contemporary sculpture

August 20, 2025August 19, 2025, by Jessica Aguilar

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in August 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Installation images of WARP Wood 2025: A Plank in a Shipwreck. Photo credit: John Carlano

Across the city, artists are focused on the meaning of visible labor and extracting the potential in the most innocent of found materials. Through unconventional mediums and reclaiming disregarded items like paper or rubber bands, artists are able to tap into universal experiences that inject value and sacredness into everyday objects. At PEEP Projects, Maria Ah Hyun constructs layered paper vessels to serve as ritual objects and gateways into cultural landscapes. Gabrielle Constantine transforms Blah Blah Gallery into a romantic archive of working class textures and sensibilities that honor the excesses of labor. Museum of Art and Wood presents the 2025 cohort for their Windgate Arts Residency program, inviting experimentation and individual perspectives in wood in A Plank in a Shipwreck.

May 1, 2025April 29, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Fellow Imaginaries: Carole d’Inverno and Susan Rostow at Atlantic Gallery

FELLOW IMAGINARIES installation (three pieces), Carole d’Inverno and Susan Rostow, (left) Telling Bones, 21 x 19 x 15, paper, metal, bone, plastic, wood, pigments. Rostow, (middle) North-South, 42 x 71, vinyl emulsions, ink pens, inks on canvas, rod, d’Inverno, (right) Under Cover, 24 x 12 x 12, wood, sisal rope, wire. d’Inverno

Carole d’Inverno and Susan Rostow live a block apart. Over the past year, they passed sculptures between studios, texted images and material references, built paper maquettes, and revised their work without fixed goals. Fellow Imaginaries, now on view at Atlantic Gallery, result from this sustained exchange. The exhibition includes fully collaborative hybrid sculptures made jointly by d’Inverno and Rostow, alongside individual works by each artist: sculptures by Rostow and both sculptures and paintings by d’Inverno. Though distinct in authorship, all the works were developed in close dialogue. They respond to one another in form and material and in how they occupy space. Walking into the show feels like entering a toy store—joyous, playful, a place of invention. The visitor becomes a child again, wondering how things were made and how they might move.

June 24, 2024June 14, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Bat Ami Rivlin: Functional Narratives

A person standing in a grass field with a dog and a large object

Description automatically generated — *Untitled (12 tubs)*, 2023, Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY.

Bat Ami Rivlin, who has lived in New York City for over a decade, finds her artistic practice profoundly shaped by the city’s relentless cycle of object turnover. The daily expulsion of waste from restaurants, buildings, and homes onto the streets, followed by the inevitable clear-out, is a stark reflection of urban existence. This phenomenon sparks contemplation on how these transient objects organize our spatial interactions, both during their use and after their disposal.

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Judy Hoffman: Evolvers and Wildtypes at Sculpture Space

Hot Air

A person standing next to a sculpture

Description automatically generated — The artist with Big Yellow, 18″ x 11″ x 7.5”; ceramic; 2017. Photo Credit: Linda Cunningham

Ten years ago, Judy Hoffman became enthralled with clay and hand-building. The current exhibition Evolvers and Wildtypes at the Long Island City Sculpture Space is her first solo show of these ceramic sculptures. Hoffman’s ceramics’ imagery and forms tap into a previous installation work made from sculpted paper pulp, natural materials, and man-made debris. Paper clay techniques permit the bonding of wet clay to fired forms, enabling the construction of diverse configurations. These components are conjoined to initiate a dialogue between organic and mechanical elements, yielding imagery that defies expectation. The artwork evolves through a rhythm of construction and deconstruction, encapsulating cycles of creation, deterioration, and renewal. Viewers are meant to encounter an elemental rawness, surprise, and a touch of humor.

August 4, 2023July 18, 2023, by Hovey Brock

Jean Shin the Alchemist: Turning Waste into Art

Hot Air

Jean Shin, *Home Base*, 2022. Installation at Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO. Photo Credit ProPhotoSTL. Courtesy of the artist and Laumeier Sculpture Park.

With her public sculptures, Jean Shin makes powerful statements about the climate crisis out of discarded and obsolete materials. She often engages communities in her materials sourcing, mixing social practice into her public sculpture practice to create platforms for discussion. Ingenious and esthetically considered, her works show novel ways to engage with the climate crisis.

June 8, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Kate Casanova: Gut Feeling at Yi Gallery

Featured Artist

Kate Casanova, photo courtesy of Yi Gallery

Gut Feeling is a solo exhibition of hyper-tactile sculptures by sculptor, Kate Casanova, at Yi Gallery in Brooklyn. This is Casanova’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view May 14 through July 9.

April 7, 2022November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Daniel Wiener: At Home With Scallywags and Rapscallions at Pamela Salisbury

Featured Artist

Daniel Wiener, Six Custodians, 2021, Apoxie-Sculpt and dispersed pigments, 12.5” x 29” x 29”, photo courtesy of Daniel Wiener

The exhibition, At Home with Scallywags and Raspcallions, brings together Daniel Wiener’s work from the past 12 years. It focuses on his sculptures which also have a practical domestic use. As he says—the tables, stool, benches and bowl are familiar objects but in my hands, as with all of my work, they still uncover subconscious inner demons.

May 7, 2021December 6, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Jennifer Macdonald: We Met in Kaarthijenkia at Sala Projects

In Dialogue with Jennifer Macdonald

Jennifer Macdonald, We Met in Kaarthijenkia installation at Sala Projects, 2021, photo courtesy of Tania Cross

Jennifer Macdonald’s solo inaugural exhibition at Sala Projects features a group of unique cast bronze sculptures, made by using prototypes that are built from textured wax and wax-coated materials such as card stock, pasta, balsa wood.

January 26, 2021January 11, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Debbie Hesse: Spatial Paintings

Debbie Hesse, Laboratory for Healing, 2018, Immersive installation at Yale West Campus, Photo Courtesy of Graham Hebel, Artspace

Debbie Hesse, the CT based artist, makes plexiglass sculptural constructions and video installations. Her sculptural installations, or “spatial paintings” are typically made of multiple planar Plexiglas and wood cutout shapes layered to create complex shapes which bring her ideas to life through light and color.

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Amy Butowicz: Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space

In Dialogue with Eric Fallen, Founder and Executive Director

A room full of furniture

Description automatically generated — Duet, 2020 76.5”h x 84”w x 53”d Canvas, acrylic paint, wood, furniture parts, wheels, and hinges

Amy Butowicz solo show Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space features a collection of domestically scaled sculptures staged as a group of characters which are readily associated with notions of sensuality, ornamentation, and haute couture. Bulging cushion-like forms, meticulously hand-stitched over wooden structures, display intricate patterns and rich material suggestive of bedding, vanities, corsets and human anatomy. Bold and tender simultaneously, these anthropomorphic forms defy the disdain and fear that are frequently imposed upon feminine artforms, spaces, and bodies. Eric Fallen, founder and executive director of the Red Hook based Peninsula Art Space elaborates on Amy Butowicz’s exhibition and on his art venue.