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Critical art reviews of Detroit galleries and museums weekly

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Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley @ Cranbrook Art Museum

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On December 10, 2025

In Uncategorized

Uncanny Valley,” installation, Cranbrook Art Museum

If there were any doubt that we now live in an age of peak aesthetic pluralism, the exhibition “Uncanny Valley,” at the Cranbrook Art Museum, has thoroughly laid that doubt to rest. The eccentric chairs, benches, vases, lamps and rugs of the Los Angeles-based twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas live at the intersection of lowbrow mass culture and highbrow fine art. The brothers’ aggressively accessible work will be instantly comprehensible to contemporary audiences while at the same time eliciting the uneasiness referenced in the exhibition’s title.

The term uncanny valley refers to a psychological theory hypothesizing that the closer an inanimate object comes to resembling a human being, the more disturbing that resemblance becomes. The idea is particularly applicable to new technologies like 3D computer animation and artificial intelligence and is relevant to the work of the Haas brothers as a loose analogy to the uneasiness the exhibition may produce in gallery visitors.  In this instance, the “uncanny valley” is the queasy feeling engendered when pop-adjacent artworks are presented as fine art. The artists openly—even gleefully–borrow imagery from animations like the television show “Futurama,” among other mass market cultural products, to create work that is easily grasped by the general public, yet difficult to define taxonomically in art world terms.

The main gallery is devoted to a number of quasi-installations that elide the difference between architectural furnishings, taxidermized representations of unknown animal species and sculpture. The impressively crafted chairs, lamps, benches and other objects often combine luxurious materials, such as art glass, marble, fine wood and bronze, with fake fur, polyurethane and light bulbs.  The resulting embodied critters are intentionally silly, sexy and disarming while suggesting a subversive, slightly sinister undercurrent.

The titles of the pieces are relentlessly punning, sometimes profane and often named after celebrities. Thus, we get Needle Juice and Hugs Bunny, Titty Slickers and Mary Tyler Spore.  The jokey (and occasionally smutty) labels are good for a chuckle as we stroll through the galleries.

Jean Luc Pi-guard, 2016, (r.)Brooke Shield, 2016, Icelandic sheepskin, silver-plated bronze, hand carved ebo

As we enter the main gallery, two enormous, yeti-like beings hulk along the wall, their sharp, ebony horns and silver-plated claws contrasting with their cozy white fur.  Jean Luc Pi-guard and Brooke Shield (as they are called) imply both friendliness and lethality. Other artworks, like the lamp James Pearl Jones and the bench and table set Bend Affleck & Giraffe-ael Warnock, show off the artists’ skills as wood and stone carvers. Nearby, an enormous black, horned and fanged creature, King Dong, sits atop a low pedestal and towers over a collection of smaller furry and fantastical figures.

“Uncanny Valley,” installation (with King Dong), Cranbrook Art Museum

The museum’s side gallery holds yet more denizens of the Haas brothers’ fertile imagination. Working in cooperation with craft collectives in South Africa and California, they have fabricated a group of intricately beaded creatures and one mighty, exotic tree. One of the most amusing and conceptually satisfying collections in this section is a series of smallish wool rugs that represent mostly extinct animals, their flatness calling to mind roadkill.  Cheetah Hayworth, LaBrea Brad Pitt, Quasidodo, and Taz Been represent (respectively) a flattened cheetah, a deceased mastodon, an extinct dodo and an expired Tasmanian devil.  Just outside the gallery doorway, computer-generated “paintings” show backlit landscapes that capture the twilit sweep of costal California, framed by freeform, fleshy pink polyurethane surrounds.

(foreground l. to r.) Gator Tots, 2019; Mouth-ew-Broderick, 2019, glass beads, wire, mixed fiber stuffing, (background l. to r.) Needle Juice, 2018; Thorn Hub, 2018, velvet, brass, poly-fil fiber

Some art scolds might question the status of the work in “Uncanny Valley” as fine art, but the impressive craftsmanship, luxe materials and large scale of many objects in the collection argue persuasively that the Haas’s artworks are indeed museum worthy. In this age of aesthetic flux, it may not pay to be overly dogmatic, and we might benefit by letting go of pre-conceived ideas in favor of a more experimental—and playful–approach to art. Perhaps we don’t need to insist on identifying these artworks as either kitschy toys or rarified cultural objects of lasting value, but can say “yes” to it all.

Mulholland, 2023, Java drawing program, QLED screen, 3-d printed ABS, polyurethane, enamel

The exhibition was organized by the museum’s Chief Curator Laura Mott, with the assistance of Katy Kim, Jeanne and Ralph Graham Curatorial Fellow.  “Uncanny Valley” will be traveling to other museum venues throughout the U.S. in 2026.  A 256 -page catalog of this midcareer retrospective of the Haas brothers’ work is available for sale at the museum.

(from left) Cheetah Hayworth, LaBrea Brad Pitt, Quasidodo, Taz Been, 2017, wool rugs

Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley @ Cranbrook Art Museum  November 2, 2025 – February 22, 2026

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Making Her Mark @ Flint Institute of Arts

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On February 1, 2025

In Ceramic, Sculpture, Uncategorized

Clay, of course, has been a fundamental material for both artistic and utilitarian objects for millennia. In Europe, ceramics had long been a masculine pursuit, maybe because digging up clay, feeding fiery kilns, and other physical aspects of the process were deemed too strenuous (or unseemly) for women. After the Industrial Revolution mechanized the manufacture of ceramics, women were employed as “china painters,” adding decorations to factory-made pottery, but weren’t involved in the actual creation of the objects. Once the ideals of the British Arts & Crafts movement — its revolt against industrialization and its emphasis on human-made objects — found their way to the U.S., studios began making ceramics featuring distinctively American designs. Some of these potteries were run by women, and some tutored and encouraged girls to take up ceramics as a vocation. After World War II, women artists emerged as important members of the Studio Ceramics movement, helping their male counterparts to bring the medium fully into the realm of fine art. Now, the Flint Institute of Arts, which boasts an impressive array of ceramics in its permanent collection, presents “Making Her Mark” (through September 28), a smallish but eclectic exhibition of ceramic artworks by women that proves that, released from any obligation to practicality, clay can be an almost endlessly versatile medium for expression.

Evelyn Cheromiah, Olla, Stoneware

Many of the objects in the show do at least nod toward the utilitarian vessels usually associated with ceramics. Evelyn Cheromiah’s Olla, a stoneware pot decorated with geometric earth tone patterns, is perhaps the most faithful piece here, sourced, fired, and painted according to the traditions of the artist’s Laguna Pueblo heritage. English innovator Clarice Cliff’s hand-painted Art Deco “Bizarre” ware is represented by two perfectly functional Fantasque Pitchers, adorned with colorful fruits and a country cottage. Sara Paloma’s jet-black Bottles, with their pencil-thin necks, and Eva Hild’s untitled white porcelain bowl (studded with nails) are at least nominally practical.

Ursula Morley Price, Fountain Plume Form,   Stoneware, 2009

Some works demonstrate the medium’s ability to mimic other materials. Ursula Morley Price’s Fountain Plume Form(2009) is a vase-like object made up of thin vertical vanes that resemble a rusting turbine, while Anne Marie Laureys’ Clay-e-Motion looks like a supple, bundled scarf. You’d be forgiven for mistaking Mary Roehm’s porcelain Tea Bowl #1 at first for translucent glass with a metal rim and base, and Lucie Rie’s small conical piece, its thin walls punctured with ragged holes, could pass for a crudely made metal sieve.

Carol Gouthro, Aurlia gouthroii Barnaclette, Porcelain, 2012

Clay lends itself to some delightfully odd biomorphic creations as well, such as Bonnie Seeman’s untitled stalk of rhubarb-like vegetation, its leaves cut away to reveal ruby red pith; the piece recalls similar vegetable- and fruit-shaped teapots and pitchers from the 18th and 19th centuries. Debbie Weinstein’s Vessel is crowned with purple polyps that could be writhing undersea creatures, and Carol Gouthro’s Aurlia gouthroii Barnaclette depicts a weird fictional organism — scientifically named for the artist — with mouth-like pods sprouting from an orange stem, anchored to a mass of purple seashells. More subtle is Chieko Katsumata’s untitled flower-like form, a fleshy, bright yellow blossom, both vivid and ponderous.

Irina Zaytceva, Twins,  Porcelain, 2013

 

Magda Gluszek, Small Pond, Ceramic, 2013

Ceramics can, of course, be figurative, even narrative. Ruth Duckworth’s Black Angel is an elegantly abstracted figure with blunt “wings” and a slender neck supporting a half-circle head that’s part helmet, part halo, with just a suggestion of a face. It recalls both early modernist works and ancient Cycladic sculpture. Irina Zaytceva’s Twins is a small porcelain vessel decorated with delicate, meticulously rendered images of mermaids and other mythical sea creatures, with a stopper resembling branching red coral. Magda Gluszek contributes Small Pond: a pale female figure in a translucent green swimsuit reclines in a sort of kiddie pool made of transparent plastic and what looks like floral upholstery off a 1970s sofa. She’s blowing a party noisemaker, and her blushing skin, hairless eyebrows, and large pointed animal ears suggest she’s some sort of puckish faerie creature, up to some mischief in the human world.

Sara Lisch, Lion’s Journey, Stoneware, 2002

Another fairytale-looking piece, Sara Lisch’s Lion’s Journey, is rich with details that hint at a narrative. A woman dressed as a swimmer, with a monkey seated in front of her, rides astride a lioness wearing a blue collar and a bracelet on one paw. The big cat’s body is perforated to reveal small animals inside its belly. Who these characters are remains mysterious, but the tableau is a beautiful one, painted in blues and browns over a white glaze.

Viola Frey, A Pile of Figurines and Masked Man.

Mariko Paterson, Willow Bago, Porcelain, 2014

Mariko Paterson, who says her works “range from pretty to political,” contributes Willow Bago, a humorous porcelain sculpture with perhaps some serious commentary about imperialism and cultural exchange. It depicts a cartoonishly tall and narrow Winnebago RV, with a cut-n-paste image of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, smiling from behind the windshield. The white body of the vehicle is decorated with cobalt blue Chinese-inspired images of pagodas, boats, and trees — the “Willow pattern,” as it was known when it became popular in the late 1700s. The RV is made even more precarious by the tourist luggage and Chinese loot piled high on its roof. Britain’s misadventures in China are notorious, so it’s easy to read Willow Bago as a critique, despite the plaque on its roof claiming it commemorates “100 wonderful years” of the Queen Mum.

Viola Frey, A Pile of Figurines and Masked Man

Viola Frey, whose imposing 10-foot tall Arrogant Man stands watch over the FIA’s main ceramics gallery, is represented here by a chaotic bricolage sculpture called simply A Pile of Figurines and a Masked Man that gloms together multiple kitschy ceramic collectibles along with original creations. Among the clutter are what look like a Dutch girl, a bunny, and possibly the Virgin Mary and one of the three wise men, all colored in bright splashes of red, yellow, and blue. Trying to make his way through the jumble is one of Frey’s signature men in suits, either placing a Roman bust on his head or trying to remove it. In Frey’s work, the commercial and fine art traditions of ceramics collide to make an appropriate centerpiece for this wildly varied exhibition.

Making Her Mark on display at the https://flintarts.org  through September 28, 2025.

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Detroit Art Review

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On December 3, 2024

In Uncategorized

Dear DAR Friend,

Hello and Happy Holidays! I am Ron Scott Teachworth, founder and writer at the Detroit Art Review. I am writing to express my gratitude for your support. Thank you for visiting our website and reading the reviews by our writers.

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From everyone here at the Detroit Art Review, Thank You!

Group Exhibition @ Library Street Collective’s – The Shepherd

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On August 13, 2024

In Uncategorized

An installation view of In an effort to be held, curated by Allison Glenn, and on view at the Shepherd until October 12. Photo: Detroit Art Review

If you haven’t yet been to the Shepherd, the former church at the center of a new cultural complex on Detroit’s east side, you are missing out on one of the most stunning exhibition spaces in the metro area. Happily, In an effort to be held — the handsome second show at the brand-new gallery (it debuted May 18) — provides a compelling reason to push east of Indian Village to the three-acre site just a block off Jefferson. While a few elements have yet to be completed, notably the coffeeshop, the just-hatched Little Village, as the three block complex is called, boasts a bed-and-breakfast aimed at artists (but open to all), a library devoted to books on artists of color, a skateboard park designed by boarding-legend Tony Hawk, and a whimsical outdoor sculpture park with work by the late, great Charles McGee.

The whole complex is the brainchild of Anthony and JJ Curis.  The couple, who own Library Street Collective, curated most of Bedrock’s multiple public art installations throughout downtown, including the “animated” alleyway The Belt, the towering Charles McGee black-and-white mural on the north end of Capitol Park, and the dazzling graffiti art on every level of the Z Garage. The interior of the 1912 Romanesque Revival church has been reimagined by Brooklyn’s Peterson Rich Office as a classic gallery “white box,” albeit one that celebrates, rather than fights, the architecture and the luminous stained glass.

The principal addition to the space is a freestanding mezzanine with a dramatic overlook on the now de-sanctified altar. At the center of this platform is a large oculus, maybe five feet across, that looks down on the gallery space immediately below.

Jordan Eagles, Vinci, Grayscale image of Salvator Mundi; Plexiglass, blood of an HIV+ undetectable long-term survivor and activist, and UV resin; 26 3/4 x 19 x 3 inches; 2018. (Subsequent images by Joseph Tiano, courtesy of Library Street Collective and the Shepherd.)

Curated by the Shepherd artistic director Allison Glenn (who grew up just east of her new workplace), In an effort to be held features one spellbinding piece that directly invokes the structure’s ecclesiastical past – Vinci by New York artist Jordan Eagles, who often, brace yourself, works in blood.

The artist generally sources his material from slaughterhouses, but in the case of Vinci, Eagles used the blood of a person with HIV who’s undetectable. The black-and-white photographic reproduction of the Renaissance portrait of Christ, Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) – attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, though that’s also disputed, Glenn notes — is washed in a rich, even crimson that, softly illuminated from behind, fairly glows. Some may find the material and association disturbing – others, mesmerizingly beautiful. But there’s no question it’s hard to take your eyes off it.

Celeste, La constelación que viene, Pigments and acrylic base on dyed cotton canvas; Variable dimensions, approximately 29 feet x 16 feet; 2023.

At the far west end of the church, you’ll find the altar, stripped of religious objects, and overhead a delightful use of art in an architectural space. It’s an approach that Glenn particularly likes. “I love working with architecture,” she said. “A lot of my career has been working in public space – so when I saw the former church, I saw all the opportunities that existed outside the boxes.” In suspension above the altar, a bit like so many red-dyed clouds, La constelación que viene (The constellation that’s coming) represents the polar opposite mood from Vinci, powerful though that is. There’s a lightness and celebration attached to La constelación by the Mexican City duo Celeste (Fernanda Camarena and Gabriel Rosas Alemán), that uplifts and turns one’s gaze heavenward. It couldn’t fit the space Glenn chose any better if it tried.

Zak Ové, DP70, Vintage cotton doilies; 74 3/4 inches in diameter; 2023

Equally luminous in its way, though much more pointed in its use of color, is London artist Zak Ové’s DP70, a circular, multihued collage made entirely from vintage cotton doilies that, when seen from a distance, bear an uncanny resemblance to what you’d see looking through a rich kaleidoscope. The British-Trinadadian artist is best known for his loony-tunes, Crayola-colored sculptures, two of which were featured at the British Museum’s Africa Galleries last year. And while it’s mostly two-dimensional, DP70 does an astonishing imitation of a symmetrical, richly 3-D work of oddball power. “Hypnotic” is an understatement – yet at the same time, the whole conceit is drop-dead gorgeous. The artist uses a process he describes as “hyperbolic pattern-making,” invoking the masquerades of Canbulay, a Trinidadian harvest festival that came to represent emancipation in the former British colony of Trinidad and Tobago.

Cameron Harvey, Ancestor 26: Ceratonia Siliqua V; Acrylic, graphite, and reflective glass beads on canvas; 109 x 53 inches; 2023.

Another rich exercise in color is found in LA-based Cameron Harvey’s Ancestor 26: Ceratonia Siliqua V, a construction that looks rather like a ceremonial robe that ancient, far-away royalty might have sported. This is sensuous, high-concept work. Harvey rolls over unstretched, shaped canvas liberally strewn with paint that she impresses as she rotates. The deep-green, abstract horizontal image that repeats from bottom to top of the “garment’s” interior – which has a certain primitive mystique – was created by Harvey pressing her forearm repeatedly into the pigment. The artist has had solo shows in, among other cities, Venice, Rome, Chicago and Malibu. Harvey is currently doing a UCROSS residency in Sheridan, Wyoming. In an effort to be held is her first time exhibiting in Detroit.

Manal Shoukair, Seed of paradise, Nylon and pomegranates, Dimensions variable, 2024.

In another clever application of architecture to a work of art, Manal Shoukair – a Lebanese-American artist working in Detroit – suspended beige nylon from the Shepherd’s mezzanine oculus with a dozen or so pomegranates clearly visible at its center. Shoukair, a 2023 Kresge Foundation “Gilda Award” winner (named for the late Gilda Snowden, artist, and College for Creative Studies professor), grapples with Islamic spirituality and issues of “contemporary femininity,” according to her artist’s statement. The pomegranate is considered a sacred fruit in Islamic tradition, and here Shoukair has created – it might as well be said – an all-nourishing breast with pomegranates at its center. That Seed of paradise is visually lined up with the very spot where the cross used to stand on the skeletal altar just makes the composition all the richer.

In an effort to be held – will be on display at the Shepherd in Detroit (above) through October 12, 2024.

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Jefferson Pinder – Weapons and White Music, @ WSU

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On April 17, 2024

In Uncategorized

Jefferson Pinder – Weapons and White Music, at the Wayne State University’s Elaine Jacob Gallery

Jefferson Pinder, Installation image, Colored Entrance, 2017

In a lecture given a few years ago, Jefferson Pinder opened by speaking about two luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance: sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, who believed the only worthwhile art a Black artist could make was propaganda that advanced the cause of social justice; and philosopher Alain Locke, who believed Black artists needed the freedom to, as Locke’s biographer Jeffrey C. Stewart puts it, “produce a black subjectivity that could become the agent of a cultural and social revolution.” Weapons and White Music, a compact anthology of Pinder’s art from the last decade or so, on view at Wayne State University’s Elaine Jacob Gallery now through April 27, showcases a body of work that balances aesthetics and activism. It addresses issues of race not with unequivocal slogans, but in an audio-visual language that prompts contemplation, investigation, and soul-searching. There are no handy wall labels here to coach the visitor, so inevitably the nature of that contemplation will vary from one person to the next.

Jefferson Pinder, Bent Spear (after John Brown), 2024

Those averse to violence on principle, for example, might be discomfited by an exhibition that features spears, billy clubs, and Molotov cocktails (never mind that the collection of armor, swords, and firearms in the Great Hall of the nearby Detroit Institute of Arts is one of the museum’s most popular attractions). Some context might help; Bent Spear (after John Brown), a piece comprising a volley of pikes displayed across one wall of the Jacob gallery’s first floor, references weapons once commissioned by the titular white abolitionist, who intended to supply them to freed Black men for use in the uprising he hoped to provoke. The spears here are arrayed behind a vitrine containing the Head of a Man — a human skull with teeth plated in gold. Drawings of a similar skull are superimposed over photos of Black Panther leader Huey Newton in a series of nearby screen prints.

The musical part of the exhibition’s title also appears on the gallery’s first floor. Facing the entrance are five monitors playing a 50-minute loop of videos featuring Black “singers” lip-syncing to a series of songs by white pop-rock bands. Some of the performers onscreen are expressive, some are deadpan, and each takes a different part of the harmonies. Entitled Revival, the piece is described on the artist’s website as a “virtual choir” that “reverses a longstanding tradition of mainstream cultural appropriation.” Some of the songs featured are more mainstream than others, but many share themes of violence that “hit different,” as the kids say, when apparently voiced by Black performers. Consider Born Under Punches by Talking Heads, with its haunted refrain, “all I want is to breathe,” that can’t help evoking Eric Garner’s dying words. (Pinder had incorporated the song into the piece prior to Garner’s killing.) Also featured are Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, about an imprisoned youth facing execution; The Flaming Lips’ The W.A.N.D. — short for “The Will Always Negates Defeat” — which boasts, “I’ve got a tricked-out magic stick that will make them all fall / We’ve got the power now, motherfuckers, that’s where it belongs”; even The Smiths’ Girlfriend In A Coma is included. It’s hard to know what someone unfamiliar with these songs will make of the piece, but for those who know, Revival will cast the music in a different light.

The curving stairway to the gallery’s second floor is cleverly incorporated into the exhibit itself.  Toward the bottom of the stairs is a weathered neon sign with a red arrow, that might be from a historical museum’s display about the days of Jim Crow, except that a “d” has been added to turn the phrase “colored entrance” into “colored entranced,” with connotations both of wonder and bewitchment. Hovering above the top of the stairs, where the visitor must pass under it to proceed, is Gauntlet, a menacing cloud of charred billy clubs that threatens to rain harm onto anyone below.

Jefferson Pinder, Fire Next Time, 2021 – Glass bottles, graphite, fabric, matches and catalyst.

At the top of the stairs is Fire Next Time, a set of four shelves of varying widths arranged in an inverted pyramid, upon which are displayed 25 Molotov cocktails — improvised incendiaries made from bottles, rags, and gasoline, associated with what’s sometimes called irregular warfare. They appear both grubbily utilitarian and oddly compelling in the way weapons often are. Up close, they’re revealed to be adorned with wire, duct tape, packed mud, BBs, matches, hair, shards of glass, and other material. The presentation itself is formal, its ascending shape suggesting escalating conflict or the rising flames themselves.

Projected onto a wall on the other side of the gallery is a new work, a video installation called Greatest Hits (violent pun likely intended); it’s a montage of scenes from movies and television programs in which white actors utter the N-word. The films range from earnest dramas (Roots; Do The Right Thing; In The Heat of the Night) and cop flicks (Dirty Harry; The French Connection; Starsky & Hutch), to satire (Blazing Saddles, a notorious Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor), broad comedy (Bad News Bears; The Jerk), and more, including the works of Quentin Tarantino, without which no such compilation would be complete. The montage closes with two musical performances: punk godmother Patti Smith belting her 1978 song “Rock & Roll N—,” adding herself to a long line of white artists who have tried to liken themselves to marginalized minorities in an attempt to set themselves apart from mainstream society; and a 1972 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, in which John Lennon and Yoko Ono remark on the abuse of women across the racial spectrum with their song “Woman is the N— of the World.”

Jefferson Pinder, Greatest Hits, 2024 – HD Video (running time:23 Min.

The creators of these films would presumably have justifications for their use of the offensive term, even if it was only for verisimilitude. For viewers familiar with these films, the contexts in which the slur is used will be understood, though not everyone will accept the justifications for its use from one film to the next, or at all. To anyone unfamiliar with them, the piece may not be much more than a litany of hate speech being ejected from anonymous white mouths. Throughout, though, there are intriguing juxtapositions within the montage, such as that of a scene from the Civil War drama Glorymashed up against one from Kubrick’s Vietnam picture Full Metal Jacket, drawing a line between the two conflicts. A theme emerges of white anti-heroes excusing their racism with the claim that they hate everybody equally. And while it’s unclear how Beastie Boys’ song “Sure Shot” relates to the scenes from The Jerk and Roots over which it’s played, putting The Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin” over a clip featuring Ku Klux Klan “knights” from Birth Of A Nation makes for a jarring audiovisual pun.

Jefferson Pinder – Weapons and White Music, at the Wayne State University’s Elaine Jacob Gallery on view through April 27, 2024.

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