The dire predicament of fine art right now is the proverbial animal in the room that no one wants to acknowledge; it’s as if an author died between books and the publisher hired someone to continue writing under the same name, all the while keeping it a secret so as not to hurt sales. Important theoreticians like Allan Kaprow and Donald Kuspit, in their rush to conceptualize the fine arts as dying or extinct human activities, have leapfrogged over today’s gallery fare, which they call ‘post-art,’ while they anticipate a future time in which ‘non-art’—human products that participate directly in life, rather than stand apart and comment on it—will fully replace fine art. Something that comes close to non-art might be Jennifer Seely’s Supporting Elements, in the Street Gallery at UMOCA: bisecting an actual gallery being more interesting than the objects its walls were built to support. Yet many art lovers retain an interest in the ongoing search for a fine art worthy of the name and relevant to our time. And one of the best places to look continues to be UMOCA, where curators still demonstrate formal taste in choosing the things they show.  .  .

Read the review in the September 2016 edition of 15 Bytes.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.