HOUSTON Moody Center for the Arts The ceramic medium completes a conceptual circle that begins with the fragility of the environment. The brittleness of the fired clay is contradicted by the force of Ruais’s work, its monumental scale and weight.
Cathy Wilkes
GLASGOW The Modern Institute Wilkes makes art engrained with memories—of childhood, of people no longer with us, of past events that weigh heavy on the present. Her work can be hard to unpick, but she prefers not to say much about it, instead allowing viewers to find their own paths through her beautifully considered, tightly bound inquiries.
Julia Shepley
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery Julia Shepley’s wall constructions give the sense of architecture and furnishings gone awry, their dimensions stretched in an almost dream-like fashion.
Jesse Darling
OXFORD, U.K. Modern Art Oxford The vulnerability of the bodies suggested in the sculptures is, at times, almost too much to bear, but there are one or two lighter moments amid the seriousness.
Phyllida Barlow
LOS ANGELES Hauser & Wirth Every view of Phyllida Barlow’s current exhibition takes on a filmic quality—the work seems to shift, to be in the process of constantly transferring weight.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
GRIMBERGEN, BELGIUM CC Strombeek Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Another Sunny Afternoon” gives the word “free” a new currency. It appears in the image on the original exhibition flyer and emblazons every T-shirt coming out of the show’s screen printing studio.
Tomás Saraceno
NEW YORK The Shed These innovative works formed in tandem with energies outside humanmade culture act as a corrective for our obsession with ourselves.
Wanxin Zhang
SAN FRANCISCO Catharine Clark Gallery While figuration still dominates Zhang’s approach to ceramic sculpture, there is also a shift toward abstraction, both in his handling of the material and in the objects themselves.
Debra Weisberg & “Material Drawing Redux”
BOSTON Piano Craft Gallery The works in these two exhibitions are formidable—the result of long experience and dedication to process.
A.A. Murakami
LONDON Superblue Silent Fall is the sort of installation that engulfs and dislodges the sense of self, which is appropriate considering that it draws on Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, offering a contemporary take on the Fall as we teeter on the brink of environmental catastrophe.
