I enjoyed my visit to Keith Haring exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Keith Haring: 1978–1982 is the first large-scale exhibition to explore the early career of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century. Tracing the development of Haring’s diverse visual vocabulary, the exhibition includes 155 works on paper, numerous experimental videos, and over 150 archival objects, including rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs. I particularly loved his sketchbook pages as I can see the progress of his visual vocabulary. It was also nice to see the contemporary photographs of his graffiti work in the subway alongside the actual graffiti pieces as these photos restore some of the vitality and spontaneity lost by the framed graffiti pieces exhibited on the museum walls.
Kira Nam Greene’s work explores female sexuality, desire and control through figure and food still-life paintings, surrounded by complex patterns. Imbuing the feminist legacies of Pattern and Decoration Movement with transnational, multicultural motifs, Greene creates colorful paintings that are unique combinations of realism and abstraction, employing diverse media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor and colored pencil. Combining Pop Art tropes and transnationalism, she also examines the politics of food through the depiction of brand name food products, or junk food. Recently, Greene started a figurative painting series spurred by the 2016 Presidential Election, Women’s March, #metoo movement and ensuing crisis of conscience, this new body of work aspires to present the power of collective action by women.