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.
Marisa Merz
NEW YORK The Met Breuer “The Sky is a Great Space” emphasized the consistency behind Marisa Merz’s body of work over chronology, starting with the larger-than-life “Living Sculpture” series (1966) at the exhibition entrance. These giant slinky-toy-like aluminum sheets hung from the ceiling in curls, spirals, and amorphous dangling “bodies”–most (excepting a wrapped armchair and a tent-like shape) without antecedent as “forms.” Breath alone could make them sway.
“so it is”
PITTSBURGH Mattress Factory The group exhibition “so it is,” curated by Belfast native John Carson, presented an impressive collection of installation work by seven artists from Northern Ireland. A practicing artist himself, Carson lived in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and ’80s during the Troubles. He drew on this experience while making his selections, choosing Ursula Burke, Willie Doherty, Rita Duffy, John Kindness, Locky Morris, Philip Napier, and Paul Seawright for their sensitivity to this volatile time of political and nationalistic conflict.
Kevin Francis Gray
NEW YORK Pace Gallery Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein recently transformed Boston Sculptors Gallery into a new kind of Wonderland with their related shows, “Zodiac” and “Geology.” Dodson’s anthropomorphic deities, arranged in two circles, reference both Chinese and Western zodiac symbols. The archetypal figures emanate an extraordinary calm. Each takes a similar stolid stance yet clearly expresses her individuality.
