New York Bronx Museum of Art Few places conjure images of urban blight as immediately as the South Bronx. And yet, walking through this working-class neighborhood, one notices changes as the community reinvents itself—integrating its past into a vision for the future, without losing its identity.
Greg Lindquist
New York Elizabeth Harris Gallery In “Nonpasts”, Brooklyn-based Greg Lindquist offered a poetic account of a troubling subject—the gentrification of run-down industrial areas. He laments the soon-to-be-gone junk yards of Brooklyn’s former industrial heartland and tries to capture their decaying presence, but by focusing on the aesthetic charm of these environs, he leaves out the
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
New York Neue Galerie Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s last body of work, known as the Kopfstücke (“headpieces” or “character heads”), is awe-inspiring. Created in the latter half of the 18th century, these contemporary-seeming sculptures manifest as a strikingly complex and uncompromising exploration of the human soul.
Stephen Talasnik
Montreal Battat Contemporary At first sight, the works in Stephen Talasnik’s “Panorama: Monolithe Intime” look like the imaginings of Piranesi or a variation on Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International. The repeating structural elements are inventive and circumscribe space, creating compositions that are less about concept design than the possibilities of sculptural form.
Richard Purdy
Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada Shawinigan Space Navigating through Richard Purdy’s water-themed installations in “ecH20,” offered some insight into one of Canada’s most wily and interdisciplinary creative “producers” For this solo show, Shawinigan Space, North American’s oldest aluminum fabrication facility and a designated National Historic site, was transformed into a temple, visitors were invited to take off
Douglas White
Dublin Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Douglas White’s recent work sets up a number of contrasting references that convey a powerful sense of mystery. Grouped under the alchemical title “Black Sun,” his sculptures and drawings evoke light and dark and speak of powerful bursts of energy and their residues.
Marcello Morandini
Mantua, Italy Casa del Mantegna The work of a living sculptor who describes the “infinite and eternal world of geometry” might, or might not, fit happily into living space planned with geometrical rigor by a 15th-century painter and now put to use as a gallery.
Art as Monster: A Conversation with Allora & Calzadilla
Over the past 15 years, Allora & Calzadilla (the artist team of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla) have produced an interdisciplinary body of work known for its distinct blend of art, poetry, and socio-political critique. Playful farce and social interaction underlie their installations, videos, performances, works in public space, photographs, and collages.
Jeanne Silverthorne: New Life in the Ruins of the Artist’s Studio
I knew that I wanted to learn more about Jeanne Silverthorne’s work when I saw one of her tiny rubber figures sitting on a tall pedestal in the McKee Gallery booth at the ADAA Fair about two years ago.
Daniel Canogar: Media Brainstorms
In the installations of Spanish artist Daniel Canogar, electronic media work in concert with sculpture to create hypnotic and mesmerizing environments from abandoned technologies. Throughout Canogar’s work, there is an impulse to keep the “human” presence alive.
