Shinique Smith has often related how reading a 2002 article in The New York Times Magazine prompted a new sculptural language in her work. “How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back” traces the journey of a used T-shirt from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Jinja, Uganda—part of a global trek of donated clothing from rich to poor countries.
Oren Pinhassi
LONDON Edel Assanti and St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate The anthropomorphic sculptures of Israel-born, New York-based Oren Pinhassi hold up a strange, disconcerting mirror to humanity. Though vaguely like us in appearance, their forms call to mind structures built for specific functions. If a voting booth or a urinal, for instance, were to mate with a human, this is what their offspring might look like.
Coral Lambert
MINNEAPOLIS NE Sculpture Gallery|Factory Equal parts grit and fantasy, “Alternate Worlds” (on view through June 12, 2021) is Coral Lambert’s response to life in the time of a pandemic. The show consists of recent cast iron and bronze sculptures, photographs, prints, and a video projection that collectively function in the seemingly liminal space between “twilight and dreams.”
Rafael Domenech
BEIJING Hua International Cuban-American artist Rafael Domenech contends that exhibition-making is an expanded form of publishing, an active site of production. His current exhibition, “Imperfect Fragments of an Uncertain Whole” (on view through June 18, 2021), presents a multipart installation consisting of a table, handmade artist books, mobile light sculptures, and ceiling tiles, all made between 2018 and 2021, as well as a large outdoor sculpture in a nearby public square.
Between Playful and Disturbing: A Conversation with Permindar Kaur
Approaching the familiar as though it were a fairy tale, Permindar Kaur uses the uncanny as camouflage in order to re-explain ordinary things. In “Home,” her current exhibition at Howick Place in central London, she continues her exploration of “private” and “public” by uprooting basic domestic objects and reintroducing them as freakishly distorted furnishings that enjoy the safety of the exhibition space while wanting to be free of it.
Spectral Memory: A Conversation with Liana Strasberg
What to remember and how to remember: these are the key concerns in Liana Strasberg’s work, which unearths and reworks images and symbols from the past in order to create what the Argentinian artist calls a “new memory file.”
Fragments of Interest: A Conversation with Marion Verboom
Complexly layered in thought and process, Marion Verboom’s works inhale cultural histories in order to exhale new-era imagery. By turns minimal, architectural, organic, and ornamental, her forms shape contemporary time into a fresh visual alphabet and run it A to Z through mythic narratives—from Aztec gods to the progeny of Zeus.
Andy Moerlein
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery To walk into Andy Moerlein’s “wood stone poem” (on view through June 6, 2021) is to enter a magical space, filled with fanciful and ecstatic forms stretching out in welcome. A three-foot-tall, 60-year-old Ficus retusa bonsai from Taiwan at the entrance to the exhibition offers a clue to Moerlein’s recent explorations, which continue his longtime interest in Asian art and poetry.
Buscando la Geometría Universal: Una Conversación con Hernán Salvo
Egresado del IUNA con profesorado de escultura y un postgrado en dibujo realizado en la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella guiado por el reconocido artista Eduardo Stupia, Hernán Salvo desarrolla su obra siempre nutriéndose de los conocimientos que le aportan los grupos de análisis dirigidos por artistas y teóricos y las residencias internacionales.
A Conversation with Kenseth Armstead
Kenseth Armstead’s videos, drawings, and sculptures draw upon and re-envision the legacy of Africans and their diaspora in the United States. In his decade-long “Spook” project, Armstead explored the life and legacy of James Armistead Lafayette, a double-agent spy for George Washington during the American Revolution.
