As a child, Lita Albuquerque was mesmerized by the vault of nighttime stars visible from the Catholic convent that was her home in Carthage. Occasionally she would visit her mother in a small seaside village, where the Mediterranean lapped the Tunisian shore.
Chicago’s Agora
The southwestern corner of Grant Park, often referred to as Chicago’s “front yard,” had been a conspicuous open space in a 320-acre park that dates to the 1830s and faces a more than mile-long skyscraper wall along Michigan Avenue.
The Perils of Public Art: Louise Nevelson Plaza
Even as a retrospective of Louise Nevelson’s work opens at The Jewish Museum in New York, one of her most important public artworks is being redesigned beyond recognition. Nevelson was the first woman to gain fame in the U.S.
Karlis Rekevics: Recent Sculpture
Karlis Rekevics’s generously scaled, weirdly architectural cast plaster constructions are some of the most robust, aggressive, materially expressive sculptures around. They are also among the most evocative and elusive. For all their size, their evident mass and weight, and their rough material palette, Rekevics’s haunting structures refuse to rely solely on the unignorable fact of
Shifting Paradigms: A Conversation with Conrad Shawcross
Addressing subjects on the border of science and philosophy, Conrad Shawcross’s structural and often mechanical sculptures question the empirical, ontological, and philosophical systems that define our lives. While at first appearing rational and functional, his complex systems ultimately deny all rational function and force the viewer down alternate philosophical and metaphysical avenues to deduce a
Thoughts on Resistance: A Conversation with Jeff and Alina Bliumis
While preparing to interview the Russian-born artists Alina and Jeff Bliumis, who live and work in New York, I involuntarily reflected on my own experience of living in exile. How did it happen that we, who are still young people, have already witnessed major historical shifts, including the rise and fall of regimes, ideologies, and
Defying Expectations: A Conversation with Momoyo Torimitsu
Momoyo Torimitsu says that she is a bit tired of being remembered for Jiro Miyata (1994), a life-sized robot she based on a middle-aged salaryman. But who could forget? Miyata, which Torimitsu had crawl around the streets of Tokyo, Paris, New York, and other cities, brilliantly embodied a hard-working, misunderstood, badly dressed everyman of the post-bubble era
What’s the Point? A Conversation with Marcus Bering
Some viewers of contemporary art, particularly Minimalist art, have been known to ask the question, “What’s the point?” but it is highly unusual for artists themselves to raise the issue. However, such is the case with German artist Marcus Bering, whose minimalistic work draws from a variety of influences ranging from the thoughts, actions, and
Ed Zelenak: Mapping the Allegory
While Ed Zelenak’s sculpture seems to reflect that intense period when Pop Art and Minimalism occupied center stage on the arts scene, in hindsight one realizes that his works are highly individuated, with a narrative element, some allusions to science, and even allegorical elements.
Andreas Slominski: The Wisdom and Cunning of the Trap-maker
The motif of making and setting traps has fascinated German artist Andreas Slominski since 1984, when (as the story goes) he discovered a metal trap for voles in a shop. As he explored the trap’s mechanism, he realized that this type of device not only had important plastic qualities, but that it also offered him
