J. Scott Orr

Contributor at The Lo-Down

Featured in: Favicon

thelodownny.com Favicon

whitehotmagazine.com Favicon

ocula.com

artefuse.com Favicon

sculpturemagazine.art Favicon

observer.com

Articles

Vincent Valdez: Confronting America’s Uncomfortable Truths

1 week ago | whitehotmagazine.com | J. Scott Orr |Scott Orr

By J. SCOTT ORR May 27, 2025Vincent Valdez, the 48-year-old Chicano artist whose canvases read like visual testimony from America's shadow zones, is stepping up at precisely the moment when artists across the nation are ducking for cover. As culture wars rage and dark powers threaten artistic freedom, Valdez offers monumental paintings that refuse to let America forget its most uncomfortable truths.
Last Swipe: NYC’s Farecard Artists Face Extinction as the MTA Eliminates the Beloved MetroCard

2 weeks ago | observer.com | J. Scott Orr

Juan Carlos Pinto holds a MetroCard portrait of Nina Simone. Photo by Jamie LubetkinThe Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s recent announcement that it will stop selling the iconic yellow MetroCards by Dec. 31 came as heartbreaking, though not unexpected, news to a small but passionate community of artists who use the credit-card-sized passes to create surprisingly engaging works of creativity.
Frieze NY 2025: Do Not Miss These Six Artists

1 month ago | whitehotmagazine.com | J. Scott Orr |Scott Orr

By J. SCOTT ORR May 8, 2025As auction houses hemorrhage staff and mid-tier galleries fold weekly, Frieze New York 2025 emerges as a battleground where art must justify its existence in an age of economic contraction and emergency. This year's edition—scaled back but intellectually ferocious—abandons market cheerleading for something more urgent: a reminder of art's capacity to translate catastrophe into meaning.
Mapplethorpe Unbound: Rediscovered S&M Images Surface in New York City

2 months ago | observer.com | J. Scott Orr

The newly discovered portfolio of Mapplethorpe photographs on a table during a private showing at Giorno Poetry Systems in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Photo by Lisa FreemanIn a radical collision of high art and leather-bound taboo, a cache of never-before-seen Robert Mapplethorpe S&M photographs has surfaced in New York City, bringing with it all the swagger and controversy that defined the photographer’s boundary-shattering legacy.
Intimacy Revived: The Frick Collection's $220 Million Renaissance

2 months ago | whitehotmagazine.com | J. Scott Orr |Scott Orr

By J. SCOTT ORR March 26, 2025The Frick Collection—that jewel box of masterworks nestled within the former Manhattan residence of Gilded Age industrialist Henry Clay Frick—has emerged from a five-year slumber, transformed through a $220 million renovation that deftly balances historical reverence with contemporary function. The museum reopens its doors on April 17, returning Bellini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Whistler, Goya and the rest to the domesticity of their rightful Upper East Side home.
“I was just taking pictures of my friends" : Cereal Killer: Bobby Grossman's Corn Flake Boxes at Ki Smith Gallery

Mar 10, 2025 | whitehotmagazine.com | J. Scott Orr |Scott Orr

By J. SCOTT ORR March 9, 2025Andy Warhol once said, “You need to let little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.” Like, say, a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, America’s most anodyne breakfast commodity. Honestly, when it comes to quotidian American consumer products, nothing is more ordinary than a box of Battle Creek’s most famous spawn. Except, maybe, a can of Campbell’s Soup.
George Condo’s NYC Two-Step: A Rare Duel Exhibition For the Cubist Master

Jan 29, 2025 | whitehotmagazine.com | J. Scott Orr |Scott Orr

By J. SCOTT ORR January 29, 2025Please excuse George Condo if he begins to resemble one of the famously shattered souls he depicts in his psychodramatic portraiture; it’s been a dizzying few days. Preparations for a bifurcated exhibition called “Pastels” had him dashing back and forth between galleries in Soho and the Upper East Side before the eagerly awaited openings, which, by the way, took place on the same night.
Barkley L. Hendricks Biography, Artworks & Exhibitions

Oct 15, 2024 | ocula.com | J. Scott Orr |Sam Gaskin

Early LifeBorn in 1945 in Philadelphia, Barkley L. Hendricks earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in Fine Art from Yale University. While pursuing his MFA he studied photography under Walker Evans. Photography soon became a key medium for the artist, as well as a preparatory medium for his paintings. Hendricks depicted the world around him, capturing strangers on the street as well as turning the camera on himself, his friends, and his family.
Kenny Scharf: A Surviving 80s Musketeer Returns to the LES

Sep 29, 2024 | thelodownny.com | J. Scott Orr

By J. Scott OrrFor a time they were The Three Musketeers of a white-hot art scene that erupted with such irrepressible momentum that it effortlessly consumed every established notion of what contemporary art should look like and where it should come from. Then it consumed itself.
The Exhilarating and Exhausting Art of Jason McLean in the LES

Jun 4, 2024 | thelodownny.com | J. Scott Orr

By J. Scott OrrThe protagonist of this particular painting has an empty box for a head, but he is nonetheless “well spoken.” A window seems to peer into his soul, but there’s little in there except for a pillow, or a marshmallow, or something. He holds his diary in his right hand, a miniature golf club in his left. His luminous yellow belly dominates the piece like the sun; so bright, in fact, that a palm tree has sprouted on a private beach just beyond his naval.