If your eye becomes entangled by the beauty of a huge fishing net cast into the vast blue of the sky, it has probably been caught in a work by Janet Echelman. Originally a painter, Echelman has been working with nets since a residency in India.
Jan-Ru Wan: A Magical Journey
A mile or more of hand-dyed, waxed thread, perhaps an acre of silkscreened, printed, and dyed silk organza and other fabrics, hundreds of bells, rusted razor blades, brain scans on magnetized rubber disks, small round candle mirrors, miniature Buddhas, the Heart Sutra, and a myriad of other symbolic objects mark the artistic journey traveled by
Claire Lieberman: Material Sensitivities
Claire Lieberman is a sculptor with a clear sensitivity for materials. Incredibly agile, she demonstrates a comfort with everything from alabaster, marble, and glass to cast rubber and resin, to ice and molded Jell-O. She has even experimented with photography and video, though always with her sculptures as the subject of the work.
Dave Beck
POTSDAM, NEW YORK Roland Gibson Gallery, State University of New York Dave Beck uses unconventional tools and systems to make art. He once recorded the movements of people during 24-hour segments—their changing geographical coordinates—to create a series of linear sculptures mounted in shadowbox frames.
Gabriel Dawe
DALLAS Guerilla Arts and Dallas Contemporary The large, taut string installations in Gabriel Dawe’s “Plexus” series create new spaces while transforming their surroundings. Such a powerful architectural effect makes them indeed site-specific.
Ib Geertsen
AARHUS, DENMARK ARoS Aarhus Kuntsmuseum In a lifetime of visiting galleries and artists’ studios, I can’t remember an exhibition provoking the immediate reaction of sheer joyousness prompted by “Ib Geertsen—Mobiler” with its multitude of extraordinarily colorful and imaginatively displayed mobiles.
Fiona Kinsella
HAMILTON, ONTARIO Art Gallery of Hamilton Like an unfolding origami crane, Fiona Kinsella’s work reveals itself in layers. Her exhibition “Cake” challenged viewers to “think beyond surfaces” and to cross the “gray line of how people perceive beauty.”
Irresistible Illusions and Other Worlds
At least since the Renaissance, when artists developed sophisticated perspectival and trompe l’oeil effects to produce convincing representations of the real world or of imaginary scenes, illusionism has been a large part of the story and substance of Western visual art.
Jitish Kallat
CHICAGO Art Institute of Chicago During the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted the first World Parliament of Religions—one of the most significant assemblies in the history of modern religion.
