Dynamic forms, organic shapes, and bright colors loaded with implied growth and energy characterize Maria Nepomuceno’s work. “Everything is in transformation,” she says. “Everything is alive in the work.” Beginning with a point and a line – via a bead and a string – Nepomuceno builds up forms and compositions, creating sculptures and installations that
Kevin Killen: Drawing Time From Light
Artists who use neon, an expensive medium, are not thick on the ground in Ireland. Those of us who are, shall we say, of a mature generation, probably think of Dan Flavin’s Minimalist sculptures or perhaps of François Morellet’s pulsing forms, both bodies of neon works dating from the early ’60s onward.
The Work Takes Control of Itself: A Conversation with Mariana Villafañe
Mariana Villafañe’s work emerges from the study of geometric-morphological patterns, a dialogue between mathematics, pure geometry, and abstraction that gains focus from a sensorial point of view. Villafañe tries to find visual means of representation for movement, as well as the sounds and vibrations that it generates.
Achieving Necessity: John Duff
John Duff, a New York-based sculptor long associated with abstract, austere, and often totemic-looking objects, exhibited a new and decidedly different body of work last year. His first solo exhibition in 12 years, it was held in an unconventional setting.
Color Coded: A Conversation with Rana Begum
For the American sculptor Donald Judd, simplicity focused attention on the object in space: “It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate.
Tom Bevan: Weapons of Indirect Attack
Irish sculptor Tom Bevan came to New York in 1993 for a year-long PS1 residency. A noted sociopolitical artist who had engaged with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, he was a major presence in exhibitions, catalogues, books, and articles, including my own Directions Out in Dublin (1987), Art Politics and Ireland (Open Air, Dublin 1989),
Traveling the Road to Freedom: A Conversation with Dominique Moody
Last summer, assemblage artist Dominique Moody brought NOMAD, a “tiny house” on wheels that serves as her living and creative space, to Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology, located in Joshua Tree, California. The 140-square-foot mobile shotgun house, whose title stands for “Narrative, Odyssey, Manifesting, Artistic, Dreams,” is a gem of a compact, self-sufficient dwelling
Action and Magic: A Conversation with Navjot Altaf
Over the course of a long career, Navjot Altaf has experimented with a host of media and materials. Her work, which has evolved to embrace new dimensions, reflects a personal journey, celebrating relationships and mourning losses while making strong statements about socioeconomic trends, especially in India.
Martha Dimitropoulou: Pine Needle Pixels
Despite the Greek economic crisis, art is thriving in Athens thanks to a growing number of nonprofit and alternative exhibition venues. One such space, the Contemporary Greek Art Institute (iset), a nonprofit archive and gallery, recently featured the work of an unusual sculptor in the exhibition “Devalue/Value/Surplus Value: between ‘work’ and ‘art,’” curated by Charis
Unknown Extremes: A Conversation with Tania Kovats
Tania Kovats’s work encompasses sculpture, installation, and large-scale, time-based projects that investigate the layered aspects of landscape—that which lies beneath and beyond what is perceived with the naked eye. These unknown spaces— shifting tides, weathered rock faces, wood grain, and even the uncharted territories of outer space—are mysteries to be unraveled.
