CHICAGO — Navy Pier is the thing with the giant ferris wheel on it that juts out from Chicago’s lakefront into Lake Michigan. It also plays host every year to an outdoor art installation of sculptures by international artists. This year features works by Antony Caro, Roy Lichtenstein, Nancy Rubins, Steed Taylor and Almond Zigmund.
sculpture
Posted inArt
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.
Posted inArt
Stealing the Triennial and Other Neat Tricks
As good as the last Triennial was — and, all qualms, quibbles and philosophical differences aside, it was a pretty good survey of emergent art — what it didn’t have was a monster.
Adrián Villar Rojas’ “A person loved me” (2012) has already achieved show-stealer status at The Ungovernables, the second installment of the New Museum’s Triennial, snagging a feature by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times with the sweeping headline, “A Colossus in Clay Speaks a Generation’s Message.”
Posted inArt
Paper People and Rude Shocks
Some shows are designed to shock, and you’d expect that one sporting the title Extra Fucking Ordinary would be among them. And you’d be right.
Posted inArt
Two Sculptors Wrestle with Emotions, Language and the Body
It’s not every day that a contemporary artist gets to show her work alongside that of a master. But from now through August 12, Rachel Kneebone is having her day.
Posted inArt
Toppled
I can’t say I wasn’t charmed by Marble Sculpture from 350 B.C. to Last Week’s title, though it’s a tad overblown. And I was pleasantly surprised by the almost gauche clutter I encountered on the gallery’s routinely Spartan first floor, with thirty-one midsize-to-extra-large artworks from wildly different historical periods crowded together like refugees from an intergalactic conflict.
Posted inArt
Sassily Serious and Seriously Sassy
I set out with the intention of seeing these shows, so I wouldn’t call it synchronicity, but the simultaneous exhibitions of David Goerk and Martha Clippinger in the same building, just one floor apart, did get me thinking about art making that is concerned with the realm between painting and sculpture — from della Robbia’s bas reliefs to early modernism (Hans Arp) to contemporary art (Stuart Arends, Ellsworth Kelly, Jim Lee, and Richard Tuttle).
Posted inArt
Martha’s Tongue or Our Pseudo-Sexual Relationship With Food
DETROIT — This Thanksgiving you should pay attention to the texture of your food, how you use your tongue to lash out and taste your food, and how you digest your food. Why? Isn’t that kind of creepy? Um, yes, it is kind of creepy, and lusting over your food may upset your family members’ stomachs. But Brooklyn-based sculptor Martha Friedman is preoccupied with food and digestion, and she creates awesome food art, proving there is some real artistic value in food lust. Maybe you should leave it to the experts though.
Posted inArt
Traveling the Visual Highway
Day trips beyond New York City for visual art can feel decadent, especially with all the spectacular shows we don’t have time to see. And although it might be a small hassle to get there, the Brant Foundation’s current solo show of David Altmejd is really worth every minute of the trip to Greenwich, Connecticut. With his hallucinogenic and kaleidoscopic aesthetic, Altmejd also seems to be asking viewers to take a trip.
Posted inArt
Coming to Grips With Matthew Barney at Gladstone Gallery
Matthew Barney, “Djed” (2009-2011) (photos by the author) Matthew Barney’s most recent exhibition Djed opened at Gladstone Gallery on September 17. Like everything the artist tends to do, the sculptures on view are of epic proportion. The objects themselves are extremely minimal steel and graphite molded constructions that are half early Richard Serra and half […]
Posted inArt
Seeing Through the Crowds at the 2011 Venice Biennale Part II: The Arsenale
The Arsenale and its Corderie (Rope Walk) compose the remainder of the curatorial effort of the Biennale’s director. It is the sprawling nasty sibling of the Padiglione Centrale, and is somewhat of a chore to tackle. The entire layout of the Arsenale this year feels disjointed. On a whole, I felt like there was a dearth of strong work. I believe Curiger had aspirations to move beyond the trends of participatory art and ostentatious work seen everywhere else in Venice and other art fairs.
Posted inArt
The Top 6 Trends at ArtPrize
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN — As an artist participating in ArtPrize myself, I had the amazing experience of not only visiting Grand Rapids for the first time, but also experiencing this mega-event for the first time. While walking around the city snapping pics, I was instantly reminded about my solo trip to the Venice Biennale in 2003 when I was just a college kid: feeling like an outsider to the local people, crossing bridge after bridge and trying to consume the overwhelming amount of artwork around me. As a cultural producer, I can’t help but analyze and tally the formal and conceptual trends that are present in such a saturated art environment.
So from the perspective of a dude like me, here are the Top 6 things I saw at ArtPrize 2011 …
