BROOKLYN Undercurrent Gallery “Myoptic,” a sculptural video installation by Carl Lee, contemplated the intricate twining of spectatorship, memory, and technology. The title, a play on the word “myopic,” strongly underscores this notion: “myopic” means nearsighted, not being able to see the wider view without some sort of corrective lens; “myoptic” seems to indicate a more personal spectatorship, the nostalgic lens through which we each, individually, experience the past.
Lydia Okumura
LONDON Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Okumura has stated that “geometry is an intelligent way to express the concept of multi-dimensionality, an aspect of the truth of life.” This exhibition therefore provided an opportunity to re-evaluate the intricate multi-dimensionality of a group of five key sculptures from the 1984 show, which exemplified a decisive year in her artistic trajectory.
Brendan Fernandes
CHICAGO Monique Meloche Brendan Fernandes’s new works cast bondage in bronze. His current exhibition, “Restrain” (on view through January 11, 2020), features bronze coils suspended by leather straps from live-edge walnut supports. Titles inject context, connecting these looping suspensions to the formations of kinbaku, or “tight binding,” the Japanese practice of aestheticized bondage.
Simone Leigh in New York
Like the braided clay that adorns some of her ceramic sculptures, Leigh’s practice articulates a richly interwoven narrative of recuperation, resistance, restitution, and healing that directly addresses this core viewership even as it puts the broader public on notice.
“Metamorphosis. Art in Europe Now”
PARIS Fondation Cartier
Thomas Delamarre, senior curator for the Fondation Cartier, didn’t know what he would learn when he visited 200 European artists who came of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall. How, he wondered, did the still politically charged landscape of today shape their perspectives and impact their work?
Echiko Ohira
LOS ANGELES Craft Contemporary For me, the hallmarks of singularity in an art object are to be found in certain manifested obsessions, idiosyncratic techniques, and animating tensions. Echiko Ohira’s complexly reductive works declare that singularity by way of a compulsive tropism toward simple, repetitive, labor-intensive techniques.
“Alice, Neeme & Jass”
HELSINKI Kunsthalle Helsinki
The unassuming title could not have been any more paradoxical, effectively belying the vitality of the work created by Alice Kask, Neeme Külm, and Jass Kaselaan, three Estonian artists. Their objects not only played off each other, but also responded astutely to the spaces in which they were set.
2018 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Awards
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute
Though not by design, there is often a shared thread among the works in the annual Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards Exhibition, which accompanies a $10,000 unrestricted grant to each artist.
The Webster Court Project
NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS When Christopher and Joelle Zakak purchased a late 19th-century Queen Anne Victorian house in Newton, Massachusetts, they intended to demolish the aged relic and rebuild on the site. Local zoning regulations, however, required that they wait one year. Being artists, as well as enterprising developers, they began using the empty rooms as studios.
Maya Lin
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN Grand Rapids Art Museum From the meteoric launch of her artistic career in 1981 to the present, Maya Lin has harnessed an elegantly Minimalist vocabulary to convey potent messages, frequently using her work to demonstrate humanity’s impact on the natural environment. “Flow,” Lin’s recent exhibition, was devoted to sculptural works addressing the need to be more mindful of water.
