NEW YORK Van Doren Waxter
Solange Pessoa
LOS ANGELES Blum & Poe Dictionaries define a fetish as a spirit attached to a material object; if nothing else, the oddly configured, misshapen, and obsessional pieces made by the Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa count as such. Her sculptures look as if they have a job to do in the service of divination or magic. The work is deeply suffused with metaphysics, mystery, loss, and sorrow.
Jason J. Ferguson
HAMNTRAMCK, MICHIGAN Public Pool Art Space You go through a door, and you’re faced with the very same door. When you pass through that second door and turn into a room, you see what appears to be an anatomically perfect skull, but as you approach, you gradually realize that it is, in fact, horribly distorted. This is not a dimly remembered dream, but the initiation into “One-man (freak) show,” Jason J. Ferguson’s fascinating exhibition situated at the intersection of technology and the uncanny.
“Age of Terror: Art since 9/11”
LONDON Imperial War Museum In order to reach the Imperial War Museum’s landmark “Age of Terror” exhibition, you had to negotiate its astonishing atrium, complete with a suspended jet plane and rocket. Underfoot, James Bridle’s Drone Shadow lurked as a white outline on the floor. IWM has commissioned contemporary artists to go to war zones since its founding 100 years ago. Its collections include 20,000 works of art, in addition to thousands of war-related artifacts that combine a big-picture view with intimate personal stories.
Elizabeth Michelman
RUTLAND, VERMONT Clastleton Downtown Galler Pandora, the first installation in Elizabeth Michelman’s recent exhibition, “Notes from Underground,” consists of things one might find forgotten in a basement, unearthed after the passage of years. An oversize steamer trunk made of dark gray-green metal provides an anchor. Propped up against it is a cello, its generous curves contrasting with the trunk’s linearity.
Christopher Wilmarth
NEW YORK Betty Cuningham Gallery
Carolee Schneemann
QUEENS, NEW YORK MoMA PS1 Carolee Schneemann, speaking at the press conference for her touring retrospective, recalled the days when the art world labeled her unabashed use of her body to disrupt misogynist attitudes toward women as “lewd” and “narcissistic.”
Doerte Weber
SAN ANTONIO Artpace Doerte Weber grew up in a country divided by a wall. Born in West Germany, she attended university in Berlin (1979–83). To visit her boyfriend in West Germany on the weekends, however, she had to travel through East Germany. Each time Weber crossed the border, she was overcome with emotion as she confronted the formidable wall erected inside a single country, complete with barbed wire and armed guards.
Patricia Cronin
DUBLIN The LAB Gallery Even the crudest structure or site can become a shrine. Once connected to an item or individual deemed sacred, it transfigures into a space conducive to contemplation and rituals of remembrance—activities that keep the enshrined, in some way, alive. Patricia Cronin subverts traditional notions of a shrine to memorialize something that is handled, globally, with systemic disdain and a chronic lack of care.
Andy Zimmermann
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery The back gallery at Boston Sculptors is small, dim, and oddly shaped. But under the hand of Andy Zimmer – mann, it became vast and colorful— a panorama of construction and destruction, a maze of welded rebar, translucence, imagery, and mirrors that immersed viewers in the illusion of being in the midst of a work site.
