Just as a great singer can use his voice at full volume or at the most disembodied of pianissimi, so Kan Yasuda can convey the full range of sculptural emotions as convincingly by the exploitation of powerfully expansive sculptural mass as by tender, almost imperceptible formal modulations.
Jorge Oteiza: Nothing is Everything
The Guggenheim Museum of Art recently held the first comprehensive retrospective in New York of Jorge Oteiza (1908–2003), a formidable figure in the history of 20th-century Basque art. His work (represented in the exhibition by 125 sculptures, drawings, and collages) is particularly interesting for its range of influences, which include Neolithic cultures and the avant-garde
Transforming Energy: A Conversation with Jaume Plensa
A young man once approached Jean Cocteau and asked the master what he should do to become a successful artist. Cocteau responded with three words: “Faites-moi étonner!” (“Amaze me!”) Looking at Jaume Plensa’s works, one gets the impression that he had been that young artist and had taken Cocteau’s recommendation to heart.
Patti Warashina: Personal and Political
Recent exhibitions in New York, Spokane, and Seattle confirm the growing achievements of veteran ceramic sculptor Patti Warashina. Beginning as the ultimate escapist/fantasist in the ’60s with her sculptures Moon Dog Dream (1969) and Ketchup Kiss (1966), by the 1980s Warashina had moved on to all-white porcelain statuettes of demonic, gleeful, and revenging female figure groups.
Kicking Out the Boundaries: A Conversation with Kiki Smith
We are in a living room filled with candelabras, sculpted birds, and female figures. Birdy, the 15-year-old dove, contentedly watches the rain through a back window. Kiki Smith is leaving for Italy tomorrow to open a show and then travels to San Francisco to install a 25-year retrospective, yet she calmly draws as she discusses
Stella Waitzkin: Idiosyncrasy’s Library
The libraries of the late Stella Waitzkin (1920–2003), contained in her home and studio at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, suggest a robust, nearly obsessional relationship between Waitzkin and books, which she immortalized as emblems and symbols of an erudition whose importance is physical as much as it is spiritual.
Willie Cole: The Other Side
Willie Cole creates elegant artworks that challenge prevailing ideas of identity and perception. His combination of visually seductive materials and witty humor serves to temper his serious and sometimes difficult subject matter. In his deft hands, discarded domestic items are transformed into mythical figures and objects that carry poignant commentaries within their iconographic arrangements.
Electrifying the Inert: A Conversation with Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier arrived in New York in the mid-1960s, achieving early recognition with several prestigious national awards and representation by the Leo Castelli Gallery. Part of a generation of artists that included Eva Hesse, Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Richard Tuttle, he turned early to the medium of neon in installations that
Jae Won Lee: Intangible Landscapes
In the frozen silence of a Michigan winter, life waits below ground, breathing under ice. The vast solitary landscape parallels Jae Won Lee’s reductive art-making methodology, stripping color to subtle modulations of white, nuances that punctuate the charged stillness.
Michael Combs: Real Men Don’t Carve Handkerchiefs
Michael Combs knows the trajectory of an osprey plummeting to its prey. He knows the silhouette of a heron, haloed in the steamy mist of a rising summer sun. He can tell his life in the cycles of sea lavender or the cacophony of arctic terns warning him away from their young.
