MUNCIE, INDIANA David Owsley Museum of Art The three artists featured in this show come from different places – Jongil Ma from Korea (now living in New York), Christopher Smith from the U.S., and Corban Walker from Ireland – but they all share an interest in glass and Plexiglas. Curator Lisa Banner, a professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, exploited this commonality in two ways: first, as a means to remember the university’s ties to the Ball family glassmanufacturing business and, second, as a tool to explore subtle changes in material, as well as shifts in vision and viewpoint.
Revisiting Lin Tianmiao
Experimental artist Lin Tianmiao has been dramatically expanding her work in recent years, moving from her signature textiles, ribbons, and threads into found objects and sound. A recent visit to Lin’s studio and home near Beijing offered an opportunity to see current works, as she prepared for upcoming exhibitions.
Everything Is Alive: A Conversation with Maria Nepomuceno
Dynamic forms, organic shapes, and bright colors loaded with implied growth and energy characterize Maria Nepomuceno’s work. “Everything is in transformation,” she says. “Everything is alive in the work.” Beginning with a point and a line – via a bead and a string – Nepomuceno builds up forms and compositions, creating sculptures and installations that
Kevin Killen: Drawing Time From Light
Artists who use neon, an expensive medium, are not thick on the ground in Ireland. Those of us who are, shall we say, of a mature generation, probably think of Dan Flavin’s Minimalist sculptures or perhaps of François Morellet’s pulsing forms, both bodies of neon works dating from the early ’60s onward.
The Work Takes Control of Itself: A Conversation with Mariana Villafañe
Mariana Villafañe’s work emerges from the study of geometric-morphological patterns, a dialogue between mathematics, pure geometry, and abstraction that gains focus from a sensorial point of view. Villafañe tries to find visual means of representation for movement, as well as the sounds and vibrations that it generates.
Achieving Necessity: John Duff
John Duff, a New York-based sculptor long associated with abstract, austere, and often totemic-looking objects, exhibited a new and decidedly different body of work last year. His first solo exhibition in 12 years, it was held in an unconventional setting.
Art Prospect
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA Art Prospect Last year, Art Prospect, St. Petersburg’s first and only public art festival, marked its fifth year. Since its inception, its artistic vision has been shaped by Susan Katz, an American who has lived in St. Petersburg since 1998, and Kendal Henry, a New Yorker involved with public art. In 2016, the festival focused on social practice and community engagement, with projects by 33 different artists and artist teams, 22 from Russia and the remainder hailing from the U.S., Switzerland, Norway, Finland, and Poland.
Heinz Mack
NEW YORK Sperone Westwater In Heinz Mack’s recent, three-floor exhibition, carefully selected monochromatic paintings, wall reliefs, ink drawings, and stelae were placed together to read like a narrative. The quest for narrative in abstract terms is beginning to appear integral to Mack’s work. Rather than em phasizing mediumistic aspects, he clearly went for the impact of earthly and celestial light on physical form, a position related in some ways to the Romantic poet, playwright, natural philosopher, painter, and color theorist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a figure with whom Mack has been compared.
Color Coded: A Conversation with Rana Begum
For the American sculptor Donald Judd, simplicity focused attention on the object in space: “It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate.
Vancouver Biennale
VANCOUVER Vancouver Biennale A stack of five cars, precisely balanced on a twisted old-growth cedar trunk, erupts from a patch of green grass-an incongruity amid the spider web of roadways and elevated rapid-transit lines edging the downtown core of Vancouver. The 33-foot-high, 25,000-pound Trans Am Totem-its massive tree stump supporting the vehicles like an arboreal Atlas-is a tribute to, as well as a critique of the car, North America’s enduring symbol of personal freedom and technological innovation.
