Kelly Mark and Luis Jacob reviewed in esse

It’s been a busy couple of months, with Images blogging happening in April and lots of behind-the-scenes work on a forthcoming article for Fillip that is my first attempt at a sustained reading of Jon Rafman’s Nine Eyes of Google Street View project, which I’m very excited about (it should be out in the next few months). Oh, and then there’s that whole PhD thing.

But, among all those more long-term projects, I’ve also been writing a few reviews, including my regular reports from Toronto for Montreal’s esse magazine. In this issue, I had the pleasure of reviewing two artists whose work I’ve long appreciated, Kelly Mark and Luis Jacob. Much has been written about Jacob’s travelling exhibition, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” but it is one of those rare projects that draws you in and becomes richer the more one looks at and thinks about its thematic intersections. Mark’s newest piece, a three-part video installation, seems simple at first, but I couldn’t help but smirk at the project’s subtle dig at the social awkwardness that art openings and events tend to breed (especially the “take” that is excerpted above, which clearly takes place at the Power Plant, perhaps even the Power Ball).