NEW YORK Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Some years ago, I argued in favor of making a critical distinction between works of art that are significant and those that are merely symptomatic of the times.
Archive
Do Ho Suh
NEW YORK Lehmann Maupin Do Ho Suh, easily one of the most interesting sculptors working in America today, presented a lot of things in this show—models of homes (one like a dollhouse and the other done in a pale-green resin), as well as such mundane objects as a sink, a circuit-breaker, and a doorknob (the last three made of translucent cloth).
Rene Rietmeyer: Time, Space, and Existence
Rene Rietmeyer creates abstract, three-dimensional wall objects that he calls “Boxes.” These works address his personal existence within time and space. Through formal means such as shape, color, texture, composition, and choice of materials, Rietmeyer visualizes his experiences of a certain region or a specific person encountered at a particular place and time.
Ginny Ruffner’s Seattle Garden
Ginny Ruffner’s role in the early years of the Pilchuck Glass School and inspirational recovery from a severe car accident in 1991 have kept her close to the hearts of many cultural observers in the Pacific Northwest, so, of course, the installation of her new, 27-foot-tall, almost 10,000-pound, mechanized sculpture in downtown Seattle has generated
Gregory Barsamian and the Flying Dream
Gregory Barsamian’s work exists in a profound confrontation with reality. Theatrical in the sense that it takes place in a darkened space before a passively engaged audience, his sculpture relies almost completely on the viewer, because what the viewer sees, seemingly fully present and tangible, is, in fact, not there.
Jonathan Prince
NEW YORK The Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Avenue Felicitously staged among stately bamboo in the soaring atrium of New York City’s IBM building, Jonathan Prince’s four monumental steel sculptures brought to mind one of Plato’s favorite sayings: God is always doing geometry. Classic forms bearing historical and symbolic associations, Prince’s obelisk, flattened sphere, cube, and torus all display rich sienna patinas that accentuate their contours.
Michael Arata
LOS ANGELES Beacon Arts Building To say that Michael Arata is prolific is almost laughable. “Arataland!,” a retrospective of this Los Angeles-based artist, recently filled more than 20 rooms in the three-story Beacon Arts Building.
“Boundaries Obscured”
NEW YORK Haunch of Venison These days, the synergy between art and life occurs so quickly that it is hard for artists to keep up. Opening a few months after the Arab Spring and only a week after Occupy Wall Street decamped from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, “Boundaries Obscured” took on the hot topics of globalization, technology, and the blurred geographic boundaries responsible for outsourcing, Facebook revolutions, and collaborative protests over economic inequality.
The Karen and Robert Duncan Collection of Contemporary Sculpture
A vaguely anthropomorphic structure of colossal semi-circles, triangles, and projecting masts, Fletcher Benton’s painted steel Balanced/Unbalanced towers above a nearby fence line and stream of passing cars as if beckoning in an amiable gesture of asymmetrical geometry.
Monumental Collaborations: A Conversation with Patricia Leighton and Del Geist
Patricia Leighton and Del Geist, who are married and call New York home, have been making public art for more than 25 and 35 years, respectively. They have developed major site-specific works in the United States, Europe, and most recently, South Korea, where they each created new sculptures for the Jeju Museum of Art, and
