site-specific art – Page 3

February 10, 2023May 12, 2024, by Saul Ostrow

Impossible Failures at Zwirner

Opinion

A photo of Pope.L in his studio, dated 2022 — Pope.L, studio, 2022, photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery 52 Walker

When I heard about Impossible Failures it promised to be an exciting exhibition, in that it was to bring together Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), a White post-Minimalist artist best known for his site-specific works of cutting through buildings and homes, and Pope.L (b.1955), a Black artist who used to describe himself as the friendliest Black man in America, and is known for his public performances and installations, which address Black racial stereotyping and other such hypocrisies. In a not un-interesting way, the resulting exhibition is a curatorial mash-up in which the works in it are overwhelmed. As such, this is not an exhibition where the works of each artist supply a context for the other, nor does it explore Matta-Clark’s legacy by focusing on Pope.L’s overlapping strategies. Instead it might be thought of as a collaborative installation authored by the curator Ebony L. Haynes.

January 23, 2023December 30, 2022, by Susan Hoffman Fishman

Keeper of the Waters

A city next to a body of water

Description automatically generated with low confidence — *A Living Water Garden*, Chengdu, China

For the last 50+ years, eco-artist and environmental activist Betsy Damon has devoted herself to community building – the coming together of individuals to achieve a common purpose. Since the 1980s, after a decade of engaging the public through public performances in New York City, she has worked at the intersection of art and science, focusing on the topic of water and on creating models for communities in the United States and China to know and become stewards of their own water sources. The brief descriptions below, highlighting four of Damon’s many exhibitions, ecological and sustainable design projects, publications, and organizations are only a brief glimpse into her prolific and important body of work.

December 14, 2022December 12, 2022, by Sara Farrell Okamura

Mary Ann Unger: To Shape a Moon from Bone at WCMA

A picture containing indoor, wall, floor, room

Description automatically generated — Installation view of Mary Ann Unger, WCMA

Power. Power, not bravado, not ego, but the power of intelligence, skill, fortitude, and vision is what Mary Ann Unger possessed and that is what is on exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art (referred to as WCMA). Throughout her life she defied limitations frequently imposed overtly and subconsciously on women. Attending Mt Holyoke College in the mid-60s, she studied biochemistry when few women were found in science departments, then transferred to studio art taking up welding, casting and carving. This was not the typical route for women during the mid-to late 60s. She traveled on her own to North Africa and this journey greatly influenced her work. Returning to New York she completed an MFA at Columbia and launched her career as a post minimalist sculptor, finding herself in the minority amongst a sea of men.

November 28, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Light and Matter: 2022 South Korea Sculpture Biennale

Art Spiel Photo Story

A picture containing text, library, scene, room

Description automatically generated — Michael Whittle Butterfly on the Sun, Seongsan Art Hall, Changwon Ink on UV-resistant plastic, 61’ x 48’

The Changwon Biennale is the largest recurring sculpture show in South Korea. During the fall of 2022 it showcased 69 artists under the title, Channel: Particle Wave Duality. Curated by Director Cho Kwan Yong, Chief Curator Lee Tahe Hoon and Curator Hyojin Nam, the show considered the broad sense of how light and matter interact at the intersection of art and science. Alongside three-dimensional works, it included sound art, video screenings and installations. The small group of international artists who were invited this fall to South Korea to create their work onsite in the biennale exhibition halls worked for three weeks with support from the Korean government and the care of the local team.

September 29, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Repopulations: New Horizons

Grantee of Brooklyn Arts Fund Grant Type: (Brooklyn Arts Fund/Local Arts Support/Creative Equations Fund) Project Profile: Daniela Holban (Curator)

Photo courtesy of Last Frontier NYC & Sol Kjok

Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.

September 12, 2022December 30, 2022, by Etty Yaniv

Sophia Sobers: How Life Might Look

Sophia Sobers, Power Tools, 2018, artist with plush fabric sculptures

Sophia Sobers started making site-specific and installation art in what she sees as a somewhat “meandering path.” She studied Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology while taking art courses at Rutgers. There she started learning about working with space, concept, and materials. Simultaneously taking Art and Architectural History as well as Theory, expanded what she imagined as possible in the arts. Site specific works by artists like Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark as well as architectural projects like the Blur Building by Diller and Scofidio, inspired her deeply and set her on a path of wanting to create large scale installations.

November 22, 2021November 23, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Baris Gokturk: Danse Macabre in Public Spaces: Painting Euphoria and Madness in Times of Crisis

Baris Gokturk, working on All Saints at The Boiler@ ELM Foundation

Baris Gokturk’s installations are intricate, layered, and admirably ambitious in both meaning and form. The Turkish born New York based artist asks the big questions – what is his role as an artist, individual, immigrant within the larger context of a world in crisis? In All Saints he exhibited at the Boiler space at the ELM foundation he combined imagery of dance and fire into a monumental installation.

August 25, 2021July 24, 2021, by Susan Hoffman Fishman

Seeing Water

A picture containing text, swimming, ocean floor

Description automatically generated — *Gulf of Main: Phytoplankton Breathing III*, detail. Oil and phosphorescent pigments on canvas, 48” x 16,” 2017.

Krisanne Baker defines herself as a multi-disciplinary eco-artist, water activist, citizen scientist, and educator. In all of these disciplines, she has devoted herself to researching and revealing the condition and beauty of our rivers, streams, and oceans, and to advocating for their protection.

July 16, 2021November 2, 2022, by Alex Feim

Jorge Otero-Pailos: Distributed Monuments at Sapar Contemporary

A picture containing gallery, room, scene, indoor

Description automatically generated — *Installation view of Jorge Otero-Pailos: Distributed Monuments. Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary*

One could say that the primary medium of Jorge Otero-Pailos’s work is liquid latex, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his medium is time – or rather, the passage of time made visible. In Distributed Monuments at Sapar Contemporary, Otero-Pailos presents a series of latex casts mounted on canvas from the old U.S. Mint in San Francisco, California and from the pool at Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York. Two monumental sites on opposite coasts come together – one representing the literal creation of wealth, and the other an accumulation of it by an elite family. These latex casts have extracted dust from the sites, which are both in states of preserved ruin, but can be visited by the public.

May 13, 2021May 13, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles

In Dialogue with Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles features work by two artists of Chinese descent – one from Jamaica and one from Hawai`i – paying tribute to Wifredo Lam, an artist who drew on an Afro-Cuban and Chinese heritage to create works evoking spirituality and the power of nature. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang reflect in their installation work on notions of landscape, history, and myth.