Dusty Wright's Culture Catch - Smart Pop Culture, Video & Audio podcasts, Written Reviews in the Arts & Entertainment

Roaming Imagination

Millree Hughes — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:54:51 +0000

Roaming Imagination Millree Hughes March 1, 2026 - 11:54

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Mike Cockrill: Falling in Place
Mosaic Artspace, 19-28 S1st Place (Andromeda Building)
Long Island City, NY 11101
Thru March 13

I became a curious fan of Mike Cockrill's paintings and drawings on Facebook, beginning in 2022, when the artist returned from a Covid-imposed isolation to meet in public. I approached him at a Mark Kostabi show on West Broadway. He's tall and confident, easy to pick out in a crowd. One of the reasons I was attracted to his FB art profile is his graphic versatility, drawing skills, and sharp imagination. Artists such as Daumier and Goya, and editorial cartoonists like Jules Feiffer, created nightmare fantasies and ironic jokes with their pens.

His technical facility is deceptively mainstream, serving a subversive bend. "I had an early fascination with popular forms like magazine illustration and political cartoons." As a young artist, he took a job designing business forms in the financial district for Merrill Lynch, getting an inside view of cubicle life.

By the time we became acquainted, I had morphed into a veteran of the outdoor billboard-painting scene. In the blue-collar circus of ropes and ladders, the painter of big signs was called the "mechanic." Apart from a chuckle about the sinister Charles Bronson movie by that title, I identified with the cold impersonality of the content (cars, bottles, fax machines). The old-school bosses and shop managers put complete trust in my hands. I often dreamed about a clean job at a Madison Avenue desk.

1> Office Drones

In The Idea Room, a distressed gray office like a prison cell, three co-workers are pitching a campaign proposal. They are dressed in sparse Mormon black pants and shoes, white shirts, and ties. The result of their labors is demonstrably futile, the floor littered with paper airplanes and crumpled pages. An executive sucks on the lifeline of a cigarette while another sketches an invisible idea on a floating easel, yet a third lies supine in the exhausted pose of a patient in a psychiatric session. The figures are rendered as ciphers, thin suggestions with clown noses. A clockface stares like a merciless moon.

The Idea Room

2> Maps and Neighborhoods

Mike is from Virginia, a bedroom community close to the nation's government offices. In other paintings, he shows off his gift for storytelling in sunny, halcyon landscapes. The types of children and activities in those are deceptively innocent and attractive. Mike's plots add a sinister twist. In earlier works of lawn parties, sweet girls in pastel pinafores hold pistols aimed at cowering clowns.

His views of suburban houses are devotional and can resemble pre-Renaissance Italian art. The ranch-style houses are composed with a model-maker's care and patience, often using multiple perspectives, or more pastorally, seen from a bird's-eye view. In these, we see a sharp-edged Japanese space, the curved roads gracefully disobey logical connections. The surface is layered and scraped to reveal hidden layers, with drips and veils, seams of patchwork, affirming the flat canvas. Nowhere do we see the anecdote of dogs, figures walking, and cars on errands. An eerie quiet prevails, as if the families have all departed for offices and schools–perhaps a reminder of the Cold War.

Maps and Neighborhoods

The grinning malevolent map of the USA is another of Cockrill's inventions. The omnivorous face of a US map grasps with tentacles and mechanical arms, a reminder of MAGA's threats of rogue imperialism, the face of America: arms dealer to the world. Heads roll, and bloody conquests from history are revived: the map is an ogre–the tenuous Union affirmed by Lincoln at the surrender of Lee's army still festers, remains a squirming, itching bed-case. Anger against scapegoated minorities is normalized.

The Skull Gatherer

3> Falling in Place: Watteau and Fragonard

One wonders whether, by drawing on Watteau and Fragonard, Mike gives free rein to beauty and refinement without contemporary content. Or maybe the bubble-dwelling courtiers of the Rococo era mimic the climate deniers or the isolationists of today's head-in-the-sand retreat from stable alliances? The Rococo world, highly decorated and refined, is now the poster child of a blind and willful negligence of the social order. A student of history knows what followed the last Bourbon monarchy: The French Revolution. Who can say, as some historians claim, that the violence of the 1790s was seismic, causing a chain reaction of mass death, into the Russian Revolution and the two World Wars? The expedient of the guillotine is expressed in Mike's related drawings of decapitated heads.

PUDDLE OF REGRETS

These concerns seem secondary to his fun in picture making, teasing delicate gestures of storybook women and girls from homely scraps and playful accidents on the canvas. The clash of materials and subject is charming as it is contradictory. His attachment of layers and shifting of the focal length on the players in this farcical, self-conscious space vibrates like an earthquake.

Blindfold Falling

4> Parents

There is a similar cancellation or discretion in this canvas. A traditional painter would be locked into the tedious posing of the couple in tiring positions, the result usually forced into its own stiff reality. Mike suggests a dreamlike flash as the principals assume the pose–a memoir deliberately faded, a fashionable red blazer worn by dad, a stylish car coat and handbag for mom. The likeness is an homage, emerging from the mystique of unity.

Parents

In modern culture, the painter is an uneasy hero, constantly striving towards a more complete reality. Bonnard said: "...the artist is grounded in the palette, but when the illusion appears, that's when the nonsense begins." Degas worked on Young Spartans Exercising for ten years. Hopper spoke of "a deepening affection" in his slow process, coaxing finality out of only two paintings a year. They were fiercely committed and took painting as far as their talent would allow. Revision for Cockrill is a source of life.

5> Destruction and Reconstruction

Perhaps living in our challenging, densely opinionated society requires nimble reassessments and constant reactions to the latest shocks. Who is not aware of some imbalance and insecurity? For artists, self-awareness is a top concern, as a daunting field of competitors claim and fight for their own style message. His painting, Fighter Jet No. 3, channels amoral, jarring realism—a pathos like stepping near a bird flattened by car tires. The layering of accurately cut textile shapes conveys a grim, inhuman force.

Fighter Jet No. 3

There was a saying from the abstract painters of the 1950s: "...you paint it out, and it is still there." What was the "it?" Could the artist see the ghost of his failed attempt through the veils of overlaid paint and start over on a new tack?

I think of the myopic trance of Melville's anti-hero, Captain Ahab, searching oceans for the white whale. Mike Cockrill's process of scavenging layers of textile, building images with ready-made colors from the thrift store racks, feeds and satisfies this anxiety. It comes of an impatience with fixed goals and of his roaming imagination. His work is from a tradition in which talented admirers of past masters allow themselves gauche manners and not-so-subtle jokes. Painters hope to surprise themselves, and maybe get some laughs.

John S. Paul, Brooklyn 2026

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PSYCHOPOMPS

Millree Hughes — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 01:12:52 +0000

PSYCHOPOMPS Millree Hughes February 23, 2026 - 20:12

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Josh Smith: Destiny
David Swirmer Gallery, 519 West 19th Street, New York
January 21 - February 28, 2026

I believe that I can use a combination of mental looseness and an almost meditative concentration to access Consciousness. The same place that the artist goes to make the art.

Giacomo D'Ariano and Frederico Faggin's new theory of Consciousness* claims that it is not linked to the functioning of the body and can persist even after death. That it is somewhere else, in another dimension. The body behaves like a drone controlled by this source.

Josh Smith's new show at Zwirner is of paintings of Grim Reapers on bikes on New York streets.

I believe they are painted from AI-generated images. AI really doesn't understand how bikes work at all, any more than it understands how arms connect to the body under that shroud. The hands become wheels, and some join the body to the bike. AI is looking for patterns on the plane at the front of the image, mainly because it has difficulty with the Z-axis. Consequently, wheels order themselves decoratively; lines of handlebars or cross braces link with bike chains in gestural strokes.

AI is perfectly situated to communicate with another dimension.+ It has become like a global unconscious. A dream state that is in danger of becoming a mass hallucination.

Before that happens, perhaps it can reveal pure states of being.

What other ways can I use to access the creative infinite? I have read that drugs can help, but which ones? The shimmer of ketamine? The feel-good confidence of MDMA? There are Halloween colours here that could've come from a 'shroom schema. Purple skies, dirty yellow lights, Pepe the Frog green bikes. Do I need to be on drugs to understand them?

This painting depicts a reaper at the top of some subway steps wieldinga bike object. Josh Smith makes his paint the consistency of a high-class moisturizer. Slippery but not drippy. The line bears no pretense of elegance. It has a hand-wavy quality, a little flutter that gives you the sense of an activity that may vibrate to the point of falling apart.

It is a good example of Smith's tendency to turn an image into a symbol. The amalgamated reaper and bike form an X shape in the middle of the canvas. I closed my eyes and tried to deepen my connection to the piece. But the symbol became an obstacle barring the way to the city and to life itself. The British slang term "Christ on a bike!" connotes surprise.++

This image is of inevitability.

In some areas of these canvases, the figure, bike, and bike chain become obnebulated. AIhas given up, and the artist has rendered its ejecta as is. Abstraction that is merely confusion.

In an attempt to reach out to Consciousness, I took dowsing rods to the gallery. They can also be used to foretell the future or divine hidden truths by bypassing the mind's logical processes. Unfortunately, although they told me where the water pipes were in the building when I asked, "Is this a good painting?" They did not respond.

Conclusion:

What can I understand about Josh Smith's new show at David Zwirner Gallery called Destiny in terms of quantum Consciousness?

Embrace Uncertainty.

Smith's work thrives on contradiction. Instead of trying to resolve these tensions, let them exist simultaneously, much like a quantum system holds multiple potentials. That state of not-knowing is central to the experience.

Deep Seek.

*"Hard Problem and Free Will: An Information-Theoretical Approach" by Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano and Federico Faggin, January 2021

+According to Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič, "A structure trapped in an endless feedback loop of self-referentiality." https://iai.tv/video/the-language-of-the-unconscious

++Similar, less common variations include "Christ on a stick" or "Christ on a cracker."

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Local Color in Chiaroscuro

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 23:32:14 +0000

Local Color in Chiaroscuro Chet Kozlowski February 16, 2026 - 18:32

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dramatic comedy

Two new films shed light on the vagaries of modern Irish life.

_____________________________

Perennial Light

Directed by Colin Hickey. 2024. Runtime 82 minutes.

Perennial Light is an ambitious work by filmmaker Colin Hickey, expansive in intent and minimalist in execution. Think The Tree of Life as a series of black and white stills, punctuated by pencil sketches.

Set along the Irish coast, the plot, such as it is, follows a young fisherman’s journey from childhood to adulthood, haunted by a mortal tragedy. But for Perennial Light, a plot is beside the point. The point is the images: a string of them, glowing, austere, barely moving, depicting snatches of memory that take to the skies in meditative drone shots.

This journey is nearly silent, with a simple score compiled by Juliet Martin that runs like water under it. This reductive approach makes for a montage that’s languid yet stirring. It’s a unique, somewhat lulling way to spend 90 minutes.

Mr. Hickey has been making shorts; this is his first feature. He uses nonprofessional talent in Perennial Light and assumes a part himself. He doesn’t ask much of the actors, sometimes just to stand still while the camera lingers on every detail.

These shots are intermittently dotted with childlike drawings and flipbook-style animations depicting babies, stars, and the cosmos. These illustrations are by Paolo Chianta, who shares auteur credit with Mr. Hickey, who is credited as “Writer/Camera/Editor.”

Happy mention goes to his large cast, which includes Finn O’Donovan, Clara Rose Hickey, Muriel Pitton, Jack Mahoney, and Ciara Hickey, among many others.

_____________________________

The Spin

Directed by Michael Head. 2025. Runtime 92 minutes.

The Spin provides what’s absent from Perennial Light: color and comedy.

Two slackers, Dermot (Brenock O’Connor) and Elvis (Owen Colgan), own Boneyard Records, a struggling vinyl shop in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Rent’s due, child support’s due, and their best bet is a road trip across the length of Ireland to procure a cache of rare records. Mix High Fidelity and Coogan/Brydon’s The Trip, and you get the idea.

It’s a simple setup that pays off well. The duo has a goofy charm, as well as eccentric peripheral characters, like an overbearing landlady (Derry Girls’ Tara Lynne O’Neill) whose abuse Dermot finds oddly arousing. Quirky and breezy, the Irish way of puttin’ things is in evidence: Dermot says of a cohort, “Look into his eyes and tell me Dave hasn’t murdered someone.” Elvis debates his ex-wife over whether she threatened to “slaughter him like sheep” or “slaughter him in his sleep” (“Sorry, I misheard,” he says, splitting hairs). One episode has their backseat occupied by a man with a taxidermized dog, a stripper, and a nun.

Michael Head writes/directs/acts in films including Bermondsey Tales, Meeting Across the River, A Gangster's Kiss, The Gift, and the upcoming feature Jackie the Stripper.

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New York With An English Air

Robert Cochrane — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 19:02:05 +0000

New York With An English Air Robert Cochrane February 14, 2026 - 14:02

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singer songwriter

EDWARD ROGERS: Astor Place (TLAK Vinyl/CD/Download)

When the singer whom Quentin Crisp referred to as "Mr Sting" immortalised him in the wonderfully apt An Englishman In New York, it conferred, even now, long after the death of its subject, a lingering sense of exclusivity to the title. Crisp never made it into the new century, bowing out a month shy of it and his 91st Christmas Day birthday in Manchester on the eve of a sold-out tour of the UK. After a long-haul flight from his adopted city, one he had been strenuously advised not to undertake on account of his failing health and advanced years, it was a suitably provincial end to a strangely international life.

There are, of course, a plethora of English exiles in Manhattan. The singer-songwriter Edward Rogers, born in Birmingham but raised in New York, whose output is both nostalgic for the music of his birth country, whilst imbued with a certain Manhattan grit and edginess, is one to consider. His new album, Astor Place, is a gaudy sequence of nostalgic postcards to an era of English songcraft by which he has been cultured and informed. A nod to here, a wink to there, sixties beats collide with a fey, world-weary glam, creating an intoxicating brew that steps free of the shadows of his influences to present a modern, eclectic cascade of memorable, poetic songs. A curious series of English thoughts and Manhattanite references rise and fade.

The title track, a tribute to the central heart of the East Village, skips into life with an exceptional yet appropriate breeziness in its gait akin to the Psychedelic Furs, whilst deploying a rumbling string arrangement of rock refinement.

"Lost stories and forgotten facts

a world of art that still attracts

a new facade with a current twist

still the spot for a secret tryst."

"The Olde Church" presents as an exceptional piece of baroque psych, with elements of Colin Blunstone, mannered yet exquisitely casual, and languid eloquence. A Mott The Hoople swagger emboldens "Lies, Cries and Alibis," a wonderfully confessional piece of down-side rock weariness with an up-tempo glide. "Romeo" could be Blondie circa 1977, devoid of Debbie Harry, a slab of Max's Kansas City meets CBGB's sweatiness and grit. The single "Magical Drum" harnesses Donovan-like whimsy in a tryst with Ray Davies at his conversational best. Effortlessly louche and melodic. Nick Drake on an upward glide.

There's a gossamer psych-folk delicacy to the madrigal "Diamonds Hidden In the Pearls." Haunting and occasionally ethereal, it drifts along and away all too swiftly, whilst "Tears In My Martini" possesses a certain late sixties "Image-era" Bowie vibe, with shades of Mick Ronson's undervalued early solo efforts. Sprinklings of glam seasoning leave a crackling of neon in its wake. "I Walk Behind Your Shadow" could be The Zombies in their baroque best, with a dash of The Left Banke, a beautifully realised paean that lingers in the mind.

"It takes two to make it perfect

It takes two to do it right

'Cause one's the loneliest number

At the end of the longest night"

"15 Eldon Road" swaggers in awash with glammy chords; "All The Young Dudes" with a certain backward glance of sad nostalgia for the loss of childhood. "Every day was summertime, at least in my mind," underscored with wonderful piano stabs and a climax of "cry in your gin" tarnished glitter 'n' regret, akin to Cockney Rebel at their shimmering and moody best. The journey completed from the dark, stark monochrome of '60/'70s Birmingham to Manhattan's vibrant East Village, accompanied by memories that taunt and linger.

"On The Other Side Of the Rainbow" is introduced by a haunting trumpet, a world weariness possessed by wisdom without descending into bitterness—a perfect balancing act of recollections, their pull, and strange power.

Beautifully produced by Don Fleming (Sonic Youth/Teenage Fanclub), Astor Place combines a poetic backward glance with an air of contemporary relevance whilst providing the proceedings with a sense of intimacy and immediacy. Adorned by a gaudy, vivid sleeve, a contemporaneous take on psych sensibilities, the perfect packaging for an album that perfectly wears its influences whilst never drowning under their weight. Eloquent, reflective, and sincere, it presents Mr. Rogers as a likely English contender for Quentin Crisp's Manhattan crown.

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Olden Valor

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:45:04 +0000

Olden Valor Chet Kozlowski February 12, 2026 - 20:45

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action

Hellfire caught my attention because of the cast: Stephen Lang, Dolph Lundgren, and Harvey Keitel. All character actors who have had rich careers, peaked, and now do these low-budget films to either keep their chops sharp or their bank accounts full. But this one looked promising. I wasn’t disappointed: Hellfire is an inventive addition to the action genre, hitting all the marks, tweaking cliches, and shooting around deficiencies.

Stephen Lang stars. He’s an intriguing figure, and I’ve appreciated him in small parts in Manhunter and Last Exit to Brooklyn, as the villain in the first Avatar film, and in a commanding performance on Broadway in John Patrick Shanley’s play Defiance. More recently, he’s been the blind guy in the Don’t Breathe movies. Mr. Lang appears bigger than he is: he’s actually on the shorter side and stealthy, traits that serve him well against the beefier assailants he faces in Hellfire.

The town of Rondo, Texas, is terrorized by a drug operation run by piano-playing patriarch Jeremiah (Mr. Keitel). A stranger comes to town, a nameless wandering hitchhiker (Mr. Lang). Turns out he’s a former Special Forces. He employs his specific set of skills to challenge the gang leader Clyde (Michael Sirow), who has eyes for local beauty Lena (Scottie Thompson). It’s pretty standard stuff, what you’d expect from an 80s action star like, say, Jean Claude Van Damme. And speaking of '80s action stars, Dolph Lundgren plays a Texas sheriff (!) in Hellfire, pretty convincingly, adding texture to any setup he’s in.

The fight scenes start off standard as well, but stunt coordinator Heather Burton (also credited with special effects) makes a few stand out: one in an abandoned factory (where a shoot-em-up amongst abandoned refrigerators looks like a tribute to Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master movies), and in a restaurant kitchen (including creative use of a cheese grater). Mr. Lang, the avenging vet with no name, parries and punches and grunts and tucks and rolls. Much of the dramatic weight is assumed by Ms. Thompson, who is known for work in TV series like NCIS. Her Lena is the tale’s fulcrum, and her fashion model features are a welcome visual diversion from the dominant macho motif.

Then there’s Harvey. I worry about Mr. Keitel. Mortality takes its toll, and the actor who defined Mean Streets, Bad Lieutenant, and The Piano, to name a very few, is a cherished national resource. His Hellfire scenes are few, his energy is low, and he’s put together and propped up. Shoestring movies like this exploit his name, but at least director Isaac Florentine gives him real lines to read and uses him to his best advantage.

Despite its limitations, Hellfire works. Stephen Lang’s wanderer looks poised for a franchise; the fights are cleverly staged. Even the music, mostly reworkings of recognizable tunes in the public domain, is effective in its simplicity.

_____________________________

Hellfire. Directed by Isaac Florentine. 2026. From Saban Films. On VOD and digital platforms. Runtime 95 minutes.

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New Praise of Former Glories

Robert Cochrane — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:01:19 +0000

New Praise of Former Glories Robert Cochrane February 8, 2026 - 10:01

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John Howard: Can You Hear Me OK? (2026 Prof. Stoned Remaster)

For 30 years, John Howard's sequel to his debut album, Kid In A Big World, remained unheard, unaired, and uncared for. The suits in power at CBS Records had yanked Can You Hear Me OK? from the release schedules of February 1976, and only a lone 45 crept out. Having placed their dynamic new signing in the studio with Biddu and his orchestra, it was anticipated they'd have something they could board the disco train with. What they received was a mannered, sophisticated, and artful affair, more akin to Bill Fay's self-titled, sumptuous debut of 1970 than to glitzy dance pop.

The same sad fate awaited his third offering.

Stars were aligned but not in the favour of the immaculately suited and coiffured boy from a Northern town, with a penchant for baroque balladry. Despite his debut album having shifted 15,000 copies, without the passport to greater glory of a hit single, the suits were cautious, Howard had received no BBC airplay for his brace of earlier 45s and although he wasn't making the kind of overt waves his direct piano contemporary Jobriath was regarding his sexuality, it was easy to discern the true nature of his identity, and there were zero qualms by they that could, about using that knowledge to impede his chances.

As his own career stalled, Howard drifted into a successful career in A&R, his sole album becoming a dump-bin resident that caught the eye of discerning crate sifters. When it was finally given an unexpected digital outing in 2003, reviews were rightfully enthusiastic, 5 stars in Uncut, and a miraculous second bite at the cherry of pop began.

Can You Hear Me OK? was finally introduced to a new and waiting world, even securing a much-deserved vinyl release in 2018. It has continued to be appreciated as Howard's output, twenty-one albums from an extraordinary second wave that thankfully shows no sign of running out of momentum. Now, it has been gifted a Prof Stoned remaster via Think Like A Key label, who secured his exceptional work on remastering Kid In A Big World and Howard's extraordinarily well-received 2025 release, For Those That Wander By.

"19th September" arrives with a cinematic orchestral vista before gliding into an exquisite exercise in rococo balladry, reminiscent of Jobriath: a theme for an unmade movie, lush and intoxicating. There's a distinct air of Bowie-inflected vocal mannerisms within "Frightened Now" with shades of 'Rock n Roll Suicide' whilst possessing an effortless melodic panache, neatly underscored by Biddu's strings. "Two People In The Morning" appears as a breezy sixties series of kitchen-sink vignettes. a pair of star-crossed lovers devoid of stars.

'You Keep Me Steady' is searing and soaring, a piece of Jimmy Webb lushness with a nod and a wink to "Wichita Lineman," the kind of song the late Miss Springfield ought to have made her own. With "Finally Adored," there's a sense of the poignant balladry of Badfinger, a malady of melodies, briefly sublime as they entwine above an effortlessly rolling cascade of piano. There's a decidedly plaintive American pop tempo to "Can You Hear Me Ok?," a letter to missed hopes and lost opportunities.

"You're Mine Tonight" sounds like a poppy Lou Reed on uppers. Some Coney Island Babies transported to Brighton Pier. Sleek and eloquent, it's a walk on the sorry side of yearning. |n "Missing You," Howard combines the lavish with the lush from a glammy guitar opening, it becomes a paean of longing with a prancing melody cocooned in florid piano flourishes and splendid surges of orchestration. A big production with restraint. "Play Me A Love Song" hints at the artistry Kate Bush would later make her own. bold yet seemingly effortless. The curtain closes with the album's lone single, "I Got My Lady," which could and should have fared better.

There's a bonus selection at the end that enhances and embellishes the entire exercise of excavation and discovery. Amongst these, a delightful Eddie Pumer overseeing from 1976 of "Is This My Love" composed by Hurricane Smith and two Trevor Horn productions prior to his ABC and ZTT glories, plus a live take of "I Got My Lady" rescued from a rare BBC TV appearance.

Just as old gems deserve a little TLC, so too do lost songs from half a century ago. Prof Stoned has accomplished a wonderful exercise in raising such dust that has descended as a wonderful coating of glitter. It should be noted that this album sounds nothing like a second effort by a young guy in his early twenties, but reads as an accomplishment by a long-established artist. It can only be hoped that it will soon have a further outing on vinyl and shall continue to gather belated interest and recognition as the lost and neglected classic it most definitely was, and is.

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Routes/Roots

Millree Hughes — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:58:53 +0000

Routes/Roots Millree Hughes February 3, 2026 - 19:58

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painter

Odila Donald Odita: Shadowland
Kordansky Gallery, NYC
January 15 – February 28, 2026

"Fear is the flash, the gorgeous dress our skeleton wears." - Dambudzo Marechera.

It's better if the content of a painting is clear or at least available when you look at it. If not, you need a statement to guide the observer. Often, with abstract painting, writing the statement may require more lucubration than usual. Why these colours, why these forms as opposed to any others? It might end up being as significant an artwork as the paintings themselves.

Odili Donald Odita creates acrylic paintings and wall murals. He was born in Nigeria and raised in America. He has made the intersection of the two cultures a reason for making the work.

This is Odita's second show at Kordansky Gallery in Chelsea. He has included some paintings by his father, who was an artist in Nigeria, and some of his own identity-oriented photographic work from the '00s. The inclusions suggest that he's not sure if the work will communicate its purpose without some background information. The rest of the show is work made in 2025.

At some point in the late '90s, the influence of Illustrator, the vector graphics editing program, was felt across the visual culture. The patterns were used for digital wallpaper, desktop backgrounds, and in the physical world, sometimes as nightclub murals. They seemed to reflect the digital optimism of the era. You could hover over an area with your dropper tool and fill it with your bucket tool in any colour you fancied. Fashion designers like Diane Von Furstenberg used it to update Emilio Pucci's patterns, and some artists decided that the vector images might make good paintings. It was a large part of Franz Akkerman's work. I think I noticed it first in 2000 in a Mathew Ritchie show at Andrea Rosen Gallery.

But after a while, it faded away. There were all kinds of other ways to make images on the computer.

Once Odita had adopted the look, he took a few years to refine it and then produced a lot of quite similar-looking paintings. There are some key motifs in the work. The squashed and fractured stripe painting that might be seen as a landscape, as inHeavy 2025 or Future Perfect from 2008. The loose verticals with a diagonal cut, as in Cut 2025 or Cut 2016 (lithograph). There are the diamond-shaped patterns that appear to have a figure in the middle that could either be "Nude Descending a Staircase," or a figure (sometimes figures) dancing. Like "Protector" in this show or "Here and There" from 2008. You get the idea.

There are lots of interviews online in which the artist talks about his relationship to Nigeria and how it informs his work, yet "Protector" has twenty-eight different colours. I still can't pick out which ones are Igbo and which are American. It's not like looking at a Mary Heilman. There is a lot to choose from. Also, I don't know why a digitally derived image should be a painting rather than a print. The associations are with weaving and block printing, so is the complete lack of human touch somehow ironic? Only the slightly raised ridge along the taped edges remains.

Protector, 2025 acrylic on canvas 90 x 40 x 1 3/8 inches

But more than that, there is a caution at the centre of the work that I can't ignore. For example, he often uses a marigold yellow as a highlight colour, but unlike Akkerman, he can't let it stand on its own. In "Camouflage," on either side of this coloured shape, there is a sliver of yellow ochre, or in other places, it has been backgrounded by a low-key azure blue. One shape has a line of dusty mauve running through it, but despite being its colour opposite, it merely subdues it. The whole effect throughout is one of balance, of resolution. The colour arrangements have sanded down any rough edges, and the forms themselves have suffered from the heavy toll that Shutterstock vector wallpapers have demanded. It looks too much like graphic design.

"How do you observe a stone that is about to strike you?" - Dambudzo Marechera

Watching them pluck our friends and neighbours, our loved ones, out of the crowd because of the colour of their skin is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. But anger and fear alone cannot make great art. Max Beckmann's ghastly shadows depended on his detachment, and David Hammons' blade was whetted by critical judgment.

I don't think all artists should or could be actively political; the act itself is political.
I understand that Odita came up at a time when it was harder for black artists to get gallery shows; he may have felt it was necessary to get his point across subtly. But today, I believe, if it can be said, it should be said without a filter.

Odita's statement at the gallery's front desk asks you to consider his work as a philosophical reflection and a meditation on how political forces shape what you perceive. It's a lot for this work to carry.

modernism (post modernism)

thanks for your concise review of these vigorous works by O. D. Odita, released amid the turmoil of today's unacceptable reality. Odita's work reminds me of another black artist, William T Williams, who chose a similar path: hard edge colors in a structure influenced by the Bauhaus and the geometric fan-shaped spectrums of Frank Stella. In the figurative world, there is also a hard edge approach to the heart-wrenching stories painted in modestly small tempera panels by Jacob Lawrence. At the end of 2025, the Jewish Museum celebrated Ben Shahn, at a time where being Jewish is under increasing attack. As you mention, not everyone can take to the high ground of political commentary.

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Han Ho’s Eternal Light and Radiant Ruins

Thalia Vrachopoulos — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:15:57 +0000

Han Ho’s Eternal Light and Radiant Ruins Thalia Vrachopoulos February 2, 2026 - 12:15

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painter

Han Ho, 21c The Last Supper, 2017 Charcoal, Oil with traditional black ink, Canvas on Korea Paper, Punch, LED 1,350x6x300(h)cm

Han Ho ETERNAL LIGHT
Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, N.J.
Nov 21st - Dec. 10th, 2025

I recently encountered a consummate and mature articulation of the aesthetic imagination in Han Ho’s solo exhibition, Eternal Light, at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City. While differing from such artists’ work as Yuan Goang-Ming’s in his meditations on domestic fragility and geopolitical tension, it achieves an equal, if not markedly greater, degree of intensity. Internationally renowned for his monumental light sculptures, spatial installations, and large-scale works imbued with biblical and metaphysical symbolism, Han Ho constructs environments in which illumination itself becomes both the medium and the message, using Marshall McLuhan’s phrase.

Entering the exhibition resembled stepping into a prismatic, otherworldly field of perception rather than a conventional gallery setting. Vast luminous structures, radiant surfaces, and kinetic constellations of LED punctures upon traditional Korean Hanji paper generated a transcendental atmosphere of refracted light that seemed to suspend gravity. In a way, such an experience inevitably recalled the medieval cosmology of Robert Grosseteste, for whom lux was not simply illumination but the metaphysical origin of matter; the first corporeal form from which spatial extension and physical reality unfolded. In Han Ho’s installations, a comparable intuition is materialised sensorially. Light operates simultaneously as both the material and the ontological agent, shaping space while also suggesting its own pre-existence to it.

This metaphysical primacy of illumination finds a particularly forceful expression in the monumental work 21C The Last Judgement. A vast mixed-media composition of charcoal, oil with traditional black ink, Korean paper, and embedded LED constellations, in which light operates not merely as an accent but as the principal medium from which the entire visual field emanates. At once painting, relief, and glowing installation, the work evokes the grand iconographic lineage of Western art history, especially Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Simultaneously, the piece displaces it into a contemporary register marked by nuclear anxiety, territorial divisions, and the fragile dialectics between war and peace reminiscent, in thematic gravity, of Yuan Goang-Ming’s reflections on state fragility and mediated disaster. Yet where Yuan often situates the viewer within the hyperreal circuitry of simulation, Han Ho propels the spectator toward a more cosmic horizon.

Structured in a tripartite vertical narrative of celestial aspiration above, the anguished threshold of lived reality at the center, and the infernal debris of human destruction below, the composition stages an allegorical drama in which clouds oscillate ambiguously between heavenly vapor and nuclear mushroom, embodying the Janus-like conceit of humanity’s technological triumph and existential peril. The punctured Korean paper, illuminated from within by LED light, produces an ethereal radiance that renders figures and gestures almost immaterial, as though suspended in an aethereal continuum where matter itself seems provisional; this internal luminosity simultaneously evokes the silent diffusion of radioactive glow and the spectral afterimage of irradiated atmospheres of nuclear fallout. Subtly interwoven into this vertical apocalypse is the unresolved memory of Korea’s partition, whose geostrategic fracture reverberates less as a cartographic fact than as a psychic and metaphysical condition.

Han Ho, 21c The Last Judgment, 2022 Charcoal, Oil with traditional black ink, Canvas on Korea Paper, Punch, LED Variable Install

This particular concern likewise inflects the almost stereographic The Last Supper, in which Han Ho extends his theology of light into a historical and political allegory, reconfiguring Leonardo’s canonical tableau as the Last Supper of the Twenty-First Century and inscribing it with the unresolved tensions of the Korean peninsula. Christ occupies the center not as a doctrinal sovereign but as a luminous nucleus of life, of inexhaustible radiant vitality amidst collective precarity. Around him, the disciples are reimagined as fractured embodiments of contemporary subjectivity. A uniformed NBC-clad sentinel registers nuclear anxiety, and the aluminum mirror embedded in a Chinese costume reflects not only the spectator but also the weight of hostile forces bearing upon the peninsula. The nude figures facing toward a primordial Korea, silently split across the pictorial axis into North and South. Upon the table, symbolic objects such as tanks and barbed wire cruelly transmute into aestheticized toys, Peter’s denied chicken, kimchi as a sign of cultural homogeneity, and the sushi bomb as purposeless destruction, coalesce into a post-modern still life of poised devastation.

However, it is again light that confers metaphysical coherence upon this dense iconography. These images resist total instrumentalization even within a technologically mediated platform, understanding the form as a vital force rather than an inert representation. In a way, light here becomes a spectral intermediary, binding fractured histories, divided territories, and dispersed identities into a single, trembling field of presence; an eschatological supper staged at the end of time and history.

My encounter with Han Ho’s Eternal Light at Mana Contemporary became an occasion to contemplate through association the unsettling proximity of large-scale annihilation, sensing that the spectre of a global war no longer belongs solely to speculative discourse but hovers as a tangible possibility within the collective imagination. Yet the exhibition does not succumb to despair; rather, it staged the primordial element of light as a fragile but persistent counterforce, offering these aesthetic environs in which existential fear and the enduring human impulse face toward transcendence.

Han Ho’s sublime works, radiating an otherworldly glow, function as a spectacular luminescent architecture of consciousness, dissolving the boundary between sensuous experience and philosophical inquiry. In a way, Han Ho strongly affirms that even when art confronts the imagery of conflict and violence, it retains the singular capacity to momentarily liberate the observer from the contingencies of personal will and social turmoil, reconstituting the viewer as a disinterested and lucid subject of pure contemplation.

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New York Jewish Film Festival 2026

Brandon Judell — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 01:36:14 +0000

New York Jewish Film Festival 2026 Brandon Judell January 25, 2026 - 20:36

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The last twelve months supplied us with numerous transportive moments across screens big and small that were very hard to cold-shoulder.

Take the explosive final half hour of the un-kosher Sirāt. Against the backdrop of an unsparing southern Moroccan desert, a father (Seregi López) searches for his daughter, accompanied by four tattered hippies, his son, and a hypnotic techno soundtrack. Motto: No matter how little life has blessed us with, we can still wind up with less.

Meanwhile, Marty Supreme chronicles the overzealous ping-ponging exploits of a self-absorbed, Philip-Rothian Jew (Timothee Chalamet) with an unbridled Type A persona. The film’s tail-end leads to Marty discovering his raison d’être off the table tennis table. Tearing up, I recalled one of my favorite Roth observations from American Pastoral:

“The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.”

Well, more than a dozen such right-and-wrong moments are scattered among the 30 offerings currently being shared at the 35th Edition of the New York Jewish Festival presented by The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center.

Emily Lobsenz’s documentary short, “A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too,”boasts enough for several features. Comprised of Jewish families of varying size in the midst of rolling their matzah balls and simmering their chicken soups, the film showcases how this savory concoction has been passed from one generation to another. Recollections of lost ones, of childhoods, of joys yet to be grasped rise up along with a nod to Moses and his peers as the scent of fowl broth rises up from stove tops. A bonus: There’s also a defining of schmalz (rendered chicken fat).

The highlight of A Bit of Everything, though, is great-grandma Minnie Osher, whose ability to smile today was once part of a future she thought she would never experience. Looking straight at us, she recalls:

“My grandmother had 10 kids. She had 35 grandchildren. Hitler killed them all for no reason. They had shaved off all of our hair. No hair on my head. I looked at my sister. My sister looked at me. We couldn’t recognize each other. And Dr. Mengele . . . he was the killer in Auschwitz. He made the selection: who should live and who should die. So I took a brick while Dr. Mengele was in the back, and I rubbed the brick on my cheeks to make them rosy so I’d look good, and he let me live.”

Lobsenz’s offering is clearly a celebration of both Jewish survival and a reaffirmation of community that includes a Mexican matzoh ball recipe and a young woman who delivers the beloved soup to those who are ill.

All of which reminds me that when Marilyn Monroe was wed to Arthur Miller, she was said to have been served matzoh ball soup three meals in a row. After the third time, the star inquired: “Isn’t there any other part of the matzoh you can eat?”

I wish the answer Ms. Monroe received had also been recorded for posterity. No luck there.

And no matzoh here in Native Australian Jack Feldstein’s films that have nothing to do with “fressing,” but they do supply plenty of food for thought. His 30 or so shorts often explore the institutions and inhabitants of the Big Apple with a huge nod towards Judaism. When delving into his oeuvre, expect no less than a Yiddish song or two, a collapsing Golem, the 91-year-old former head of New York Culture Affairs, plus the book and lyrics for something subtitled “The World’s First Theremin Musical.”

But be forewarned: much of Feldstein’s output might trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. “Why?” you ask. Simply because he’s the master of neon animation or neonism, which has been explained by critic David Jaffer as “cartoonish pop-art visualization. Strange, wonderful, and a must-see for fans of the monologue.” Feldstein himself has been said to describe this technique as “a stream of consciousness narrative with a cartoon aesthetic that takes modernist stream-of-consciousness filmmaking into a post-modern and humorous form.” As for his content, it’s been compared to that of Woody Allen and Spalding Grey.

The humor within Feldstein’s works is often evoked by an interplay between the visual elements and the solemnity of the souls he’s interviewing. With “Animated New Yorkers: Joel,” part of an award-winning series, the focus is on the eponymous Joel, who was born into an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community from which he had decamped four years earlier.

So what do you do when you escape into a modern life that has a totally different set of restrictions and freedoms, most of which you are not yet familiarized with? You join a WhatsApp group with a few other religious Jewish people who are becoming secular.

What ensues is the five-minute story of Joel’s first romantic encounter told in a straightforward manner yet illustrated with ever-changing visuals that borrow from Chagall, Picasso, and maybe even R Crumb.

Joel: “I never felt a woman’s touch and certainly not with women my age, where’s there’s the possibility of this type of intimacy even happening.”

Soon, the pair are watching movies on a laptop in her father’s car and progress to hand-holding.

Joel: “No one had ever told me they liked me before. It exploded my brain. At the same time, I felt this tremendous pressure, like I didn’t know what to do in such a situation. And I immediately begin to worry about whether her level of like is more than my level of like...and do I like...and in what way do I like.”

Maybe if there’s a “Joel: Part 2,” we’ll discover if this chaste romance leads to our young man stepping on a glass and a few years later burping some babes, but sometimes hand-holding is more than enough.

For those seeking a feature-length entertainment that shoehorns in a funeral, a wedding, and a bat mitzvah, you might want to attend the festivities celebrated in Mazel Tov, which, according to Wiki, was the most successful Argentine film of 2025. Directed and starring Adrián Saur, who’s apparently a big deal in his homeland, this mildly comic, sometimes over-the-top, intermittently dramatic exploration of a dysfunctional family delightfully argues that when relationships are deteriorating, Jewish traditions can be the glue that mends.

But if you can’t get to see a screening of Mazel Tov, let me share a bit of it that Rabbi Telushkin shared in his classic Jewish Humor. He labeled this "A Final Jewish Reflection on Antisemitism.”:

“Albert Einstein said: “If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. If my theory should prove to be untrue, then France will say I am a German, and Germany will say I am a Jew.”

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Last Sátántangó in Budapest

Gary Lucas — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:41:33 +0000

Last Sátántangó in Budapest Gary Lucas January 8, 2026 - 09:41

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Bela Tarr and Gary Lucas in Sarajevo. Photo by Snjezana Milivojevic

Really sad to hear of the death of the great Hungarian art-film director, Bela Tarr, at the young age of 70. The master of the glacially slow take, his singularly dark, visionary black and white fever dreams, especially those made in collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning author Laszlo Krasznahorkai (among them the 7 1/2 hour Sátántangó, Damnation, Werckmeister Harmonies, and The Turin Horse, all with music by Mihaly Vig) are some of the most profound and stunning works of contemporary art cinema. Intense contemplation through repeated viewings of his hypnotic oeuvre is seemingly capable of actually stopping the passage of time. Susan Sontag declared that she would "be glad to see Sátántangó every year for the rest of my life" (all 7 1/2 hours of it. You can laugh at its extreme length–sometimes it's shown with an intermission, but that makes it even longer. Still, I've never seen anyone walk out of it). His films, set in the grimy dysfunctionality of rural post-Communist Hungary, ultimately have a mystical aura about them, a kind of transcendence in the wonder of the universe. Still, you would never confuse Tarr with Terrence Malick. His metaphysical worldview is definitely painted black, laced with touches of absurdist humor–and I think he stands more in the tradition of literary titans such as Celine, Beckett, and Dostoevsky, and painters such as Mark Rothko and Franz Kline (and many old master painters as well), than film makers–although some of the films of Werner Herzog, Carl Dreyer, early David Lynch, and Romanian director Radu Jude have certain affinities with Tarr's output. But his cinema really exists on a plane of its own, and I highly recommend him.

A few years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Sarajevo to meet the Master and hang out with him for the afternoon. He was then heading up a Film Academy with a select group of eight young, fledgling filmmakers. Sadly, he had forsaken the hustle of trying to get his films financed at this point (shades of Orson Welles); it was a dead end for him. His work was still feted at film festivals all over the world, and I went to visit him the very last time he was in New York, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center mounted a retrospective. It was right after a Q&A following a screening of an early film, Family Nest, and he was sitting on the patio outside the Walter Reade, looking a bit jet-lagged and blue. As I approached him, his face crinkled up, and he broke into a big smile. He was quite a lovely guy, a gentle humanist really, with the creative warmth of a blazing sun within him, and we had a pleasant reminiscence about our meeting in Sarajevo.

Despite the over arching bleakness and despair of many of Bela Tarr's films, they still are full of life (especially in the pub scenes) and occasional redeeming points of lightand they are ever more relevant today: Werckmeister Harmonies ends with the terrifying rise and rampage of Fascists triggered at a Dark Carnival in a nameless village presided over by a maniacal "Prince” and its prize exhibit, an enormous dead whale, and Sátántangó depicts the manipulation of the lumpen residents of a broken down collective farm in the middle of nowhere by conmen and spies for the communist government secret police.

Bela Tarr's films are eternal–and are not going gentle into that good night.

(Read The Guardian obit here.)