Eyes on Columbus

(photo: A.J. Zanyk)

The global arts media has taken note of the Wex's current exhibitions, Cyprien Gaillard: Disquieting Landscapes and Hard Targets. Noted Artforum International editor Tim Griffin in the January issue previewing the Gaillard show of photographs, projected video, and film, “This survey features the artist's already-familiar studies of post-Soviet fight clubs and housing-project demolitions, along with newer works that will undoubtedly evidence an expanded cartography.” In the fall, Gaillard was named one of the top 100 emerging artists (and actually fell in the top 10 of that list) in Flash Art contemporary art magazine, and also scored a multiple-page spread in the current issue of the NYC-based Pin-Up magazine (a “magazine for architectural entertainment”), which called his work “equal parts seductive and destructive.” We've had media inquiries, meanwhile, on Cyprien from Bulgaria, France, Spain, Italy, China, the UK, and beyond, attesting to his resonance across borders. Meanwhile, the multimedia sports-in-art show Hard Targets has garnered—in additional to an onslaught of local media—nods in the widely read artnet.com as one of the top 20 shows of the month (“just in time for the Super Bowl”), and also on art:21's site in a recent weekly roundup, with a Big Ten Network piece set to air nationwide on that cable network February 23. And Brutus Buckeye (Ohio State's mascot, for those of you reading from farflung locales) has tweeted about this show—just another example of Hard Targets tearing down those art world/sports world barriers, one tweet at a time.