BEIJING AND SHANGHAI Today Art Museum and Shanghai Expo 2010 Xu Bing’s two enormous, 28-meter-long Phoenix sculptures are a pastiche of dangling three-dimensional tales chronicling China’s past, present, and future.
Marc Swanson
HOUSTON Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Marc Swanson’s recent solo exhibition was named for Second Story, a now defunct gay bar in San Francisco that had closed before the artist even visited the city.
Aristotle Georgiades
CHICAGO Chicago Cultural Center Aristotle Georgiades’s recent exhibition “Repurposed” featured eight sculptures constructed from salvaged wooden and metal objects.
William Corwin
NEW YORK The Clocktower A chess game played by two American masters at The Clocktower in Lower Manhattan marked the culmination of a residency held by William Corwin, a New York sculptor who thinks long and hard about conceptual motifs.
Juan Miceli
BUENOS AIRES This Is Not A Gallery Sculptor, installation, and performance artist Juan Miceli says, “I am my work.” Without him, the work doesn’t exist. Miceli thinks in terms of projects; he imagines worlds and works without previous formal organization or model.
Fabrizio Plessi, Pier Paolo Calzolari, and Marisa Merz
VENICE Biennale di Venezia, Ca’ Pesaro, Fondazione Querini Stampalia Venice recently hosted three solo shows by three leading Italian sculptors whose language couldn’t be more different: video-techno visionary Fabrizio Plessi at the Venice Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Arte Povera master Pier Paolo Calzolari at the Ca’ Pesaro; and the mysterious, solitary Marisa Merz.
Duane Paxson
TROY, ALABAMA Johnson Art Center With works from the past decade, as well as a new series, Duane Paxson’s recent show offered an interesting contrast in subjects and materials.
Jene Highstein
NEW YORK Danese Gallery Jene Highstein’s new stainless steel sculptures have a formal morphological relation to his earlier work, going back to the 1970s. In contrast to the generation of Minimal artists who emerged in the early 1960s—Judd, Flavin, Morris, LeWitt, and Andre—Highstein entered the Minimalist stage somewhat later.
Steven and William Ladd
HONOLULU The Contemporary Museum Think “box” and what comes to mind might be Joseph Cornell’s lyrical mise-en-scène, Donald Judd’s obdurate rows and stacks, or a singular work like Eva Hesse’s Accession II—its lush austerity signaling, among other things, a finely tuned balance between industrial materials and hand labor.
“Go Ahead…Touch Me!”
CINCINNATI Manifest Gallery Mischievous intent and scrupulous execution do not necessarily go hand in hand in sculpture, but “Go Ahead…Touch Me!” featured works that answer both criteria.
