On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, 2014 Dread Scott’s edict is make “revolutionary art—to propel history forward.” Since the early 1990s, after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completing the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, Scott has joined the ranks
Nan Smith: Symbols of Devastation
Nan Smith is an ambitious artist. Over the years, she has increased her command of the ceramic medium, extended her range of techniques and media, and set herself more demanding goals. A full professor in the ceramics program at the University of Florida’s School of Art and Art History, she has also served as head
Strange Events and Mythological Materials: A Conversation with Ojars Feldbergs
In June 2014, Latvia’s Pedvale Open-Air Art Museum hosted its 7th International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art (ICCCIA), organized by Ojars Feldbergs, Kārlis Alainis, a teacher at the Latvian Academy of Art, and Tamsie Ringler, a sculpture professor at St.
Geny Dignac: Playing With Fire
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
