Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Anne Collins Goodyear
American; 21st-century
Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College Museum of Art
68%
Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory). 2025. Exhibition (with Ann Craven)
This was not an exhibition of Ann Craven's paintings but an installation (presented as an exhibition) made up of Ann Craven's paintings plus the methods/tools she uses to make/catalog them. Its shortcomings had mostly to do with its failure to recognize that it was not merely an art exhibition, but was instead itself an artwork whose medium was "art exhibition." Namely, the wall texts and an informational video were too academic, nonreflexive, and tonally disconnected from the main stuff of the installation to come off as aesthetically significant. However, the elements of the show that worked, worked. A whole bunch of Craven's paintings of the moon in different phases and atmospheric conditions were presented alongside the boxes she uses to store them and the ugly metal shelving those boxes go on. Craven's style is famously naive, but her process of conceiving and creating her paintings is, as presented by this show, detached and clinical. This contradiction is productive. It imbues Craven's work with a conceptual element (seriality, repetition) that enhances the visual effect of her canvases, which as paintings can feel too wry and knowing in their bad-painting simplicity (even if she's got an indelible sense for color and an alluring brush). (TFS, 2025)