Pigeon deterrents, glue, nylon, marijuana, film, spray paint, wood. Such are the materials listed for Gereon Krebber’s Let’s talk about it later (2010). Without a doubt, Krebber loves materials that we would not expect in an art context.
Looking for the Wreck: A Conversation with John Umphlett
For the past 15 years, John Umphlett has developed a body of work in which his own body, placed under extreme duress, is a central feature. Whether dangling over cars, somersaulting through the air, or being slowly dragged through a gallery, Umphlett relentlessly explores the limits of bodily endurance through his provocative performance pieces.
Actualizing Potential: A Conversation with Simon Starling
Simon Starling’s complex interdisciplinary practice draws from a vast network of successively interconnected parts. Between craftsmanship, industry, process, site, technology, and art history, it’s immediately possible to get hooked on surface or superficial value alone—Starling’s work is easy to digest, humorous, quick-witted, and materially lush.
St. Louis: Sculptural Gateway to the West
Imagine a proposed and completed public artwork recording the locations of 94 fire and flood disasters in Queensland, Australia; then imagine the unveiling of the work, as the artist reveals that the list doesn’t document natural disasters at all, but a series of 19th-century atrocities against indigenous peoples.
Baroque Paradoxes: A Conversation with Albert Paley
Albert Paley’s monumental forms offer a metaphorical resolution to a dilemma first posed by the Industrial Revolution, when it disempowered the human (and human labor) by elevating machines. Today, that revolution has, of course, gone further, morphing into an electronic juggernaut with even greater capacity to dehumanize by reducing us to mere dots in cyberspace.
Cal Lane: Veiled Histories in Steel
Guttersnipe (detail), 2012. Steel, 8 x 6 x 40 ft. Cal Lane was a recipient of the International Sculpture Center 2001 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards Critics define Cal Lane as a female sculptor-welder, a woman using male-oriented, working-class technology to make art.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Absurdities as Absurd as Reality
“They’re like spies everywhere, filming everything,” Ilya Kabakov grouses to his wife, Emilia. He’s jokingly dissing the ubiquitous film crew—not the KGB of years ago bugging his rooftop Moscow studio. She flashes a knowing smile, then hits her cell phone buttons; there’s a snag to fix in one of the biggest art events that Russia
Objects Are Alive: A Conversation with Abraham Cruzvillegas
Abraham Cruzvillegas’s Autoconstrucción works ricochet back and forth between categories, from intriguing, aesthetically constructed, found-object compositions to emotionally charged, socioeconomic/political statements. Rooted in the real world situation of Mexico City specifically, and to some extent of Latin America generally, this ongoing series builds on the art historical vocabulary of Duchampian readymades, Arte Povera, and assemblage.
New Orleans Airlift’s Insouciant Vernacular Modernism
As arts organizations go, New Orleans Airlift is one of a kind. Following a multi-disciplinary trajectory that has often seemed more improvised than programmatic, it has staged a number of unusually broad-based events that blur the boundaries between object and performance, vernacular and contemporary art, local and global.
Policy of Truth: A Conversation with Fiona Foley
Imagine a proposed and completed public artwork recording the locations of 94 fire and flood disasters in Queensland, Australia; then imagine the unveiling of the work, as the artist reveals that the list doesn’t document natural disasters at all, but a series of 19th-century atrocities against indigenous peoples.
