BOSTON Atlantic Works Gallery The Atlantic Works Gallery, at the edge of Boston Harbor, occupies the top floor of a repurposed building that was once part of the East Boston shipping industry. Leigh Hall, the sculptor of the two-person exhibition “Metaphors and Metamorphoses” (which also included the assemblages of Suzanne Mercury), combed the streets of the surrounding industrial neighborhood for many of the materials included in the show. Hall uses a combination of needlework techniques to stitch together found pieces of metal wire of different thicknesses.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA Christopher Grimes Gallery “Well 34°01’03”N–118°29’12”W,” the title of Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s recent exhibition, represents the coordinates of the Grimes Gallery’s location in Santa Monica, introducing a multi-part work that required consideration of the geographical, social, economic, and political dimensions of water. The installation itself was titled P’oe 34°01’03”N—118°29’12”W. P’oe means “gift” in Tewa, the indigenous language of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico; the numbers indicate the coordinates of a well dug there in 2014. P’oe was clinical in its stark minimality.
14th Istanbul Biennial
ISTANBUL Saltwater As a migration crisis unfolded in Turkey (refugees on rubber rafts were trying to reach Greece from the Turkish coast), a biennial titled “Saltwater” seemed an amazing coincidence. But innocuous as the title appeared, the theme encompassed political, spiritual, mystical, and scientific metaphors reaching back into history through the present and into the future. “Tuzlu su” (“Saltwater”) featured venues that could not be seen, installations in obscure locations, and ferry trips to the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara and up the Bosphorus.
Roberley Bell and Boston Sculptors
STOCKBRIDGE, MA Chesterwood Margaret French wrote a line or two a day in the diaries that she kept in the early 20th century. French was the only child of Mary and Daniel Chester French, the sculptor best known for the Lincoln Memorial. He and his wife and daughter spent as much time as possible at his Berkshire summer estate, Chesterwood, until his death in 1931. Margaret’s entries in the diaries were terse and factual. On August 9, 1905, she wrote: “Went down to the store in morning. Played tennis in aft. And drove over to Stockbridge.
Matt Siber
Chicago DePaul Art Museum Advertisements tell people what to think, what to buy, and how to act. But not Matt Siber’s “Idol Structures.” The Chicago-based artist’s photographs and large-scale sculptures encouraged viewers to consider the structures of mass media communication and advertisements found in public spaces.
Robert Irwin
BEACON, NEW YORK Dia:Beacon Robert Irwin’s “site-conditioned” installation Excursus: Homage to the Square3 is a navigable optical illusion of 18 interconnected rooms divided by floor-to-ceiling semi-transparent scrims. Originally commissioned by Dia Center for the Arts for its former space in Chelsea in 1998, the new iteration engages with the architectural and lighting specificities of its redesigned space in Beacon. Taking cues from his surroundings, Irwin manipulates the existing building to form a Gesamtkunstwerk out of an old box factory turned museum.
Samara Golden
NEW YORK MoMA PS1 A display of silver Escher-inspired stairs leading nowhere, some absurdly upside down, some supporting tensely poised silver wheelchairs (wheels both down and up), burst like a hallucination upon visitors to PS1. Without exception, gallery-goers whipped out their cell phones, because no one could be sure that their dazzled faculties of perception would retain the scene without a photo. Samara Golden’s The Flat Side of the Knife (2014–15) conjured a witty, dream-like atmosphere that toyed with the subconscious while tweaking our certainty about what we think we see.
Teppei Kaneuji
NEW YORK Jane Lombard Gallery Entering the world of Tokyo-based sculptor Teppei Kaneuji is like walking into a funky workshop gone awry. Quirky combinations of tools, surreal arrangements of household objects on barbecue grills, towers of Claes Oldenburg knock-offs, and black and white stuffed toys collide to create a phantasmagoria of color and action.
Choong Sup Lim
NEW YORK Korea Society Choong Sup Lim is a highly accomplished Korean-born artist who has lived and worked in New York since 1973. His work offers a marked contrast to the notion of materialism so rampantly displayed in the so-called art fairs that have displaced the spiritual concept in art, a concept that Lim understands as indigenous to the culture of his homeland. Luna—Thousand Rivers & Thousand Reflections (2015), a room-size installation, consists of traditional Korean cotton thread (1,000 yards), rice paper (hanji), wax, wood, a kinetic system to move the thread, and a DVD projection.
James Siena
NEW YORK Pace Gallery James Siena’s extensive show of large and small, intricate sculptures in wood and metal seemed very much like an essay in structure. In an interview with Julia Schwartz for Figure/Ground, Siena acknowledged the influence of open-wire works of art: “I met Alan Saret early in my years in New York and was tremendously moved by his light-permeable wire sculptures.” While the range of sculpture in Siena’s exhibition was broad, both in size and materials (bronze, cherry wood, bamboo), the fabrication process was close to identical: sticks are attached to the ends of other sticks, the connections building an open design in which light and space are as important as the construction itself.
