NEW YORK Mixed Greens Once Donna Dennis decided to close the doors she had made, they opened for her. When she landed in New York City in the early ’70s and found herself smack within the barbed crosshairs of feminism and male-driven Minimalism, she confronted both. Her series of “door works”—including Egyptian Hotel (1972), a slim mastaba- like door—resembled geometrically shaped canvases that physically led nowhere. Instead, they functioned as psychological passageways through which Dennis discovered her voice.
John Crawford
NEW YORK Lori Bookstein Fine Art John Crawford, a Brooklyn-based artist whose output consists of welded steel sculptures, spent 10 years (1976–86) in Tuscany working at a blacksmith’s shop after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since 1995, he has been interested in the smithing works of various West African cultures. As a result of these models, his work is highly tactile, abstract, and often totemic. Abstract steel sculpture has a long, illustrious history in the U.S., but Crawford’s vision is quite different. He borrows from the forms of other places to create work that openly relates to its making, as well as to the history of American creativity.
Christopher Frost
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery Chinese scholar’s rocks are hunks of stone sculpted by nature into bizarre and visually interesting shapes. Pitted, eroded, and wrinkled, they evoke landscapes, waves, mountain peaks, sometimes human and animal figures. In Asia, they are mounted on individually designed bases as objects of contemplation and inspiration. Boston sculptor Christopher Frost, fascinated by such “viewing stones,” received an alumni grant from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to travel to China and seek them out on their home turf.
“Ephemeral Art in the Landscape”
EAST HADDAM, CONNECTICUT I-Park I-Park’s fifth Environmental Art Biennale, “Ephemeral Art in the Landscape,” featured site-specific, outdoor installations by 12 artists-in-residence from the U.S. and Europe, who presented their works in a culminating, one-day happening. Guided walking tours allowed the public to experience the projects amid the park’s immersive natural setting. Unique in New England, I-Park functions as a conceptual drawing board where artists can experiment without a specific result in mind, and public access is limited to protect the artists’ privacy as they work.
Isa Genzken
BONN, GERMANY Bundeskunsthalle Visitors to the last Venice Biennale might recall Isa Genzken’s 23 models for outdoor sculptures, which appeared in the main pavilion. If not, this probably has more to do with curator Okwui Enwezor’s incomprehensible decision to present them with, of all things, Walker Evans’s legendary photo series “Let us now praise famous men” than with the sculptures themselves. The models were recently shown again in Bonn, with 12 new additions; together, these 35 works document Genzken’s public projects from 1986 to the present. The exhibition, however, offered far more than mere documentation.
Robert Grober: Ordinary Ambiguity
Thirty years ago, Robert Gober produced several dozen sculptures of sinks, built up of plaster, wood, wire lath, and metal, and covered at the top with semi-gloss enamel. He began the series in New York in 1983 with the inexpensive materials he could then afford.
Pinaree Sanpitak: The Body is the Code
In Theravada Buddhism—the prevailing religion of Thailand—the color white has a very specific meaning. Representative of the principles of purity, it is considered the color of knowledge and longevity. Pinaree Sanpitak’s 2014–15 installation Ma-lai: mentally secured, at Tyler Rollins in New York, was almost overwhelmingly white— lit in a way that cast no shadows, which
Virginia Maksymowicz: Strong Supports
From the first glance, Virginia Maksymowicz’s “Bread” series clearly recalls antiquity. These works abound in motifs taken from Greco-Roman architecture—caryatids, Corinthian capitals, columns, and volutes—but as the viewer comes closer, the point of reference shifts. The Hydrostone and fiberglass/resin forms have less to do with Greek and Roman marbles than with plaster casts of the
Daisy Youngblood: Shifts in Consciousness
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the work of women artists, many of whom have been in the art world for multiple decades. Last spring, “Works in Progress” in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, featured 11 women (in their 70s, 80s, and 90s) whose work “we should have known about
Corporeal Transitions: A Conversation with Doug Jeck
Seattle-based sculptor and University of Washington associate professor Doug Jeck has been bridging ceramics, photography, and performance for more than a decade. His work, influenced by static physicality and historicity, maintains the human object at its center.
