Milton Stevenson’s The Beginning of My Ascent to the Center of the Universe is a large flashy jokey installation in ’80s DayGlo rainbow colors of cardboard cutouts of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, framed celebrity pictures (Mr. T, Erkel, Bill Cosby, Will Smith), celebrity magazine covers with googly eyes pasted onto the faces of Britney Spears and Tom Cruise, and plastic toys stuck on striped sticks. It looks like something that escaped from a neighborhood carnival midway. I mean that in a good way. Smart-alecky slogans proclaim: “Note to Rachael Ray: Delish is not a word”; “Note to Brooklyn: Your pants are too tight”; “I had sex with a robot.” Stevenson slathers on too much obnoxious badass snark for me, but it taps something magnetic in our celebrity-driven trash culture.
Also notable are Sungee Pae’s delicate etchings and screenprints of trees and parking lots; Amanda Lebel’s large annotated drawing of a minibus; Natalie Wright’s cartoony line drawings of family photographs which become wallpaper patterns; Mark Nicholson’s gray wool felt chair; Jueun Chung’s accordion book mandala; Andrew Khoo’s mama computer and baby robot; and Zeke Leonard’s Boat Chair, which looks like a red oak dory hung upright from its bow and swinging from a steel chain.
Related:
Here comes trouble, The Gadfly, Back to the barricades, More 
- Here comes trouble
There’s nothing like a brouhaha to make art feel relevant. And the Boston art scene has just been blessed by two.
- The Gadfly
Nestled in the verdant mountain valley of Glover, Vermont, way up in the northern part of the state, is a farm of rolling meadows, pine forests, and gray barns, all under vast skies.
- Back to the barricades
In the fall of 2005, when the artist and curator Mark Tribe began teaching at Brown University, he was struck by how little protest there was on campus at a time of war.
- Peter the gadfly
Bread and Puppet Theater is the landmark political troupe that has been pricking US presidents and policies with a unique brand of street theater since JFK was in office.
- Radical chic
“The gallery system relies on supply and demand, and I created a demand for my work by doing street art.”
- Year in pictures
Imagery 2008
- Narrative truth
For the majority of us Americans, Iraq and Afghanistan are a series of news-data points — number of Americans killed today, number of car bombs, spending tallies, estimates of civilian deaths.
- Biker gang
You’re looking over the handlebars of a bike, down the narrow canyon between a pair of city buses heading right at you.
- Life in Hell
Wiharso, who lives in North Kingstown, fills 5 Traverse with a harrowing dance of demons in black silhouettes and ruddy flesh (well, charcoal, acrylic, enamel, and spray paint).
- Peabody rising
Could the Peabody Essex Museum be the Boston area’s most exciting art museum right now?
- Boston exposures
Photographer Nicholas Nixon of Brookline first burst onto the scene in the show "New Topographics."
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Celebrity News, More
, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Celebrity News, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Movie Stars, Tom Cruise, Rachael Ray, Milton Stevenson, Less
