Buenos Aires-based Edgardo Madanes studied at the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredon, taking such well-known artists as Nora Correa and Norberto Gomez as his mentors. Correa’s soft volumes, with their contrast between textile and sculpture, particularly captured Madanes’s attention, as did Gomez’s perfect balance between concept and passion.
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design In homage to Monet, Spencer Finch titled his recent exhibition “Painting Air.” A quotation from the Impressionist painter, the phrase also riffs on the familiar description of Impressionism as “painting light,” though “sculpting” air might have been more accurate in Finch’s case.
Denver sculptor Robert Mangold considers himself to be a “realist,” but his definition of the term is fairly idiosyncratic considering his abstract and non-objective works. For Mangold, who avoids even a whiff of representational imagery in his pieces, being a “realist” means that he’s interested in physical reality—in real gravity, in real movement, and in
DALLAS H. Paxton Moore Fine Art Gallery, El Centro College Claire Ashley’s pneumatic objects are singular yet referential. Each giant, pillowy creature has a presence so unique it is easy to overlook the heterogeneous array of influences. Clown sports multi-colored horns and one leg that sits out lazily in front of its trunk. The center of its cutely bloated, pastel pink belly is marked by a dripping bull’s eye—reminiscent of both a Jasper Johns painting and an assassinated Michelin Man.
Kaarina Kaikkonen, one of Finland’s leading artists, first showed her work at Art Basel Miami Beach in a 2004 exhibition curated by Julia P. Herzberg and Carol Damian. And It Was Empty—thousands of used men’s jackets arranged along a wall, somewhat reminiscent of the hanging jackets in Kaikkonen’s boat-shaped installation at the Havana Biennale earlier
No marble or bronze for sculptor David Mach. For over 35 years, he has been transforming bulk raw materials and what many consider junk or garbage—old tires, magazines, out-of-date telephone directories, empty bottles, Barbie dolls, postcards, coat hangers, and matches—into memorable, wacky, inventive, crowd-drawing public art.
NEW YORK David Zwirner When the Victorian poet Robert Browning coined the phrase “less is more” in a poem about the painter Andrea del Sarto, he could not have known how apt it would be in regard to the string sculptures of Fred Sandback. A stylistic colleague of the Minimalist sculptors of the 1960s and ’70s, Sandback evolved a language that made the most out of acrylic yarn, a highly humble material.
NEW YORK Ziehersmith Widely acclaimed in Los Angeles-oriented group shows in the U.S., Europe, Russia, and Israel, Allison Schulnik is a good example of a young artist coming out of the CalArts experimental animation program. Her third New York show, which combined sculpture, painting, and animation video, took on the atmosphere of a dark and threatening circus sideshow, the works all bound together by an utterly individual, somewhat funky West Coast sensibility.
WASHINGTON, DC Hillyer Art Space One of the most compelling aspects of Rachel Rotenberg’s sculptures is their singular admixture of delicacy and robustness. The first of these qualities comes from the apparently effortless ways in which she turns, pulls, and molds her materials—typically cedar planks, often combined with tree limbs or vines—into endlessly suggestive forms, complete with subtle color accents.
NEW YORK Michael Werner Gallery The first major Wilhelm Lehmbruck exhibition in the U.S. in more than two decades has reconfirmed his importance as one of the most progressive sculptors of the early 20th century. In fact, it leaves one lamenting that there has only been one American museum retrospective to date, at the National Gallery of Art in 1972.
