The VIEWS: Brutes and Trouble-Makers - June 11 - 17

(Gale Hart, Attack on Habitat, 2011, paint, steel, pencil. ArtSlant Showcase Juried Winner.) Between antagonists and brute forces... ...sometimes art has to be tough as nails. Like Rick Prol's anguished subjects, with their primal will to survive, riddled with knives and nails. Or the nails could become the artwork...with concrete, and bricks, and other brute materials, as in Benjamin Sabatier's anthropomorphic sculptures. Or it could be grisly, gruesome, and gorgeous, as with Polly Morgan's taxidermied apocalyptic horrors. It could represent power relationships both physical and metaphysical, between colonizer and colonized, as in the work of José Bedia. But sometimes it's the brutes and philistines outside the art world that exert their forces on art, as in the cultural situation in Amsterdam, which sparked this show about creativity and social turmoil. More often than not, however, it's those within the art world that cause the trouble: like these curators in China who insist "art is not a system", or these painters in Berlin with their contentious rhetoric and battle cries. Clearly the art world is not for the faint of heart. In our PERSPECTIVES Charlie Schultz on intimate studio visits vs just browsing at Bushwick Open Studios 2012. In the RACKROOM From the Archive: Devon Caranicas with Alex Israel, one of the featured Art Statements artists at Art Basel 43. In the EDITIONS We're going Swiss! Keep your eye out for our Art Basel Special Editionsarriving in your mailbox this week. In the SLANT Rose Masterpol's solo exhibit, Deliberate + Unintentional, opens on June 16th at Hadid Gallery in West Hollywood, and runs through July 14th.

INTERVIEW WITH ALEX ISRAEL [Editor's Note:  Alex Israel is being featured at Art Basel 2012 in Art Statements at Peres Projects.  In 2012, Alex has exhibitions scheduled at Museo Civico Diocesano di Santa Maria dei Servi, Citta'... [more]

THE BUZZ from other SLANT cities New York Nicole Eisenman, Rick Prol London Polly Morgan Amsterdam Matthew Barney, Melanie Bonajo , more... Paris Benjamin Sabatier Chicago Rashid Johnson San Francisco Mitzi Pederson India Madan Mahatta Miami José Bedia China