MacArthur Fellow Ned Kahn is one of the most undefined artists working today. And that is just the way he likes it. His refusal to be pigeonholed grants him the freedom to embark on projects of his own choosing, whether they be wind curtains to cover the urban blight of a concrete parking garage or
Fletcher Benton: Indifference to the Absolute
Fletcher Benton was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2008. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. For more than three decades, Fletcher Benton has been refining and redefining geometric sculpture.
Kim Simonsson: Alien Innocence
Finnish artist Kim Simonsson speaks of finding his calling when he discovered ceramic. He describes its extreme variability and diversity of forms as a sort of paradise that allows him to exploit his artistic potential. The first work he created in this material was in the style of a common ceramic living room ornament—a dog.
Under the Dome of Time: Two Iranian Sculptors
Through a series of coincidences, I was invited by the municipality of Tehran to serve as a juror for its First International Sculpture Symposium in March 2007. Although hesitant at the outset, I accepted out of a sincere curiosity to see what kind of sculpture was being produced in that part of the world.
Feeding the Spirit of Adventure: A Conversation with Nicholas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley
No research on installation art is complete without a conversation with Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley. As founding directors of London’s Museum of Installation (MoI, 1990–2005), an influential nonprofit exhibition space, and authors of the equally influential books, Installation Art (1994) and Installation Art in the New Millennium (2003), their impact is well known.
Quarryography: New Life in an Old Quarry
Three hundred and sixty million years ago when the granite coast of Maine was forming, the fairies and wood nymphs were planning their debut. A massive rock formation consisting of microcline, plagioclase, and quartz seemed perched at the end of the world—too perfect a place to remain inert.
Poetics and Utopia in Cuban Contemporary Sculpture
Recent exhibitions of Latin American and Caribbean contemporary art have fostered new interest in Cuban art. While the island nation may be isolated politically and economically, its art scene has kept the door open to international influences and exchange.
(Un)Holy Grounds: The Floor Sculptures of Carl Andre and Wolfgang Laib
At first sight, the works of Carl Andre and Wolfgang Laib seem worlds apart—and not just geographically or in terms of the artists’ ages (Andre was born in 1935 in Quincy, Massachusetts; Laib in Metzingen, Germany, in 1950).
Anna-Maria Bauer: Geometric Poetry from the Turtle Shell
In 1979 Swiss artist Anna-Maria Bauer found the weathered shell of a turtle on the shore of the Walensee (Lake of Walenstadt). Fascinated by the beauty of the shell’s structure, she decided to follow the example of its natural order in her sculptural works.
Time-Existence-Space: A Conversation with Wolfgang Laib
It is a hot day in southern Germany. The floor of Wolfgang Laib’s studio is covered with recent works soon to be shipped to New York for what will be his first exhibition at the Sean Kelly Gallery.
