TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA Torrance Art Museum In art, the task of the body is to perform some signifying act of emotion; the representation of this act has been sculpture’s job for centuries. As ideas regarding representation have evolved, the kind of emotion and the nature of the body on display have varied with the prevailing culture. Forty years ago, when artists’ resistance to theater and narrative disappeared, the revival of figuration produced an ongoing critique of history and civilization expressed through the figure. Yașam Șașmazer’s critique involves a dramatic, noir-esque enactment of anomie—a vision of the body as emptied out, gutted by experience.
The Narrative is in the Unknowing: A Conversation with Tim Shaw
Tim Shaw, who was born in Belfast, has lived in the south of England for the past 25 years, on a farm that serves as both his home and studio. In 2013, he was elected to the Royal Academy and to the Royal British Society of Sculptors.
Regina José Galindo: Acts of Endurance
Regina José Galindo’s performances are often shocking and degrading. Sometimes naked, she is tasered, hit, bloodied, anesthetized, urinated on, or left for dead. “Bearing Witness,” at North Carolina’s David son College last fall, was Galindo’s first solo show in the United States.
Linda Fleming: At the Edge of the Unknown
Linda Fleming is always thinking about light—how it moves through, over, and around her work. In conversation, she points out how the play of cast shadows echoes and enlivens the complex, latticed surfaces and curving forms of her sculptures, which range from paper and wood maquettes only a few inches across to powder-coated, lasercut steel
Gisela Colón: Light Effects
It’s a hot, California autumn day when I make the trek out to a Los Angeles valley to meet the second-generation Light and Space artist, Gisela Colón. Her studio, located in an industrial park, is a warehouse space, once home to a plastic manufacturer and a befitting locale for an artist whose preferred medium is
Andrew Lyght: Charting Spatial Wonders
Guyana (which means “land of many waters”) is a small tropical country of variegated rivers wedged between Venezuela, Suriname, and Brazil. Its capital, Georgetown, is perched on the nation’s broad northern coastline, facing a vast expanse of sea and sky.
Nothing is Static: A Conversation with Richard Van Buren
What are these exquisite, abstract forms? What are the materials? How were they made? What are their visual references and influences? These are some of the questions that came to mind when I first saw Richard Van Buren’s mysterious sculptures.
Submerged: A Conversation with Jason deCaires Taylor
Disillusioned with the rat race, sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor chose to dive into an altogether different pursuit. His poetic underwater installations comment on environmental issues, climate change, and rising sea levels while providing new habitat for sea life and foundations for underwater growth.
“Wonder”
WASHINGTON, DC Renwick Gallery From kaleidoscopic prisms to twinkling LED lights, nine room-size installations inaugurated the Renwick’s second reboot since its opening in 1859. Natural references and the importance of labor prevailed, as did explorations of growth and accumulation with materials of everyday life. By featuring contemporary artists Jennifer Angus, Chakaia Booker, Gabriel Dawe, Tara Donovan, Patrick Dougherty, John Grade, Janet Echelman, Maya Lin, and Leo Villareal, the Renwick opted to revitalize its original mission—it was the first private museum in the U.S. dedicated to the visual arts.
Sudarshan Shetty
NEW DELHI National Gallery of Modern Art Sudarshan Shetty, describing his recent installation, Shoonya Ghar (emptiness is the house), has said that it “challeng[es] my own relationship with the market as an artist. Since it is a museum show, this is an opportunity to push those boundaries in my work rather than doing a retrospective, which is what I was offered.” And push boundaries he did, with élan, combining diverse mediums and materials to seamlessly blend the distant past with the present. The inspiration for this body of work came from the great 12th-century Nirgun poet, Gorakhnath, specifically his dohas, or couplets, that speak hauntingly of inhabitants in settlements and places.
