NEW YORK Luhring Augustine Christopher Wool’s 2013 show at the Guggenheim Museum didn’t seem terribly convincing. It is likely that many viewers found the paintings uninspired and stylistically repetitive. But his sculptures, which mostly consist of curved, bronze tubular lines, look more interesting. Wool’s three-dimensional works reference New York School painting as much as they consider the current state of American sculpture. Still, his work has to justify itself on a contemporary basis rather than an archival one.
Susan Fitzsimmons
EDINBURG, TEXAS Dorothy Charles Clark Gallery “Sentinels and Guardians,” an exhibition of bronze sculptures by Susan Fitzsimmons at the Clark Gallery of the University of Texas in Edinburg (where Fitzsimmons is a professor and chair of the art department), presented an engaging paradox. Bronze casting is a highly skilled as well as physically demanding discipline and requires careful planning. Traditionally, hot molten bronze is poured into a wax-filled mold, then packed in sand as it cools and solidifies. In the process, the wax is burned out, revealing the form.
Leo Saul Berk
SEATTLE Frye Art Museum Leo Saul Berk’s recent exhibition “Structure and Ornament” featured a series of sculptural installations commissioned by the Frye Art Museum and Frye Foundation. In an unusually apt interface between an artist and the museum’s permanent collection of 19th-century German art, director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker linked Berk’s variations on his childhood home (eccentric architect Bruce Goff’s Ford House in Aurora, Illinois) to the Frye’s substantial holdings of the multi-disciplinary Munich Secession.
Rita Simoni
BUENOS AIRES Zafarrancho I have been following the work of the Argentine artist Rita Simoni for many years, and I must confess that it still surprises me. Her work offers a clear example of a skill that can’t be ignored by contemporary artists—the ability to adapt to a specific environment using as many stylistic devices and supports as needed. Architect, photographer, visual artist, Simoni can move from the two-dimensional to installation, from an artist’s book to 3D digital design; there are no limits for her. Humectaria took place in an unconventional, almost unthinkable, and even hostile space.
Sculpture by the Sea
AARHUS, DENMARK Next year, “Sculpture by the Sea” in Australia will celebrate its 20th anniversary. The brainchild of David Handley, “Sculpture by the Sea” was conceived as a free exhibition, arranged along a spectacular stretch of coastline at Bondi Beach and designed to attract both a popular audience and art professionals. The Sydney show now draws about half a million visitors annually and generates about $1 million in sales, making it one of Australia’s most significant art events.
Dispatch: Kara Walker at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Domino Sugar Factory, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Kara Walker operates in the liminal—that in-between space of overlap and displacement at the border and on the margins—intent on undermining and transcending fixed definitions and domains of difference. Whether in the form of cut-out silhouettes, for which she first gained recognition, or in more recent projects, including an exhibition that she organized for the
Bradley Wester
NEW YORK Pavel Zoubok Gallery Bradley Wester, best known as a painter and printmaker, has pushed his two-dimensional works into three dimensions, making sculpture out of what might have originally been paintings. A New Orleans native, he celebrates the city’s famed Mardi Gras and glitzy nightlife with works incorporating disco balls and glitter. For Wester, who lived for a long time in New York and now resides in Bristol, Rhode Island, this exhibition paid homage, not only to the glamor of New Orleans, but also to his memories of the gay community there.
Hyemin Lee
NEW YORK Art Mora Hyemin Lee’s recent show “White Shadow” filled both rooms of the Art Mora gallery in Chelsea. The large front room featured works from her “Plaster Bandages” series, which consists of relief sculptures made from plaster bandages arranged in rows. After breaking her arm, Lee was treated with a plaster covering, and she later decided to use the material as a means of building vividly textured surfaces.
Jeppe Hein
NEW YORK 303 Gallery “All We Need is Inside,” the name of Jeppe Hein’s third exhibition at 303 Gallery, was also the title of a work that set a strong thematic precedent for the exhibition. All We Need is Inside consists of a two-way mirror, with neon lettering behind it spelling out the title. Viewers seeing their reflection are alerted to the immediacy of their presence within the communal space of the gallery and in relation to adjacent works. Confronting viewers with their own image is a recurring dynamic in Hein’s practice.
Tara Donovan
NEW YORK Pace Gallery Drawing seems a misnomer for Tara Donovan’s new two-dimensional works. The 14 works, all titled Drawing (Pins), were created with a method that she began using in 2009 and date from 2011 to the present. For each piece, Donovan pressed hundreds of thousands of straight pins into painted white Gator Boards to create simple geometric shapes divided into bands of gray: circles, squares, diamonds and crosses. While the works are sold individually, most of them fall into pairs that offer both the positive and inverse of a given shape in grayscale.
