Goldin’s oeuvre—but with a surreal, cinematic twist in the vein of Guillermo del Toro.”
Burning Books at Phil Space, Southwest Contemporary.
“Meow Wolf’s aesthetic ancestry points to Dada, Fluxus and COBRA more than Georgia O’Keeffe, but the modernists were considered a radically weird force when they first landed in New Mexico.”
Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, Visual Art Source.
“Drawing is commonly considered a utilitarian bridge to other media, but here doodles are presented as vital skeletons that will support the flesh of masterpieces. It’s a small but powerful thought pivot…”
Lines of Thought at New Mexico Museum of Art, Visual Art Source.
“Stare long enough and you'll sense subtle asymmetries in the stark geometric forms. Their sharp edges curve almost imperceptibly, like a high desert horizon line.”
Susan York at Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Visual Art Source.