BERLIN Galerie Nordenhake
Carlos Rolón
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Big Car Collaborative — Tube Factor artspace With the seasonal spectacles of the Indianapolis 500, NFL football, and NBA and NCAA basketball ingrained into the cityscape, Indianapolis often identifies as a “sports town,” perhaps to the exclusion of other aspects of culture. Given Big Car Collaborative’s mission regarding place-making and cultural inclusion, Carlos Rolón’s recent exhibition, “50 Grand,” was calculated not only to introduce quality work by a rising artist, but also to attract a widely diverse audience, including sports aficionados and Latino viewers.
Bojana Ginn
ATLANTA Whitespace Gallery
Documenta 14
ATHENS GREECE At the opening press conference of Documenta 14, “Learning From Athens,” artistic director Adam Szymczyk stated, “The great lesson is that there are no lessons.” These elusive words may well have been a disclaimer for an exhibition that rambled on without aim. Such large events are difficult to manage in general, but Documenta’s Athens endeavor required viewers to accept much of the responsibility for realizing the show’s potential and to make a sizable time commitment to text-based art.
Rachel Beach
CHARLOTTETOWN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, CANADA Confederation Centre of the Arts Much discussion about the history of 20th-century sculpture has focused on its emergence from under the shadow of painting. With Minimalism’s return to the object, the conversation with painting suddenly seemed irrelevant. Yet, as with so much in art, conversations never truly end, they evolve and spiral in new directions. The work of Brooklyn artist Rachel Beach appears, at first glance, to be a manner of painting in threedimensional space.
“/spek-tr m/ variance of sculpture and form”
KANSAS CITY Studios Inc The best group shows spark conversations between artworks, revealing new dimensions and offering fresh insights. “/spek-tr m/ variance of sculpture and form,” which showcased works by many of Kansas City’s best-known sculptors, did just that. Studios Inc is a nonprofit studio complex and residency program located just east of KC’s Crossroads Arts District. It maintains a collection consisting of works donated by resident artists as a condition of their three-year tenure. Studios Inc’s associate director, Robert Gann, drew from these holdings for “/spektr m/.”
Cody VanderKaay
ROCHESTER, MICHIGAN Oakland University Art Gallery The best group shows spark conversations between artworks, revealing new dimensions and offering fresh insights. “/spek-tr m/ variance of sculpture and form,” which showcased works by many of Kansas City’s best-known sculptors, did just that. Studios Inc is a nonprofit studio complex and residency program located just east of KC’s Crossroads Arts District. It maintains a collection consisting of works donated by resident artists as a condition of their three-year tenure. Studios Inc’s associate director, Robert Gann, drew from these holdings for “/spektr m/.”
Documenta 14
KASSEL AND MUNSTER Skulptur Projekte Munster Summer 2017 marked an art world trifecta, the Venice Biennale coinciding with Documenta (held every five years) and Skulptur Projekte Münster (held every 10 years). In Kassel and Münster, what began as modest municipal undertakings to reconnect postwar Germany with the global art community have become internationally recognized for their influence. Sources of great civic pride, these shows depart from Venice and the art fair model with their refreshing non-commercial slant.
Dispatch: Venice Biennale
VENICE Venice Biennale Christine Macel, curator of the Centre Pompidou and of “Viva Arte Viva,” the 57th International Exhibition, describes art as a force for life: “Art in itself helps us to navigate in these times; its very existence is a resistance in itself… Contemporary art cannot be understood as mere representation or imitation: it is a reality tout court, an instrument of inquiry, both of the creative process and of the different questions pertaining to Humankind and the world.”
“Juxtapoz x Superflat”
VANCOUVER Vancouver Art Gallery “Juxtapoz x Superflat,” a group exhibition of 36 international artists organized by Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd and co-curated by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and Evan Pricco, editor-in-chief of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine, premiered as a four-day pop-up show at Pivot Art + Culture in Seattle; it then had a three-month run at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
