Gao Yuan, "Untitled (Woman with construction scene)," 2010
RECOMMENDED
Contemporary Chinese photography continues to impress by its conceptual power, sophistication and aesthetic richness in this exhibit of four artists who combine postmodern complexity with subtle senses of beauty. Nobody puts it all together better than Gao Yuan in her “Tattoo” series, in which she placed her models bedecked in their body art in poses derived from Italian Renaissance paintings, and then added to her studies backgrounds from China today of which the early moderns could not have dreamed. In Gao’s banner image, an exquisite nude young woman wreathed in spidery tattoos reclines on a blue floral blanket; she appears to be on a hill overlooking an industrial landscape smothered in hazy smog, insouciant and oblivious. Gao has integrated foreground and background seamlessly, mirroring and muting colors, balancing focus and fusing opposites so that they harmonize and never betray a trace of juxtaposition. (Michael Weinstein)
Through February 25 at Schneider Gallery, 230 West 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.
