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.
Daniel Boccato
BROOKLYN The Journal Gallery Kevin Francis Gray’s recent solo exhibition found the neoclassically inspired bronze and marble sculptor making his boldest moves yet in testing the representational ideal of the human figure against a contemporary perspective. More than ever, the exploration of tensions inherent in the dichotomy between figuration and abstraction, which has defined Gray’s practice, becomes the central subject of his work.
Elizabeth Lide
ATLANTA The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia With a focus on organizing space, Atlanta-based Elizabeth Lide explores how we shape–and are shaped by–our personal past. Her recent, multi-part installation of sculpture, drawing, and stitchery, Putting the House in Order, which marked the culmination of a 2015/16 Working Artist Project Fellowship awarded by the museum, investigated the literal and metaphorical influence of memory, family history, and accumulated domestic objects, all of which Lide believes can be both burden and assurance.
Medardo Rosso
ST. LEWIS Pulitzer Arts Foundation Though Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) is not as widely known today as he should be, a number of his contemporaries (including the influential French poet Guillaume Apollinaire) considered him to be as great a sculptor as Rodin. “Medardo Rosso: Experiments in Light and Form” addressed this omission with a visually arresting and extremely informative presentation of his works from 1882 to 1906, curated by Sharon Hecker, a leading Rosso scholar, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg, an associate curator at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
Akio Takamori
SEATTLE James Harris Gallery The works in Akio Takamori’s recent show revealed a strangely somber and perplexing side to this usually exuberant ceramic artist, examining the rituals of male public behavior. These were the last works that he produced before succumbing to a long bout with cancer last year. Idio – syncratic and characterized by masterful technique, Takamori’s work is also known for a perilous awkwardness, which often doubles as self-examination.
Whitney Biennial 2017
NEW YORK Whitney Museum of American Art Smaller and more diverse than in years past, this year’s Whitney Bien – nial featured the work of 63 artists spread across two floors, the stairwell, and lobby of the museum’s new Renzo Piano building. With few walls, high ceilings, and works hung together in separate spaces as if in mini gallery shows, the layout encouraged viewers to wander about almost as if they were at an art fair.
Christian Benefiel
WASHINGTON, DC Flashpoint Gallery In Christian Benefiel’s recent exhibition, three large sculptures filled a small, elongated space. Each work, created of interwoven pieces of wood, was held together through the strength of the intricate con – nections linking its individual parts. Benefiel sees his constructions as a physical means of addressing the interactions of singular elements in complex systems, whether social systems ( societies and governments) or biological ones (organisms both simple and complex).
Norbert Prangenberg
COLOGNE, GERMANY Galerie Karsten Greve Nearly every top-heavy Figur sculpted by Norbert Prangenberg (1949– 2012) is reminiscent of an ancient amphora or pithos, although without the lid or twin handles. The rest of his symmetrical Figuren approximate modern barrels. We eventually realize that neither of his container types can hold liquid or grain, because they remain fundamentally un-reconstituted ropes of clay. The concentric coils were crudely kneaded into lengths up to 2.5 inches thick before being barely smoothed and vertically stacked.
