An excerpt from Daily Serving's post on the 2012 DeCordova Biennial:
"There is always someone who is offended by every biennial. They are inherently two-headed beasts, with the introspective head judging the strengths and weaknesses of a portion of the art world, while the extroverted head optimistically presents a narrative, declaring why the included artists are notable. For this year’s DeCordova Biennial, curators Dina Deitsch and Abigail Ross Goodman followed tradition by programming a regional Biennial of New England artists. A few years ago, the DeCordova refocused their annual show by turning it into a biennial. The annual was described to me once as the place where the curators put the oddball artists that didn’t fit into the DeCordova’s group shows but still deserved a wider public. The change to the biennial structure granted guest curator teams more time to schedule a tighter exhibition. They hoped that the change would create an active rather than a reactive exhibition. The 2012 exhibition (up through April 22) lives up to this promise not by presenting a relentless concentrated central theme, but instead by assembling a flexible show relatively centered on “anxiety, discomfort, and overall change.”
Installation shot of Mary Lum's work. Photography by Clements Photography & Design, Boston, MA
"Mary Lum‘s hybrid photograph-wall-paintings of odd spaces compelled me to spend a lot of time with them. The gestural perspectives of her work are altered, reality becomes unbound, when these works are shown so close to each other. Her close observations of both empty space and objects are absorbing. The masterful flattening and distortions found in her work makes an effortless documentary photo of a street into an inventive composition. A photo of something real is affected by the impossible drawing next to it, while the drawing seems more real with the fake-looking real-thing in tight progression. Each work infects the others and the presentation makes them come alive as an interrelated subject that is bigger than the sum of its parts."
via Daily Serving
