Contributed by Brenda Zlamany / A few days before I saw Backrooms, I attended Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante and stayed for the Q&A, with Laurie Anderson leading a conversation with Schnabel and a few of the actors on stage. I walked into that theater in a raw, hyper-specific state of mind, very much thinking about time and memory. David Hockney had died, and I was operating in a state of quiet shock. I had spent that morning writing a remembrance for The Observer about my last painting of Hockney as Whistler’s Mother, realizing it had unexpectedly become a final goodbye, a sort of time and meaning shift. To sit in the dark grieving one great artist while watching another’s film about beauty, consciousness, and the survival of the imagination was overwhelming.
Tag: Laurie Anderson
Sam Anderson: Feeling is structural
Contributed by Patrick Ryan Bell / Situated in Baltimore’s Old Goucher neighborhood, art hall has rapidly established itself as a pivotal space for contemporary art. Once a Hells Angels bar, the venue has undergone a thoughtful transformation that embraces its history and urban context by way of significant international artists tailored to Charm City’s audience. In a city shaped by economic precariousness, institutional neglect, and fierce grassroots creativity, art hall presents an alternative model: serious contemporary programming without the trappings of market pressure or institutional polish. Owner and director Shawn Mudd is not looking to feed or mimic New York but instead to divert its pipeline, bringing established artists to Baltimore. Now up is Sam Anderson’s solo exhibition, “There’s a Girl in My Soup,” which features a wide range of her work. It fits the gallery: rigorous, poetic, and strange.
























