One of the most radical American artists of the last 40 years, Los Angeles-based Richard Jackson has expanded the definition and practice of painting into almost unimaginable dimensions. His wildly inventive, exuberant, and irreverent takes on “action” painting have dramatically extended its performative and spatial reach, merged it with sculpture, and repositioned it as an
Dread Scott: Radical Conscience
On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, 2014 Dread Scott’s edict is make “revolutionary art—to propel history forward.” Since the early 1990s, after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completing the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, Scott has joined the ranks
Nan Smith: Symbols of Devastation
Nan Smith is an ambitious artist. Over the years, she has increased her command of the ceramic medium, extended her range of techniques and media, and set herself more demanding goals. A full professor in the ceramics program at the University of Florida’s School of Art and Art History, she has also served as head
Strange Events and Mythological Materials: A Conversation with Ojars Feldbergs
In June 2014, Latvia’s Pedvale Open-Air Art Museum hosted its 7th International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art (ICCCIA), organized by Ojars Feldbergs, Kārlis Alainis, a teacher at the Latvian Academy of Art, and Tamsie Ringler, a sculpture professor at St.
Geny Dignac: Playing With Fire
Geny Dignac says that she has “a love affair with fire.” The Argentina-born, Arizona-based sculptor began incorporating living flames into her work during the late 1960s. As she explains the relationship: “I respect fire; I’m bewitched and obsessed by it, but I’m not intimidated by it, and I always feel in control.”
Vincent Barré: Forms of Humanism
May 27, 2014 saw the official inauguration of La Journée de la Résistance—Resistance Day—in France. The newly established holiday honors the heroism of those individuals, celebrated and anonymous, who, in the words of a speaker at the dedication ceremony, “chose liberty over barbarism,” during the World War II Nazi occupation of France.
John Greer: Staging Civilization
For John Greer, civilizations are like distant islands immersed in a sea of time. He developed an early interest in how memory and the human tendency to shape forms into symbolic ideotypes (regardless of culture) result in the repeated creation of certain typologies.
Luisa Rabbia: A Sense of Kinship
Luisa Rabbia employs the human form to express existential themes, ranging from physical and spiritual transformation to the interconnectivity of all beings. Despite its figurative aspects, her eclectic body of work, consisting of sculptures, installations, drawings, and animated videos, tends toward abstraction.
Aljoscha: Germinating New Art
Dateline: Tuesday, March 17, 2009. At Cologne’s Museum Ludwig, a young man moves toward Portable War Memorial (1968), a large installation or, more precisely, an environment created by Edward Kienholz in obvious reference to the Vietnam War.
Daniel Wiener: Trojan Horses
When a natural environment is confronted with contaminants, it responds with instability and disorder. One of the byproducts of contamination is “outcrossing,” a process that allows recessive traits to migrate across a population, adding diversity and strengthening certain characteristics.
