Adam Charlap Hyman

Sep 2, 2024 | pinupmagazine.org | Adam Charlap Hyman

I am looking at my friend as we sit on a bentwood cafe chair inside of a compact steel prism with a grass-covered roof, sinking beneath a hillside in the Engadin village of Sent. The mechanism that is lowering us into the ground, controlled by “up” and “down” buttons about 1,000 feet away, is loud like a construction site. I can see the grassy top layer slowly subside through one cut-out window until it slips out of site.

Jan 5, 2024 | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley |Alexandra Marshall |Patrick Kidd |Adam Charlap Hyman

Ben Shahn would have been delighted to see his work in the museum that houses Picasso’s Guernica. Shahn’s goal, after all, was to use art to protest cruelty and to make injustice visible. Presenting inhumanity in a contemporary style that draws us in, Shahn employed color and line to summon the viewer’s full attention. It was an unusual ability—to excite us optically while at the same time distressing us emotionally—but, like Picasso’s, Shahn’s heart was awake to the harsh realities of life.