NEW YORK ART100 New York Sometimes the intentions of artists do not fit the categories assigned to their mediums. There can be cross-overs between sculpture and painting, for instance, in which the connecting link is about content rather than form. Such was the case with “Hearts and Bones,” a show that featured installations and drawings by Judy Pfaff and paintings by Kharis Kennedy.
Monika Sosnowska: Misdirecting Reality
There is a system of interconnected concepts expressed through steel–the skyscraper, the automobile, modernity itself. Bearing its own language and history, it’s also the “steel trap,” the “steel hand in the velvet glove,” the “city forged from steel.”
Mario Petrirena
ATLANTA Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia With a manner analogous to literary stream-of-consciousness, Mario Petrirena juxtaposes “things” simply because they resonate with chords deep within. His work is therefore a kind of self-portrait, not of his appearance, but of his inner life, making concrete those often wispy, evanescent memories that can define a person even more definitively than his features. Composed of ceramic, collage, and found-object works, his recent show unfolded in four galleries, each with a particular focus: personal narrative, politics, beauty and transcendence, and finally, mortality. Largely autobiographical, the first room “introduced” Petrirena as a Cuban-American who came to the U.S. during the ’60s in the aftermath of Castro’s takeover, followed almost a year later by his parents. A battered tricycle next to a ceramic hand, daddy come ride with me (1987) is a poignant appeal to his hard-working but undemonstrative father, who lost several fingers in a sugar mill accident in Belle Glade, Florida. …see the entire review in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
Imaginary Spaces Within: A Conversation with Soo Sunny Park
Starting with ordinary materials such as chain link fencing, Soo Sunny Park’s sculptures and installations “catch” and interact with natural light. In a radical twist, changing light, rather than the work itself, is central to the viewer’s experience.
Franka Hörnschemeyer
BERLIN Galerie Nordenhake
Carlos Rolón
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Big Car Collaborative — Tube Factor artspace With the seasonal spectacles of the Indianapolis 500, NFL football, and NBA and NCAA basketball ingrained into the cityscape, Indianapolis often identifies as a “sports town,” perhaps to the exclusion of other aspects of culture. Given Big Car Collaborative’s mission regarding place-making and cultural inclusion, Carlos Rolón’s recent exhibition, “50 Grand,” was calculated not only to introduce quality work by a rising artist, but also to attract a widely diverse audience, including sports aficionados and Latino viewers.
Sinead McKeever: There But Not There
Though artists rarely develop in a straightforward manner, Modernist thought likes to pretend that there is an “onward and upward” ascent toward some kind of perfection. In reality, however, most artists make small incremental moves (sometimes forward, sometimes back), while, every now and then, experiencing a sudden spurt ahead–a jump that, without the benefit of
Lines of Connection: A Conversation with Chiharu Shiota
Chiharu Shiota’s work comes from a very spiritual place. Though she followed an unusual path to arrive at her now-recognizable style, this history is vital to her installations. In these environments, line, in the form of yarn, and the human body, represented by shoes, keys, suitcases, or beds, are woven together in visually stunning displays.
Bojana Ginn
ATLANTA Whitespace Gallery
Documenta 14
ATHENS GREECE At the opening press conference of Documenta 14, “Learning From Athens,” artistic director Adam Szymczyk stated, “The great lesson is that there are no lessons.” These elusive words may well have been a disclaimer for an exhibition that rambled on without aim. Such large events are difficult to manage in general, but Documenta’s Athens endeavor required viewers to accept much of the responsibility for realizing the show’s potential and to make a sizable time commitment to text-based art.
