LOS ANGELES L&M Arts / J. Paul Getty Museum In “Way Out West” at L&M Arts, Robert Irwin was concerned with “light,” illumination, and chance combinations of color. Nine related, but independent works rendered in fluorescent light coalesced in an installation that responded to its site, but could exist in any space, including, Irwin says, the domestic.
(e)merge art fair
WASHINGTON, DC Capitol Skyline Hotel From clever branding to a brassy roster of artists, the debut edition of (e)merge delivered on its promise to shake things up. Showcasing artists with no gallery representation and galleries that take on new artists, the art fair offered a rowdy alternative to its blue-chip cousins.
Amanda Dow Thompson
BROOKLYN Causey Contemporary Amanda Dow Thompson’s installation Ghost Moth filled the center of Causey’s vast, elegant, and well-lit space with about a dozen narrow spiral shapes. Dangling from a ring of suspended aluminum tubing, these vertebrae-like forms tapered and twisted down for about five feet, nearly reaching the floor.
Anne Ferrer
NEW YORK The LAB Gallery Anne Ferrer’s Billowing Beauty (2011) first appeared in May at The LAB Gallery in Midtown Manhattan; in October, it filled the front window of Rupert Ravens Contemporary in Newark.
Michelle Lopez
NEW YORK Simon Preston Michelle Lopez’s recent show, which featured works exploring the history of contemporary American sculpture, was clearly influenced by the late John McCracken and John Chamberlain. Educated in literature and art history at Barnard College in New York, Lopez is perhaps unusual in her sensitivity to this narrative.
Clement Meadmore
NEW YORK Marlborough Chelsea Clement Meadmore, an Australian-born sculptor who moved to New York in 1963, is the kind of artist we don’t see much of anymore: a formalist who eschewed the myths of culture in favor of a purely objective art.
Anna von Gwinner
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINE Projective Eye Gallery, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Berlin-based artist and architect Anna von Gwinner is probably best known for street-level video installations that entice passersby with hints of activity in inaccessible spaces. Among her recent projects are a Winnipeg building that appeared to be filling with water and bunnies doing what they do in the back of a Berlin van.
Martin Calcagno
BUENOS AIRES Elsi del Rio Contemporary Art The Argentine artist Martin Calcagno created his own cardboard and wooden toys when he was a kid. At the age of seven, while visiting an exhibition of Japanese art, he discovered that he was meant to be an artist.
Jean Dubuffet
BRUSSELS Musee d’Ixelles “Dubuffet Architecte,” a survey of Jean Dubuffet’s public artworks, displayed the evolution of his monumental sculptures (some realized, some not) through large-scale models, exploring space and dimensionality with a signature humanist flair.
