Viewers familiar with the British artists Ivan and Heather Morison expect their work to elicit a sense of unease. Anna, a piece of object theater installed in their 2012 Hepworth Wakefield exhibition, showcased their diversity of media and approaches.
Beauty with a Measure of Awkwardness: A Conversation with Sahej Rahal
Clever, capable, and spirited, Sahej Rahal belongs to a new generation of Indian artists who have seen the success of their immediate predecessors and wish for more of the same. Rahal is as articulate as he is well-informed, with kaleidoscopic knowledge and the ability to adapt ideas from recent history with intellectual ease; his works
Jeff Koons: A Supreme Trouble-Maker in Crowd-Pleasing Clothes
For a moment, let’s look at the work of Jeff Koons in its artistic and cultural context, separating it from issues having to do with production, financing, promotion, and reception—for the latter have received ample attention in the wake of the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Michael Cooper: Mastery with a Message
It looks like an ordinary tricycle that any three-year-old might ride. But it’s made entirely of wood (wenge and sycamore), and if you give it more than a passing glance, you notice a wooden gun mounted under the seat, pointing in a forward direction.
Sculpture as Haiku: A Conversation with Hidetoshi Nagasawa
Hidetoshi Nagasawa was born in 1940 in Tonei, Manchuria, where his Japanese parents were located because his father was an army doctor. During the war, when Soviet forces attacked Manchuria, the Nagasawas fled back to Japan and settled near Tokyo.
Fusion: A Conversation with Rachel Kneebone
British sculptor Rachel Kneebone uses porcelain to create deeply psychological and sensual tableaux of contorted bodies and limbs. I first came across her work at the Brooklyn Museum, where it was paired with the sculpture of Auguste Rodin in the exhibition “Regarding Rodin” (2012).
Of Empathy, Appropriation, and Time: Gillian Jagger
How do you solve a problem like Gillian Jagger’s label-defying work? It does not fit into any familiar art-market niche and confounds many of the art establishment’s trend-conscious poobahs. It is not postmodern-ironic, nor does she send her designs out to nameless fabricators to be manufactured—bigger, shinier, more expensive—and then sold to trophy-seeking Russian oligarchs
Zilia Sánchez: Minimalist Mulata
Zilia Sánchez defies categorical definition. Her high-relief, shaped canvases hover between painting and sculpture. A breakout art world success at the age of 87, she is a Cuban national, who has lived off the island since the revolution, and she creates apolitical work.
Elements of Measure, Classically Inclined: Alun Leach-Jones
Though Australian artist Alun Leach-Jones is known primarily for his paintings, he began to make sculptures more than 20 years ago in 1992. Working in his studio—a converted factory building in North Sydney, near Sydney Harbor—he made three-dimensional works that, at the time, he did not consider showing.
Big, Bold, and Riotously Colorful: Louise Paramor
Though Louise Paramor’s work inspires an initial reaction of pure visual delight, viewers are advised to look twice and think twice, for things are seldom as they appear. Paramor plays with contradictions and ambiguities, forcing us to ponder, reconsider, and question.
