On the Cover:
John Henry, Tatlin’s Sentinel, 2001. Steel, 101 x 45 x 40 ft. Photo: Michael Samples
Editor’s Letter:
By happenstance and temperament, this issue honors recent ancestors. Our cover artist, John Henry, who is the 2023 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ISC, passed away late last year as we were working on this issue. An inimitable sculptor, he worked in a recognizably Modernist idiom. All but one of the artists whose work is considered in this month’s features take Modernism as an explicit inspiration to their practices. Liva Isakson Lundin’s installations and sculptures are, she says, “inspired by Modernism. I think mostly about Minimal/post-Minimal sculpture.” Best known for whimsical kinetic works that often incorporate video, Jon Kessler has more recently been producing pieces that entail skilled metalwork, riffing on such Modernist precursors as Lucio Fontana, Alexander Calder, and Lynn Chadwick. Florian Slotawa creates assemblages from found materials, including, at times, works by such forebears as Anthony Caro and Mark di Suvero, which also engage with the art of the last century by playfully attempting to “re-create” it, again using found materials. By contrast, Irina Kirchuk does not reach back to Modernism, but, in a sense, she does look to our shared history. Her sculptures and installations are made from industrial material, which she aims to give “another life—to dislocate it, reassemble it, make it perspire, and convert it into new exact and frantic machines.” As T.S. Eliot reminded us a century ago, we best make the future fresh by digging into the past. —Daniel Kunitz, Editor-in-Chief
