For a moment, let’s look at the work of Jeff Koons in its artistic and cultural context, separating it from issues having to do with production, financing, promotion, and reception—for the latter have received ample attention in the wake of the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Michael Cooper: Mastery with a Message
It looks like an ordinary tricycle that any three-year-old might ride. But it’s made entirely of wood (wenge and sycamore), and if you give it more than a passing glance, you notice a wooden gun mounted under the seat, pointing in a forward direction.
Sculpture as Haiku: A Conversation with Hidetoshi Nagasawa
Hidetoshi Nagasawa was born in 1940 in Tonei, Manchuria, where his Japanese parents were located because his father was an army doctor. During the war, when Soviet forces attacked Manchuria, the Nagasawas fled back to Japan and settled near Tokyo.
Fusion: A Conversation with Rachel Kneebone
British sculptor Rachel Kneebone uses porcelain to create deeply psychological and sensual tableaux of contorted bodies and limbs. I first came across her work at the Brooklyn Museum, where it was paired with the sculpture of Auguste Rodin in the exhibition “Regarding Rodin” (2012).
Scott Ingram
Atlanta Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia Scott Ingram’s “Blue Collar Modernism” included collage sketches, paintings, and sculptural installations that underscore his interest in modern architecture and functional building materials. Following the exhibition title, the work made a promise to explore aspects of Modernism that are often conflated and at times contradictory—on the one hand,
“Lines”
Zurich Hauser & Wirth “Lines” featured a positively intellectual body of non-works that appeared to want to disappear from view. Beneath curved steel ribs rising up into the ceiling, the industrial-style space of Hauser & Wirth might have been completely empty were it not for the wafer-thin works and barely visible thread installations that resonated
Tunga
New York Luhring Augustine Gallery Tunga’s intention to generate astonishment and perplexity was more than fulfilled in his fifth exhibition at Luhring Augustine. Abounding with evocations of human shapes, forms, meanings, and connections, “La Voie Humide” created an arena for free-flowing associations.
“New Art Archaeology”
Acton, Massachusetts The Quarry Just beyond a new cookie-cutter housing development, the woods of semi-rural Acton, Massachusetts, open up into an astonishing sight: an assortment of contemporary sculptures made from wire, granite, and repurposed old machines.
Nobuo Sekine
Los Angeles Blum & Poe A seminal figure in the Mono-ha movement, Nobuo Sekine is particularly associated with its emergence, which was marked by his large-scale earthwork Phase—Mother Earth (1968). For this work, he dug a cylindrical hole in the ground, approximately seven feet wide and nine feet deep; then he placed the excavated earth,
Rina Banerjee
Los Angeles L.A. Louver Gallery “Disgust” is a specific and powerful term; Rina Banerjee uses it to describe bodily response and emotion at the extreme of self-control. She perceives disgust as the trigger for a transformative moment that alters perception.
