For anyone that has not seen Alexander Sokurov’s epic masterpiece “Russian Ark,” Michiko Itatani’s current exhibition, “HyperBaroque,” offers an eerily similar experience. Much like Sokurov’s 2002 film, we are presented with a situation that calls into question the precise nature of time and place. Where the “Ark”is set exclusively in St. Petersburg’s Russian State Hermitage Museum, Itatani’s ghostly world is not set in a single location, but rather functions much more like a Grand Tour of her impressions of various Baroque interior spaces. Inspired by venues such as Milan’s La Scala opera house, places that fulfill their function when full of people, Itatani’s versions are noticeably lacking in the physical presence of a human, unlike Sokurov’s filmic retelling of history, teeming with human activity. Itatani employs mark-making, invented iconographies (phantom, halo-like circles that drift aimlessly throughout rooms), and even laptops to announce that although these rooms may appear to be vacant, they are certainly not unoccupied. (Steven Wirth)
Through March 29 at Printworks Gallery, 311 W. Superior.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
