RICHMOND, VIRGINIA Anderson Gallery Almost as if curator Michael Jones McKean had assembled a collection of artifacts for private contemplation, “you, your sun and shadow” offered a meditation on the function of sculpture, implying that it provides opportunities to consider the relevance of subject/object relations in an everyday world.
Joseph and John Dumbacher
WASHINGTON, DC Curator’s Office The title of a recent show by fraternal twins Joseph and John Dumbacher—“elsewhere: a call to the open road or an antidote to whatever”—offers a decided yes to both options. The focused selection of five sculptures and 10 drawings signals a breakthrough in their risk-taking while affirming that their works are anything but random.
Kosyo Minchev
NEW YORK Stux Gallery Bulgarian-born Kosyo Minchev creates works that are incisive in their commentary, wit, material cognizance, and unpretentious formality. His sculptures reach out somewhere between aesthetics and politics, or, better put, they implant politics within aesthetics.
Speak, Materials: Dan Steinhilber’s Way with the Everyday
Do you remember the sound of your parents’ basement? The drone of the dehumidifier, the steady whir of the dryer, the hollow thump made by Uncle Kent’s college trunk? Dan Steinhilber does. Marlin Underground, his installation on the lower level of the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC, (on view until December 29) consists of an ensemble
“Gestures: Intimate Friction”
PITTSBURGH Mattress Factory It was no surprise that “Gestures: Intimate Friction,” guest-curated by Mary-Lou Arscott, a British architect living in Pittsburgh, included architects and designers in addition to visual artists. In her statement, Arscott explains, “Our physical reality bumps up against us and then disappears from view…The process of creating the installations in this exhibition will be collapsing, constructive, and collaborative.”
Pablo Dompé
BUENOS AIRES Recoleta Cultural Center Pablo Dompé learned his craft while working with his sculptor father. The son of two artists—a sculptor and a painter—he ultimately discovered that sculpture was his language of expression. He is building an extraordinary personal aesthetic of the organic and the visceral, with prominent volumes that combine abstraction and subtle figuration while invading both public and private space.
A Conversation with Adrián Villar Rojas: The End of the Human Race
Many contemporary artists create large-scale installations, but those fabricated by the young Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas stand out for their audacity, originality, ambition, and fragility. Born in 1980 in Rosario, Villar Rojas has completed installations around the world, for exhibitions as far flung as the Biennial of the End of the World in Ushuaia,
Miguel Angel Rios
DES MOINES, IOWA Des Moines Art Center The title of Miguel Angel Rios’s recent exhibition, “Walkabout,” suggests the idea of a spiritual quest through unknown terrain. Rios traverses multiple spiritual and physical landscapes as he transforms memories from his roots in Catamarca, a remote area of Northern Argentina, into videos, sound installations, sculptures, and drawings.
Paris Triennale
PARIS Palais de Tokyo Not the Paris Triennale of yesteryear, Okwui Enwezor’s ambitious “Intense Proximity” was a post-identity, post-national exhibition that argued for a common visual language shared by contemporary artists the world over, all similarly preoccupied with the complexities of the globalized world.
Foon Sham: Crafting Dialogs
One of the hallmarks of Foon Sham’s sculptural language is his ability to cultivate a fine line between the dictates of his materials and methods and the specific context of his work. Another, which has shaped his career both as a practicing artist and as a teacher, is his dual perspective on the importance of
