Ruffles and Ridges

Wayne Thiebaud hasn’t lost his edge

We’ve all seen the graph before. It’s a line that spikes and plummets its way uphill from 1896—the year the Dow Jones industrial average was created—peaks in late 2007 and then declines the present day. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the mountain slopes in three of Wayne Thiebaud’s most recent paintings.

To the Death

A show tackles the twisted triangle of art, religion and culture

Art that examines how religion functions within our culture could do us a lot of good. Every psyche, however secular or even atheist, remains heavily populated with what Saul Bellow called “large numbers of highly individual ghosts”—and few of those are uninfluenced by prevailing religious beliefs.

Moby-Ditch

Erika Wanenmacher shows us where the wild things are

Let me begin with the words of one contemporary philosopher: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Smoke and Mirrors

A portrait show meanders through the mysteries of identity

Eighty-five years after Gatsby attempted to create himself purely from one pre-existing idea and a whole lot of money, the character feels as real and as heartbreaking as ever.

No Restraint

Summer arts expos explode onto the scene

Art critics constantly get flak in this town for using a lot of $10 words. But, I mean, if you know the meaning of a word like “percipience”—even if “perceptiveness” works just as well—why not show it off?

Naughy by Nature

Sarah Hewitt sculpts a fine mess

I once knew a guy who, when he was on LSD, couldn’t handle being in nature. All that exaggeratedly twining, entangling growth was just too creepy for him, so he only took the drug in visually sanitized city spots, surrounded by concrete and steel.

Color Me Alienated

This is a portrait of the artist as a parsed, scattered, reiterated man

You are what you do. You are what you eat. Let’s face it, you probably are what you google. But for your sake and mine, I hope you don’t end up resembling Jason Salavon’s “Spigot (Babbling Self-portrait)” video and sound installation.

Not Fade Away

SITE reanimates the biennial

The newest SITE Santa Fe biennial, The Dissolve, hit the city’s art scene in a string of previews, parties and performances last week. But the show itself proves that all this fuss is about more than the production of fuss. It’s also about the production of an all-video exhibition that still feels human.

Outside the Box

An installation puts all human knowledge in order—or not

Remember the Being John Malkovich scene in which John Cusack’s character discovers the portal to the inside of Malkovich’s head? He’s at work in that 7th floor office, surrounded by floor-to-low-ceiling rows of filing cabinets filled with index cards. It’s his job to put the cards in order. Then, in one leap, he’s in the interior of another man’s brain.

Get Lost at Ghost Ranch

is adventure for the people: Owned and run by the Presbyterian Church since 1955, Ghost Ranch is a nonprofit, open-to-the-public educational retreat center in one of the most beautiful settings in northern New Mexico.