This selection of shows has been curated by Sculpture magazine editorial staff and includes just a few of the great shows around the world.
Baltimore Museum of Art -
Baltimore:
Tomás Saraceno
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Through July 8, 2018 |
Saraceno confronts fatalistic views
of the future with invention and
imagination, "looking to the sky to
escape from the reality of earth."
Merging sculpture, architecture, and
engineering to explore the possibility
of a better world, he creates structural
and theoretical proposals
for sustainable systems of travel and
habitation (from cloud clusters to
flying gardens and space elevators).
The whiff of utopianism in his
approach is more than offset by the
buoyant exuberance sustaining
his clusters of spheres, explosions of
lines, and geometric constellations.
The most recent contribution to his
"cloud city," Entangled Orbits, continues
a project that Saraceno describes
as "becoming airborne, not to fly
but to float in the air at the speed
of solar aerostatics, from cumulonimbus
cities to the cosmic web."
Web site www.artbma.org
Tomás Saraceno, Entangled
Orbits. |
Belvedere 21 -
Vienna:
Rachel Whiteread
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Through July 29, 2018
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Whiteread has spent almost 30 years
cataloguing an inverse inventory of
human life and relations, casting the
space within and around objects. Set
in plaster, resin, concrete, and rubber,
her negative impressions of
cupboards, tables, bath tubs, wash
basins, beds, mattresses, stairways,
rooms, and entire houses record the
gaps between bodies and space--
simultaneously material and immaterial,
they function like spirit sculptures,
capturing emanations and
memories invisible to the naked eye.
This exhibition, her most substantial
survey to date, ranges from early
works such as Closet and Mantle
(1988) to new works like Chicken Shed.
In addition to intimate domestic
sculptures and works on paper (which
Whiteread thinks of as "a diary"), the
show also features a special section
devoted to her Holocaust Memorial
(in Vienna's Judenplatz), as well as
some of her most important largescale
evocations of presence and
absence, including Untitled (Book
Corridors), Untitled (100 Spaces),
and Untitled (Room 101), a cast of
the BBC Broadcasting House room
believed to be the model for "the
worst thing in the world": Orwell's
sinister Room 101 in 1984, where
nightmares are made manifest.
Web site www.belvedere.at
Installation view
of "Rachel Whiteread." |
Freer|Sackler-
Washington, DC:
Subodh Gupta
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Through June 24, 2018
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The prosaic objects and rituals of
everyday life take on a magnified
status in Gupta's large-scale assemblages.
Gathered together in megastructures,
specifically Indian utensils
and tools--from aluminum dishes
and pans to milking buckets, bicycles,
and shopping carts--become building
blocks in a semantically witty
clash between local tradition and
globalized progress, spirituality and
the pursuit of material gain. Gupta's
versions of these artifacts aren't
found, however, but re-created in
stainless steel, bronze, or marble.
This aggrandizing of material (and
frequently of size) might confer an
ironic luxury status, but it is also sincere
in its elevation of basic needs
and simple technologies over the
accouterments of greed. Terminal, his
new installation in the Sackler Pavilion,
turns to a more elevated form--
the tower. Recalling the spires that
rise from the mosques, temples, and
churches of the world's largest religions,
Gupta's brass towers (ranging
up to 15 feet in height) cast off
specific symbolism and affiliation;
instead, they coalesce in a dense,
interdependent configuration, bound
together by a delicate web of thread
and a narrow path that leads into
the center of an almost urban complexity.
Web site www.freersackler.si.edu
Subodh
Gupta, Terminal (detail), Lifespan.
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HangarBicocca-
Milan:
Eva Kot'átková
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Through July 22, 2018 |
Kot'átková combines installation,
sculpture, collage, performance,
and video to investigate the internal
and external forces that influence
human behavior, particularly institutionalized
systems of control.
"The Dream Machine is Asleep," her
immersive new show, builds on the
notion of the human body as a
machine that requires periodic tuneups
for optimal performance. Those
times of rest--of sleeping and
dreaming--are also the principle
drivers of creativity, generating new
visions and parallel worlds. To reach
this promised land, however, the mind first has to negotiate and conquer
the conscious world--a pilgrimage
physically enacted here as
viewers journey through a ravenous
and chaotic Stomach of the World
(2017), where they are chewed up,
assimilated, and expelled. But whatever
damage the world inflicts--
and, for Kot'átková, that includes
every kind of phobia, trauma, and
psychological disorder--the dream
machine can repair. Contrasting the
wide-open universe of surreal fantasy
and childhood imagination
with constrictive conformity, a giant
bed replaces an office desk: from
this command center, dreams are
shaped and expression released.
Web site
www.hangarbicocca.org
Eva Kot'átková,
Cutting the Puppeteer's Strings with
Paper Teeth (Brief History of Daydreaming
and String Control).
|
Institute of Contemporary Art-
Boston:
Kevin Beasley
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Through August 26, 2018 |
Beasley's raw and performative work
explores the physical materiality and
cultural connotations of objects and
sounds. A hybrid of assemblage and
process art, his sculptures bind personal
ephemera such as discarded
clothes and studio debris into archaeological
aggregations held together
with resin and polyurethane. Working
only until the resin hardens, he
strikes a balance between the inherent
properties of the materials and
the finished forms, which preserve
embedded artifacts intact. Already
referencing an absent human presence,
these works frequently act as
acoustic mirrors, mute in themselves
but reflecting ambient and recorded
sound. Though we might recognize
what we see (house dresses, Air Jordans,
bandanas) and hear (samples
from dead rappers), these bits have
been run through the mill of symbolism
to transcend familiar surface
identity; distilled and refined, they
begin to echo a visual language that
we still understand today, albeit
remotely. Only an artist well versed
in iconographic operations could
seamlessly fuse Bernini's Chair of St.
Peter and the wicker "peacock" chair
of Black Panther Party co-founder
Huey P. Newton into a singular, profoundly
ambivalent symbol of authority
at the crossroads where promises
of protection and redemption battle
acts of ignorance and violence.
Web site www.icaboston.org
Kevin Beasley, Strange Fruit
(Pair 1).
|
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum-
Krefeld, Germany:
Christian Falsnaes
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Through June 24, 2018 |
Falsnaes, who takes a performancebased,
participatory approach to art,
creates evolving scenarios, games,
and stagings that blatantly expose
the subtle mechanics of power. To
what extent do people obey authority?
When do we transgress, and
why? The eight works in "FORCE,"
each one representing a different
model of interaction between artist
and viewers, extend this investigation
into the relationship of master
and servant, focusing on the
process of communication. Collages
of clothing fragments commemorate
a performance in which Falsnaes
compelled audience members to cut
off not only his clothes, but also
those of his gallery owner and two
collectors. In Available, museum visitors
can speak directly with the
artist, but he offers nothing beyond
precise instructions for moving
through the galleries. The controlling
hand is even stronger in Force,
a staging in which visitors have
to wear costumes and follow instructions,
completely giving up individual
identity in exchange for participation.
Web site www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de
Christian Falsnaes, Force.
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Kunsthaus Bregenz-
Bregenz, Austria:
Mika Rottenberg
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Through July 1, 2018 |
It's one thing to discuss the excesses
and abuses of capitalism and quite
another to manifest them in painfully
humorous, surreal form. Rottenberg
has no interest in critique or documentation;
instead, she uses exaggeration,
distortion, and caricature to
create awkward and uncomfortable
experiences. She wants "to activate
a building, turn the walls into skin,
and then turn them inside out." Her
installations, fabricated from cardboard
and found objects, set
the stage for videos depicting bizarre
applications of labor. From the production
of cultured pearls (NoNose-
Knows) to cheap wholesale goods
tying together Chinese superstores
and the U.S./Mexico border (Cosmic
Generator), to wet wipes literally
made from the sweat of others (Tropical
Breeze), these scenographies
lay bare the senseless absurdities
of a "globalization on steroids." The spaces, however, really drive the
point home: after squeezing through
claustrophobic corridors and tunnels
equipped with revolving doors, viewers
finally reach cramped workshops,
betting offices, and gloomy, anonymous
chambers. Inside Rottenberg's
belly of the beast, our bodies are
forced to undergo a semblance of the
production process right through
packaging and use. We all ultimately
end up as commodities to be manipulated,
bought, and sold.
Web site www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at
Mika Rottenberg, Ponytails.
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Museum Ludwig-
Cologne:
Haegue Yang
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Through August 12, 2018 |
Working with customized Venetian
blinds and sensory devices, lights,
infrared heaters, scent emitters, and
fans, Yang constructs nuanced installations
that collapse the space
between the concrete and the
ephemeral. For over 20 years, she has
explored real and metaphorical relationships
between material surroundings
and emotional responses,
attempting to give form and meaning
to experiences beyond conventional
order. "ETA," her first survey
exhibition, showcases her remarkable
versatility with more than 120 works
ranging from action-based objects to
video essays, anthropomorphic light
sculptures, performative pieces, and
large-scale installations. Despite their
rigorous and minimal abstraction,
these objects and environments do
not negate narrative; instead, as
Yang says, "they allow a narrative to
be achieved without constituting its
own limits." Harmonious, yet full of
dissonance, such works defy boundaries
between inside and out, open
and closed.
Web site www.museum-ludwig.de
Haegue Yang, Mountains of
Encounter.
|
Park Avenue Armory-
New York:
Nick Cave
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June 7 through July 1, 2018 |
From drill hall to dance hall--trust
Cave to unravel the tight knots of
military discipline and set the newly
liberated strings into freewheeling
motion. The Let Go, his largest
installation since the monumental
Until, grants much-needed permission
to relax ironclad control over
the frustrations, anxieties, and fears
bedeviling almost every aspect
of life these days. In Until, Cave let
loose a primal scream disguised
as bling; here, everyone gets a go at
catharsis: vent, let your hair down,
channel all that suppressed anger
and disgust into the sheer joy of
physical release--just let it go. Visitors
can enjoy various daytime
events, with yoga practitioners, hulahoopers,
church choirs, and dancers
leading games of Twister, Soul Train
lines, and other encounters--all
presided over by a swaying and gliding,
giant sculptural curtain and
music curated by New York's leading
DJs. On weekday evenings, Cave
orchestrates "Up Right" performances
that begin with "practitioners"
dressing and resculpting the
bodies of "initiates" in soundsuits.
Another cleansing of mind, body,
and spirit, this piece-by-piece ritual
transformation puts participants
into another skin, another identity
where selfhood can shape itself without
normative definitions.
"Feat.," a more sedate version of
the Cave experience on view at the
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
in Nashville
through June 24, features 10
recent soundsuits, psychedelic textile
installations, a massive projection
of the soundsuit-centric film
Blot, and several sculptures originally
shown in the 2014 "Made
By Whites For Whites" exhibition.
Web site www.armoryonpark.org
Nick Cave, mock-up of
curtain for The Let Go.
|
Philadelphia Museum of Art -
Philadelphia:
Jean Shin
|
Through July 15, 2018 |
Shin's installations give new life to
the castoffs of consumer society.
Scavenging discarded objects such
as worn shoes, lost socks, broken
umbrellas, and old lottery tickets, she
dismantles, alters, and reconstructs
them into elaborate assemblages of
hundreds, sometimes thousands,
of seemingly identical objects. "Collections"
features six large-scale installations
created since 2000, including
Worn Soles, an unfurling topography
of detached shoe soles set in patterns
of mass movement; Unraveling,
a dense, brightly colored web of
woolen threads pulled from donated
sweaters that traces relationships
within the Asian American arts
community; and Armed, a tattered
mosaic of U.S. military uniforms
whose various camouflage patterns
designed for conflicts in different
landscapes around the world testify
to a pervasive and far-from-invisible
presence.
Web site
www.philamuseum.org
Jean
Shin, installation view of "Collections."
|
Smithsonian American Art
Museum -
Washington, DC:
Do Ho Suh
|
Through August 5, 2018 |
Suh's installations capture the emotional
tensions of displacement:
belonging while being alien, at home
while longing for "home." His architectural
sculptures start "from a
reflection on space, especially personal
space--not only a physical
one, but an intangible, metaphorical,
and psychological one." That identification
of self with place infuses not
only the spaces we call home, but
also those objects and bits of hardware
that we handle daily. The works
in "Almost Home" may record the
specificities of Suh's life, but their resonance
is universal. Fabric copies
of sinks, toilets, latch sets, and hinges,
removed from their context, isolated,
and displayed as "Specimens,"
elevate ordinary items into uncanny
familiars, emphasizing the intimacy
of our contact with them. A largescale
"Hub" construction puts these
details back in situ, morphing corridors
lifted from his parents' house
in South Korea and various abodes in
New York and Europe into a single
ghostly passageway. Rendered in
jewel-tones of gossamer fabric, complete
with heating pipes, ductwork,
switches, and radiators, this splicedtogether
space of transition maps
a life's journey, the self as memory.
Suh's work also reveals a trace of salvage
yard nostalgia, unexpectedly
paying homage to the character
of place beyond the self, recording
buildings, ornaments, and artifacts
that will soon dissolve into the past.
Web site
https://americanart.si.edu
Do Ho Suh, Fire Extinguisher, Unit G5,
23 Wenlock Road, Union Wharf, London,
N1 7SB UK.
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