sculpture – Page 20

June 30, 2023May 19, 2023, by Hovey Brock

Envisioning Adaptation – Symposium on Art and Adaptation to the Climate Crisis at the Catskill Art Space

David Brooks, installation shots of *Budding Bird Blind,* at Planting Fields Arboretum, Oyster Bay, NY, and maquettes showing the future forest succession as the trees supplant the building

On April 23rd, Earth Day, 2023, at the Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor, NY, I moderated a panel on artists’ responses to the climate crisis titled “Envisioning Adaptation.” The panel was one of the many events the director of the CAS, Sally Wright, has hosted at the arts and performance space newly refurbished in 2022. The concept for the symposium was to create a forum of artists whose practices addressed the idea of adaptation to, as opposed to mitigation of, the climate crisis. The panel participants included David Brooks, Simone Couto, Alexandra Hammond, Brian Kelley, and J. Morgan Puett.

June 22, 2023June 22, 2023, by Amy Talluto

Ruby Palmer: Painter with a Kaleidoscope Eye

A person sitting on a couch with a dog

Description automatically generated — Ruby Palmer with dog, “Oscar,” in her studio in Red Hook, NY, Photo credit: Yuko Yamamoto

Ruby Palmer’s new acrylic and Flashe paintings, currently on display in her solo show Shift at Morgan Lehman through June 30, look like colorfully doodled Rorschach tests. Each work is densely populated with swirling kaleidoscopic symbols like flowers, feathers, and geometric shapes, all set over jewel-toned or neutral grounds. At her previous exhibition with the gallery, she showed wall sculptures made up of painted clusters of basswood, and her new paintings seem to take those networks of wood a step further and expand them outward like Hoberman spheres in a big-bang fashion. It was my pleasure to speak with her and find out more about this exciting new direction in her work.

June 20, 2023June 13, 2023, by Daisy Archer

Isabelle Plat Reinvents the Portrait

Artist Profile

By Daisy Archer

A picture containing wall, indoor, art, clothing

Description automatically generated — Installation shot

When she was eight years old, Isabelle Plat’s mother took her to the museum in Lyons, France, to see a show of works by the School of Paris. The young artist remembers being enchanted by the works of Matisse and Soutine and then and there decided she would be painter. Flash forward a decade and Plat was working toward her baccalaureate at the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, which offered a rigorous five-year program of academic training. Plat concentrated on sculpture, following the age-old practice of drawing and modeling from antique casts.

June 17, 2023June 17, 2023, by Paul D'Agostino

Collage and Then Some: Vitamin C+

Book Review

Vitamin C+ Collage in Contemporary Art. Introductory essay by Yuval Etgar. Phaidon (back cover)

Recently released by Phaidon, Vitamin C+ is another noteworthy addition to the publisher’s boundlessly malleable series of anthological volumes gathering scores of artist profiles into luxuriantly illustrated, conceptually cohesive tomes. Medium, era, genre, or movement tend to be the organizational binders for these books, as might be expected, and they’re generally wonderful and inspiring as such. But they’re sometimes wonderful and inspiring in less obvious ways as well, furnishing readers with much more to delve into, reflect on, and revisit time and again.

June 10, 2023June 5, 2023, by Etty Yaniv

George Widener and Terence Koh at Andrew Edlin: Traces of Time

George Widener: Tip of the Iceberg — George Widener at Andrew Edlin

The riveting debut exhibition at Andrew Edlin showcases George Widener’s profound fascination with historical catastrophes, particularly the tragic sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The artworks on the wall, made of patched-together napkins and tea-stained scrolls, bear the marks of accidents, palimpsests, and esoteric knowledge, reminiscent of ancient manuscripts and enveloped in an aura of mystery. The elaborate numerical puzzles, complex wordplay, and prophetic visions informed by historical events become data landscapes that the viewer explores alongside the artist.

June 7, 2023May 12, 2024, by Saul Ostrow

Re-evaluating Ellsworth Kelly at 100

opinion

Ellsworth Kelly, *Spectrum IX*, 2014, acrylic on canvas, twelve joined panels, © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, Photo: Ron Amstutz, Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is one of those artists whose status I’ve never understood. While he is held in high esteem by many, I’ve always questioned his significance. Don’t get me wrong, I like his work, but liking it doesn’t necessarily make it significant. His work is elegant, refined, and smart, and yet even in the 1950s-70s, it seemed conservative against the backdrop of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism. What made Kelly different from his peers was that when he was living and studying in Paris after World War2 on the GI Bill, while many of his fellow artists from the States were exploring lyric abstraction and L’informale, Kelly was looking at Art Concrete and had begun to make multi-canvas paintings.

June 1, 2023June 1, 2023, by Etty Yaniv

Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake

A picture containing indoor, art, wall, museum

Description automatically generated — Installation view, Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Collected Things, Jim Condron’s terrific solo exhibition at Art Cake in Brooklyn prompts us to question our relationship with the objects we interact with—objects that we use, discard, and transform through memory and art process. At the heart of this exhibition are Condron’s recent series of sculptures, which brings together everyday objects and ephemeral materials he has collected from artists, writers, and thinkers who participated in the project—these individuals include personal acquaintances like Graham Nickson, Lucy Sante, Rebecca Hoffberger, Carl E. Hazlewood and Cordy Ryman. Among them is the pioneering painter Grace Hartigan, who was Condron’s teacher and for whom he also worked as a graduate assistant in 2004, four years before her death. This body of work highlights how Condron’s process of collecting, editing, and adding other materials, activates the lineage and history of everyday objects, transforming them into playful art objects with renewed vitality and psychological presence.

May 26, 2023May 3, 2023, by Etty Yaniv

On the Waterfront: A View from the Coast (Line)

HOT AIR

From its founding in 2009 by Maddy Rosenberg, CENTRAL BOOKING has focused on the exploration between art and science with emphasis on aspects of the environment and social justice issues. In many collaborative projects with organizations such as the New York Academy of Medicine and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, artists researched their work in the collections, libraries and grounds of these institutions and exhibited the resulting work in several venues. Rosenberg says that after years of living along the Brooklyn waterfront of Buttermilk Channel and incorporating the imagery into her own work, she sensed it was time to take a deeper dive into the ecosystems of the Brooklyn waterfront and the last surviving section of functioning port within New York City’s boundaries. The life along the harbor integrates the wildlife, land and neighborhoods of human-made architectural elements seemed to her like “a perfect barometer for exploring climate change”. A collaboration with the New-York Historical Society was a natural step, as their collections preserve many of the earlier roots along the way to the transformations we live with today. Rosenberg says that in addition, by forging partnerships with other area organizations such as Kentler International Drawing Space, Pioneer Works and the RETI Center, the project became truly emblematic of the Brooklyn Waterfront.

May 24, 2023May 20, 2023, by Jac Lahav

Sara Jimenez: the rain from dreams or from breaths at Rachel Uffner

Featured Artist

Sara Jimenez’s new installation, “the rain from dreams or from breaths,” at Rachel Uffner Gallery is a thought-provoking and multi-sensory experience. Jimenez is known for examining the colonial history of the Philippines, an archipelago of over 7,000 islands in Southeast Asia that was colonized by the Spanish for almost 400 years and then by the United States for another 50 years until after World War 2.

May 23, 2023May 22, 2023, by Art Spiel

The Liu Shiming Foundation Celebrates the Life and Legacy of Acclaimed Sculptor Liu Shiming Through Supporting Emerging Artists

Liu Shiming. All photos courtesy of The Liu Shiming Foundation.

Art non-profits play a critical role in fiscally supporting and guiding emerging artists. Founded in August 2021, The Liu Shiming Art Foundation was created to preserve the legacy of artist Liu Shiming’s work as well as to support art students and emerging artists. In April, the Foundation announced the very first ten recipients of the Liu Shiming Art Grant. Channeling Shiming’s longstanding passion for the arts, the $3,000 grant is given to young artists who are no longer enrolled in school or students enrolled in institutions outside of the Foundation’s partner universities and colleges.