‘Beyond the news cycle’

“For You” (detail), (acrylic paint, oil paint, canvas, thread, screws, fluff), by Noelle Ventura, in the group show “HEAVY/LIGHT,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Aug.6-30.

The gallery says:

“Making art in a sharply polarized, hyper-political moment, HEAVY / LIGHT is less about choosing a side than about choosing a stance toward the noise itself. Artists, as culture bearers, face a persistent tension—to ignore the churn of daily politics and risk irrelevance, to engage it directly and risk becoming didactic, or to translate the deeper emotional and social currents beneath it into something more enduring. 

“None of these paths is neutral. Silence can read as complicity; response can be flattened into slogan. The real difficulty lies in holding both weight and buoyancy at once—resisting reflex and retreat—finding a form that neither parrots the moment nor pretends to stand outside it, but instead renders its complexity, contradictions, and human stakes in a way that outlasts the news cycle.”