BY MICAELA HOUTKIN
Micaela Houtkin is the Advertising Manager at Artforum. She lives and works in New York City.
01 GINA BEAVERS (MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY, NEW YORK)
Gina Beavers’s “Divine Consumer,” presented by Marianne Boesky Gallery, represents a departure from the bizarre and often grotesque domain of social media that has informed and characterized her work for more than a decade, yet it is still unmistakably hers. Across all her work, Beavers has turned the act of looking into a near-tactile experience. For this series, Beavers collaged online advertisements for linens, knits, and upholstery, then rendered these images on canvas using foam, paper pulp, and oil paint. The resulting “Comfortcore Paintings” (all works 2024) are mixed-media translations of the barrage of advertising that pervades one’s online journey. The series’ title at once references the comfort that downy bedding offers while alluding to the relative tranquility of the uncomplicated advertisement (as compared with the chronic discord found on social media). Shopping for something cozy, if the alternative is social media’s riotous noise, offers, like a chunky knit throw, something of a respite. The resulting works are sumptuous and inviting, and yet, true to form, uncanny in their not-quite-faithful representations. This tension makes them wonderfully mesmerizing.
02 GUYS & DOLLS IMMERSIVE STANDING TICKETS (THE BRIDGE THEATRE, LONDON)
Even before the house lights flash or the orchestra commences with the overture, “immersive” ticket holders to Guys & Dolls at London’s Bridge Theatre can glimpse—right from the stage—what the forthcoming two acts hold. The hustle and bustle of 1950s New York is close enough to touch: An assemblage of flashing marquee arrows point haphazardly in all directions, the din of car horns permeates the air, and the entire cast mills about on floor level, engaged in conversation about a certain permanent floating craps game (one presumes). As the performance begins, crew raise, lower, configure, and reconfigure portions of the stage; ushers direct the audience to yield to ascending set pieces and emphatically gesture when it’s time to move up to an elevated edge. There’s an ineffable value to be found in experiencing live theater at such proximity: It’s at once acutely intimate and larger than life. Never is this more apparent than during the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat,” led by Jonathan Andrew Hume as Nicely-Nicely Johnson. For what is undeniably one of the most exhilarating performances of the show, Hume leads the ensemble in a rollicking rendition, made all the more captivating by its immediacy.
03 MICKALENE THOMAS (BARNES FOUNDATION, PHILADELPHIA; CURATED BY RENÉE MUSSAI)
Mickalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, “All About Love,” is the first major international tour of her work and the second stop on its eastbound trajectory, having come to Philadelphia from the Broad in Los Angeles, with shows slated for London’s Hayward Gallery and Les Abbatoirs, Musée–Frac Occitanie Toulouse in the coming year. The exhibition focuses on the beauty, strength, and personal agency of Black women as it brings together works across media from 2003 to the present day. The throughline, as suggested by its title—borrowed from bell hooks’s book of the same name—is love. hooks asserts that her book offers “a hopeful, joyous vision of love’s transformative power,” noting the vital importance of a “love ethic” in all “great movements for social justice.” Thomas’s exhibition is peopled with heroically scaled portraits of friends, family, and lovers, frequently in reimagined scenes from Western art history—those from which Black and queer subjects were historically excluded, anonymized, or objectified. As she claims this space—unabashedly, in an exquisitely rendered tapestry of color and rhinestones, and with such tenderness for herself and her muses—Thomas presents her own account of love’s transformative power.
Co-organized by the Hayward Gallery, London, and the Broad, Los Angeles, and in partnership with the Barnes, Philadelphia, and Les Abbatoirs, Musée–Frac Occitanie Toulouse. “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love” is on view through January 12 at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; travels to Hayward Gallery, London (February 11–May 5, 2025); Les Abattoirs, Musée–Frac Occitanie Toulouse (June 13–November 9, 2025).
