At least since the Renaissance, when artists developed sophisticated perspectival and trompe l’oeil effects to produce convincing representations of the real world or of imaginary scenes, illusionism has been a large part of the story and substance of Western visual art.
Archive
Jitish Kallat
CHICAGO Art Institute of Chicago During the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted the first World Parliament of Religions—one of the most significant assemblies in the history of modern religion.
Gregory Witt
PITTSBURGH Pittsburgh Center for the Arts “Things That Float” featured five works of considerable panache, all incorporating a variety of industrial materials and technological devices.
Judith Page
NEW YORK Lesley Heller Workspace At once familiar and strange, disturbing yet comforting, Judith Page’s sculptures recycle personal items into enticing assemblages that probe the slippage between dreams and experience, memory and time.
The Kartoon Kings (Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio)
ANN ARBOR Slusser Gallery, University of Michigan In this era of video games like Call of Duty, it seems that nothing is more fun than ersatz warfare.
Material Dreaming: Photography and Sculpture
In 2004, Xing Danwen began an ongoing series of color photographs titled Urban Fiction. Using showroom models of large apartment complexes created by real estate developers in Beijing as her primary subjects, she digitally inserts a few small figures (often including her own) into windows or onto terraces, roofs, or surrounding sidewalks.
Mary Coble
WASHINGTON, DC Conner Contemporary Water and endurance: in Mary Coble’s recent exhibition “Source,” what might have conjured images of torture instead generated an engrossing meditation on purification and renewal.
Julia Shepley
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery Julia Shepley’s recent exhibition presented a suspended, kinetic installation in eight parts, as well as smaller wall reliefs and mixed-media drawings.
“Art and Landscape”
HERZELE, BELGIUM HOVE Brick Factory Belgium’s Arpia landscape and art group recently acquired a disused brick factory in the Herzele region.
David Smith: Moments of Invention and Experimentation
The work of David Smith is a monolith in the history of modern American art. And like all monolithic structures, it is surrounded by a simplified, essentialized, almost mythological narrative. Now, 35 years after his death, two exhibitions have begun to explore his prodigious output in a much more comprehensive manner.
