A precocious 12-year-old once rolled her eyes at me after I described an artist as a “Renaissance man.” When I asked her what was wrong, she said “I hate that phrase. It’s so vague, it’s meaningless.
I Am the Background: A Conversation with Dan Colen
Dan Colen, who applies himself to painting, placards, and sculpture with equal bravado, likens his approach to that of a child enthused first by one idea and then another. He explains his work as closer to a permanent condition than a series of disconnected objects.
Sabotage: A Conversation with Minerva Cuevas
Minerva Cuevas, who came to prominence in the 1990s as part of a group of socially engaged Mexican artists responding to political corruption, NAFTA, and the government’s embrace of neoliberal economic policies, works across sculpture, installation, photography, painting, video, and performance.
Minoru Ohira: Attractive to the Hand
Minoru Ohira uses wood in ways that make it seem like a newly discovered material. Surfaces flicker from light to dark—monochromatic or flecked with color, matte or gleaming, bristling with texture or smoothly uninflected, richly stained or overtly natural.
Interfering With Space: A Conversation with Mary Early
For years, Mary Early’s modus operandi has been to plot the placement of objects on floor plans and architectural elevations. Spaces, she insists, “activate” the art that occupies them. She began, more than 15 years ago, by making cast concrete and wood works sealed in a coating of beeswax.
Material States: A Conversation with Marcela Cabutti
Argentine artist Marcela Cabutti creates simple, elegant, and subtle works of fantasy and magical transformation based on a strong connection between forms and materials, particularly blown glass and fired clay. While some viewers may think of a Surrealist legacy, her sculptures and installations also draw on the literary tradition of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar,
Creating a Way Back: A Conversation with Martin Soto Climent
Using found objects such as pantyhose, purses, bras, beer cans, and shoes, Mexican artist Martin Soto Climent creates sensual, anthropomorphic sculptures with minimal intervention. Easily dismantled (with the objects returned to their original state), these poetic, continually evolving juxtapositions raise questions about ephemerality, consumption, destruction, and desire.
The Evolution of a Four-Legged Table: A Conversation with Nahum Tevet
From his childhood on a Socialist-Zionist kibbutz to his present studio workshop in south Tel Aviv, the innovative Israeli sculptor Nahum Tevet views his world, and the things in it, in a very specific manner. Driven by an independence of thought and action, he has parlayed a limited Minimalist ideal into extensive installations and discerning
Kerry James Marshall Discusses A Monumental Journey
Kerry James Marshall’s works lead viewers to a deeper awareness of integral and coactive relationships across material, form, and concept. Imagery and formal qualities, such as color and shape, depth and flatness, speak to ideas of race and power.
Corrupted Perfection: A Conversation with Eva Rothschild
Eva Rothschild, who will represent Ireland at the 2019 Venice Biennale, expands on the Modernist sculptural tradition, using a range of materials including jesmonite, wood, Perspex, steel, aluminum, polystyrene, fabric, leather, and beads. Her work often examines how objects acquire meaning peripheral to their material reality through the different beliefs, ideologies, and religions imposed on
