Nari Ward’s monumental works merge mystery and meaning. His 2012 exhibition at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie Street gallery consisted of beautiful objects with double and triple meanings. Why would shoelaces embedded in a gallery wall spell out “We the People?”
Life Might Prevail: Doris Salcedo’s Plegaria Muda
Doris Salcedo’s Plegaria Muda is a passionate cry of denunciation against injustice, crime, and abuse and a mute prayer for a better world. A space to commemorate victims of murders perpetrated all over the world, it honors people whose only fault is to have no rights, or graves to mark their existence.
Hijo Nam
NEW YORK Tenri Gallery Hijo Nam, a Korean-born artist living in the New York area, recently put on a strong show of sculptures and low reliefs animated by her Buddhist beliefs. Interestingly, much of the integrity of these works stems from their individual orientation, in which the inspiration changes from piece to piece rather than following a path of serial repetition.
“40 under 40: Craft Futures”
WASHINGTON, DC Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum When curator Nicholas R. Bell pondered how to celebrate the Renwick’s 40th anniversary, he opted for 40 artists under 40. While he admits that the conceit isn’t novel, the framework allowed him to survey, or sample, rather than chronologize.
Katie Caron
DENVER Hinterland Gallery Drosscapes, Katie Caron’s recent installation, pirates the language of natural history dioramas to depict an eerie and toxic landscape. The story it tells is unnerving because it is hopeful: nature doesn’t wither on contact with chemical contamination, but changes into something strange, a third landscape.
“Summer of Sculpture”
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Wynyard Quarter In conjunction with the ISC symposium International Dialogue, Outdoor Sculpture 2001 Incorporated Society (New Zealand’s only sculptors’ society) initiated, curated, and presented “Summer of Sculpture.”
Arlene Shechet
RICHMOND Anderson Gallery Droll and crudely elegant, the nine clay sculptures in “Arlene Shechet: That Time” demonstrate the ubiquity of narrative. The works emerge from instinctual manipulations of clay that occur slowly in the studio through attentive play with gravity, juxtapositions of quirky shapes, and flirtations with contradiction and failure.
The Life Through Time and Space: A Conversation with Tatsuo Miyajima
Since the 1980s, Tatsuo Miyajima, who lives and works in Ibaraki, Japan, has been making works that address time. Numbers made of LEDs count from one to nine or from nine to one; zero is not shown.
Myths of Fantastical Life: A Conversation with Meeson Pae Yang
Meeson Pae Yang understands the power of repetition. While one tree seen in isolation can be an object of breathtaking beauty, a cluster offers a very different visual and emotional experience, built up of the variations that occur across species, the contracting and expanding spaces between forms, and the fragmentation of light and ensuing tonal
Paradise Lost: A Conversation with Anna Eyjólfsdóttir
In 2000, Anna Eyjólfsdóttir, president of the Reykjavik Sculptors’ Association, invited me to cover a couple of sculpture exhibitions celebrating Reykjavik as the European Capital of Culture. In the following years, this city of 120,000 witnessed a remarkable building boom.
