ABBOTSFORD, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford Ruth Beer’s recent exhibition, “States of Matter,” presented a suite of works that are beautiful in their materiality while portraying a sobering subject matter. The show arose from research that Beer had been conducting on the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would carry raw bitumen from the tar sands in Northern Alberta across Northwestern British Columbia to the coast.
Fred Sandback
NEW YORK David Zwirner The Minimalist work of Fred Sand – back does not cease to amaze, with its elegant simplicity and radical transformation of line into sculpture. Especially when presented in complex installations such as this one, the poetic depth and large range of this unique oeuvre begins to shine. “Vertical Constructions” re-created and expanded on Sandback’s landmark 1987 exhibition at the West – fälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Germany, which featured six thennew works, each one engaging the vertical space.
Barbara King
NEW YORK Narthex Gallery, St. Peter’s Church Barbara King’s recent exhibition, “Ribbon Meditations,” was shown in the narthex of St. Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan. For over 50 years, the church, which is committed to creatively shaping the life of the city and its community, has served immigrants, the homeless— people of every race, ethnicity, and language, at every economic level, and at every point of the gender spectrum. The arts play a vital part in living out this mission. The church commissions and installs permanent and temporary art, using it to spark public conversation and dialogue.
Sarah Sze
WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS Rose Art Museum Sarah Sze is known for her complicated, sprawling sculptures, accumulations of small quotidian things that add up to enigmatic and overwhelming impressions. The meaning of her works is often subsidiary to the simple, ungraspable, in-yourface complexity of each piece. In Timekeeper (2016), her multifarious accretion became smaller and more unified than in many of her previous works. Improbably, instead of building the work out to the edges of all three sculptural dimensions, she managed to add the fourth dimension.
Caoimhghin Ó Fraithile
BOSTON The Back Bay Fens Caoimhghin Ó Fraithile’s remarkable floating sculpture, placed in the Fens some 400 yards from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, which eventually led to independence for Ireland. The artist is known for his sculptural installations, particularly in Japan, where he regularly works with local people to construct environments in the town of Fukui, near the city of Niigata.
Gary Haven Smith
BOOTHBAY, MAINE Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Boogie Woogie and Wiggle Room are hardly names one would expect to find for sculptures in stone, but Gary Haven Smith is hardly your ordinary stone sculptor. His approach is somewhere between a considered Zen aesthetic and playful invention. “Stone Waves,” his recent exhibition, showcased the impressive range of his freestanding work. Swept Away, perched on a pyramidal granite obelisk, looks like a twisted piece of paper.
Renwick Invitational 2016
WASHINGTON, DC Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery’s biennial invitationals highlight mid-career artists pushing the boundaries of craft. According to curator Nora Atkinson, the 2016 edition, “Visions and Revisions,” focused on the “degradation of society and the reinvention and rebirth of it.” Featuring the works of four American artists—Jennifer Trask, Steven Young Lee, Norwood Viviano, and Kristen Morgin—the exhibition went beyond mere ruin porn to examine the meticulous processes of each individual artist.
Roxana Alger Geffen
WASHINGTON, DC Flashpoint Gallery Though the chaotic world of parenting is all consuming when one’s children are young, it remains a risky theme for art-making. Roxana Alger Geffen boldly titled her multi-part installation Motherload with full awareness of the feminist artists who came before her and who were dismissed or pilloried for daring to valorize this elemental experience. She expands on motherhood’s—in her words—“messy box of intimacy” with broader themes addressing the construction of familial memories and notions of domestic labor.
Boaz Vaadia: Finding Equillibrium
Serenity and a pervading stillness characterized Boaz Vaadia’s recent retrospective at Grounds For Sculpture. Admirably displayed both outdoors and in two major buildings, 125 works spanning over 40 years of the artist’s career fostered a psychological centering for the viewer.
The Void Is Never Empty: A Conversation with Gaspar Acebo
Gaspar Acebo, who trained in the fields of painting and drawing, combines these mediums with other techniques and disciplines, including photography. His work is perhaps best defined by its reflection on the interaction of plane and volume, the concept of emptiness serving as an engine that generates not neutral space, but a balance of forces
