NEW YORK MARC STRAUS Gallery For nearly three decades, Jeanne Silverthorne has treated the artist’s studio and all it encompasses as her subject. The work that gets made there, the furniture and tools, the person who makes the work (herself), and the workings of the artist’s body are all represented, along with memories, dreams, and discarded ideas.
“New Installations: 40th Year”
PITTSBURGH Mattress Factory The Mattress Factory has been commissioning new installations since 1977. Over those four decades, an estimated 800 artists from around the world, including Janine Antoni, Vito Acconci, Ann Hamilton, Yayoi Kusama, Tony Oursler, Kiki Smith, Bill Woodrow, and noted regional artists Kim Beck, Joe Mannino, Kathleen Montgomery, Thaddeus Mosley, and Diane Samuels, have constructed unique works.
Loaded Histories/Real Experiences: A Conversation with Kevin Beasley
A multi-disciplinary artist whose practice includes sculpture, installation, sound, and performance, Kevin Beasley caught the attention of the art world with I Want My Spot Back (shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 2012), a work that remixed 1990s rap acappellas.
Abigail DeVille: Everyday Processions
Fashioned from rubbish and recycled materials, Abigail DeVille’s sculptures refuse their role as art objects. Instead, her assemblages of repurposed items revel in excess and the casual circumstance of the everyday. Recognizing the potential of cast-off things to tell stories and enunciate other histories, DeVille proposes an alternative, social purpose for sculpture (often combined with
Difficult Connections: A Conversation with Ursula Johnson
Ursula Johnson’s hybrid work blends sculpture, performance, and activism. A member of the Eskasoni Mi’kmaw First Nation on Cape Breton Island (Unama’ki in Mi’kmaw) in Nova Scotia, she grew up speaking the Mi’kmaw language. Johnson spent her early working life as an activist and participated in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United
Jeffrey Schiff
BOSTON Rafius Fane Gallery “DisInterRuptions,” Jeffrey Schiff’s recent exhibition, included a selection of floor sculptures (many from the “Carpet Rubble” series), three-dimensional studies, and photo-based wall reliefs from the “Inter rup tions” series. The “Carpet Rubble” works feature chunks of concrete debris re-surfaced with pieces of Oriental rugs.
Social Skins and Other Constructs: A Conversation with Wilmer Wilson IV
Cross-disciplinary artist Wilmer Wilson IV focuses on the body, how gestures and everyday materials activate it, and how images of the body are transformed through context and enter the social realm. By exploring applied skins and the circulation of images, he resists the production of simplified icons without abandoning corporeal realities.
Sheila Hicks
NEW YORK High Line In the mid-1970s, Sheila Hicks was considered a heroine of the “new tapestry” movement. For over 50 years, she has stretched the boundaries of fiber as a medium, creating a distinctive body of work that weaves together sculpture, craft, design, and architecture; now at 84, she continues to create innovative, energetic objects and installations that transcend genres and materials while uniting color and structure.
Jean Arp
MARGATE, U.K. Turner Contemporary “Arp: The Poetry of Forms,” the first U.K. museum exhibition of Jean (Hans) Arp’s work since 1966, gave viewers fresh insights into this pioneer of chance whose serendipitous configurations personify the core precept of Dada practice–that of the gratuitous creative act.
“Through That Which Is Seen”
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA Palo Alto Art Center The literal meaning of the word “diorama”– through that which is seen–served as the title for this exhibition of sculptures and installations by more than a dozen artists. The idea of the diorama explored in the show–as a model, whether miniature or life-size, of anything from a historical event to a species habitat–dates back to the 19th century.
