VENICE U.S. Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale
“Liberty/Libertà,” Martin Puryear’s U.S. pavilion exhibition, uses subtle, disarming, and purposeful juxtapositions to create a mindful meditation on what it means to be an American artist and citizen today.
When asked about her influences, Rona Pondick tends to reply succinctly. “Kafka and my mother,” she will often state, but when pressed further she has only been known to elaborate on the former. In looking at the hybrid metal creatures for which Pondick is perhaps best known, Kafka’s influence—from Metamorphosis to his letters to his
BERKELEY Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives
Attia, a French Algerian artist currently living in Berlin and Algiers, has been working with the concept of repair from the trauma of war for more than a decade. He is particularly interested in the process of healing—for individuals and for societies—and in repairing the damage caused by conflict and by colonization.
Lee Bae is a significant figure in the trajectory of Korean Modernism. Born in Korea, Bae studied under Park Seo-Bo, one of the founders of Dansaekhwa, an art movement born in South Korea in the 1970s.
Oliver Ranch is one of the few American sculpture parks in which the works have all been conceived explicitly on and for the site—relationship to land being the one imposed constraint. The Olivers’ approach to commissions involves working intensively with artists and asking them to commit to a multi-season study of the land as part of the process.
NEW YORK New Museum
Amazing Grace (1993), an installation of fire hoses and nearly 300 abandoned baby strollers first shown at a firehouse in Harlem, originally referred to the crack epidemic, AIDS, and homelessness sweeping through that neighborhood. Now, as one walks through the strollers along a pathway formed from the hoses while listening to Mahalia Jackson sing the gospel song of the title, it is hard not to think of family separations and the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the border.
Nick Hornby’s largest sculpture to date is unveiled this month in Harlow, U.K. The town’s historical collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Elizabeth Frink, among many others, so is a fitting environment for an artist whose subject is frequently the canon and its construction.
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO Ylise Kessler Gallery
Walking into a show of Elise Siegel’s ceramic “portrait” busts can be an unsettling and awkward experience. There they are—in this case, five works on pedestals—their gazes quizzical and eager, as though you, the visitor, are expected to bring something to the conversation.
“I’m interested in the ways plants orient themselves and fight; in the magnetic sensitivity and the geo-localization of great migrators; in a dog’s sense of smell, which configures its volatile world as it moves, but also its memory and self-awareness.”
BRUSSELS Mendes Wood DM
Best known for freestanding and hanging sculptures made from found and gifted fabric, thread, and wire, Gomes was born in Caetanópolis, a center for the Brazilian textile industry.
