Mona Hatoum defines physical and objective space by altering its reality. Her spaces do not refer to a specific or identifiable situation but allow us to perceive the psychic dimension within an environment. Confronting the conflicts and contradictions within power relationships, her sculpture deals with confinement, uncertainty, and fear—even the most ordinary everyday objects and
False Borders: A Conversation with Marcos Ramirez ERRE
Marcos Ramirez (aka ERRE) lives on the U.S./Mexico border, a place that inspires most of his work. For INSITE, the periodic art event in San Diego/Tijuana, he produced two important projects that attracted international attention. In 1994, he installed Century 21, a replica of the provisional dwellings that characterize Tijuana’s outskirts, on the plaza of the
“Iron Bridging Art + Technology: Past, Present + Future” The 5th International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art
Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale, Telford, U.K., April 5–9, 2006 From the speculative and visionary to the practical and applied, artists today use a wide variety of processes in their work. Cast iron embraces all of these diverse approaches to the practice of contemporary sculpture.
Stephen Daly: Sculpture as Witness
Many of us are familiar with the Stage Manager, in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, who observed and narrated the daily events in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Historically, references to this concept of a “witness” or “observer” appear in ancient writings as far back as the Old Testament (Genesis 31: 51–52).
Athena Tacha: Natures of Abstraction
Athena Tacha seeks out natural wonders: slot canyons in Utah, volcanoes in Hawaii, mudboils in New Zealand, glaciers in Patagonia, and, always it seems, water and the magnificent patterns, forms, and effects it has wrought the world over.
Esoteric Practices: A Conversation with Brian Catling
Brian Catling (b.1948) is Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford and Head of Sculpture at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. He recently won the commission to create a permanent memorial for the Tower of London Site of Execution, which was unveiled in September 2006.
Gerda Steiner + Jörg Lenzlinger: Visions of Paradise
Falling Garden (2003), an enchanting installation at the Venice Biennale, turned Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger into instant international celebrities. The Swiss Art Commission had invited the young Swiss artist couple to create an work in the church of San Stae.
Figural Poetry: A Conversation with Manuel Neri
Manuel Neri was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2006. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. Manuel Neri, the son of Mexican immigrants, was born in the San Joaquin Valley in California in 1930.
The Form in Time: Manuel Neri’s Relief Sculptures
In the mid-1980s, Manuel Neri began building sculptures that evoked the relief carvings and architectural friezes of antiquity, a materially substantial format based on the integration of figure and ground. At that time, he had been giving exclusive attention to the figure for more than 20 years and already was closely identified with the solitary
Robert Rauschenberg: A New Sculptural Idiom
Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, created between 1954 and 1964, were revolutionary in the history of art. Leo Steinberg called them a “shift from nature to culture,” and his characterization is still the most successful critical description. Others have discussed the works as collages, grids, “definitive incongruity,” and “relaxed symmetry.”
