SEATTLE Suyama Space Huddled in impromptu groups, excluding passage in some directions and open to being traversed in others, Joan Tanner’s recent multi- part installation seemed to lumber, stride, and even careen through space. Continuing her distinctive arrays of curiously awkward and yet oddly familiar forms, The False Spectator could be characterized as off-the-cuff, extemporized, or makeshift. Yet Tanner’s installations exude an air of compositional determination even as they appear to head in several different directions simultaneously—a polysemantic strategy that makes seeing them in person a pleasurable experience and retelling them in text a daunting task.
“The Xerox Box”
NEW YORK Paula Cooper Gallery Conceptual art, which came into being during the mid-1960s in the cold-water flats and raw-space warehouses that spread through Lower Manhattan, was anything but an elitist movement. Instead, it was a phenomenon largely based on the notion than art could exist in pursuit of ideas rather than preconceived object-forms laden with academic entitlement (which it later became). The conceptual aspects of the work evolved at a time when casual materials—like Xerox pages—were either secondary or integral, often integrating time or temporality as part of the idea.
Soo Hong Lee
NEW YORK Art Mora Korean sculptor Soo Hong Lee, who teaches at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, makes work out of wood—seemingly simple pieces that we in America would relate to Minimalism, but which take on the ritual simplicity of spiritual expression. Though there is no overt reference to Buddhism in his work, his efforts feel infused with that philosophy. Wood is a simple material; and Lee’s pieces possess an honesty that relates them to the long tradition of wooden religious sculpture in Asia. Yet the work is relentlessly abstract, given to schematic imagery that repeats forms in negative and positive space.
Robert Kinmont
NAPA, CALIFORNIA di Rosa Robert Kinmont’s recent one-person show, “Trying to Understand Where I Grew Up,” was a mini-retrospective with works from his early years in the 1970s through pieces created as recently last year. Kinmont, one of the California Conceptualists, rose to prominence in the ’70s, then dropped out of the art world in the ’80s and, for about 20 years, studied Buddhism and made his living as a carpenter. Around 2000, he returned to making sculpture, and he still lives and works in Sonoma, California—an important factor for work that explores the peculiarities of place and the human relationship with nature.
John Outterbridge
LOS ANGELES Art + Practice The most salient aspect of John Outterbridge’s recent retrospective was its powerful originality. A prominent and influential Los Angeles artist and activist, Outterbridge creates works that embody erased, obscured, or neglected histories. Though he evokes the writings of Langston Hughes to convey an essentially African American cultural history and experience, Outterbridge converts these elements into forms that oscillate between encoded meaning and the opacity of pure abstraction.
Matt Hope
BEVERLY HILLS ACE Gallery Matt Hope’s recent solo exhibition was a complex conceptual show that welded together art and science. With formal art degrees from England and California, Hope combines artistry with a knowledge of metal fabrication, structural design, and sound engineering to create his “Sun Dragon Hardware” hybrid creations. The show included two distinct series: a group of finely crafted metal “Tools” and a congregation of mechanical “Towers.”
Vibha Galhotra
NEW YORK Jack Shainman Gallery “A river runs through it” could be the subtitle for Vibha Galhotra’s recent exhibition inspired by the Yamuna River, a legendary tributary of the sacred Ganges, which is also one of the world’s most polluted waterways. Tapestry-like constructions, sculptures, an installation, and a film all continue Galhotra’s examination of the effects of globalization and development by focusing on the critical role of water in daily life, not just in the artist’s native India and hometown of Delhi, but for all of us.
Amber Cobb
DENVER, CO Gildar Gallery Amber Cobb’s exhibition, “Solace,” immersed viewers in a sculptural dialogue of fleshy tones and dichotomously seductive and repulsive forms. Building on a practice rooted in psychological and physical attachments, Cobb probed the space between the decorative and the grotesque, filling both rooms of the gallery with 12 wall-bound sculptures, a series of small figurines, and a large, centrally located sculpture in the round. Cobb gathers and treats a range of domestic objects—blankets, bedding, bath mats, figurines, and bedroom furniture—with silicone, resin, paint, and acrylic media.
Patrick Strzelec
NEW YORK Garth Greenan GalleryPatrick Strzelec’s recent exhibition featured a mature body of work evoking a variety of profound emotions—joy, sadness, fear, recognition, and foreboding. Composed of diverse materials, including plaster, aluminum, epoxy, steel, bronze, ceramic, wood, and detritus, the sculptures collapse recognizable and illogical forms. Strzelec uses postmodern strategies—appropriation, assemblage, and simulacra—but unlike many of his contemporaries, he crafts his work with his own hands. For over two decades, he has worked in numerous studios and foundries and taught sculpture at prestigious universities.
“Interspatial”
WASHINGTON, DC Transformer “Interspatial” was the second collaboration of the pop-up curatorial group Quota. Co-founded by Dawne Langford and Avi Gupta, Quota champions a broad definition of cultural diversity beyond notions of otherness and tokenism. Featuring installations by Rachel Schmidt, Johab Silva, and Levester Williams, the show dialogued in clever and unexpected ways with the architecture of Transformer’s shotgun gallery, as well as with the changing fabric of the neighborhood. Time became fluid in this malleable context, while space, both imagined and real, stretched to encompass in-between spaces and the jarring boundaries that define them.
