Amid the Olympic melee, I would seek refuge in Rio’s new Cidade das Artes, a massive cultural complex designed by French architect Christian de Portzamparc. Wedged between the sea and the mountains, the Cidade sits atop a flat plain crisscrossed by highways, now reimagined as a… Read More
A year ago, florist Lisa Waud bought an abandoned duplex in Detroit for $250. Condemned and crumbling, the house bucked redemption: shingles peeling like scabs, bottle shards tiling the floor, leaks striping the walls, trash towering knee-high, a dead dog buried in the rubble. And… Read More
On a quiet block in south London, a legacy of industrious creativity stretches back to the Victorian era. A theater scenographer worked here, painting theatre sets. As did a flower wheelbarrow maker. And most recently, artist Damien Hirst. But as of Thursday, Hirst has reopened… Read More
A different lens on love: too big to be contained, frothing from notions of domesticity and security. Delicate white balloons spill from a suburban home somewhere/anywhere, a scene staged by French photographer Charles Pétillon as part… Read More
A chartreuse simulacrum of a bathroom. And a bedroom and a staircase. For years, Korean artist Do Ho Suh has been sculpting every aspect of his NYC apartment and studio (a former sailors’ dorm in… Read More
Riga ranks high on my to-travel list. And I shan’t wait: the European Union has dubbed the largest Baltic city the European Capital of Culture for 2014, a designation that finds the capital flush with cultural events. With… Read More
Twin box trucks are planted in a polo field in my hometown – cabs buried, back doors flung open to the elements. Parallel sentinels, stripped of signage, sharing the manicured expanse with a 43-foot-tall topiary Puppy by Jeff Koons.… Read More
Dueling double takes: one expressed in burly wood letters, perched above a waffle joint in Pittsburgh, PA; the other, instigated by kid scratch on cotton, stretched across a chest. Both semiotically subversive, inversive. For four years, artist… Read More
In honor of Austrian Conchita Wurst’s triumphant win of the Eurovision Song Contest, I’m bound for a Baroque manor outside Salzburg, where modernity is a foil for history. Contemporary art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac has peppered his… Read More
Simultaneously transparent and reflective (I can aspire to that). Or, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s description: “part garden maze, part modernist skyscraper façade” (I’m lingering in NYC). As the Met’s new Roof Garden Commission,Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout by American artist Dan Graham… Read More
