It is not hard to understand why Lin Tianmiao is considered one of the leading female sculptors in China: she fashions memorable work that has to do with the female body and mind. Although Lin would be quick to downplay the significance of her role in contemporary art, she has built a career and a
John Gibbons: Abstraction and Being Human
Visitors entering London’s National Portrait Gallery during the eight months between mid-September 2009 and mid-May 2010 were confronted by five mysterious, wall-mounted objects at the top of the long stair leading to the second-floor galleries. “John Gibbons: Portraits” was part of NPG curator Paul Moorhouse’s “Interventions Series,” a program focusing on “20th-century artists who have
Wurrungwuri: Chris Booth at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens
New Zealand artist Chris Booth recently completed a massive installation of undulating sandstone at the Royal Botanic Gardens—350 tons of rock cascading downhill along the shores of Sydney harbor. The wave-like form is an impressive 22 meters long and rises, at its highest, three meters above ground level (not high enough to intimidate the children
Redefining Limits: A Conversation with Judy Millar
Sarah Gold: At the end of the 1920s, Yervand Kochar initiated discussions about “painting into space.” More recently, the German artists Gotthard Graubner and Katharina Grosse have continued this line of thinking. How did you become interested in space and the painted surface?
The Theatrum Mundi: Barry X Ball
A key to penetrating Barry X Ball’s sculptural enterprise (though not by any means to unlocking all its contents) was a phrase he let slip in a recent interview concerning his solo exhibition at the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice.
Adventures in Black: Seung-Wook Sim
Seung-Wook Sim belongs to a generation of young Korean artists who have taken advantage of educational opportunities in both South Korea and the United States, where they have stayed after school. Sim has an impeccable academic pedigree: he studied sculpture at the prestigious Hong-Ik University in Seoul, where he received his BFA in 1999 and
Leviathan: Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais
For the fourth installment of Monumenta, Anish Kapoor transformed the elegant Grand Palais in Paris with a surreal, space-invading installation. Instead of walking into the museum proper, visitors entered a gigantic, womb-like world where orifices suspended high overhead morphed into other mysterious spaces.
Fiona Banner: Clash of Sensibilities
Fiona Banner first came to prominence in the 1990s with “wordscapes” or “still films” such as The NAM, a 1,000-page, continuous-text book that describes the action in Vietnam War films frame-by-frame. Her interest lies in the complexities of language and history, how they are appropriated and mythologized; she is also interested in the physicality of
Charles Juhász-Alvarado: Raconteur of Complicated Stories
Charles Juhász-Alvarado’s mid-career retrospective (2008), organized by Exit Art in New York, was titled “Complicated Stories” for good reason. In trying to unpack his intellectually challenging work, a writer scrounges around for synonyms such as complex, maximalist, multi-layered, and, certainly, enigmatic.
Katharina Grosse
Just about 12 years ago, German artist Katharina Grosse initiated a radical and risky extension of her painting, moving off the canvas and into architectural spaces. She began to make her swirling, energetic, intensely colorful abstract works directly on walls and, in some cases, parts of the ceiling; in these and subsequent works, Grosse exchanged
