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.
Hernán Dompé
Buenos Aires Recoleta Cultural Center Some artists’ works create a visual or a conceptual impact, but others, such as those of Hernan Dompé, create both. The Recoleta Cultural Center recently presented two complementary Dompé exhibitions, simultaneous shows that interacted in such a particular way that even though each was understandable on its own, they needed
“Monument to Transformation”
Prague Prague City Gallery “What,” asked curators Vit Havrdnek and Zdenék Baladran, “has happened to us in the 20 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, to the artistic imagination, to society?” To answer that question, they assembled video journals, installations, fragments, and other projects from more than 60 international artists and artist collectives
Ran Hwang
Seoul Hakgojae Gallery One of Korea’s better-known artists, Ran Hwang, who works in New York and Seoul, has built a reputation on artful arrangements of buttons—thousands of them pinned onto the wall. Her varying compositions include vases, birds, plum trees, and, in this exhibition, a spectacular installation of chandeliers complete with web-weaving spiders, Because buttons
Berlinde de Bruyckere
Zürich Hauser & Wirth Berlinde de Bruyckere’s sculptures are imbued with the sublime—they combine awe and anxiety to approach something akin to spiritual uplift. The Belgian sculptor (who has become an international sensation in recent years) works in Ghent, Belgium, in a former Catholic boys’ school transformed into a studio.
Won Ju Lim
Santa Monica, California Patrick Painter Inc. Won Ju Lim’s sweeping installation Baroque Pet Shop celebrates convergences in cinematically tactile and weirdly complete ways. It combines relics of Baroque architecture with the urban trappings of Los Angeles’s Highland Park neighborhood, constructing an idiosyncratic environment in which embellished steeples, industrial scaffolding, and gaudy playthings make the ordinary
