Art
A Blimp Floats in a Gallery, Imagining the View from Space
CHICAGO — The Sidney R. Yates gallery in the Chicago Cultural Center is a large space on the top floor of a neoclassical-style building on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.
Installation Art
Art
Paint Flows Over a Rockaway Ruin Like Hurricane Waves
One of the most remarkable places accessible to the public in New York City is the ruins of the Fort Tilden military base on the Rockaway Peninsula, where huge batteries with now-empty heavy gun turrets open to the beach.
Art
A Tribute to the Rust Belt, Carefully Crafted from Domestic Decay
For 10 weeks in a disused church basement somewhere in the Midwest, Julie Schenkelberg built a turbulent installation of broken furniture, found objects, and housing rubble anointed with blue and gold paint.
Art
An Early Installation Art Maverick Gets Her Due with a Madrid Retrospective
MADRID — The short but plentiful career of US installation artist Ree Morton, surveyed at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid in Ree Morton: Be a Place, Place an Image, Imagine a Poem, reminds us there are still many untold histories of 20th century women artists.
Art
Walk into a Painting's Colorscape
DALLAS — It was a normal day in downtown Dallas in June. The heat and humidity were bearing down on me with intense aggression, the traffic on Harry Hines Boulevard was jammed as usual, and glare beaming off of Museum Tower almost blinded me as I made my way to the arts district. Destination? The Na
Art
Can Lin Tianmiao Break Free of Gender?
The first survey of Chinese installation artist Lin Tianmiao at Asia Society, called Bound Unbound, could not have a more fitting title. The artist’s sartorial sculptures, grotesque bodies, and fibrous compositions illustrate an artist bound by cultural convention creating art unbound in technique a
Art
Gabriel Orozco Brings Beach Collecting to the Guggenheim, I-Spy Style
In a side gallery off the Guggenheim’s main spiral, it looks like a tide of water came and went, leaving behind piles of bricks, wood, and detritus ripped from their original contexts and tossed into disarray. It’s not unlike certain parts of the New York City area, post-Sandy. The difference is tha
Art
Surreal Sculptures Remixing Nature Provoke Environmentalist Concerns
CHICAGO, Illinois — Walking down an urban Chicago street on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I noticed a gathering of greenery nestled in the crack of a sidewalk jutting up against a cement wall. These small moments of nature poking through the urban landscape reveal themselves when we are not paying atten
Art
Where Do Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds Begin and End?
BERKELEY, California — At Haines Gallery in San Francisco’s Financial District, I finally got to see Ai Weiwei’s notorious “Kui Hua Zi” (Sunflower Seeds). There has been much hype around Ai Weiwei and this particular installation, and seeing it caught me by surprise. The Haines Gallery installation
Art
Empty Galleries, Empty Hands
Nineteen years ago, Anselm Kiefer unveiled an installation at Marian Goodman Gallery called “20 Years of Loneliness,” which featured two decades’ worth of the artist’s work stacked in a towering pyramid (there were rumors that Kiefer was planning to set it on fire) along with two tables filled with
Art
Up from the Mud: “The Parade” by Nathalie Djurberg
Claymation has always had that special something — a lilt of life that its too-perfect digital counterparts can’t touch. Its magic resides partly in its imperfection, namely its inability to disguise its own processes. The herky-jerky motions and the impressions of the animator’s fingers reinforce i
Art
Lessons from an Unknown Master: Phyllida Barlow at the New Museum
Phyllida Barlow’s installation at the New Museum, siege, doesn’t waste any time telling you who’s boss. Post-industrial, post-modern — post-everything but post-sculptural — it all but pushes you back inside the elevator.