Between a huge drawing show at CAM Raleigh, a dancer at Fukushima and apocalyptic knitting, museums and galleries offer the best alternative to sunblock this summer: Staying inside and looking at lots of great art. Bill Thelen, whose gallery, Lump, marks its 20th anniversary this fall, decamps to the vast interior of CAM Raleigh for […]
Chris Vitiello
Bio: Chris Vitiello lives in Durham and writes for INDY Week on art, music and hockey.Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrisvitiello
Posted inReviews
Record review: Polyorchard’s Color Theory in Black and White
For three years, the Raleigh-rooted improvisational collective Polyorchard have only existed in the real time of live performance. The revolving, motley assortment of classical, jazz and rock musicians have played practically every kind of music in every possible configuration in almost every Triangle venue, emerging as a vital and wonderfully vexing force of the area’s […]
Posted inArt
At Lump and Flanders Gallery, Harrison Haynes, Chris Watts and Aaron Fowler pierce the myth of the solo artist
CHRIS WATTS & AARON FOWLER: SO MUCH TO SHE Flanders Gallery 505 S. Blount St. Raleigh 919-757-9533 www.flandersartgallery.com Through June 2HARRISON HAYNES: ISOLATED TRACKS Lump 505 S. Blount St. Raleigh 919-889-2927 www.teamlump.org Through May 30 Two new shows at neighboring Raleigh galleries, Flanders and Lump, use vastly different means to draw on similar reservoirs of […]
Posted inReviews
Record review: Yandrew’s daring debut Crossing Streams
Yandrew plays Friday, May 1, at The Shed in Durham. Skylar Gudasz opens. The 9 p.m. show costs $5. In the vast open space between jazz and classical music, it can be tough to speak with specificity. You either describe the music in terms more poetic than informative, or you namedrop the influences you detect: […]
Posted inCulture
Full Frame: Brett Morgen’s Kurt Cobain—Too little, too late at night
Nights run long at Full Frame—into the next day, in fact. Thursday evening ended on Friday morning, spanning midnight with the disappointing biographical documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. This is the first film bio authorized by Cobain’s family since his 1994 suicide, using lots of never-before-seen home movies and footage of his personal notebooks, […]
Posted inCulture
Full Frame: Though very different, Iris and War Photographer both leave our writer feeling “breathlessly empowered”
Get off your ass and make your work. That’s what I learned on the first day of Full Frame. Thursday morning offered an unlikely double feature, Iris and War Photographer. On the surface, these two films could not be more opposite. For Iris, the late Albert Maysles followed the fabulous, hilarious, colorful fashion icon Iris […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Full Frame: So what is an “experimental documentary” anyway?
Life is messy. Interrupted by memories, distractions, mistakes and boring passages where little happens, it’s not experienced in a neat, comprehensible line. But you wouldn’t necessarily guess that from watching documentary films. Many of the documentaries at Full Frame this year adhere to a tidy chronological form. Biographies march through birth, childhood, adulthood and death. […]
Posted inArt
Duke’s MFA in Experimental Documentary Arts finds its focus
MFA|EDA 2015 THESIS EXHIBITIONS Power Plant Gallery 320 Blackwell St., Durham 919-660-3622 www.powerplantgallery.org Through April 18 Windrose Stanback’s photograph of volcanic rock is a good metaphor for Duke University’s Experimental Documentary Arts program, from which she and 13 other students are graduating this spring. Upon its founding in 2012, Duke’s first and only MFA program […]
Posted inArt
Eye of the Beholder: Abstract art entwines with reality in a group show at Meredith College and a new mural at NCMA
I used to hold the Modernist idea that abstraction was always sourced in the real. Cézanne’s fields of brushstrokes were recognizable as landscapes. Kandinsky’s improvisations referenced battles, or used a horse and rider as a starting point. Postmodern culture made me cancel my subscription to that idea, but it still has strong circulation among some […]
Posted inMusic
Live: Approaching Ali offers emotional attachment
North Carolina Opera’s Approaching Ali Music by D.J. Sparr, libretto by Mark Campbell and Davis Miller Carolina Theatre, Durham Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015 I’ve never connected emotionally with an opera until the North Carolina Opera’s Approaching Ali last week. I’ve had a technical understanding of the emotions before—Mozart’s subtleties mean mischief; Wagner’s power chords mean, […]