Giuseppe Penone takes an almost animistic approach to sculpture, instilling material, process, and object with a ritual significance that moves beyond the conventions of culture to capture something innate, though forgotten, in human nature. His definition of art is deceptively, disarmingly simple: the task of the artist is to explore the reality of the world
Trying the Combinations: A Conversation with Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon is one of the most prolific British artists practicing today, with a career spanning nearly four decades. Using a wide variety of media and processes, he has developed a diverse and constantly surprising body of work—from small-scale pieces to monumental public sculptures.
Crossing Disciplines and Modalities: A Conversation with Margaret Wertheim
At first the vastness overwhelms; the colors, diversity, intricacy, and textures bedazzle. Only later does the realization set in that these fantastical crocheted coral reefs bear an urgent ecological message. Some are based on photographs, but most are pure imaginative improvisations.
Human Echo: A Conversation with Tony Matelli
Tony Matelli’s imperfect human figures and macabre self-portraits might be described as expressions of hyperrealistic angst. Over the past 15 years, he has reinterpreted the human condition through an interplay of humor and horror, a strategy best demonstrated in Total Torpor, Mad Malaise (2003).
Realizing Metaphor, Memory, and Meaning: Ganesh Gohain
Ganesh Gohain’s sculptures and paintings are very personal, very intense introspections on myth, memory, materiality, and metaphysics. Extremely deceptive with their minimal, simplified forms, these works offer complex ideations based on his life experiences and conceptual meditations.
Anonymous Exchanges: A Conversation with Shinique Smith
Shinique Smith’s sculpture, paintings, and collages reflect the belief that possessions reveal identity, create personas, and confer power. She is a student of the social totems represented by clothing and furnishings, observing how they perform along a spectrum of duty, beginning with function and ending as narrative.
Beyond the Canvas: A Conversation with Annette Lemieux
Annette Lemieux, who was raised in Torrington, Connecticut, grew up in an atmosphere of Yankee pragmatism. Though she was expected to go to secretarial school after graduating from Catholic grammar school and public high school, she elected instead to pursue a degree in the arts.
In Search of Universal Dialogue: A Conversation with Jackie Sleper
In a highly unusual mixture of schooling, Utrecht-based Jackie Sleper studied at both the College of Agriculture and Horticulture (now Wellantcollege) and the Utrecht Academy of Visual Arts. While art school honed her technical skills, “farmer’s school,” as she likes to call it, taught her about the fragility of life, the sanctity of nature, and
Kishio Suga: Stealth Objects
Looking at Kishio Suga’s work is like watching a photograph develop: it makes itself available gradually, subtly, indirectly, yielding its content slowly. It’s sculpture that flies under the radar, taking you by surprise. Suga believes that concepts exist in physical things before they’re used in an object and that the artist’s task is to reveal
Material Performance: A Conversation with Phoebe Cummings
Phoebe Cummings uses unfired clay to make poetic and performative sculptures and installations that emphasize material, fragility, time, creation, and decay. Working across art, design, and ceramics, she has had a number of residencies in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Greenland, including three months as a Kohler Arts/Industry Resident (2008) and six months
