New Orleans Review

Since 1968

Art Column

Where Do You Belong? The Paintings of Enrique Martinez Celaya

Art Column by Emily Farranto

I was standing in the viewing room of Jack Shainman Gallery in front of a large painting by Enrique Martinez Celaya. The painting showed a shirtless adolescent boy holding up a dead rabbit. The figure was looking directly at me. I wanted to look and I wanted to look away. A second large painting depicted another boy (or man?) with similarly intense eye contact. There is something straightforward about Martinez Celaya’s work, something ultra-sincere, but there is also something reluctant, held back.

If You Build it, Will They Come?

Art Column by Emily Farranto

The first art opening I attended last spring after the long lockdown was at Wading Room Gallery on Alvar Street, a new and temporary space created by Peter Hoffman and Ryn Wilson. Though I usually avoid openings, I wanted to support the new project, was curious to see what was there, and maybe just needed to get out of the house. This event and gallery, a garage and surrounding lawn, got me thinking about the spaces–current, past and future–to see art in New Orleans.

Virtually There: Looking at Art From a Distance, Part 2

Art Column by Emily Farranto

It was dark outside my window in New Orleans and nearly dark outside Katarina Janeckova Walshe’s studio in Corpus Christi, Texas. We were finally on a video call; she was sitting in her studio, an enclosed space underneath her stilted house and I was in my home office. I apologized, remembering I was chewing gum, took it out and stuck it on my tape dispenser. Katarina held up a slice of pizza and said it was okay because she was eating her dinner. Speaking to her, one feels immediately on familiar terms.

What Does a Stingray Mean?

Art Column by Emily Farranto

Photograph by Kevin Barrios, 2020 

In a post-Christmas torpor, a kind of sensory malaise, I found myself recalling that a year ago I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now, lying on my living room floor in the doldrums …

Hindsight is 2020

Art Column by Emily Farranto

Hindsight is 2020

My Top Ten Nine Art Experiences of the Year

It’s a tradition to end the year with Top Ten lists. Artforum dedicates its December issue to reviewing the year in film, music, and art. The New York …

The Mail Gaze: Art and the Postal Service

Art Column by Emily Farranto

In 1995, the summer after I graduated from college, I received my first envelope from a stranger named Pascal Lenoir. Inside the tan Euro-style C5 envelope was a collection of original artworks varying in size, subject, and texture. Several were collaged and many included text and rubber stampings. This was the curatorial mail art project of Pascal Lenoir. I received my last Mani-Art envelope in 2000, the year I began an MFA program in painting and then I pretty much forgot about mail art until now.