WASHINGTON, DC Flashpoint Gallery Mending comes alive in Nicole Salim – bene’s breathtaking work, awakening complex sensations of loss, empathy, and healing. An obsolete or forgotten activity for some, for others, it endures as a cultural norm born of economic necessity. In Salimbene’s vision, participatory installations incorporating thread, needles, and seating invite viewers to experience mending as a hands-on, multivalent art medium, rich in metaphor and ritual.
BRONX, NEW YORK
NEW YORK Catinca Tabacaru Gallery Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels re-built the floor and walls of the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery as part of her powerful installation. It seemed spare while I studied it before the opening, but not after many hundreds of people jammed inside the relatively small space—and kept coming. The exhibition title, “a DEFECT // to DEFECT,” and its question, “How do we learn to change for a future we can’t imagine?” perfectly expressed the Trump election jitters experienced by many New Yorkers.
HILLSCHEID, GERMANY Kunstraum am Limes Combining a conceptual foundation with elements of outsider art and archaic sculptural forms, Jochen Brandt’s retrospective charted 20 years of multifaceted paths through six discrete installations. Each section presented ideas so highly concentrated and self-referential that subsequent galleries literally demonstrated the show’s enigmatic title, “beyond this case.” Brandt’s mainly ceramic work stems from a creative process in which formal decisions are based on given material circumstances.
TEL AVIV Tel Aviv Museum of Art Hairless albino squirrels, darting here and there across a crowded floor or nibbling on quasi-scientific paraphernalia, formed a visual connection across the startling installations, freestanding assemblages, and zany reliefs in Eli Gur Arie’s recent exhibition “Growth Engines.” These sinister rodents, together with robotic metallic dogs, reflect the artist’s unrelenting interest in genetic engineering and post-apocalyptic life; in this show, they played an unsettling role in an alarming, yet visually gratifying drama.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Pioneer Works Sustainability received an ironic spin in “The Present is the Form of All Life,” an exploration of time capsule works created by Ant Farm and LST. Shown at Pioneer Works, a nonprofit space dedicated to fostering crossdisciplinary practice, community, and collaboration, the exhibition took a nostalgic look at Ant Farm’s 1970s projects, even as it argued for the group’s continuing relevance as LST.
There is a certain truth that plain sight offers us as visual thinkers and explorers of life. Sound, however, is often overlooked, though it is a major contributor to how we understand our surroundings. When sound and vision mix, our senses are ignited, and an emotional response occurs.
What do bees want? The fact that Jarrett Mellenbruch has spent seven years trying to find the answer tells you a lot about him. Haven, his most extensive project to date, features a series of pole-mounted, Corian, wood, and steel beehives designed to provide a safe environment for wild honeybees imperiled by colony collapse disorder
Jaewook Lee’s work deals with the perceptions and theories that define our sense of place, humanity, and nature. Consisting of video, installation, and performance, his practice assumes that all relationships in space are sculptural, hence form, weight, volume, scale, and negative space create material extensions and possibilities of physical and sensorial space.
Arnaldo Morales’s studio is a machinists dream come true. Points of pride are a 1977 variable speed Bridgeport milling machine, a 1966 Logan lathe, and not just a Clausing table saw, but also a Delta Rockwell horizontal band saw.
