"Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964-1980"

STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM
NEW YORK
Through July 02


Organized by Yale art historian Kellie Jones, this group exhibition joins the politics of race to the practices of avant-garde painting, sculpture, and video in the mid-'60s and '70s. The fifteen artists included—Al Loving, Alma Thomas, and Howardena Pindell among them—pursued vibrantly modernist alternatives to the figuration of the contemporaneous Black Arts Movement. The show's catalogue explores the creative contexts—like Minimalist sculpture and free jazz—that shaped black abstraction and presents a transcription of the museum's cross-generational roundtable (moderated by Jones last June) on abstraction then and now, featuring artists Julie Mehretu and Louis Cameron, their nonobjective predecessors Melvin Edwards and William T. Williams, and Lowery S. Sims (president of the Studio Musuem).

—Richard Meyer

The band tore it up, last night was better for me!

Practicing a bit of preventive medicine!

Flux Magazine
Finland funk faves The Soul Investigators have teamed up with Brooklyn-born vocalist Nicole Willis to craft what is easily the finest album yet from the global nu-funk movement. Lots of folk are taking us back to Motown, but the songs here come the closest so far. Incredibly light and catchy hooks, a deftly modern production sound and deceptively chunky funk snaps make every track hugely immediate and highly enjoyable. Flawless.

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Mrs Jimi Tenor teams up with Finnish funk revivalists The Soul Investigators for an inspired set of authentic 60’s soul. Probably the best classic Motown album never recorded, with a wonky noughties twist.