It took buying a cup of coffee at The Times Club (the coffee shop in Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St.), sitting down at a table to review the show and taking time to stare and reflect, for the artwork in Water and Stone to register in me. In Jeff Robinson’s “Green Totem,” a vertical […]
Brian Prugh
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Arts Review: To Lead One Beyond All Paintings
Heidi Van Wieren’s paintings on view at the Englert’s second floor gallery space are magnificent objects. They are everything one wants an abstract painting to be: thick paint slides and wrinkles down the surface of the panel with fiendishly slow intensity. Materials congeal to create mesmerizing visual patterns. Compositions are engaging and surprising. They are […]
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Arts Review: Gaia Nardie-Warner’s “Limelight”
I stopped by Public Space One the day after the opening of Gaia Nardie-Warner’s “Limelight,” and the gallery space had its fluorescent lights on. These had been turned off during the opening, so that track lighting provided the paintings’ only illumination. I therefore experienced them under both flattering and unflattering lights, and was struck by […]
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Arts Review: A Set of Lies Agreed Upon
The question of how emperors and imperial aspirants fashion their cult status through images is, given our place in the present election cycle, relevant. An exhibition that raises questions and provides insight into the ways that visual propaganda shapes the image of an actual or potential government leader would have been edifying in the current […]
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Arts Review: Following the “Water” – on Josh Hoeks installation at UI Studio Arts
Josh Hoeks calls Water a “structural intervention” to his studio at The University of Iowa’s Studio Arts building. The Rube-Goldberg-esque contraption Hoeks designed serves to siphon water from another studio into his—and to successfully dispose of the wastewater thereby generated. His studio’s need for water is increased by the fact that the nearest sink, […]
