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).
Rodney McMillian: Waging an Artist’s War
It has been a big year for Rodney McMillian. In a rare achievement for any artist, three major East Coast institutions mounted simultaneous solo exhibitions of his multimedia works, spanning more than a decade. At the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia, and MoMA PS1 in New York, McMillian’s
Space as Object: A Conversation with Natalia Abot Glenz
Space, abstraction, geometry, remnants of a Minimalist aesthetic, balance of force and weight, and light: Natalia Abot Glenz’s work brings all of these words and concepts to mind. She thinks about space not only as a means, but also as an end-the sculpture may determine the construction, but space designs the route.
Motion and Matter: Ryszard Wasko’s Exile
Ryszard Wasko, a somewhat legendary Polish artist, has lived and worked in Berlin since 2008. This is not his first period of residency in Germany, just the first time that he has stayed there of his own accord.
Not Just About the Revolution: A Conversation with Humberto Dìaz and Holly Block
In early April of this year, I had the good fortune to travel with Holly Block, executive director of the Bronx Museum, on a visit to Cuba, where I visited Humberto Díaz in his Havana studio.
Experimentation is like Oxygen: A Conversation with Valay Shende
Valay Shende’s resourceful and meaningful works reflect his personality as a simple man who conveys his thoughts without ambiguity in a direct manner. His ability to bring together diverse mediums and materials to tell a story-steel combined with graphic videos, for instance-stands out for its forcefulness.
