While the work of American Minimalist masters such as Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd has begun to seem slightly dated, it has not lost its impetus, and the early- and middle-period sculptures of these artists continue to challenge us.
Why Did Petah Coyne’s Work Make Me Cry?
Eleven years ago, I wept openly in the middle of Petah Coynes touring survey “Above and Beneath the Skin.” Within compulsory, regulated social systems the ones that determine what options are available for a subject’s action and identification uncontrolled crying is a breach of those mores, a breakdown and demonstration of the effects of life
Brian Dettmer: Paging Through Time
How can history, memory, and cultural knowledge become the materials of sculpture? In Brian Dettmer’s hands, books that have lost their original function do just that. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference volumes represent the physicality of gathered knowledge with their moving pages, solid bindings, and words and illustrations.
Taryn Simon: The Spectacle of Loss
In the fall of 2016, Taryn Simon presented a unique interactive work, An Occupation of Loss, at the Park Avenue Armory in collaboration with Artangel, London. (Loss, in the work’s title, represents the fugitive nature of things, a theme that runs through all of Simon’s work.)
Lynda Benglis: I Choose My Dreams
Lynda Benglis was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2017. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. Over the course of her long career, Lynda Benglis has defied easy categorization.
Harry Leigh
OLD WESTBURY, NEW YORK Amelie A. Wallace Gallery Octogenarian Harry Leigh has made a long career of constructing Minimalist sculptures that are highly evocative in their Shaker-like simplicity. Educated at SUNY, Buffalo, and at Teacher’s College, Columbia University – supplemented by stints of private study with Peter Voulkos and Richard Pousette-Dart, and numerous stays at Yaddo and Mac – Dowell Colony residencies – Leigh is clearly well-trained and historically versed in late-modern and contemporary art.
Drew Conrad
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Kustera Projects Red Hook Drew Conrad’s exhibition, “The Cold Wake,” offered a view of Red Hook through a literary lens. Using H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Horror of Red Hook” as a launching point, the Red Hookbased artist researched local historical events to construct a sitespecific installation and self-portrait. Conrad took new materials, like lumber and metal, then aged them through a labor-intensive process of oxidizing, soiling, breaking, and shaping. Dwelling No. 11 (Jacobs Ladder) suggested a half-sunken dock and a boat on the precipice of collapse.
Kennard Sculpture Trail
NEWTON MASSACHUSETTS Kennard Park Because few venues can, or will, show large-scale outdoor sculpture, a community tends to forget how much talent is available to be tapped. Curator Allison Newsome isn’t letting Boston forget. It took three years of petitioning, permitting, and organizing, but a littleknown green space on Newton’s south side recently hosted a display of outdoor art of surprising quality. Although Newsome stressed the goal of developing works inspired by the site, not every piece conformed. The epitome of the idea was best expressed in Jean Blackburn’s Kennard Web.
Cara Despain
SALT LAKE CITY Central Utah Art Center Despite appearances to the contrary, the 23 rocks protruding from the walls in Cara Despain’s Seeing the Stone were not the final end game. The installation was more like a veneer or mirage pointing to the actual artwork. Attached to the walls with sturdy iron hooks, the stones ranged from pea- to melon-size and undulated between knee- and eye level. Accompanying GPS coordinates signaled the original locations of the rocks, which were found scattered around Utah.
David Lang
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery David Lang’s room-size multimedia installation Journey, an elegant flying machine apparatus suspended about a foot above the floor, communicated a kind of retro sci-fi fantasy. With slowly rotating, frictionless gears to suggest a dreamy traverse across space and time, the sculpture’s delicate metal lattice engaged an upper tier of feathered paper wings that moved ethereally in simulated flight. On the underside of the wings, Lang projected moving imagery synchronized with music, audible only in close proximity.
