The work of Brazilian artist Ana Maria Tavares provokes unforgettable experiences. Using industrial materials such as steel, glass, and mirrors in combination with organic elements, she constructs sometimes slick interventions that resemble street furniture, barriers, handles, and turnstiles.
Ai Weiwei; Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
NEW YORK Park Avenue Armory Hansel & Gretel presented a fitting cautionary fairy tale for our post- Snowden world. This large-scale interactive installation in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory was the latest collaboration between Ai Weiwei and the architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Like their “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and 2012 pavilion for London’s Serpentine Gallery, this commissioned project, curated by Tom Eccles and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, continued to engage with the politics of public space and the psychological effect of architecture.
Doubting Clarity: A Conversation with Josiah McElheny
A sculptor, performance and installation artist, filmmaker, curator, and writer, Josiah McElheny holds a unique place in the contemporary art world. He is best known for work that uses glass, but he also employs many other materials and engages in collaborations with a wide variety of voices, from artists to art historians and literary translators.
Tania Pérez Córdova
CHICAGO Museum of Contemporary Art “Smoke, nearby,” the ambiguous title of Tania Pérez Córdova’s first major U.S. museum exhibition (organized by José Esparza Chong Cuy), alerted one to the convoluted sensibility at work in the show. Born in Mexico City, Córdova received her BA in fine art, studio practice, and contemporary critical studies at Goldsmiths College in 2005.
Stanley Rosen: Radical Roots
Despite the radical openness and pluralism that characterize contemporary artistic practice, the phrase “ceramic sculpture” can still be interpreted as an oxymoron. There are exceptions, of course, such as Turner Prize nominee Rebecca Warren’s evocative figures and Ken Price’s colorful abstractions.
Sandra Muss
WASHINGTON, DC The Kreeger Museum Walking through the woods at the Kreeger Museum, visitors encounter a series of seven rather mysterious pillars (the seven pillars of wisdom from Proverbs?), although it takes a moment to identify them since they are only partly there, somewhat like a magician’s now-you-see-it, nowyou- don’t feint. Made of reflective stainless steel and enclosed by a wire trellis threaded with vines and leaves, the pillars were created by Sandra Muss, an artist based in Washington DC, New York, and the Berkshires.
Fluidity and Fixedness: A Conversation with Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon deliberates over a conversation as though it could become a physical object pinned together by ideas, treating words almost like buildings blocks for a sculpture. He explains everything as part of a process and sees materials and language as the elemental skin and bones of his sculptures, allowing them to make contact with
Nnenna Okore
SAN FRANCISCO Jenkins Johnson Gallery In the Igbo language of Nigeria, “Osimili,” the title of Nnenna Okore’s recent show, means a huge body of water. Okore, who spent most of her childhood in Nigeria (she was born in Australia), is now a professor of art at North Park University in Chicago. After graduating from the University of Nigeria in 1999 with a BA in painting, she received her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa in 2004 and 2005.
Vincent Fecteau: Submerged Forces
In The Shape of Time, anthropologist George Kubler organizes a history of objects and ideas from the perspective of innovation, replication, and mutation from an original, a “prime object.” Such prime objects can’t be reduced to something else; they arise from deep needs, not fashion, and they are fundamental to their specific function.
Urs Fischer
SAN FRANCISCO Legion of Honor/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Artists’ interventions in museum collections come in many forms, but their purpose is often to bring new meaning and resonance to objects that are so familiar as to have become almost invisible. Though Urs Fischer’s contemporary perspective on the Legion of Honor’s permanent collection thrilled some visitors while horrifying others, director Max Hollein’s decision to invite Fischer and his subversions brought a definite liveliness into the Legion’s neoclassical marble halls.
