EUREKA, CALIFORNIA Morris Graves Museum of Art Artist and blacksmith Monica Coyne works in steel, and her sculptures are riddled with reminders of the forge. In a built environment predicated on the ready availability of prefabricated steel components, that’s enough to make them strange.
Duane Paxson
TROY, ALABAMA International Arts Center, Janice Hawkins Cultural Arts Park, Troy University At a time when sculptural craftsmanship is often subordinated to idea—and idea is at best inconsequential—it was refreshing to see an exhibition of works both beautifully made and “weighty” in thought.
Candice Lin
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA Pitzer College Art Galleries Candice Lin’s work involves equal measures of dark poetry, speculation, fiction, DIY science, futurism, queerness, and art history. Its concentrated physical materiality is rendered even denser by layers of association and reference.
“An exhibition with works by…”
ROTTERDAM Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) For me, Delftware—a blue and white ceramic that rose to prominence in the 17th century—isn’t particularly sexy, but this show of sculptures and installations reinterpreting Delftware forms and presenting a wider global history changed my mind.
Jessica Stoller
NEW YORK P.P.O.W André Breton once described Frida Kahlo’s work as “a ribbon around a bomb.” His words could also apply to Jessica Stoller’s witty and subversive sculptures, which first seduce and then explode into contrary objection.
Rita McKeough
BANFF Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Rita McKeough’s exhibition “darkness is as deep as the darkness is” offers a captivating and critical perspective on natural resource extraction. Set in a mysterious realm, the show focuses on the unheard voices of flora and fauna—perhaps the most vulnerable inhabitants of the terrain exploited and destroyed by extraction industries.
Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian
WASHINGTON, DC Transformer In “Which Yesterday Is Tomorrow?” collaborator artists Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian reimagined a future rest stop by riffing on their Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) heritages.
Renee So
BEXHILL-ON-SEA, EAST SUSSEX, U.K. De La Warr Pavilion Renee So’s exhibition “Ancient and Modern” centered on themes of gender, playfully upending preconceived ideas about crafts such as knitting, weaving, and ceramics. The show, which followed So’s residency at the West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, demonstrated her joyful experimentation across media and disregard of traditional art/craft hierarchies.
Hayoon Jay Lee
NEW YORK Gallery 456 “Eternal Mother,” a recent show of painting, sculpture, and performance by Korean-born, New York-based multimedia artist Hayoon Jay Lee, demonstrated a remarkable merger of Asian content and Western contemporary art methodologies.
Tiril Hasselknippe
NEW YORK Magenta Plains Visitors to this demanding show by Norwegian-born, New York-based sculptor Tiril Hasselknippe first encountered Braut (2020), a group of five roughly textured, handmade concrete columns, descending in height from roughly seven to just over four feet.
