By virtue of the impact of Zen Buddhism on their high culture, Japanese photographers have developed the talent of bringing forth the intensely concentrated potentialities of the straight still image beyond any other national group. Shooting in black and white, Hiroshi Watanabe is a powerful exemplar of the Japanese tradition, whose studies can be most readily appreciated as visual haiku. Watanabe’s portraits of macaque monkeys that have been disciplined by their masters in “monkey dancing” steal the show; their expressions are so individualized and, yes, thoughtful that they should be required seeing for all those who have doubts about the truth of Darwinian evolution. Zen is often ironically subversive, but it always emotionally evocative; in Watanabe’s deepest image, a mangy black dog rounds a bend in a dirt path under a haze towards a rude fence on the staves of which long-stemmed flowers have been placed unobtrusively. (Michael Weinstein)
Through October 31 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 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.
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