jameswagner.com

respect A gentle letter to the editor in today's New York City Newsday ends with this terse critique of the Republicans' evil politics of stem-cell research: "After all, we may differ as to when human life begins, but it...

John F. Simon, Jr. Endless Victory 2005 software, Apple Powerbook G4, acrylic plastic 28" x 28" x 3.25" [detail/screen still] Sandra Gering showed only two modest-sized works by John F. Simon, Jr. in the show which closed on Saturday....

They've made landfall and explored Roosevelt Island but in the end it's apparently not quite what they or any of us thought it would be. Jesse Bercowetz, Matt Bua and Carrie Dashow continue their investigation of the weird mythologies of...

untitled (taupe Volvo) 2005...

untitled (marble works) 2005...

Damien Davis Bear and Cover 2004 paper bears, desk [installation view] How do we address the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki today, sixty years after the fact? The artist Hiroshi Sunairi, a native of Hiroshima, asked his students at...

Jesse Burke Pink & Black 2005 C-prints detail view of installation Jesse Burke Pink & Black 2005 C-prints detail view of installation The two images above are elements of a larger work by Jesse Burke which we encountered while...

untitled (eight with cockswain) 2005 I captured this view of the Providence harbor off India Point at dusk last week. The suggestion of a vaseline-covered lens is just that: The instability of a zoom in low light did all...

untitled (Race Point) 2005...

untitled (54th Regiment Memorial detail) 2005 From the Boston African-American National Historic site:Denied equal pay, African American soldiers in the 54th Regiment refused pay for 18 months until Congress agreed, in 1864, to pay them the same rate as...

untitled (lottery cart) 2005...

untitled (Commonwealth Avenue) 2005...

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin The Canary oil on canvas 19.75" x 17" I'd love them even if they didn't sing, but they do, and now we're learning how much they want to, and why they want to. Because of the beautiful...

Jürgen Mayer H. In Heat detail of room-size installation/painting Alex Schweder Lovesick Room detail of room-size installation I'd want to do a post on this show even if the images weren't so spectacular, and I now have an additional...

David Ratcliff Embroidery 2005 acrylic on canvas 72" x 66" David Ratcliff Floatation 2005 acrylic on canvas 72" x 96" The show was over even before we got home on Saturday after visiting it for the first time, so...

Have I missed anything? I've been neglecting the blog this week because I've been down with a wicked flu accompanied by an impressive body temperature. For a couple of days I could barely think, I ached everywhere, so that even...

I'm very happy that I waited until this evening to capture these beauties in the center of our garden court. Now in the process of disappearing, they were never so deeply sensual, especially on close acquaintance....

no armor and no hairshirt The Washington Post reported three weeks ago (in an article syndicated in excerpts today in New York Newsday) that DaimlerChrysler has finally decided to let us dumb Yankees have a chance to buy the...

Pietro Gualdi Grand Plaza of Mexico City, Following the American Occupation of September 14, 1847 1847 oil on canvas [one of my all-time favorite public squares, for the richness of its life - once we left] Over seventy years...

Tim Thyzel Dot Lights 2004-2005 26 pegboard and electrical light constructions, variable dimensions, installation view LOT-EK Cynthia Broan Gallery 2005 billboard-style facade with retained elements, detail Cynthia Broan returned to Chelsea tonight, with a bang, after a two years'...

multiplying light We're planning a trip to Boston and southeastern New England this month. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is seeing Cape Cod for the first time since moving from Rhode Island twenty years ago,...

installation view of Roni Horn's Gold Field (1992) in the foreground and Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (1991) in the rear The press release for the second in the Andrea Rosen Gallery's series of two-person exhibitions [closed last Saturday] exploring the...

Steed Taylor Doll With Chocolate Bunny 1964 photograph 15" x 15" Even my mother might have shown she was impressed this time, and it was never easy to get her to show enthusiasm with our little accomplishments (she let...

Chief Smolka doing his thing UPDATE/FOLLOW UP: When I posted my April 30 story, "political police thuggery in New York," I wrote that I was unable to find the dramatic photograph which acccompanied the print edition of the NYTimes...

heroes at large We met these two extraordinary men for the first time this afternoon. Until then our knowledge and experience of the nobility and the courage of John Schenk and Robert Loyd had been limited to the incredible...

Yolanda del Amo (large detail of lightbox image) Oona Stern (detail of wall installation) Nicolás Dumit Estévez (view of installation with still from video) Noriko Ambe (detail of cut paper sculpture) On Thursday I wrote about Jesse Bercowetz and...

untitled (Rote Fahnen) 2005 In the spirit of May Day, the spirit of the Left and, yes, the spirit of the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la....

turkey cone turkey face turkey scene David Humphrey unveiled the delightful products of his latest trip into the fantastic on Friday evening. His "Oven Stuffer Roaster" installation is now, well, stuffed into the courtyard of the Morsel gallery in...

untitled (wagon wheel) 2005...