On the edges of the Greek urban landscape, in neglected and abandoned buildings, Iakovos Volkov composes eloquent, cerebral sculptures. Made of discarded materials that he finds and reimagines, his works give meaning to spaces that have lost relevance, environments scarred by a lacerated economy.
Sinister Beauty: A Conversation with Gabriel Valansi
Though Gabriel Valansi is internationally known as a photographer, it’s hard to define him as such. The monumental scale of his work, its nontraditional approach to installation, and the interaction between different elements far exceed the limits of photography, generating an a priori spatial disposition more akin to sculpture.
Sam Jaffe: Interdisciplinary Opportunism
Sam Jaffe constructs uncompromising sculptures from yarn and fabric, giving form to soft materials, often by knitting or sewing. These works are bold efforts, enhanced by an authoritative use of color, with a defined point of view.
Konstantinos Stamatiou: In Praise of Junk
Greek-born sculptor Konstantinos Stamatiou, who divides his time between Athens and New York, works with throwaway materials such as plastic, Styrofoam, and cut drinking straws, following the path established by Arte Povera, in which a “poor art” is constructed of humble elements (Jannis Kounellis, a sculptor of Greek origin, is an important practitioner of Arte
Fighting Gravity: A Conversation with Tony Cragg
Tony Cragg was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2017. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. Tony Cragg’s new works – contortions of wood, metal, and stone perfectly manipulated by man and machine – represent a kind of beauty as close to nature and as far removed from Modernist
Diane Simpson: Fashioning
Clothes are the skin over the skin of the body. Although one is manufactured and the other biological, both are theorized constructions. Objectively speaking, the body is a succession of stacked parts that vary conceptually in terms of emotive emphasis: head, neck, torso, hips, genitals, legs, feet.
Jill Bonovitz: Drawing Form
Jill Bonovitz, an artist with an intensely personal aesthetic sensibility, is known for her idiosyncratic ceramic sculptures. The matte opacity and restrained color of her glaze gives each object a visual weight and substance, despite its small scale.
Very Serious Play A Conversation with Jess Benjamin
Nebraska-born sculptor Jess Benjamin creates work with an austere sensibility and eloquent narrative that is inextricably tied to the land—more specifically to the water—of her home state. The daughter of a rancher, she earned her BFA in ceramics from Hastings College before working as a studio assistant for Jun Kaneko and then earning an MFA
Words and Silence: A Conversation with Cécile Andrieu
Cécile Andrieu seduces viewers with forms influenced by three decades spent living and working in Japan. Using shredded dictionaries to give a material emphasis to different languages, her work comments on the state of global affairs, frictions between East and West, and inter-Asian relations.
How Things Malfunction: A Conversation with Eduardo Abaroa
Eduardo Abaroa’s work has taken many twists and turns over the years, from the monument-like Portable Broken Obelisk for Outdoor Markets (1991-93) to the curiously functional and intimate Fragments for human hands VI (2009), to the spectacular Total destruction of the Anthropology Museum (2012) and the surreal and hypnotic Great Oxygen Catastrophe (2015).
