installation art – Page 41

January 14, 2021January 14, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Yvette Molina: Big Bang Votive at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

In Dialogue with Yvette Molina

Yvette Molina in residence at the VACNJ before shutdown. Photo credit: Ettienne Frossard.

Big Bang Votive, Yvette Molina’s collaborative storytelling art installation has evolved over fifteen weeks, utilizing the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Gallery at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey through January 18^th, 2021. Yvette Molina creates an immersive audio-visual experience — accompanied by a 30-minute surround sound composition played on a loop, her installation includes three hundred paintings of starry skies, some with votive symbols of delight or love taken from stories gathered from the public, a work-table with the artist’s materials, and an on-going “story catcher” project involving public participation.

January 5, 2021December 5, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Margaret Roleke: Getting a Dialogue Started

Margaret Roleke, Margaret Roleke: Made Visible, 2020, window installation of cyanotype banners and mylar, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT., photo courtesy of Rashmi Talpade

When Margaret Roleke finished her MFA, she was a sculptor and installation artist. From early on she created installations dealing with issues of water, sound and light and after becoming a mother to four children, notions of motherhood and domesticity became central in her work. As her children grew, current political events became increasingly part of her visual expression. For instance, around 2002 she started including toy soldiers in her sculptures, referencing the Iraq war, and also around this time for a public art project in Brewster, NY, she made seating for the day-laborers who were regularly gathering on that site. She continued to make work that spoke to issues that were important to her, mainly gun control, domestic abuse, and immigrant rights. She says she had no intention to be an activist artist, but became one in the course of making art and exploring her true voice — “The Trump presidency led me to march on the streets and register voters, but I feel I can be a better activist when I create work which starts a dialogue on these important subjects, as this seems to be what comes naturally to me,” she says.

January 2, 2021January 4, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

More Time Less at Cathouse Proper

In Dialogue with David Dixon

MORE TIME LESS, Cathouse Proper: Zac Hacmon, ‘Capsule #5’ (2020); Nari Ward, ‘Anchoring Escapement (Baule)’ (2017); Elana Herzog ‘Cross Pollination #1’ (2020); photo: Dario Lasagni

For Cathouse Proper’s second ensemble exhibition, More Time Less, curator and gallery director David Dixon brought together five artists — Zac Hacmon, Elana Herzog, Aga Ousseinov, Tim Simonds, and Nari Ward — whose installations, wall-based work, and sculptures reflect our changing perception of ‘normative time.’ David Dixon describes his curatorial process, gives us a closer tour of this ensemble exhibition, and shares some background on his diverse art practices.

December 18, 2020January 2, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

“FLUX : Vita Mutata” virtual on Sculptors Alliance

In Dialogue with Marco Palli

Marco Palli, 2020 at his studio in Kent CT, with “The Origins of Sculpture” Photo by Sandra Cafarelli

The online sculpture exhibition “FLUX : Vita Mutata” curated by Natsuki Takauji and hosted by the veteran non-for-profit artists’ cooperative Sculptors Alliance, features seventeen artists who display works made before the pandemic, throughout the closure, and beyond. The Sculptors Alliance president, Marco Palli. shares with Art Spiel how the show evolved, and how his organization transformed throughout the pandemic, while offering us a generous peek behind the scenes.

December 11, 2020December 11, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Women to the Fore at the Hudson River Museum

In Dialogue with co-curators Laura Vookles, Chair of the Curatorial Department, and Victoria Ratjen, Curatorial Assistant

Installation view. (Front) Ola Rondiak (American, b. 1966). Motanka Installation, 2019. Papier-mâché, plaster of Paris, and other mixed media. Courtesy of the artist. © Ola Rondiak. Photo: Steve Paneccasio

To celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women’s voting rights, Women to the Fore, the current group exhibition at the Hudson River Museum features more than forty female-identifying artists, spanning one hundred and fifty years. The two curators, Laura Vookles and Victoria Ratjen, selected diverse artworks across media —paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, collage and sculpture— from the Museum’s permanent collection, regional artists, galleries, and collectors. The exhibition includes works by renowned artists like Marisol, Judy Chicago, Louise Nevelson, and Mary Cassatt among many others, and less recognizable contemporary and 20^th century artists. For instance, one of the highlights in this show is Anna Walinska’s self-portrait which not only marks her first return to the walls of the Hudson River Museum in over 60 years, but also brings to light her significant role in the art world of her time, including her dedication to promoting the work of other artists, like Arshile Gorky, who got his first New York City solo show in the mid-30s at the Guild Art Gallery, an art venue she founded and ran.

December 8, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Abena Motaboli

Abena Motaboli, The Pieces that hang far up above – in you, in me, in I, in We, in Us, 2019 Plastic Tarp. Dimensions variable approximate 12ft x 12ft x 12ft. Photo courtesy the artist

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a volunteer, female-led, artist-run project. TIAB 2020 launched in March in New York City at Brooklyn Museum, and continued in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Abena Motaboli is a Southern African born educator, visual artist, and writer based in Chicago. She grew up in Lesotho, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, before moving to the U.S where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago and at L’Institut Catholique de Paris in Paris, France. With a strong commitment to social justice work in the South and West sides of Chicago and being an immigrant, her artwork comments on displacement, immigration, the African diaspora, and the loss of the sense of home. In her intricate plastic installations and meditative line-work in her paintings, she uses ephemeral material such as plastic, tea, dirt, and coffee to comment on colonialism, past memories, and the culture of creating.

December 2, 2020November 30, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Edge of Light at Plaxall

Previewing with Jonathan Sims

A picture containing cake, indoor, show, photo

Description automatically generated — Jess Holz, *Borderlands*, 2020. Installation with laser cut Fresnel lenses and video of the artist’s skin being examined under the scanning electron microscope at the HoloCenter exhibition EDGE OF LIGHT

The Edge of Light began with the intent to create a group exhibition of artists who work in light. Jonathan Sims, a light artist himself and the curator of this group show at Plaxall, says that although there are a very large number of artists currently working with light as a medium and a material, but their chances to exhibit, particularly in a group setting, are limited.

December 1, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Sari Nordman

Sari Nordman, Assembling on Ancient Towers, 2020, video, video still courtesy the artist

Sari Nordman, a native of Finland, is a NYC-based interdisciplinary artist working with dance, video and installation. She loves to travel to the isolated parts of the world to reflect on nature, history and female experience, the recurring themes in her works. She continues developing Torni-Tower, an installation work which has received support from the Catwalk Institute and NYU, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, The Amsterdam Collective and Tohmajärvi Residency, for Jamaica Flux: Workspaces and Windows 2021 exhibition and Performance Mix Festival. She worked as a performer with choreographer Dean Moss in 2009-2018, and holds a M.F.A. from NYU/Tisch School of The Arts.

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.

November 23, 2020November 23, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Michele Brody – Embodying Daily Flux

*Michele Brody, working in home studio in The Bronx on handmade paper body sculpture for Annual Earth Celebrations Eco Pageant, paper made from recycled linen table cloths and caning, 2020.*
*Photo by Olivier Marcaud*

A fourth generation NY builder, artist Michele Brody loves working with materials. She recalls how her father groomed her early on to become an architect so that she could continue the family tradition of builders and land developers. Although she excelled in the study of Architecture, she was not attracted to pursue it as career. ” I prefer building with my own hands,” she says. So in 1994, instead of getting a degree in Architecture, she graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from the Fiber and Material Studies Department.