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Mother’s Magazines is Danielle Orchard’s second solo show with New York’s Jack Hanley Gallery. Orchard’s large-scale canvases, some eight-feet wide, reveal a confident painter who’s recently made the switch from small detail brushes to large brushes (the symbol of courage in the studio.) There’s something inherently late-90s about Orchard’s style, as though I could imagine Charlotte, Samantha, and Carrie attending her opening in Sex and the City. Orchard’s playfulness with art history, Cubism and Picasso-like compositions, paired with her re-appropriation of the female form, are nostalgic of an art and fashion world where self-reflectivity was once novel.

Gunderson harnesses ciphers from the collective visual vernacular to exemplify the potential and limits of identity and transformation of self, as dictated by the overbearing weight of preconceived socio-political frameworks. A self-portrait (and perhaps the catalyst for connecting the exhibition’s disparate heroes) It’s Hard to See from Where I Am Standing exists as a visual echoing of repeated selves, each figure’s vision obscured by another’s, though each ultimately bearing the same identity.

Patterns & Rituals marks Tunji Adeniyi-Jones’ second solo exhibition at Nicelle Beauchene for the young British-Nigerian artist. Adeniyi-Jones’ work feels at once fluid and solid. Liquid-like figures move through a tornado of pink and purple foliage, yet the work is flat, authoritative. In a way Adeniyi-Jones’ work feels like music – pulsing, repeating, transporting us to another realm. The scale and uniformity of the paintings causes reverberations throughout the space. Visions of stain-glass come to mind, in this artist’s place of worship.

Frequent Editorial Magazine contributor Maya Fuhr debuts her latest solo show Tec Style at new Toronto gallery 10 Years Ago. Pivoting from fashion photographer and brand ambassador for the likes of Chanel, Fuhr unpacks her career, and perceived culpability through sculptures, light-boxes and a pair of 3D-rendered boots. Tec Style is a meditation on the life of a garment; Fuhr walks us through the manufacturing process behind the clothes we wear. While the idea of environmental or resistance art can seem futile, sanctimonious, Tec Style comes across as a sincere effort. Fuhr worships her wardrobe, ritualizing the washing and caring for each item. Her simple “Washing” photographs are the stand-out works in the show, intimate, familiar, and mediative. 

Mike Kuchar’s work is a joyful blast of colour, sex and humour, in an art world that needs it. The first time I saw his drawings was after a long, jading day of Material Art Fair; they were a welcomed surprise – crass, playful, and funny. Mike says his aim is to put “a bit more fun to viewing pictures.” His latest exhibition Broken Gods, currently on view at Ghebaly Gallery, is invigorating, no holds barred. Mike and his twin brother George made their name as iconic figures of the burgeoning underground film community in 1960s New York. The twins’ over-the-top, Romance-sci-fi movies were shot on 8mm film with little to no budget. John Waters sources the Kuchar Brothers as a source of inspiration, calling them “complete crackpots without an ounce of pretension.”

Level 1: A free falling blue flame descends from a smoggy sky filled with pink flamingos. Landing in a sudden burst, I emerge in the form of Chun-Li, to begin a long, poetic journey. Chun-Li, of Street Fighter II fame, was the first female fighter in video game history. An expert martial artist with thighs of steel, Chun-Li was born in the 90s, first in pants, later in a cropped qipao and white combat boots. Despite Nintendo’s eventual censorship of her up-skirt moments, Chun-Li was named “Hottest Babe of 1992” by Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Some might say to be blue is to be sad, but it is also to be moved. Matthew Wong sought to explore the “blueness of blue,” symbolically and literally, through his exhibition, Blue, on view now at Karma. Its fluidity, its affect, and its uncanny ability to “activate nostalgia, both personal and collective,” Wong renders blue moments—repose, speculation, longing, gloom, hope—in various shades of blue, imparting memories for moments we cannot recognize, yet seem altogether too familiar. A resonating legacy of color, of what it means to be blue.

“Don’t Stress” was shot over the course of a ten-day cruise around Japan and Korea in which Monika Mogi attended with her mother and grandmother. This is a story about letting loose within the abstract weirdness of cruise culture. Published in Issue 19  

Frequent Editorial Magazine collaborator, Jonny Negron unveils his latest show at HSFA, not only as painter, but this time as curator as well. “I’ll see you in the ether” features the work of five different artists—Cécile di Giovanni, Nina Hartmann, Benjamin Kellogg, Lisa Signorini, and Jonny Negron himself—whose work unpacks iconography on the material plane, and subsequently where such symbolism intersects esoterically. Occupying the ambiguous limbo between light and dark, these works question the nature of temporal subjectivity, and whether each of us is uniquely complicit. “The mind is the limit of reality, the imagination its forge.”

A giant shell hangs upside-down from the ceiling, when touched it emanates sounds of war, collision, and violence. Another shell quietly sings fragments of Taiwanese lullabies, increasing in volume as the viewer approaches. These are a few of the ambitious new works from artist Hui-Ying Tsai currently on view at Red Bull Art’s Resident Artist Exhibition in Detroit. For the past three months, Hui-Ying has been in residence, building these sculptures activated by touch and movement. Her practice reflects the bustling mind of someone in a state of wonder, seeking to answer questions of existence, spirituality, and history. Working with non-profit sustainability organizations, and initiating her own site-specific project that focuses on eco-activism and community, Hui-Ying’s work is very much a response to her environmental surroundings. I talked to Hui-Ying about the influence of Detroit on her work, and the possibility of art to carry us beyond the material world. 

That Bitch Tried to Steal My Man! The Shocking Findings of a Transgender Sleuth.
This is a true story. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.