ARTCORE Journal - William Cordova at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts by Steve Locke

My essay on the amazing William Cordova exhibition that was at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, courtesy of artcore journal, founded and edited by Erin Dziedzic in collaboration with Gregory Eltringham.

William Cordova at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts by Steve Locke.

artcore journal is an edited online contemporary art journal published biannually. The journal seeks to establish a broad range of responses to contemporary art and curatorial practice from varied spatial perspectives. artcore journal presents a broad range of informed written texts, art works and curatorial initiatives. Each issue welcomes creative and critical responses to a theme as a way of establishing an intertextual network postulating on ideas concerning space in contemporary art discourse.

Who is better than Stephen Tourlentes?

Well, the short answer is nobody, and if you don't believe me you really need to go see his show OF LENGTH AND MEASURES at Carroll and Sons. These pictures marry the poetics of the sublime with the hard reality of the administration of death. He makes clear the beauty of these landscapes comes at the expense of (and in fact is due to) the luminous presence of the prison complexes that house and administer death in the name of the people. That he is a brilliant technician is well on display in this exhibition but the thing that stays with me is that Tourlentes has used his considerable talents and technical acumen to focus on a part of contemporary life we care not to consider nor do we want to know how we benefit. (Many prisoners are stripped of their voting rights. Some of these complexes house thousands of prisoners, increasing the state's population and thus their political representation. Michelle Alexander probes this in THE NEW JIM CROW.) Pictured is an image of Ardmore, Alabama, Alabama Death House, 2004. Trust me, this cheesy jpg is nothing compared to Tourlentes's actual photos. He was my favorite to win the Foster Prize last time around. This exhibition shows why he is one of the best artists working right now. I'm glad he is really starting to get his due.

BAGLY Prom photos Gallery Kayafas

Social documentarian Zoe Perry-Wood has a gorgeous show at Kayafas - pictures of BAGLY kids going to their prom.  These sweet and participatory portraits and images of kids getting together to celebrate made my heart sing. It was also really great to see photos of LGBT kids just being kids and Perry-Wood photographs them acting like the beautiful kids they are.  Here are photos of teenaged queer couples and dancers and lovers made without exploitation or salacious probing.  They whole show feels like a gift from Perry-Wood to the kids and a gift from the kids to us.  How different my life may have been if I had walked into this gallery as a teenager.