TORONTO The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery A palpable sense of unease pervaded Ydessa Hendeles’s “The Milliner’s Daughter,” at least initially. The installations in this decade-long survey broke down into three dimly lit spaces populated by various mannequins and four brighter spaces featuring mechanical toys, panels of illustrated texts, and assorted supplementary images. Lingering in the galleries, that first impression of unease began to erode before reasserting itself. Not only did the heartening impact of the mech – anical toys wane dramatically, but deeper and darker associations also began to emerge.
“The Art of Burning Man”
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA Hermitage Museum & Gardens Since the early 1990s, Burning Man has enticed crews of artists to craft increasingly large, complex, and extravagantly lighted sculptures during a yearly gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The event is not for wimps; everything gets coated in dust and is subject to windstorms and extreme temperatures. Still, artists are drawn to Burning Man by the freedom to go bold with scant censorship and by the atmosphere of radical self-expression and com – munal cooperation.
Jen Durbin
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Art 3 Silas Von Morisse Gallery The title of Jen Durbin’s 11-part installation 90 Moves in Nine Seconds (The Jackie Series 2001–2017) refers to the actions of Jackie Kennedy in the immediate moments after her husband, President John F. Kennedy, was shot in Houston. Durbin’s immensely complicated, immensely ambitious project follows the movements of Jackie’s pillbox hat, as captured in nine seconds of film, in a sequence of sculptures that rise as high as 30 feet.
Niho Kozuru
BOSTON Miller Yezerski Niho Kozuru grew up in a clan of distinguished Japanese ceramists, led by her father, Gen. She tried clay, glass, and metal before settling on the material that has become her signature–cast rubber. Infused with bold hues, it’s translucent and looks good enough to eat, like gummy bears. Based in Boston for most of her career, Kozuru has often used casts of architectural ornaments from old New England houses in her freestanding works, stacking them into towers with distinctive personalities and energy.
Nayland Blake
SAN FRANCISCO 500 Capp Street Foundation Using only a few deceptively simplelooking elements, Workroom, Nay – land Blake’s recent installation in the garage of David Ireland’s former home, transformed a bare concrete cubicle into an imaginary performative environment. A little metal and leather and a temporary fabric wall punctuated with interesting openings succeeded, among other things, in recalling places and spaces largely erased from San Francisco– first by the AIDS epidemic and, later, by relentless gentrification.
Allison Leigh Holt
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA Pro Arts Gallery The title of Allison Leigh Holt’s recent exhibition, “The Beginning Was The End,” calls up images of endless loops, along with apocalyptic scenarios and intergalactic explosions. Oscar Kiss Maerth used the same words in the early ’70s to title a controversial pseudo-scientific book in which he argued that humans evolved from apes that ate the brains of other apes and that we are now de-evolving because our brains are too big and this cannibalistic practice has made us insane.
Rachel Whiteread
LONDON Tate Britain Tate Britain removed interior walls for its recent Rachel Whiteread retrospective, creating an open 1,500- square-meter space—an unusual modification that allowed all of the sculptures to be viewed with a single sweep of the eyes. A mesmerizing quietude pervaded the space— individual pieces, sedate and pale, appeared to evaporate into their environment. The show spanned White – read’s output from the 1980s through the present, using a regimented manner of display to create an allencompassing effect.
“David Smith: The White Sculptures”
NEW WINDSOR, NEW YORK Storm King Art Center Did David Smith intend to leave eight large white sculptures white, the state in which they were seen at Bolton Landing, when he died suddenly in 1965? That question, which has periodically vexed art historians, drove an intriguing exhibition at Storm King Art Center, where six of the white-painted steel constructions were installed outside on the lawn, including the three Primo Piano sculptures on view together for the first time.
Roni Horn
POTOMAC, MARYLAND Glenstone “Roni Horn,” a survey of work from the last four decades curated by the artist from the museum’s permanent collection, featured photographs, sculptures, and drawings divided into eight rooms: the earliest work, Ant Farm, dates from 1974, but the majority of the works were produced from 2000 to 2015. Horn’s work was ideal for Glenstone, a private museum outside Washington, DC; architecture, site, and art melded seamlessly together into a total experience that allowed for contemplation of complex ideas.
Alberto Giacometti
LONDON Tate Modern The U.K.’s first major retrospective of Alberto Giacometti in 20 years, made possible through unparalleled access to the collection and archive of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti in Paris, contained more than 250 works, including some extremely fragile and rarely displayed pieces. Although Giacometti is revered for his bronzes, the exhibition showcased a number of works in plaster and clay, repositioning him as an artist with an inherently experimental approach and farreaching proficiency in materials.
