When I met María Magdalena Campos-Pons in her Boston studio, she was gestating ideas for Documenta 14, thinking about installations in both Athens and Kassel. Her thoughts, figuratively and literally, germinated in a corner, where a branch of spindly potato plant—an invasive species that takes over everything—drew an awkward but tenacious line up the wall.
April 2018
Xu Zhen: Information Age
Shanghai-based Xu Zhen reconstitutes time to create “information objects.” His sculptures appropriate historical elements from different civilizations but siphon them through an insurgence of new technologies, underscoring relationships between tradition and contemporary social experience–all in an attempt to sidestep culture as a “known experience” and breathe new life into what might otherwise be considered dead
“David Smith: The White Sculptures”
NEW WINDSOR, NEW YORK Storm King Art Center Did David Smith intend to leave eight large white sculptures white, the state in which they were seen at Bolton Landing, when he died suddenly in 1965? That question, which has periodically vexed art historians, drove an intriguing exhibition at Storm King Art Center, where six of the white-painted steel constructions were installed outside on the lawn, including the three Primo Piano sculptures on view together for the first time.
Ritual, Politics, and Transformation: Betye Saar
Betye Saar was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2018. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. For nearly 70 years, Betye Saar has created prints, collages, and assemblages that transform the cast-off and forgotten into powerful explorations of African American history and identity, the politics of race and gender,
Roni Horn
POTOMAC, MARYLAND Glenstone “Roni Horn,” a survey of work from the last four decades curated by the artist from the museum’s permanent collection, featured photographs, sculptures, and drawings divided into eight rooms: the earliest work, Ant Farm, dates from 1974, but the majority of the works were produced from 2000 to 2015. Horn’s work was ideal for Glenstone, a private museum outside Washington, DC; architecture, site, and art melded seamlessly together into a total experience that allowed for contemplation of complex ideas.
