Born in Ecuador, Lucía Falconí, who studied and lived for years in Germany, embodies the global concerns of many contemporary artists while retaining a very specific and sensitive connection to her own heritage. Rainforest imagery—huge leaves, exotic plants, and birds—becomes a metaphor for a changing physical and social environment.
Steel Fluency: A Conversation with John Clement
John Clement is a mid-career sculptor whose studio is now located in Long Island City, Queens; until recently, he had been working at an outdoor studio in Bushwick. The new space is across the street from Mark di Suvero’s workshop, where Clement learned the basics of welding metal sculpture some two decades ago.
Ursula von Rydingsvard: Post-Emerging
Ursula von Rydingsvard was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2014. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. Ursula von Rydingsvard is “just getting over not being called an emerging artist.”
Material Splendor: A Conversation with Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva
Finding rats in the gallery is not usually cause for celebration at an art opening, but such was the case for Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva’s installation Silentio Pathologia (2013) at the Macedonian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Hadzi-Vasileva has been pushing the boundaries of unusual art “materials” for some time, using salmon and chicken skins, silk worm
Thought Before Matter: A Conversation with Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas
Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas sees heads as metaphors for the spaces they inhabit and the abstract ideas they generate. Using the joined last names of her mother, Margaret Strong, and her father, George Cuevas, she studied at the Art Students’ League in the 1960s with John Hovannes, who taught her to carve wood and stone.
Ted Larsen: Surfaced Forms
Ted Larsen’s sculptures are intimate and self-contained. His simple geometric forms resemble found objects, suggesting a past, reminiscent of something previously encountered. Though understated, the objects demand consideration: proximity encourages examination, which then reveals the nuanced complexity.
Between Evidence and Imagination: A Conversation with Janet Laurence
Elixir Bar, 2005. Traditional wooden house, screenprinted glass panel, blown-glass vials, plant extracts steeped in shochu, and laboratory glass, permanent installation at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan. Janet Laurence’s work takes viewers on an amazing journey through subjects as diverse as ecology, feminism, and alchemy, to name a few.
Wolfgang Laib: A Detail of Infinity
Much has been written about Laib’s artistic constants—his hermetic practice, distilled forms, and organic materials. A convergence of three projects in 2013 hinted at evolutionary changes in his work: “Over the last few years, I’ve made fewer exhibitions and don’t want to repeat things.
Bookworms: A Conversation with Jukhee Kwon
Jukhee Kwon uses abandoned and discarded books to make extraordinary sculptures that frequently resemble cascading waterfalls. For her, each destroyed book—its pages meticulously cut into ribbons—takes on new life through the process of creation and re-creation.
Touching Reality: A Conversation with Giuseppe Penone
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
