Simon Starling’s complex interdisciplinary practice draws from a vast network of successively interconnected parts. Between craftsmanship, industry, process, site, technology, and art history, it’s immediately possible to get hooked on surface or superficial value alone—Starling’s work is easy to digest, humorous, quick-witted, and materially lush.
“No Man’s Land”
Helsinki Forum Box Entering the gallery brought viewers into contact with an unexpected obstacle: Ilmari Gryta’s full-size transit shelter. Coated in reflective material and situated in the dimly lit entrance, it halted movement as visitors examined their reflections and the reversed view of the street behind them.
Buster Simpson
Seattle Frye Art Museum Buster Simpson’s recent, and long overdue, retrospective proved a major undertaking on a number of fronts. The challenge for curator Scott Lawrimore was to contain Simpson’s far-flung sensibility, but not taxidermize it.
“Mexico Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990”
Fort Worth, Texas Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth “Mexico Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990” was impressive not only because it presented, in a cohesive and consistent fashion, works from many of the most important artists in Mexico today, but also because, taken together, these works shed light on the complex realities of
2013 Carnegie International,
Pittsburgh Carnegie Museum of Art The 2013 Carnegie International (CI) was the 56th installment of an enduring exhibition responsible for putting the encyclopedic Carnegie Museum of Art on the art world stage. When Andrew Carnegie conceived the CI in 1896—to inform the Pittsburgh public about modern art and to advance international collaboration—it was the only
Dorothea Rockburne
New York Museum of Modern Art The works in this riveting exhibition looked as fresh as they did when Dorothea Rockburne first made them—in part because she re-imagined “Drawing Which Makes Itself,” her 1973 solo show at Bykert Gallery in New York.
Germaine Richier
New York Dominique Levy and Galerie Perrotin Germaine Richier’s recent exhibition, shared by Dominique Levy and Galerie Perrotin, was the first show of the French sculptor’s work to be seen in the U.S. since her untimely death in 1959 at the age of 57.
“(in)Habitation”
Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) Habitation has become a popular topic in Detroit. Credit the many pictures of abandoned buildings circulating as “ruin porn.” Credit, too, the late Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, a full-size re-creation of his childhood Detroit home, permanently moored behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).
Chul Hyun Ahn
Easton, Maryland The Academy Art Museum Baltimore artist Chul Hyun Ahn builds meticulously tricked-out boxes. Wall-mounted or resting on the floor, they hold singular abstractions. Ahn manipulates light and mirrors, both one-way and conventional. He carefully positions mirrors, light-emitting diodes, and fluorescents, staging and framing complex, multi-mirror reflections in which light takes shape, darts around
Miller & Shellabarger
Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago As individual artists, Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger diverge wildly in terms of interests and means of execution. Miller’s candy-colored phallic sculptures and reworkings of homoerotic porn are orgiastic, playful, and irreverent, as was his recent installation, In the Garden, which situated his collages and paintings in a landscape
