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.
Concentrated: A Conversation with Johan Creten
This conversation took place in March of 2010 at Johan Creten’s “Dark Continent” exhibition at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. Having made fundamental breakthroughs in the field of stoneware in terms of virtuosity, imagery, and scale, the Belgian artist, who refuses to sit still, is now displacing the boundaries of what is possible and acceptable
Lim Dong-Lak’s: Geometry of Light
Korean sculptor Lim Dong-Lak, who divides his time between Busan and Paris, creates large-scale stainless steel forms that occupy time as well as space and affect the light in their environs. Last summer, nine of his sculptures (dating from 1996 to 2009) appeared on the Lido outside Venice.
Releasing Spirits: A Conversation with Eileen MacDonagh
Born in County Sligo, Eileen MacDonagh studied art at the Institute of Technology, Sligo and Limerick School of Art. In 1982, she attended an International Sculpture Conference in San Francisco, where she was first introduced to the idea of sculpture symposia.
Political by Nature: A Conversation with Nnenna Okore
Sometimes an artist’s use of materials is in itself political, as in the case of Nnenna Okore. Born in Australia and raised in Nsukka, a town in southeastern Nigeria, she explores a range of artistic materials and influences, creating installations and sculptures made of clay and found as well as handmade paper.
