PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS Provincetown Art Association and Museum Jay Critchley creatively uses the codified capitalist convention of incorporation. As a CEO, he orchestrates his participation in public discourse, with fascinating outcomes regarding AIDS/HIV, nuclear energy, the carbon footprint, the impact of offshore sewage dumping, and development destabilization. His conceptualist activism is subversive. “Jay Critchley, Incorporated,” a recent retrospective curated by Bailey Bob Bailey, explored 30 years of interventionist practices.
“S, M, L, XL”
CHICAGO Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago “S, M, L, XL,” organized by Michael Darling, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, took its title from a Rem Koolhaas book of the same name—a 1,376-page tome, published in 1995 for OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), that contains essays, manifestos, diaries, fiction, travelogues, and reflections on the contemporary city as a place of change and ever-increasing scale. Unlike that innovative book, which was complex in scope and execution, this show was somewhat simplistic in its concept—it basically invited viewers to interact with sculpture.
“When You Cut into the Present the Future Leaks Out”
BRONX, NEW YORK Old Bronx Borough Courthouse Installed in the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, a grand Beaux-Arts-style building built between 1905 and 1914 and undergoing renovation after it was closed for 37 years, “When You Cut into the Present the Future Leaks Out” featured the work of 26 artists invited by curator Regine Basha. Organized by No Longer Empty, a nonprofit group that presents curated exhibitions and public programs in underused spaces, the show took its title from William S. Burroughs.
Pascale Marthine Tayou
London Serpentine Sackler Gallery “Boomerang,” Pascale Marthine Tayou’s first solo exhibition in London, was a hit on many levels and a crowd pleaser for all ages. His engrossing multimedia works created a circular flow within the square space of the gallery, transforming it into a unified, site-specific installation.
Nicola Costantino
Buenos Aires Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat The Argentine artist Nicola Costantino can’t be ignored. Some people praise her persona and her work—which are almost the same thing since she has made her body the support of most of her works—and some people hate them; there is no gray area.
Myron Helfgott
Richmond, Virginia Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Myron Helfgott is as skeptical of language as he is fascinated by its tendency toward misrepresentation and digression, effects that can be problematic but also poetic, ironic, or humorous.
Martha Walker
New York The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery Martha Walker is a microbiology-minded Surrealist whose recent show, “Broken World, Anxious Heart,” imagined a toxic garden. Long ago, its seems, life rose from luxuriant waters, briefly inhaled the air’s sweetness, then froze.
Aiko Hachisuka
New York Eleven Rivington In Aiko Hachisuka’s second solo exhibition at Eleven Rivington, fabric sculptures beckoned with stalagmite forms and brightly printed surfaces. Continuing her neatly sewn patchworks of mostly outerwear and jackets, these seemingly static cylinders belie an eerie world of body forms that leave traces of their presence through substantial absence.
Anya Gallaccio
New York Lehmann Maupin At first glance, Anya Gallaccio’s sculptures recall Minimalism. Spread across two rooms, a cube and its variations purposefully quote the skeletal frame and open modular structures used by Sol LeWitt in the 1970s.
Barbara Edelstein
New York Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery Barbara Edelstein has spent the last few years living in Shanghai, where she teaches American and Chinese students and shares a studio with her husband, artist Jian-Jun Zhang. She has acclimated quite well and is now known as a Shanghai artist, if not a Chinese one.
