Montreal Battat Contemporary At first sight, the works in Stephen Talasnik’s “Panorama: Monolithe Intime” look like the imaginings of Piranesi or a variation on Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International. The repeating structural elements are inventive and circumscribe space, creating compositions that are less about concept design than the possibilities of sculptural form.
Richard Purdy
Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada Shawinigan Space Navigating through Richard Purdy’s water-themed installations in “ecH20,” offered some insight into one of Canada’s most wily and interdisciplinary creative “producers” For this solo show, Shawinigan Space, North American’s oldest aluminum fabrication facility and a designated National Historic site, was transformed into a temple, visitors were invited to take off
Douglas White
Dublin Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Douglas White’s recent work sets up a number of contrasting references that convey a powerful sense of mystery. Grouped under the alchemical title “Black Sun,” his sculptures and drawings evoke light and dark and speak of powerful bursts of energy and their residues.
Marcello Morandini
Mantua, Italy Casa del Mantegna The work of a living sculptor who describes the “infinite and eternal world of geometry” might, or might not, fit happily into living space planned with geometrical rigor by a 15th-century painter and now put to use as a gallery.
Charles LeDray
Boston Institute of Contemporary Art “Fragile” and “vulnerable” are not words associated with traditional sculpture, but then, Charles LeDray is not a traditional sculptor. Not for him the grandeur of figures carved in marble or cast in bronze, although his work does, in an eccentric way, qualify as figurative.
Patrick Dougherty
Washington, DC Dumbarton Oaks A contemporary Johnny Appleseed who sows giant orchards, Patrick Dougherty blew into Georgetown last year with one assistant. As friendly as Tom Sawyer recruiting fence-painters, he conjured up a village of 100 volunteers and, for three weeks, led them in harvesting, hauling, and weaving truckloads of maple and hornbeam saplings from
Donna Hapac
Chicago The Architrouve Donna Hapac’s sculptures evoke an off-kilter, latticed garden where the organic environment is propped up, hitched together, and suspended to sway gently in the air. In this trellised world held together with waxed linen thread tied into thousands and thousands of square knots, meticulously snipped ends yield fine, bristly pelts that halo
“Dead or Alive”
New York Museum of Arts and Design An exhibition of international artists who turn organic matter into art could be a creepy proposition, But thanks to MAD chief curator David Revere McFadden, joined by senior curator Lowery Stokes Sims and assistant curator Elizabeth Edwards Kirrane, “Dead or Alive” was nothing less than a phantasmagoria of
Takafumi Ide
New York Ise Cultural Foundation Japanese-born sculptor Takafumi Ide graduated with an MFA from Stony Brook University three years ago, He is currently teaching there, in addition to working at Suffolk Community College. His work involves subtle light and sound installations suffused with the sensitivity and subtlety that viewers might expect from an Asian artist.
Martin Bonadeo
Pittsburgh Wood Street Galleries “Alba Magica,” a retrospective of Argentinean installation artist Martin Bonadeo, spanned over a decade of his creative output. Throughout his oeuvre, he investigates time, space, and illusion. Most of his installations are informed by his post-doctoral research focusing on connections across art, science, and technology.
