NEW YORK President’s Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Greek-born Antonia Papatzanaki is a sculptor of light. Her public installations are well known in Greece, particularly in Athens, where she lives part of the year while residing at other times in New York. Her recent exhibition, “Stratifications,” featured two bodies of work: “Exceeding Limits,” a series of wall-mounted sculptures consisting of metal casing and curving Plexiglas forms that emanate light from a hidden source, and the “Cellular” series, which takes its cue from cellular structures and includes both computer-generated prints and sculptures made from layers of Plexiglas.
Jeffrey Gibson
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art “A Kind of Confession,” Jeffrey Gibson’s captivating recent exhibition, borrowed its title from James Baldwin, who wrote that “all art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists…are forced, at last, to tell the whole story.” A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half-Cherokee, Gibson drew from his Native American heritage, as well as from his experience living overseas. His paintings, along with embellished works bearing messages, hung from the walls, but viewers could not help but be immediately drawn to his mesmerizing, three-dimensional work.
Alison Knowles
PITTSBURGH Carnegie Museum of Art For five decades, Alison Knowles has been expanding the parameters of art with performative works and participatory installations. A founding member of Fluxus with George Maciunas, she moved through the 1960s downtown New York City art scene with the likes of Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, and Nam June Paik. Working alongside Marcel Duchamp and John Cage influenced her development significantly. What set Knowles apart from other Fluxus artists, however, was the element of touch.
Nicole Eisenman
NEW YORK New Museum Starting with a deflated Captain America sleeping-or knocked out-on a pilaster, Nicole Eisenman’s recent exhibition addressed cultural and gender identity. “Al-ugh-ories” opened with Captain America’s nondescript, battered brown head at rest on a worn baseball glove. The sculpture was surrounded by weird paintings of a deep-sea diver, an androgynous, long-haired Hamlet with sword and skull, a green head, a cuffed and shackled nude maiden (Spring Fling), and a self-portrait of the artist in an overloaded, cramped studio/houseboat on a turbulent sea.
Stefano Cagol
TRENT, ITALY Civica/MART Civica, the Trent branch of MART, Italy’s lauded contemporary art museum, ingeniously structured Stefano Cagol’s mid-career retrospective into a cycle that evoked the return of the native son to the site of his first exhibition. Beginning with an early self-portrait (1998) compounded into four states of motion, the show traced the paradigm shift that characterizes two decades of Cagol’s work. Unity through duality is a chief preoccupation, from early video experiments to September 11 (2009), an LED of memorial events on his birthday.
Ugo Rondinone
ROTTERDAM Museum of Boijmans Van Beuningen Maybe it is a good idea to fill a museum with 45 life-like sculptures of clowns supplemented by colorful, rainbow-inspired and cartoon-like works—or maybe not. In any event, Ugo Rondinone chose to do just this in his recent exhibition, “Vocabulary of Solitude,” which also doubled as a retrospective of his color spectrum works. This was one of the weirdest art experiences I’ve had in some time, prompting a PTSD-like reaction similar to those I had in response to the 1980s horror films of my youth.
Catherine Heard
HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CANADA Art Gallery of Hamilton Catherine Heard’s sculptures are disturbing and ethereal, revealing the restraints of corporeal being as well as the intangibles of the soul/creativity. Myrllen: A Portrait, for instance, has indistinct, rounded features akin to Pompeian remains—empty eye sockets and vague features. The graygreen head was created from hundreds of thin layers of linen, lace, paper, clay, and wax. The only external evidence of this laborious process is a rough, compressed texture; a fabric mandala is pressed into its crown.
Alexis Dahan
LONDON LAMB Arts Détournement, the act of decomposing and redistributing cultural value, resists literal translation but finds its closest approximation in “culture jamming.” Détournement is a turn, but it is also a confrontation. It is not just veering from the road, but ripping cobblestones from the road and lobbing them. As Guy Debord and Gil Wolman saw it, “The cheapness of its products is the heavy artillery that breaks through the Chinese walls of understanding.”
“Peekskill Project 6”
PEEKSKILL, NEW YORK Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art A citywide public art festival organized by the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA), “Peekskill Project,” which launched in 2004, is devoted to bringing contemporary art out of the museum and into the community, specifically into spaces not normally used to present art. The 2015 iteration, “Peekskill Project 6,” featured works by 57 U.S. and international artists selected by an international curatorial committee and presented in various locations around the city, including empty industrial buildings, storefronts, public parks, and private homes, as well as at HVCCA.
Augusto Zanela
BUENOS AIRES Centro Cultural Recoleta In “The First Day,” Augusto Zanela— an architect, photographer, and teacher—highlights some of the concerns that have driven his work since 1996, when he began investigating the processes of image formation as applied to photography, video, and installation. He is particularly interested in optical tricks and structures created in the viewer’s space—both physical and mental. Following a rigorous plan, his recent exhibition of three installations established a dialogue across words, colors, and forms through the effects of light.
