sculpture – Page 8

March 4, 2025March 19, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: All Around NYC Exhibitions in March 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Nick Cave at Jack Shainman photo courtesy of Yasmeen Abdallah

Spatial dynamics and human hybridity are central to this month’s roundup of highlights in New York. From monumental sculpture to works intimately interspersed within the home, all things great and small commune and offer reflection upon their relationships to the environments in which they currently reside. The hierarchy between the natural and the manmade is in conversation within this selection of shows through shifting currents of tenuous and harmonious moments.

February 27, 2025March 3, 2025, by Emily Wilson

Rope and Revolver at Catharine Clark Gallery

Installation shot of WOUNDED, Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

In 2023, I saw Ansel Adams in Our Time at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. Along with Adams’ famous gelatin silver photographs of national parks and the Southwest, the show had work by contemporary photographers such as Binh Dahn and Meghann Riepenhoff, and it aimed to present a narrative of the West that didn’t depict it as a vast, empty land ready for settlement. I was thinking about this show and how art and the way institutions present it isn’t neutral when I saw Rope and Revolver: Artists Respond to Frederic Remington’s ‘The Broncho Buster’, the engaging exhibition at San Francisco’s Catharine Clark Gallery.

February 26, 2025March 3, 2025, by Vita Eruhimovitz

L.W.D: Rooted in LA

In Dialogue

L.W.D. sees himself as an observer of modern society—a world that has, in many ways, passed him by over the last three decades. L.W.D.’s work is rooted in the assertion of his personal identity within the fractured American society. His art reflects the painful shift from childhood to adulthood, a transformation that feels almost brutal, marked by the loss of innocence in the face of America’s historical realities. His perspective of the American way of life, capturing both the disappointments and fleeting joys, recalls the social commentary of Philip Guston—particularly in the simplicity of his cityscapes, yet with a distinctive handwriting, palette, and choice of subjects. L.W.D.’s visual language fuses the emotional character originating from blues lyrics and the iconic symbolism of Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art. Working within the tradition of the naive picturesque narrative, L.W.D. incorporates the humor of a comic book while maintaining his focus on the historical and the social.

February 18, 2025February 17, 2025, by Andrew Fish

Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions in February 2025

Highlights

*Constituent Parts* at Boston University Art Galleries, Boston, MA

February is the depth of winter in Boston, but there are still many ways to stay warm, including seeing some great art that thaws the senses and pleases the soul. Several exhibitions are in full swing at various galleries, museums, and university galleries across the city. These highlights focus on a few of the university gallery shows and a gorgeous new exhibition at the MFA in Boston featuring the late John Wilson, a Boston native whose work celebrates fatherhood and the rich tapestry of Black life in Boston and beyond.

February 17, 2025February 17, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Pat Lay at New Jersey City University

photo story

A yellow and orange art piece on a white wall

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Installation view of Pat Lay’s exhibition at the Lemmerman Gallery, NJCU

At first sight, Pat Lay’s vertical scrolls sit comfortably within the soaring Gothic-style Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University. Their mosaic or tapestry-like forms, in glowing red, blue, and gold, echo the tall grided window panes and the elaborate ceiling. Yet once it becomes clear that these scrolls are entirely digital, the contrast generates a sense of fertile dualities.

February 12, 2025February 11, 2025, by Claire Haik

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in February 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Carl Cheng, Alternative TV #3, 1974-2016. Plastic chassis, acrylic water tank, air pump, LED lighting and controller, electrical cord, aquarium hardware, conglomerated rocks, and plastic plants. Courtesy of the artist and Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles

I often think about the first scientist who looked into a microscope and saw the dividing of cells, the jiggle of bacteria, and the movement of microorganisms. They must have marveled at the invisible worlds that were revealed. Similar to uncovering fossils of long-extinct species, we are humbled when we discover that we are only a tiny part of a much larger story. These monumental confrontations move us emotionally as much as they do intellectually, evoking within us a sense of awe and wonder. Close Encounters at Box Spring Gallery and Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses at the Institute of Contemporary Art both ask us to consider our position within the cosmos, drawing attention to the fragility of our existence and the complicated ecosystems in which we live. Turning inward, allow yourself to be nourished by Ann Wehrwein’s Tender Ground at Pentimenti, where she renders quiet moments of everyday life with layers of color and care.

February 11, 2025February 11, 2025, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Judy Pfaff Taught Them to Break the Rules—Now They’re Sharing the Stage

A room with art pieces on the wall

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Installation view

Judy Pfaff has never played by the rules—her art bends them, her teaching breaks them, and her career is proof she never needed them. A MacArthur “Genius” who reshaped installation art, she has spent five decades throwing order out the window in favor of energy, movement, and sheer creative force. That ethos is on full display at Art Cake in Brooklyn, where Pfaff and three former students have reunited—not in a classroom, but as equals in a space that refuses to sit still.

February 6, 2025February 5, 2025, by William Corwin

Keisha Prioleau-Martin: Recenter at Olympia

Recenter is a delightful return to Impressionism in many ways. Prioleau-Martin chooses for her subject matter decidedly impressionistic themes—moments at home, moments of introspection, and unrehearsed tenderness, all the casual yet poignant subject matter that marked painting’s initial move from the historic and fantastical to the everyday and human in the 1870s. She also employs the paint with a focus to capture the spur of the moment and the unexpected. Her small-scale ceramics, composed on the templates of stock sculptural types—odalisques, Rodin-like romantic poses, and busts, are, by virtue of their Lilliputian size and wit, Impressionist re-interpretations of dry classic forms. They start out as one thing and shift mid-stream into another: this is particularly evident in Prioleau-Martin’s bust Self-portrait (2024) which masquerades as a planter with fabric and wire vegetal tendrils emanating from her cranium along with her braids.

February 3, 2025February 2, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Jim Condron: Collected Things at the New York Studio School

Installation view, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Jim Condron’s exhibition at the New York Studio School, curated by Karen Wilkin, continues his consistently thoughtful Collected Things series, inviting viewers to see everyday objects as vessels of personal and cultural memory. The sculptures, varying in size from around 20 to 96 inches, playfully transform seemingly ordinary items into layered narratives that bring unexpected elements together.

January 31, 2025February 1, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: Manhattan Exhibition in February 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Hassan Sharif, Gathering at Alexander Gray Associates

Alternative worlds abound, collide, and gravitate in a transfixing lineup that is circumspect of the new year and ruminations of what lies ahead. Unique in presentation, yet united in exploring the vulnerabilities of coexistence amidst a delicate balance, their clandestine orbits intersect and align around the precarity of humanity. Shape-shifting, portals, relics, and worlds collide and mystify in alchemical formulations. As our planet spins on an axis beyond human capacity, one can find solace and pleasure in the mystery and adventure that awaits through these masterful and delightful odysseys of discovery. Michael Brennan and Matthew Deleget create pathways of knowledge through otherworldly means. David Dixon melds stories seamlessly that serve as portals into realms that might exist in such a world.