Geny Dignac says that she has “a love affair with fire.” The Argentina-born, Arizona-based sculptor began incorporating living flames into her work during the late 1960s. As she explains the relationship: “I respect fire; I’m bewitched and obsessed by it, but I’m not intimidated by it, and I always feel in control.”
Mark Bradford
Waltham, Massachusetts The Rose Art Museum Big and scaly. That’s how most people imagine “Sea Monsters,” which is also the title of Mark Bradford’s recent exhibition. Though these sculptures and paintings lack menacing teeth and constricting coils, which would only make them literal and banal, the title properly warns against hidden danger.
Melvin Edwards
New York Alexander Gray Gallery Melvin Edwards’s head-size, welded metal abstractions draw you in like black holes, revealing themselves gradually. Out of the darkness, individual elements emerge, some menacing—knives, broken forks, machete parts, and chains—others innocuous—horseshoes, locks, bolts, and drill bits.
Lee Mingwei
Tokyo Mori Art Museum If you have patience with the lofty, yet somehow naïve, intentions of Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei, you’ll find that somehow he gets to the truth of contemporary society. His thoughtful, hypnotic, yet quiet voice in his videos explains the ideas behind each of his participatory projects.
Giuliano Vangi
Rome Museo Macro-Testaccio Curator Gabriele Simongini correctly describes Giuliano Vangi’s work as “a journey to the heart of humankind and the destiny of plastic form.” Vangi leaves us no escape: facing his work, we confront ourselves and our worst instincts, forced to ask ourselves questions to which most people today seem indifferent.
Gabriel Klasmer
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv Museum of Art Gabriel Klasmer is primarily identified with the scores of paintings that he has produced over the last three decades while living and working in London and Jerusalem. Not unexpectedly, his recent retrospective offered a large selection of these works, from theatrical canvases of decaying civilizations to paintings in
Marcela Cabutti
Buenos Aires Del Infinito Arte The artist’s universe unfolds through various languages. Often the choice is unconscious; other times, it requires conscious specificity. Marcela Cabutti bases her work in architecture. Drawing on the lessons of architects Amancio Williams and Eladio Dieste—especially the concepts of utopia and construction—Cabutti emphasized the figure of Louis Kahn in her
“Your Feast Has Ended: Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, Nicholas Galanin, and Nep Sidhu”
Seattle Frye Art Museum “Your Feast Has Ended” brought together three young sculptors who share cross-disciplinary approaches to tribal identity, gender, and the social and political status of minorities. Co-curators Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Scott Lawrimore gave the artists generous latitude: each piece was accompanied by a lengthy, detailed explanation, often accusatory, hectoring, and contradictory.
Zhang Dali
New York Klein Sun Gallery For decades now, Beijing-based Zhang Dali has been making art that challenges China’s status quo, which (most of the Chinese art world would agree) needs to be challenged. His graffiti and cut-out outlines of his head in the ruins of Beijing buildings—destroyed to make room for new architecture—were signs of
Rebecca Horn
Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard Art Museums Rebecca Horn’s Flying Books under Black Rain Painting, a commissioned, performance-based installation at the Prescott Street entrance of the recently re-branded Harvard Art Museums, is visible from the street, as is Ai Weiwei’s multimedia installation 258 Fake.
