The basic review of art exhibitions has unfortunately been diminished by a number of factors in the last decades. Public relations campaigns developed by large galleries and institutions, the overtly commercial structure of profit art journals, the disparity between academia and contemporary art, and by both the popularized growth of the art world, and the public’s interest in the business of art over the meaning of art. Popular commercial art journals which are found in airport magazine stands, museum bookshops and upscale bookshops are for the most part, simply trade journals and commercial lifestyle magazines. In many of the more familiar places where reviews of art, or cultural analysis is to be found, there is little space or time for longer, detailed, critical reviews of art exhibitions, let alone concise ones, that are descriptive or even opinionated. What is commonly referred to as “close reading” does not fit into either the PR model, the quick frequency of social media, or the sales strategies of discussing art with a larger public.

In a basic sense, we would like to use this website to bring back the old tradition of the critical review and discussion of art exhibitions and movements. Critical of course can mean a lot of things. In this case we leave it a bit undefined, but it can mean “a bit more in depth” or “independent” or from an “artist perspective” or “opinionated”, etc… An appreciation of a larger historical context would inevitably also be a part of this critical perspective.