Albany, New York Opalka Gallery When members of the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Co. spun and piqued their way through John Van Alstine’s recent solo exhibition “Arrested Motion and Perilous Balance,” they underscored a resonant, though not always apparent theme in the sculptor’s work—the figurative.
Space Is a Living Thing: A Conversation with Beverly Pepper
“Critics frequently refer to my work as ‘spiritual.’ Yet I’m less interested in spirituality than in the unexplainable, which you feel more than see. To be clear, I’m not trying to be mystical, nor am I consciously avoiding it. And though I am very concrete and use very concrete materials, I do not intend my work to be ‘explainable.’ Feeling is more important for me than anything formulaic.”
“Subverting Modernism: Cass Corridor Revisited 1966–1980”
Detroit Eastern Michigan University Artists of the Cass Corridor movement, active in Detroit during the 1960s and ’70s, are known to have been a hard-living, hard-drinking lot. Their provocative works, often created from industrial materials and detritus, have been popularly seen as reflecting Detroit’s (and, by extension, America’s) decline as an industrial superpower.
Mags Harries
Boston Boston Sculptors Gallery Welsh-born sculptor Mags Harries comes from a long line of sea captains, and water, with its visual, aural, tactile, kinetic, and even olfactory properties, has long inspired her work. In 2012, together with her partner, artist/architect Lajos Héder, Harries was invited to create a permanent installation in China’s Xixi National Wetland
Benjamin Bellas
Chicago slow A church pew and cold beer greeted visitors at the entrance of Benjamin Bellas’s recent show. The beer was a basil ale, brewed specially by the artist, and the pew was Protestant, moved hundreds of miles from a small-town chapel to this storefront gallery in Chicago.
Cyrus Tilton
Oakland Vessel Gallery This is Cyrus Tilton’s fourth exhibition at a gallery near downtown Oakland, part of a recent burst of art activity that started there in 2006, when a few storefronts began to display artworks.
Drew Conrad
New York Fitzroy Gallery In “Ain’t Dead Yet,” Drew Conrad’s iconography of turned wood, Victorian printed wallpaper, and LP record albums evoked an indeterminate past. Indicative of prewar architecture, wood lath and plaster become vehicles for sculptural communication, especially as Conrad strategically clusters, exposes, and breaks them down.
Gathering of Waters, An Invitation to Know Your River: Basia Irland
How can art convey the interconnectedness that is so central to ecology both as science and cultural theory? And how can artists nudge viewers to become active participants, not just onlookers or consumers of beautiful images?
Charting Time and Space: Michelle Stuart
In a quiet corner of Michelle Stuart’s SoHo studio, a sculpted Buddha presides over a Wunderkammer of curiosities. Pre-Columbian sculptures, African ceremonial beads, a seaman’s log, rocks, and odd pods comfortably cohabitate with other exotic oddities.
Competing Against Reality: A Conversation with Urs Fischer
On a March afternoon, while preparing for a mid-career retrospective, Swiss artist Urs Fischer is modeling a bust at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles. Assorted clay sculptures—crocodiles, hands, ships—cover the floor.
