WATERLOO, CANADA Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery The marriage of porcelain and a tire iron sounds conventionally surrealistic, but Laurent Craste’s work is much more subversive than that. In the Montreal-based artist’s current exhibition “Impertinent Abstractions,” (on view through January 5, 2025), the very medium of his work—clay—comes under attack.
It Doesn’t End With the Image: A Conversation with Letha Wilson
In Letha Wilson’s sculptures, photographic images (many taken during her forays into the American wilderness) act as transformative skins. As much façade as form, her assemblages involving concrete and metal are physically activated by the scenic views applied to them and conceptually charged by the associations and myths of those distant landscapes.
From Absence: A Conversation with Carlos Herrera
Carlos Herrera’s work does not permit indifference. His intimate installations, sculptures, performances, and photographs reflect on life and death, madness, sexuality, rites of passage, and spirituality as he tries to make the visible and material into the “stuff of memory” and emotion.
Grant Mooney
MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University “calcis,” Grant Mooney’s current exhibition, features sculptures that challenge our assumptions about materiality by exploring the enmeshment of the organic and industrial.
Enchanting Traps: A Conversation with Valeska Soares
For over 30 years, Brazilian artist Valeska Soares has used the tools of Minimalism and conceptual artto create sculptures and installations imbued with emotion and humanity, that explore love, intimacy, and desire, loss and longing, memory and history.
“Around the Table”
WASHINGTON, DC de la Cruz Gallery, Georgetown University What struck me most about “Around the Table” was the limited presence of food as material and image, a surprising approach for a show exploring food as a social connector. But curator Vesela Sretenović makes a strong case for her conceptual focus on global threads associated with sharing, including patterns of consumption and labor.
Phyllida Barlow
SOMERSET, U.K. Hauser & Wirth Over the course of a long career, Phyllida Barlow consistently challenged the possibilities of making with pieces that were experimental, audacious, and even seemingly impossible.
Earthly Paradise: A Conversation with Saad Qureshi
With a sensitive and empathetic eye, Saad Qureshi explores the essence of what it is to be human. Seeking out people of all faiths and none, he gathers their stories and weaves them together like silken threads, rendering memories and imaginings into otherworldly sculptural “mindscapes” that give a spatial presence to the narratives that help to make sense of life.
Monumentos vivos: Una Conversación con Alexis Minkiewicz
Nacido en Villa Cañás, Santa Fe, Argentina, el escultor Alexis Minkiewicz transita la urbanidad con una mirada que construye escenarios donde monumentos y estatuas son protagonistas de un recorrido artístico que lo lleva a esculpir a gran escala en materialidades tanto convencionales y académicas como más contemporáneas.
Little Capsules: A Conversation with Jorge Satorre
Working across sculpture, drawing, and installation, Mexican artist Jorge Satorre weaves complex, subversive narratives around a variety of themes, including labor, value, memory, and desire. As these diverse strands become fruitfully entangled, they create unforeseen meanings and serendipitous synchronicities.
