NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT New Britain Museum of American Art Viewers first absorb Jennifer Wen Ma’s An Inward Sea (on view through October 24, 2021) as a lyrical, room-filling composition of waves set under a full moon. But that initial response quickly shifts, as synchronized sound and mechanized elements intensify with charged momentum.
“Playing with Fire: Ceramics of the Extraordinary”
VANCOUVER Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia I don’t always find the switch between “anthropological” and “art” objects dissonant, but “Playing with Fire” cast a raking light on those problematic distinctions.
Mick Peter
ARBROATH, SCOTLAND Hospitalfield A small cartoon boy stands on a sketchy sculpture of a reclining figure, while a girl reaches out to touch the figure’s head. A man, presumably dad, looks on—not at his actively curious children but at the flattened approximation of a Henry Moore.
“Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945”
WEST BRETTON, WAKEFIELD, U.K. Yorkshire Sculpture Park “Breaking the Mould” features the work of 50 postwar female sculptors—from early examples by Elisabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth, Karin Jonzen, and Rosemary Young to recent pieces by Phyllida Barlow, Holly Hendry, Jessie Flood-Paddock, and Grace Schwindt—all selected from the Arts Council Collection, which holds around 250 sculptures by more than 150 women.
Veronica Ryan
BRISTOL, U.K. Spike Island “Along a Spectrum,” Veronica Ryan’s most ambitious U.K. show to date (on view through September 5, 2021), features a new body of work created during a two-year residency at Spike Island. Viewers entering the light and airy gallery space encounter a beguiling array of forms, many held within sumptuously colored netting in shades of orange, yellow, and lime-green.
Bouke de Vries
PITTSBURGH The Frick Art Museum The Frick Art Museum, located on the Pittsburgh estate of the late-19th-century coke and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, was founded in 1970 by his daughter Helen to house her collection of European fine and decorative arts. This rich setting provides a perfect context for War and Pieces (on view through September 5, 2021), an installation originally created by Dutch ceramics-conservator-turned-artist Bouke de Vries for the Holburne Museum in Bath, England.
Lucy Skaer
LONDON London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE For “Forest on Fire,” the sixth iteration of the project, Lucy Skaer, whose practice draws on history, art history, archaeology, and nature, drew inspiration from the Tauroctony (bull slaying) at the heart of the Mithraic cult and from walks through the surrounding district of London, redolent, as she explained in an online talk, with the history of the animal trade.
Laura Amussen
MONKTON, MARYLAND Ladew Topiary Gardens As the world screeched to a standstill last year, Laura Amussen continued working on the large-scale installations for her 2020 sculptor-in-residence exhibition at the Ladew Topiary Gardens. “Flourish” acted as a living testament to Amussen’s practice, which explores natural phenomena, human relationships, and climate change.
Brian Sanchez and Neon Saltwater
SEATTLE Museum of Museums Energy Drink, an extensive, immersive installation by the artist team of Brian Sanchez and Neon Saltwater (on view through August 29, 2021), presents a number of possible interpretations: a gay dystopian environment for a “happy” couple; a hallucinatory fun house revolving around domestic symbols; a series of discrete activity areas for upscale urbanites who require access to gyms, spas, art galleries, sculpture studios, bars, and lounges.
Gedi Sibony
NEW YORK Greene Naftali “The Terrace Theater,” Gedi Sibony’s recent exhibition, offered a performance centering on natural light as it restaged objects and their shadows in relation to each other, the spaces between them, and viewers. As with any show, some viewers left minutes later, unaware that they had flubbed their walk-on role. At least a few lingered and began to see that Sibony’s exhibition asked new questions as well as old ones.
