Having adopted a Colombian child, Alec Soth was seized with the need to document the world in which the child might have grown up. Colombia’s capital Bogota through Soth’s lens is an outpost of the contemporary world that preserves no discernible unique tradition, but takes everything we see about ourselves and our surroundings in the media down to a more doleful level that might disturb us if we recognized that Colombians are no different from ourselves, except for a more tenuous grasp on elusive prosperity; in a metaphor of Soth’s sensibility, a desolate dog crouching on the pavement seems more forlorn than we would expect it to be on a Chicago street. Is Soth justifying his rescue, or is he simply showing us that life is pretty much the same anywhere if we control for our perhaps transitory economic advantages? (Michael Weinstein)
Alec Soth show at Stephen Daiter Gallery, 300 W. Superior. (312)787-3350, through October 25.
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.
