Nafís M. White transforms commonplace objects and materials into works of profound aesthetic and cultural resonance. Her Providence studio, filled with raw materials, emanates creative energy—like an art lab for unquantifiable experiments. Colorful Oculus sculptures hang on the walls, their braids and coils dynamically winding and undulating into circular shapes in an array of vivid
BHM
Eugene Macki
PITTSBURGH Mattress Factory Without a doubt, it is the visitor who is destined to activate this uncanny field of objects and to find meaning through his or her own experience and reimagining. As Ilya Kabakov has said: “The main actor in a total installation, the main center toward which everything is addressed, for which everything is intended, is the viewer.”
Thresholds and Traces: A Conversation with Lydia C. Thompson
Lydia C. Thompson’s ceramic and mixed-media sculptures combine architectural form with layered storytelling, exploring the porous, transitional nature of “home” as physical space and social construct. Her hand-built, perforated structures invite reflection on thresholds of movement, vulnerability, and resilience amid gentrification and migration.
Steve Locke
NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS MASS MoCA Locke may be acting as witness, but he is also an artist. The work’s interpretive moment occurs in the neon words, “a dream,” which hover over the list of the dead. Which dream, and who gets to dream this dream?
Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes
SEATTLE Koplin Del Rio The satire and sharp wit of the “Pelts” are welcome, though they forsake the resonant power of the “Terra Nada” sculptures, with their aura of generative potential.
Otobong Nkanga
DALLAS Nasher Sculpture Center Along the cord’s length, there is a rhythmic evolution to the colors: one section dark and earthen like compost, becoming a stringy, mottled cream, then a beetroot purple, studded with seeds. It is also punctuated by a number of enormous, milky glass beads in analogous colors. From afar this gives the form the look of an oversize rosary.
David Hammons
LOS ANGELES Hauser and Wirth While both iterations have followed immense tragedy—9/11 and then the Palisades and Eaton fires—what Hammons attunes us to is not the instance of tragedy itself, but the infinitely combinatory and socially contingent conditions that inform the spaces we occupy.
Stepping Into Who I Am: A Conversation with Nick Cave
Nick Cave’s recent work is forging new directions, merging art, nature, and self into vehicles for loving, meaningful connections. “Amalgams and Graphts,” his current exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery’s new Tribeca location, debuts two bodies of work that challenge viewers to open themselves to love, emotion, and connection.
Hugh Hayden
DALLAS Nasher Sculpture Center Hayden’s use of wood is nostalgic, since such workmanship on an object of public utility has largely been replaced with metal and plastic. It is also a testament to his craftsmanship and skill.
Charisse Pearlina Weston: Interior Life
I spend a lot of time walking through New York and often find myself in front of condo construction sites, gawking at high-end living exemplified by floor-to-ceiling expanses of glass.
