On the Cover:
Pae White, Qwalala, 2017. Handmade glass bricks, detail of installation at Le Stanze del Vetro, Venice, Italy. Photo: Enrico Fiorese, courtesy the artist and 1301PE, Los Angeles.
Editor’s Letter:
With the rise in recent decades of research-based art, relational aesthetics, and sampling, fewer artists have strictly concerned themselves with converting materials into something new. By devoting themselves to such transformations, the artists featured in this issue prove to be exceptions to that trend. In her profile of Pae White, Kim Beil tells us the artist employs a myriad of materials—from gold to cashmere to porcelain—to create her design-influenced installations. The duo known as Future Retrieval often delve into museum collections to inform the making of their singular objects and installations, which also shade into design and craft. With her transparent hanging sculptures, Ragen Moss seeks to alter our conceptions of space. Andres Paredes deploys various insects and organisms to concoct imaginary worlds, strongly informed by the region of Argentina in which he grew up; while the Belgian artist Maarten Vanden Eynde, a self-styled forensic archaeologist, creates what he imagines to be the material remnants of our civilization, which future peoples might discover. As you delve into these pages, you are sure to discover work that is transformational. —Daniel Kunitz
