CLINTON, NEW YORK Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College A series of helmets—arguably even more extravagantly decked out—similarly conjure references across cultures and chronologies, threading together the politics, economics, and socio-religious rituals of dress, adornment, pattern, and decoration. They, and the other works in “This Is the Day” (from a Biblical psalm, hymn, and synth-pop song), activate and amplify its jurisdiction and readings.
Claudia Wieser
LONDON London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE Materials and epochs collide and dissolve in “Shift,” which places the Modernist-inspired forms of Berlin-based Claudia Wieser in dialogue with ancient artifacts excavated from the ruins of a Roman temple from the third century AD.
Yoonshin Park
RIVERSIDE, ILLINOIS Riverside Arts Center An accomplished paper sculptor, the Chicago-based Park crafted each pillow in “Passing hours, space in between: I am breathing your air” from delicate white paper, seamed and sewed precisely; inside each is a hidden mechanism inducing the slightest movement in the center of the pillows, mimicking the rise and fall of a sleeping person’s torso.
William Kentridge
NEW YORK Park Avenue Armory The Head & The Load, an installation and collaborative performance piece involving almost three dozen musicians, dancers, vocalists, and spoken word performers, along with processions and projections of Kentridge’s drawings and sculptures, is set during World War I. Like all of Kentridge’s work, however, it resonates with contemporary meaning.
Joan Jonas
SOUTH HADLEY, MASSACHUSETTS Mount Holyoke College Art Museum “Promise of the Infinite,” a mini-retrospective on view through June 16, focuses on one salient theme running from Jonas’s earliest performances (captured on 16mm film) to recent installations—the mirror as metaphor and object.
Robert Morris
NEW YORK Leo Castelli Gallery Morris’s final exhibition, “Banners and Curses,” his 40th at the Leo Castelli Gallery, opened in late October, just weeks before his death, at age 87, from pneumonia. This final gesture, an urgent wake-up call, aligns Morris’s darkly expansive vision with a contemporary moment commensurate with its prophetic and sublime cynicism.
Rena Detrixhe
BOSTON Abigail Ogilvy Gallery Detrixhe begins with a drawing, then incises her relief-like design into the soil with hand-carved stamps made from discarded shoe soles.
“Artists In Residence”
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA The Mattress Factory Relationships across body, space, and time unite these new works by William Earl Kofmehl III, Laleh Mehran, OSGEMEOS (Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo), Karina Smigla-Bobinski, and Christina A. West.
Perla Krauze and Barbara Liotta
WASHINGTON, DC Mexican Cultural Institute Krauze and Liotta offer a different take on the pursuit of uncluttered intentionality that is at once rooted in the sensual exploration of stone and a need for order. While aspects of Land Art and Minimalism inspire both artists, Krauze engages viscerally with the land and the materiality of stone, traveling to the border to gather shards.
Monica Cook
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA SCAD Museum of Art Nurture, fragility, and protection have always been prominent themes for Brooklyn-based Monica Cook. Using a variety of media, her work often explores these subjects within the human context, through gestures like feeding and grooming.
