TAICHUNG, TAIWAN National Museum of Fine Arts “Mediation/Meditation,” the third edition of the Asian Art Biennial, was curated by Iris Shu-ping Huang of the National Museum. The dual theme made an additional allusion to Japanese economist Kenichi Ohmae’s theory of the M-shaped society, which describes the global decline of the middle class and its replacement with equal peaks of rich and poor.
Animal Unrest
Adopting a disturbingly human posture, a hare constricts into a hieroglyph of anguish. Choking and gasping, a jackal succumbs to a muscle-locking spasm. Grimacing in a ghastly blend of snarl and plaintive cry, a disheveled possum peevishly limps away.
Eylem Aladogan: Iron Triggers That Could Be Released
Eylem Aladogan’s large-scale sculptural work recently emerged from the Dutch art world like a moth bursting from its cocoon, finding international exposure at the 12th Istanbul Biennial. Though her smaller work has appeared in Paris, Basel, Munich, Los Angeles, and New York, her major pieces had been exhibited only in Netherlands-based art museums such as
Rima Schulkind
WASHINGTON, DC Touchstone Gallery This exhibition of eight complicated assemblages made from a variety of recycled objects marked a departure from Rima Schulkind’s earlier work. Collectively addressing the fertility of human invention and the wastefulness produced by obsolete technology, each “totem” displays a particular category of technological devices, including those used to manipulate numbers, reproduce images, communicate sound, write words, measure time, and record history.
Klara Kristalova: Craft and the Subconscious
A new voice in sculpture, Klara Kristalova shapes subconscious and dark states of being. Her unique personalizations immerse the viewer in human and animal states of mind. She was a baby when her parents fled Czechoslovakia in 1968 and moved to Sweden.
Vanessa German
NEW YORK Pavel Zoubok Gallery Vanessa German paints over old, white-skinned dolls with black pigment and tar, delving into identity, race, and racism (as in the use of the term “tar baby” to refer to someone who is very dark skinned).
Maurizio Cattelan
NEW YORK Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Some years ago, I argued in favor of making a critical distinction between works of art that are significant and those that are merely symptomatic of the times.
Do Ho Suh
NEW YORK Lehmann Maupin Do Ho Suh, easily one of the most interesting sculptors working in America today, presented a lot of things in this show—models of homes (one like a dollhouse and the other done in a pale-green resin), as well as such mundane objects as a sink, a circuit-breaker, and a doorknob (the last three made of translucent cloth).
Rene Rietmeyer: Time, Space, and Existence
Rene Rietmeyer creates abstract, three-dimensional wall objects that he calls “Boxes.” These works address his personal existence within time and space. Through formal means such as shape, color, texture, composition, and choice of materials, Rietmeyer visualizes his experiences of a certain region or a specific person encountered at a particular place and time.
Ginny Ruffner’s Seattle Garden
Ginny Ruffner’s role in the early years of the Pilchuck Glass School and inspirational recovery from a severe car accident in 1991 have kept her close to the hearts of many cultural observers in the Pacific Northwest, so, of course, the installation of her new, 27-foot-tall, almost 10,000-pound, mechanized sculpture in downtown Seattle has generated
