NEWARK, NEW JERSEY Index Gianluca Bianchino is an Italian-born sculptor who studied in New Jersey and stayed, keeping his studio in the Garden State. He is part of a burgeoning, energetic group of artists living and showing in Newark and Jersey City, places not far from New York but offering far cheaper rents.
Joseph Beuys and Tadeusz Kantor
JERUSALEM The Israel Museum There is strong justification for exhibiting works by Joseph Beuys and Tadeusz Kantor in tandem, since their work shares many features. Both of these 20th-century greats extended the borders of art across a range of media, from actions, happenings, and theater performances to lectures, discussions, and more.
Ernesto Neto
NEW YORK Tanya Bonakdar Gallery Ernesto Neto’s woven, hanging sculptures show us how a playful understanding of Modernist aesthetics can advance the art of sculpture. His works in this show, crocheted from polypropylene and polyester cord, hung from the ceiling, in some cases filled with plastic balls, which acted as a balance and also as a floor for visitors to rather shakily walk across.
Raquel Torres-Arzola
CAGUAS, PUERTO RICO AREA There are times when an artist unexpectedly breaks away from a trend. Puerto Rico, an island with many creative minds but few institutional frameworks to support them, has recently been the site for works that either confront its ambiguous political situation rather directly and simplistically or limit themselves to representations of tropical clichés.
Jeff Koons
BASEL Beyeler Foundation Visitors strolling through Jeff Koons’s recent exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation looked happy and comfortable. It didn’t matter our age or how serious, critically involved, or skeptical we were when we entered; once inside, we looked at Koons’s works without prejudice, contagious smiles lighting up our faces, our eyes shining with childish joy.
Annica Cuppetelli and Cristobal Mendoza
PHILADELPHIA Grizzly Grizzly As part of the city-wide festival Fiber Philadelphia 2012, two Detroit-based artists collaborated on an installation synthesizing reactive video projection and physical structure. Annica Cuppetelli, a fiber artist concerned with issues of space, interaction, and materiality, worked with media artist and programmer Cristobal Mendoza, whose interests lie in the intersection of technology and the personal.
Not Vital’s Recent Sculpture: Forms That Speak Through One Another
Like much post-conceptual art, a new group of works by the nomadic, Italian-born Not Vital rejects explicit interpretation in favor of an open approach to meaning. These sculptures, which recall landscapes, animals, and body fragments, exist in a half-familiar, but distorted world beyond the everyday.
Erick Swenson
DALLAS Nasher Sculpture Center The work of Erick Swenson has a visceral appeal. In Scuttle, for instance, a meticulously detailed conch holds the body of a sea snail halted in the midst of its wriggling. At once tongue-like and pudendal, the elongated end of the snail’s body emerges erect, while its broader half wraps around the hard outer shell, squeezing it in a stranglehold.
Richard Artschwager
NEW YORK Leo Castelli Gallery Richard Artschwager’s work is not exactly Pop in the sense of Oldenburg’s sculpture or, for that matter, works by George Segal, Marjorie Strider, or Robert Indiana. The question has arisen more than once as to whether Artschwager belongs in the category of Pop at all. But where else?
Steve Lambert
LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum It looks like a chunk of retro advertising that fell off a building in Times Square: white light bulbs spelling out, in gigantic letters, CAPITALISM. Below, script adds, “Works for me!” On either side comes the kicker: “True” or “False.”
