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September 2010
Vol. 29 No. 7
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Nicholas Hlobo
Barbara Hashimoto
Willard Boepple
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From the Chairman

John F. Kennedy announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. The first CERN particle accelerator becomes operational in Geneva. Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. France tests its first atomic bomb. Elvis Presley
returns home from two years of military service. The U.S. launches the
first weather satellite. Gary Powerss U2 plane is shot down, and he
is captured. The Summer Olympic Games are held in Rome. JFK and
Richard Nixon participate in the first televised presidential debate. The
first kidney transplant is performed. Kennedy becomes the secondyoungest man elected President of the U.S. The world population is
just over three billion.
The year was 1960. Michael Stipe, Oliver Platt, Greg Louganis, Prince
Andrew, Dorothy Stratten, David Duchovny, Antonio Banderas, Sean
Penn, Cal Ripken, Jr., Hugh Grant, Blanche Lincoln, Tilda Swinton, John
F. Kennedy Jr., Julianne Moore, Kenneth Branagh, and the International
Sculpture Center were born.
Thats right, 50 years ago, the world witnessed these events, and
countless othersall forever etched in our minds. And among these
important historic moments was the decision of a young man named
Elden Tefft, in Lawrence, Kansas, to found the ISC.
Fifty years later, the ISC has grown into a vibrant organization with
nearly 8,000 members and subscribers supporting a rich set of programs. To its humble beginnings as an informal conference, the ISC
has added the biennial International Sculpture Conference (and other
symposia and events), Sculpture magazine, ISC Press (with three books
published to date and a fourth underway), the most comprehensive
Web site dedicated to sculpture on the Internet, as well as the student awards program, educator and patron awards programs and, of
course, the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award program.
It has been quite a 50-year history, and I am proud to have been a
part of it for the past seven years. To celebrate this fantastic milestone,
the ISC will celebrate its 50th birthday with a party on October 22nd
at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. With artwork for sale,
entertainment, food, drink, and a raffle that will include a seven-day
stay in a two-bedroom condominium in St. Maarten, it promises to
be a fun and memorable evening. Tell your friends and visit <www.
___
sculpture.org>
________ for more details, to buy your party tickets, and to purchase raffle tickets.
Whether you can join us in New York or not, I hope you will raise
your glass with me in toast to Eldens vision and the success of the
ISCs first 50 years. Here, too, is a toast to the next 50.
Josh Kanter
Chairman, ISC Board of Directors
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ISC Board of Directors

Chairman: Josh Kanter, Salt Lake City, UT
Chakaia Booker, New York, NY
Robert Edwards, Naples, FL
Bill FitzGibbons, San Antonio, TX
David Handley, Australia
Paul Hubbard, Philadelphia, PA
Ree Kaneko, Omaha, NE
Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, Switzerland
Marc LeBaron, Lincoln, NE
Patricia Meadows, Dallas, TX
Creighton Michael, Mt. Kisco, NY
George W. Neubert, Brownville, NE
Albert Paley, Rochester, NY
F. Douglas Schatz, Potsdam, NY
Walter Schatz, Nashville, TN
Mary Ellen Scherl, Tenafly, NJ
STRETCH, Kansas City, MO
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, Iceland
Boaz Vaadia, New York, NY
Chairmen Emeriti: Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE
John Henry, Chattanooga, TN
Peter Hobart, Italy
Robert Vogele, Hinsdale, IL
Founder: Elden Tefft, Lawrence, KS
Lifetime Achievement
in Contemporary
Sculpture Recipients
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Fletcher Benton
Louise Bourgeois
Anthony Caro
Elizabeth Catlett
John Chamberlain
Eduardo Chillida
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Mark di Suvero
Richard Hunt
Phillip King
William King
Manuel Neri
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Nam June Paik
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Gio Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
William Tucker
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September 2010
Vol. 29 No. 7
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
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60
Departments
Features
10 News
26
16 Forum Chelsea and SoHo Chinese Style: The
Nicholas Hlobo: Where Is Your Navel? by Pamela Allara
34
The Art of Activism: A Conversation with Barbara Hashimoto by Collette Chattopadhyay
40
Art and Nature: Spains Landscape Art Initiative in Huesca by Paula Llull Llobera
18 Itinerary
44
Willard Boepple: Disembodiment and Sensuality by David Cohen
24 Commissions
50
Maria Artemis: Mining Materials by Rebecca Dimling Cochran
80 ISC News
54
Revolutionizing History: A Conversation with Olivia Robinson, Josh MacPhee, and
58
Michael Aurbach: Secrecy, the Promethean Weapon by Dorothy M. Joiner
60
Reiterating Allan Kaprows Yard by Robert C. Morgan
Contemporary Art Scene in Beijing and Shanghai

by Athena Tacha
Dara Greenwald by Jesse Ball
Reviews
69
New York: Whitney Biennial 2010
70
Washington, DC: Barbara Josephs Liotta
71
Lincoln, Massachusetts: Arthur Simms
72
New York: Mel Kendrick
72
Cincinnati: Carmel Buckley
73
Philadelphia: State of the Union
74
Memphis: Greely Myatt
75
Houston: Contructivism in Relief
75
Buenos Aires: Juan Batalla
76
Otterlo, the Netherlands: A Procession of
77
Istanbul: 11th Istanbul Biennial
78
Beijing: Qiu Zhijie
Sculptures
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Dispatch: New Directions in Performance

and Sculpture
On the Cover: Nicholas Hlobo, Umphanda

ongazaliyo, 2008. Rubber, ribbon, zippers,
steel, wood, and plaster, dimensions variable.
44
Installation at the ICA Boston. Photograph:

John Kennard, Nicholas Hlobo, Courtesy
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Michael Stevenson, Cape Town.
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I N T E R N AT I O N A L S C U L P T U R E C E N T E R
Executive Director Johannah Hutchison
Director of Conferences and Events Dawn Molignano
Office Manager Denise Jester
Membership Associate Emily Fest
Web and Portfolio Manager Frank Del Valle
Conferences and Events Associate Valerie Friedman
Executive Assistant Kelly Lehman
Grant Writer/Development Coordinator Kara Kaczmarzyk
Administrative Associate Eva Calder Powel
ISC Headquarters
19 Fairgrounds Road, Suite B
Hamilton, New Jersey 08619
Phone: 609.689.1051, fax 609.689.1061
E-mail: isc@sculpture.org
_________
SCULPTURE MAGAZINE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
Editorial Assistant Elizabeth Lynch
Design Eileen Schramm visual communication
Advertising Sales Manager Brenden OHanlon
Contributing Editors Maria Carolina Baulo (Buenos
Aires), Roger Boyce (Christchurch), Susan Canning (New
York), Marty Carlock (Boston), Jan Garden Castro (New
York), Collette Chattopadhyay (Los Angeles), Ina Cole
(London), Ana Finel Honigman (Berlin), John K. Grande
(Montreal), Kay Itoi (Tokyo), Matthew Kangas (Seattle),
Zoe Kosmidou (Athens), Angela Levine (Tel Aviv), Brian
McAvera (Belfast), Robert C. Morgan (New York), Robert
Preece (Rotterdam), Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New
York), Ken Scarlett (Melbourne), Peter Selz (Berkeley),
Sarah Tanguy (Washington), Laura Tansini (Rome)
Address all editorial correspondence to:

Sculpture
1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: 202.234.0555, fax 202.234.2663
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gharper@sculpture.org
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Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and

the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
I N T E R N AT I O N A L S C U L P T U R E C E N T E R C O N T E M P O R A R Y S C U L P T U R E C I R C L E
The International Sculpture Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
that provides programming and services supported by contributions, grants,
sponsorships, and memberships.
Major Donors ($50,000+)

Fletcher Benton
Rob Fisher
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Johnson Art and Education
Foundation
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Robert Mangold
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I.A. OShaughnessy Foundation
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Russ RuBert
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Bernar Venet
The ISC Board of Directors gratefully acknowledges the generosity of our members
and donors in our Contemporary Sculpture Circle: those who have contributed
$350 and above.
Chairmans Circle ($10,00049,999)

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and Design
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Foundation
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Kanter Family Foundation
Keeler Foundation
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Koret Foundation
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Philanthropic Fund
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National Endowment
for the Arts
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Tom Otterness
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Estate of John A. Renna
Salt Lake Art Center
Lincoln Schatz
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Slotkin
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London
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Isaac Witkin
Directors Circle ($5,0009,999)

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Foundation
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Gallery Kasahara
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Gardner Foundation
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Museum of Outdoor Arts
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Louchheim
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Merchandise Mart
Properties
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National Gallery, London
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Riva Yares Gallery
Wendy Ross
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Sculpture Community/
Sculpture.net
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Sebastin
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STRETCH
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Tate
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About the ISC

The International Sculpture Center, a member-supported, nonprofit organization
founded in 1960, advances the creation and understanding of sculpture and its
unique, vital contribution to society. The ISC seeks to expand public understanding
and appreciation of sculpture internationally, demonstrate the power of sculpture
to educate, effect social change, engage artists and arts professionals in a
dialogue to advance the art form, and promote a supportive environment for
sculpture and sculptors. Members include sculptors, collectors, patrons, educators, and museum professionalsanyone with an interest in and commitment
to the field of sculpture.
Membership
ISC membership includes subscriptions to Sculpture and Insider; access to
International Sculpture Conferences; free registration in Portfolio, the ISCs
on-line sculpture registry; and discounts on publications, supplies, and services.
International Sculpture Conferences
The ISCs International Sculpture Conferences gather sculpture enthusiasts
from all over the world to network and dialogue about technical, aesthetic,
and professional issues.
Sculpture Magazine
Published 10 times per year, Sculpture is dedicated to all forms of contemporary
sculpture. The members edition includes the Insider newsletter, which contains
timely information on professional opportunities for sculptors, as well as a list
of recent public art commissions and announcements of members accomplishments.
www.sculpture.org
__________
The ISCs award-winning Web site <www.sculpture.org>
_________ is the most comprehensive
resource for information on sculpture. It features Portfolio, an on-line slide
registry and referral system providing detailed information about artists and their
work to buyers and exhibitors; the Sculpture Parks and Gardens Directory, with
listings of over 250 outdoor sculpture destinations; Opportunities, a membership
service with commissions, jobs, and other professional listings; plus the ISC
newsletter and extensive information about the world of sculpture.
Education Programs and Special Events
ISC programs include the Outstanding Sculpture Educator Award, the Outstanding
Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards, and the Lifetime
Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture and gala. Other special events
include opportunities for viewing art and for meeting colleagues in the field.
This program is made possible in

part by funds from the New Jersey
State Council on the Arts/Department
of State, a Partner Agency of the
National Endowment for the Arts.
This issue is supported

in part by a grant from
the National Endowment
for the Arts.
Patrons Circle ($2,5004,999)

Henry Buhl
Federated Department
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555 International Inc.Ruth AbernethyLinda Ackley-EakerAcklie
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Chicago
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StudioThomas GottslebenTodd GrahamPeter GrayGabriele Poehlmann
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Zeigler
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Remembering Louise Bourgeois (19112010)
A French-born American artist who gained widespread recognition only late in the course of a prolific career, Louise Bourgeois had a catalytic effect on younger artists. Her psychologically charged
sculptures, installations, and two-dimensional works probed the depths of the human psyche and
uncovered new forms of narrative through abstraction.
Since 1989, Sculpture has published numerous articles on Bourgeois, following the ever-changing evolutionary track of her work. In September 1991, the International Sculpture Center recognized her contributions to the field by naming her the first recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture, observing:
Bourgeoishas been celebrated for her fierce independence over a long and prolific career. [She] consistently adhered to quality in her work while
exploring new forms and ideas, along the way inspiring and supporting other artists with her uncompromising commitment.
Passages from the first and the most recent Sculpture articles devoted to Bourgeoiss work testify to her unceasing artistic vitality and driving need
to explore new territory, demonstrating her importance to contemporary art.
Above: Fingers, 1968/98.
Bronze. Far left: Installation
view of Echo, Cheim & Read,
NY, 2008. Left: Installation
view of Louise Bourgeois:
The Fabric Works, Fondazione
Some artists become more forgiving with age. Breadth of experience blunts
their anger, inclines them to bemusement rather than despair; they are
liable to take a philosophical attitude toward their mtier. Not Bourgeois.
As each new body of work bursts upon the world, a new level of energy is
revealed, along with new degrees of caustic humor. Her sculpture, once
understood as the expression of powerful and barely assimilated feelings,
now clearly exposes the bitter intelligence that impels it. In the last
decade, Bourgeois, who is 77, has achieved a more or less unrivaled preeminence among sculptors and, arguably, beyond her own discipline. Evidently
shes not finding the empyrean restful, and she continues to throw down
thunderbolts with a vengeful armI am fearless in my art, Bourgeois says,
I am not interested in anybodyI am impudent, manipulative, I do what
I want to do. She speaks, as in her art, with the courage born of long years
of self-reliance. But while she risks alienating her audience with a measure
of embarrassed confusion, Bourgeois seems to know shes got us so
enthralled that we cant turn away.
Nancy Princenthal (July/August 1989)
We watch as she mines her childhood to resolve issues about herself and
her relationship to others. In the process, some of the darkest and most
complex existential states, including fear, anger, joy, and self-doubt, are
exposed and materialized into works memorable for their unabashed honesty and visceral ambivalence. As we follow the interplay between fragment
and whole, past and present, we become voyeurs: we feel the oscillations
of her life, her challenge to (often) male power figures, and her convulsive
bouts of freedomWhile it is often hard to discern fact from myth with
Bourgeois, her vision astounds. Recognized rather late in her career, when
feminists, post-feminists, and Post-Minimalists embraced her, her challenge
to beauty and tradition is unrelenting, and her work feels alive and natural,
no matter the distortions. Above all, it is the power of her handthe
link between mind and body and the instrument of transformationthat
endures.
Sarah Tanguy (May 2010)
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TOP: COURTESY STORM KING ART CENTER / LEFT: COURTESY CHEIM & READ, NY / RIGHT: FABRIZIO GAZZARRI, COURTESY FONDAZIONE VEDOVA, VENICE
Vedova, Venice, 2010.
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Statue of Four Lies

The Art Guys
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Chelsea and SoHo Chinese Style: The Contemporary Art Scene in Beijing and Shanghai
by Athena Tacha
When I went to western China

last year, I stopped for a few
days to see contemporary art in
Beijing and Shanghai, which I
had previously visited in 1993.
The two cities were now fully
Westernized and unrecognizable. Both of them have several
areas of contemporary art activity, but I only had time to visit a
couple in each. Beijings largest
and best known is Dashanzi
798 Art Districttwo dozen
city blocks of art galleries and
shops flanking 798 Road (off
the Airport Expressway), many
housed in unused factory build-
ings. Compared to Chelsea,

Dashanzi 798 is ampler and
more vulgarly commercializeda combination of serious,
pretentious, and mediocre art
galleries and a bazaar. The huge
Ullens Center is central to 798:
fancy immaculate spaces (reminiscent of Dia:Beacon) with
sparse and often grandiose
installations, accompanied by
affected critical texts to educate
visitors (who have to pay a
20-Yuan entrance fee). Several
other commercial galleries
require an entrance fee, prohibit
photography, and do not supply
bios of the artists. Some of the

galleries imitate the most uppity ones in Chelsea, with incommunicado zombies at their front
desks, a single artwork installed
per each huge wall, and endless
empty spaces on which to meditate.
A perfect example of the type
is the luxurious new Pace Beijing, where the fashionable
young female usher hardly
deigned to unlock the front
door (during open hours) for
visitors seeking admission to a
drab show by Zhang (Xiaogangthe explanatory text did
not bother to give his full
name): gray cast bronze and
cement sculptures reminiscent
of Pistoletto, Jasper Johns, and
Beuys. In striking contrast, Pace
is next door to the efficiently
run Faurschou Gallery (the best
of more than 25 galleries that
I visited at 798), which had
a very interesting show of Ai
Weiweis recent work. I first
encountered Ai at the 2007
Kassel Documenta; I think that
he is Chinas greatest living
sculptorfor his extreme versatility, informed intelligence,
architectural talent, and genuine social concernand this
opinion was confirmed when
I saw his work again in China.
Across an artificial lily pond
from Pace and Faurschou lies
another contrast. The new Hong
Kong museum, housed in a
handsome historical building,
was full of dreary contemporary
art, and next to it, the RAAB
Gallery was showing a decorators ambitious sculptures of
Above: Mao Yu, Tree of Man, 2007,
island6 Art Center, Shanghai. Left:
Red Town Sculpture Park, Shanghai.
slickened-up natural materials.

Yet on the same square, in an
even more fascinating old brick
building, was an extensive
exhibition of young artists
varied, lively, and humorous.
I saw at least two more worthwhile shows at 798: at the
Amelie Gallery (the unfriendliest of all), where a marvelous
huge brush drawing of water
surface reflections by Chen Qi
recalled a more abstract and
high-contrast Vija Celmins; and
at SZ Art Center, where a political/conceptual show (celebrating the 60th anniversary of the
Peoples Republic) featured
large paintings of Maos
speeches, accompanied by a
frieze of 660 tiny photos of all
the members who signed the
Communist Partys first Convention. Among the considerable number of galleries showing earlier wave Chinese
modern (in the style of 50s
Western art, but often larger
and more grotesque), there was
a liberal amount of the slick
or gross new Chinese Realist
painting and sculpture that
brings top prices in New York
and London.
The newest and most promising art area is the East End Art
Zone now being developed in
the dusty village of Caochangdi,
not far from 798 but difficult
to visit except by reserved taxi
with written instructions (the
map in the RedBox Art Guide,
Beijing is useless). Ai moved
his studio and home there in
the late 90s and designed a fascinating Kafka-esque gallery
area of narrow alleys and brickwalled Minimalist buildings
the main architectural project
undertaken by his Fake Design
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Left: View of Mao Zedong sculpture

overlooking Peoples Square in
Kashgar. Right: Detail of The Birds
Nest Olympic Stadium, Beijing.
studio. The galleries are rather

far apart and hard to locate, but
I managed to see three. Chambers Fine Arts, C-Space, and
ShangArt were excellent in
terms of space, the art shown,
and staff attitude. The brandnew ShangArt, with a knowledgeable and friendly director,
had a magical show, Law, by
young Shanghai sculptor Zhang
Ding. Consisting of several
ambitious multimedia installations vaguely evocative of
Rebecca Horns complex kinetic
works, the show was intensely
personal and could have held
its own in any international
contemporary art center.
The best exhibition I saw in
Shanghais main contemporary
art quarter, 50 Moganshan Rd.,
was at the older ShangArt
gallery (H Space). Seeing Ones
Own EyesContemporary Art
from the Middle East, a compelling and diverse group of
sculptures and paintings, was
purportedly curated by the
MadeIn company. The exhibition included a provocative
statement by Shanghai artist Xu
Zhen, who, in fact, created all
of the works. In the subtlest and
most disquieting piece, a rectangular section of floor covered with broken bricks and
mortar subtly shifted in response to the breathing of an
air-mattress under the rubble.
Shanghais M50 is much
smaller than Beijings 798, less
gentrified and commercialized,
and more genuine-feeling,

like old SoHo versus present
Chelsea. I saw some good
shows at 99 Degrees, Studio
Yang Liu, C. Demaitre Studio,
and particularly at island6 Art
Center, which had three simultaneous exhibitions: Mao Yu,
an excellent performance artist/
photographer; Zhang Liyu,
a sculptor making interesting
work with coins; and a cooperative of very good animatedLED artists.
Red Town Sculpture Park, the
second contemporary art complex that I visited in Shanghai,
consists of the active DDM
Warehouse, which was closed
for a holiday; another immense
interior space (ex-steel factory)
with an endless display of enormous, mostly realist modern
sculptures of outstanding craftsmanship in various expensive
materials, generally in Western
styles of the mid-20th century;
and a very spacious lawn
sprinkled with large and
uninteresting or imitative sculptures, many of which may date
from the 2005 Biennial Urban
Sculpture Exhibition, sponsored by government agencies
and reportedly outdated from
its start.
The privately run MOCA
Shanghai (in the Peoples Park)
is the best official outlet for
contemporary art in the city.
During my visit, it had an international show curated by
Christophe De Jaeger and Art
Yan, Fantastic Illusions,

which featured light and video
installations. I particularly liked
David Claerbouts Shadow Piece
and Teddy Los The Positive
Void. MOCAs top-floor Art Lab
(with a chic restaurant and terrace caf) displays a variety of
commissioned art in all media,
including video, animated
LED/RGBs (which are all the
rage in Chinas urban spaces),
manipulated photography
(Yang Yonguang), and sculpture
(Uu Fei). The work seemed of
a higher level than that shown
at Ullens bar in Beijings 798.
While Ais huge Chandelier at
Ullens is handsome, his
Dragon winding its way across
the wall above the elegant
couches of MOCAs Art Lab
lobby is a masterpiece of intelligent ready-found art (it is
entirely composed of childrens
backpacks).
In contemporary architecture,
Shanghai is developing an area
of immense commercial skyscrapers at Pudong (across the
river from the Bund), but most
of them are architecturally
tedious, with one significant
exception: Kohn Pedersen
Foxs Shanghai World Financial
Center (19972007), now the
tallest building in China (1614
feet), is one of the most beautiful skyscrapers in the world,
exceptional in its simplicity
and elegance.
Thanks to the Olympics,
Beijing boasts several recent
architectural achievements: the
National Center for Performing
Arts (The Egg) by French
architect Paul Andreu; the airports international Terminal
3 by Norman Foster; and the
National Stadium (The Birds

Nest) by Herzog and de
Meuron, based on a design by
Ai Weiwei. The stadiums complexity and grandeur are
beyond description. Its rising
and bulging oval of monstrous,
irregularly intertwined steel
beams (like crisscrossing twigs)
encloses a vast, gently curving
stadium of astonishing majesty,
decorated with irregularly
rhythmic patterns of color on
the seats and steps. In addition
to its incredible variety of
views, this sculptural building
pays attention to detail at
every pointfrom color-coding to light fixtures.
In a city of Beijings scale, no
single public sculpture can
make a statement, except perhaps the extensive computeranimated waterworks across
from Tiananmen Square (reminiscent of the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas). Perversely,
the only outdoor sculpture that
impressed me during my trip
was the colossal concrete statue
of Mao standing majestically
over whats left of the old city
of Kashgar and raising his right
arm to the Peoples Square. It
really is a grand piece of traditional statuary, very appropriate
for its wide-open public space
and messageperhaps the
best one remaining from the
old regime.
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Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

Gateshead, U.K.
Cage Mix: Sculpture and Sound
Cornelia Parker
Through September 19, 2010
Consistently unconventional, John
Cage unraveled the rules of musical
composition, re-thinking sound
itself as well as the score in order
to open up a universe of auditory
possibilities across time and space.
An important catalyst for the highart subversions of Fluxus and
Happenings, his embrace of chance,
participation, and the mix continues to inspire artists today. This
show brings together works by
eight artists, including Sam Belinfante, Graham Gussin, Christian Marclay, Jeremy Millar, Katie
Paterson, Paul Ramrez Jonas,
Richard Rigg, and Katja Strunz, who
use Cages ideas as a starting point
for investigations into ideas that
span the origin of sound, auditory
ghosts, and lunar mappings.
Parkers work observes the principle that conservation of matter dic-
tates that nothing is ever destroyed,

merely transformed into something
else. But what does it become? Is
there meaning in the transformation? Her compelling treatments of
familiar, everyday objects explore
the nature of matter, test physical
properties, and play on meaning
and value. Using objects loaded with
history and associations, she
explodes, crushes, and stretches
them until they enter a realm
between states of being. In connection with Cage Mix, this exhibition
of new and rarely seen pieces focuses
on Parkers interest in hidden
acousticspercussive moments,
intricacies, and identities intensified through absence.
Tel: + 44 (0) 191 478 1810
Web site <www.balticmill.com>
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead, U.K.
Toms Saraceno
Through October 10, 2010
Saraceno confronts fatalistic views
of the future with invention and
imagination, looking to the sky

to escape the reality of the 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.
His new installation expands on his
2009 synthesis of galaxy and spider
web formation for the Venice
Biennale, engaging arachnologists,
astrophysicists, architects, and engineers. More than a funhouse
fright, this oversized and interactive homage to a Black Widow web
(8,000 strings connected by over
23,000 individually tied knots) connects earthly and cosmic structure.
Tel: + 44 (0) 191 478 1810
Web site <www.balticmill.com>
Left: Graham Gussin, Vortex Mix

Music of the Spheres, from Cage
Mix. Top: Cornelia Parker, Perpetual
Cannon. Above: Toms Saraceno,
14 billions (working title).
Evergreen House
Baltimore
Sculpture at Evergreen 2010
Since its inception in 2000, Sculpture at Evergreen has given artists
the freedom to design whatever
they want, using whatever materials
they want, after visiting and exploring the historic 19th-century Evergreen House and its 26-acre
grounds. This year, guest-curators
Ronit Eisenbach and Jennie Fleming
describe the works in Simultaneous Presence as initiating a
dialogue on the intertwining of
moments, meanings, and place.
Ten new works (five by artists and
five by architects) by Eric Leshinsky,
C. Ryan Patterson, and Fred
Scharman; David Page; Shannon
Young; Cynthia Gunadi; Yolande
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GUSSIN: COLIN DAVISON, COURTESY BALTIC / PARKER: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FRITH STREET GALLERY / SARACENO: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BALTIC
itinerary
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YOUNG: WILL KIRK/HOMEWOODPHOTO.JHU.EDU, COURTESY EVERGREEN MUSEUM & LIBRARY, THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY / BOURGEOIS: CHRISTOPHER BURKE, COURTESY CHEIM & READ, HAUSER & WIRTH, AND GALERIE KARSTEN GREVE / YIN XIUZHEN: PAUL GREEN, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND
BEIJING COMMUNE / SONG DONG: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BEIJING COMMUNE
sculpture
Top: Shannon Young, How Does Your Garden Grow?, from Sculpture at Evergreen
2010. Above: Louise Bourgeois, Spider. Top right: Yin Xiuzhen, Weapons
(detail). Right: Song Dong, Burning Mirror.
Daniels; Myeongbeom Kim; Matter

Practice; Yukiko Nakashima; Meredith Nickie; and Taeg Nishimoto rely
on unexpected materials to challenge the historical and cultural
grounds of Evergreen and the urban
environment, considering abundance and absence, sustenance and
sustainability, fantasy and pleasure,
and wealth and its sources.
Tel: 410.516.0341
Web site
<www.museums.jhu.edu/
evergreen>
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Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca

Vedova
Venice
Louise Bourgeois
Over the course of a prolific career,
Bourgeois engaged with most of
the 20th centurys major avant-garde
movements, but her work consistently stood apart from trends and
frequently at the forefront of contemporary practice. Her powerfully
inventive sculptures run the stylistic
gamutabstraction, realism,
and the ready-madeand explore
almost every possible material.
These different inflections, however,
always remain at the service of an
unswerving set of themes, pulled
forth from the depths of human
experience. The Fabric Works, the
last exhibition in which she was
actively involved, offers a concentrated examination of her fabric
drawings (200208)intimate montages, collages, and assemblages
made from pieces of Bourgeoiss
own clothing that radiate an unsettling and surprising energy, a presence that stems as much from
their richness of color and language
as their symbolic resonance.
Reincarnations of the past and testaments to memory, these altered
fabric forms express a tormented
but powerful femininity.
Tel: + 39 (0) 41 5226626
Web site
<www.fondazionevedova.org>
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
New Plymouth, New Zealand
Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen
Through installation, sculpture, performance, and video, Chinese conceptual art innovators Song Dong
and Yin Xiuzhen respond to the
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dizzying pace of social change and

urbanization overtaking their native
country. Both artists are particularly
interested in the impact of rapid
growth on family and community
life, as traditional customs of
human interaction erode in the face
of new priorities such as wealth
acquisition and consumption. In
addition to presenting recent work,
the couple have also created new
commissions that include a collaboration with their eight-year-old
daughter and a beyond-the-gallery
piece that engages with the street
and wider issues of transportation,
urban development, and the textures
of daily life.
Tel: + 64 6 759 6060
Web site
<www.govettbrewster.com>
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itinerary
view of Dream Passage. Left:

Greg Lynn, Fountain. Above: Charles
LeDray, Throwing Shadows.
Hamburger Bahnhof
Berlin
Bruce Nauman
Idea- rather than medium-driven,
Nauman has pursued numerous
directions over the course of his
career. But his diversity of expressionvideo, neon, sound, and
sculptureis deceptive. Beginning
with his ground-breaking practices
of the 1960s and carrying right
through his recent spatial/aural
compositions, he has been engaged
in a coherent inquiry into how perception is shaped, how meaning is
conveyed, and how language and
space determine and alter human
behavior. Dream Passage, his first
major show in Berlin, focuses on a
series of works inspired by dreams
and features several examples of
what he calls experience architecture, including the spectacular
Room with My Soul Left Out, Room

That Does Not Care (1984). Viewers
moving uneasily through these corridors and rooms are forced to
confront fears, anxieties, and sometimes themselves.
Tel: + 49 (0) 30 3978 3411
Web site <www.smb.museum>
Hammer Museum
Los Angeles
Greg Lynn
A pioneer of blob architecture, Lynn
has devoted his career to overcoming stasis. His notion of animate
form, fully articulated in 1999,
replaces the familiar building blocks
of stability with new organic models
based on evolution and the forces
that shape growth and vitality
in the natural and virtual worlds.
Since then, his irregular, biomorphic
designs, animated through CAD

and other software environments,
have influenced countless artists
and designers. His recent furniture
designs and sculptural projects
push material boundaries while
exploring the formal potential of
altered, recycled objects. For the
Hammer, he has created a whimsical re-imagining of an ordinary
fountain in which used plastic
teeter-totters coalesce into a fantastical playground of whales and
sharks. Lynns studio is always on
the lookout for toys; the wish list
is posted on his Web site <www.
___
glform.com>.
______
Tel: 310.443.7000
Web site
<www.hammer.ucla.edu>
Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston
Charles LeDray
LeDrays work embodies the conviction that ideas are experienced
not only through the life of the mind,
but also through the skill of the
hand. It is no coincidence that this

retrospective, like one of his most
well-known pieces, is called workworkworkworkwork. Meticulous
attention to detail is evident in all
of his work, regardless of material
(fabric, porcelain, or bone) or technique. In this era of high-tech, mass
production, he insists on painstaking manual processes, and unlike
many other contemporary artists,
he completes this labor alone. His
multi-part sculptures of clothing,
toys, and domestic objects all
resemble things we have seen or
used, just at a different scale and
imbued with a deep humanity. This
selection of more than 50 smallerthan-life sculptures and installations,
including a re-creation of a secondhand clothing shop filled with
mens suits and a new ceramic work
composed of more than 3,000 finger-sized black porcelain pots,
reveals an artist who defies stereotypes to inquire into the intersection of identity and anonymity, individual and collective, uniqueness
and conformity.
Tel: 617.478.3100
Web site <www.icaboston.org>
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NAUMAN: ROMAN MRZ, BERLIN 2010, VG BILD-KUNST, BONN 2010 / LYNN: BRIAN FORREST / LEDRAY: TOM POWEL, COURTESY SPERONE WESTWATER
Top left: Bruce Nauman, installation
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has received new impulse. This largescale exhibition gathers works by

Beuys, Mario Merz, Anish Kapoor,
Tony Cragg, Meris Angioletti, Olafur
Eliasson, Carsten Nicolai, Katharina
Grosse, and Giuseppe Penoneall
demonstrating the continued viability of an approach that champions
holistic, creative thinking.
Tel: + 49 (0) 5361 2669 0
Web site
<www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de>
Guggenheim Bilbao
Bilbao
Anish Kapoor
Kapoors geometric and biomorphic
objects seem to come from another
world, a realm of almost impossible
purity, lightness, and beauty. But
there has always been a tension in
his work that undermines harmonic
perfection: roughness intrudes on
refinement; messy internal implications qualify austere voids; and
made matter threatens to dissolve
into the unmade. This retrospective
of works from the last 30 years
underscores the duality at the heart
of his practice. From the refined saturations of the pigment sculptures
through the voids and the nonobjects, to the ritualized, mechanized acts of creation/violence performed by his recent installations,
Kapoors illusion of immateriality is
grounded in transformative materiality.
Tel: + 34 94 435 90 00
Web site <www.guggenheim.org>
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Wolfsburg, Germany
Rudolf Steiner: Art of the Everyday
The beginning of the 20th century
witnessed resurgent interest in the
spiritual, giving birth to a wide range
of movementssome serious, some
decidedly wacky. While many of
these ideas found their way into art,
perhaps the most influential, and
lasting, notions came from Rudolf
Steiner, the Austrian philosopher,
social theorist, architect, and esotericist who sought a synthesis between
science and mysticism. Anthroposophy, as he labeled his particular
mix of European transcendentalism
and Theosophy, embraced education,
biodynamic agriculture, medicine,
and the arts, demonstrating his
belief that there is no limit to human
knowledge. From Kandinsky and
Mondrian to Beuys, Steiners cosmos
has resonated with the formal
and conceptual goals of Modernism.
Today, as we debate ecological
responsibility, toy with the manipulation and creation of life, and ponder
what it means to be human, his idea
of an integrated, balanced totality
Laumeier Sculpture Park

St. Louis
Brandon Anschultz
Anschultz describes his work as
occupying the intersection of painting and sculpture. This new series
of indoor and outdoor pieces diverts
and deconstructs the act and
object of painting until it has no
choice but to become sculpture.
Unstretched canvases undergo
cutting, folding, and wrapping until
they take on volume, occasionally
doubling as quasi-functional objects
like furniture and handbags. Woodpanel paintings pass through the
chipper, transformed into evocative
three-dimensional mounds of brilliant color. Anschultz is an obvious
admirer of Hlio Oiticica, adopting
his sense of optimism and ingenuity
to create hybrid works that combine
rigor and playfulness.
Tel: 314.615.5278
Web site <www.laumeier.org>
Mount Stuart
Isle of Bute, U.K.
Lee Mingwei
Whatever materials Lee uses in his
installations, his true medium is
people. For over a decade, his generous participatory endeavors have
played a pivotal role in the expansion of invitational aesthetics. Many
of his open-ended projects, which
Top left: Anish Kapoor, Greyman

Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke,
Beauty Evoked. Top: Giuseppe
Penone, AlberoPorta, from Rudolf
Steiner. Above: Brandon Anschultz,
17 to 1.
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Top left: Lee Mingwei, Trilogy of

Sounds (detail). Above: Keith W.
Bentley, Cauda Equina, from
Dead or Alive. Right: Ai Weiwei,
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.
he labels social conceptualism,

start with a conversation or
exchange and take different forms
depending on the participants. His
new three-part work for Mount
Stuart continues his recent interest
in using sound to blend the natural
and the domestic. Visitors enter
a world that is real and imagined,
past and present, public and private, exploring an oversized bronze
and wood wind chime in the park,
following echoes of music lessons
in the hall, and tracing a spatial
transformation in the conservatory
(which doubled as a WWI operating
theater). Here, Lee finds new ways

to harness architectural space and
Buddhist aesthetics to engage with
ideas of change, comfort, repair,
and renewal.
Tel: +44 (0) 1700 503 977
Web site
<www.mountstuart.com>
Museum of Arts and Design
New York
Dead or Alive
Since moving to its new building in
2008, MAD has given the spotlight
to artists working in undervalued
and unusual materials. With Dead
or Alive, shells, insect wings,
cocoons, seeds, plant materials, fur,
and animal bones join the ranks of
overlooked craft materials and scavenged discards to find new life and
purpose as art. Works by more than
30 artists, including Christiane
Lhr, Lucia Madriz, Nick Cave, Tim
Hawkinson, Tracy Heneberger,
Damien Hirst, and Levi van Veluw,
demonstrate how organic and onceliving materials can be re-purposed
into intricately crafted sculptures
and installations. While not a show
of environmentalist art per se,
Dead or Alive touches on climate
change, sustainability, genetic
manipulation, and the ephemeral
beauty of nature, tempering hopes
of resuscitation and rebirth with the
irrevocable fact of mortality.
Tel: 212.299.7777
Web site <www.madmuseum.org>
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Museum of Contemporary Craft

Portland, Oregon
Ai Weiwei
Chinas most visible and prolific art
star, as well as a wide-ranging
creator, Ai has engaged in a huge
range of interdisciplinary projects,
everything from sculpture and
installation to architecture, design,
publishing, and curatingnot to
mention politically volatile blogging
and other activist efforts. Dropping
the Urn focuses on his iconoclastic
appropriations of historic Chinese
ceramics, from Neolithic urns to
Qing Dynasty porcelains. Dipped in
vats of industrial paint, inscribed
with the Coca-Cola logo, forged by
traditional craftsmen, smashed on
the floor, and ground into powder,
these artifacts of cultural patrimony
undergo an ironic gestural practice of defacement and destruction
that reconfigures their financial and
cultural worth in terms of contemporary art. Straw men in a perfectly
executed black comedy shot
through with heresy, Ais gravely
witty objects enact desecration in
order to question blind veneration
of tradition while simultaneously
critiquing Chinas curious relation
to and disregard for its past.
Tel: 503.223.2654
Web site <www.
___
museumofcontemporarycraft.org>
__________________
Museum of Modern Art
Brussels
Marcel Broodthaers
Broodthaers (192476) was a poet,
journalist, and photographer when
he decided to become an artist.
The invitation to his first exhibition
(1964) announced: I, too, asked
myself whether I could sell something and be successful in life
in the end I had the idea to invent
something dishonest. Presenting
his work in a radically subversive
way, Broodthaers offered pleasure
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LEE MINGWEI: KEITH HUNTER PHOTOGRAPHY AND MOUNT STUART TRUST / BENTLEY: STANZIE TOOTH / AI: COURTESY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CRAFT
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Top left: Marcel Broodthaers, Mirror

with Eggs. Left: Miranda July, Eleven
Heavy Things (detail). Above: Sofia
Bcklund, installation from
BROODTHAERS: J. GELEYNS, SABAM 2010 / JULY: BRIAN PAUL LAMOTTE, COURTESY THE ARTIST, DEITCH ARCHIVE, NYC PARKS & RECREATION, AND THE UNION SQUARE PARTNERSHIP
Another Way. Right: Anne Thulin,
with obstacles. The central object of

the exhibition consisted of a recycling sculpture: 50 plastered-over
copies of his unsold book of poetry.
Beginning with this conflation of
text and sculpture, he followed
a path toward what he called politique magique, which attempted to
grasp reality through fictionthe
best-known example is his Muse
dArt Moderne, a non-existent enterprise with himself as director
(a response to protracted battles
at Brusselss Royal Museums over
where to put modern art). This exhibition, unearthed from the real
museums substantial holdings,
focuses on works that seem prescient in their exploration of brand,
trade value, original and copy, travel,
colonization, and the exotic within
the global marketplace.
Tel: + 32 2 508.32.11
Web site
<www.fine-arts-museum.be>
Union Square Park
New York
Miranda July
Drawing on the old-fashioned carnival fantasy photo-op, Julys Eleven
Heavy Things offers exhibitionist viewers a selection of clever, offbeat
stages to inhabit. Designed for inter-
Double Dribble. Both works from

Wans 2010.
One, The Guiltier One, or The Guiltiest

One? What are you saying if you
choose a Burberry plaid or an intricate lace aura? And the innuendos
scarcely bare mentioning when you
become a human plug and carry the
descriptive label, This is not the first
hole my finger has been in; nor will
it be the last. Though Julys project
begins as sculpture, it mutates into
a performance that only reaches
completion when the photos move
into a wider sphereat which
point, the subject clearly becomes
the participants who reveal themselves through the work.
Tel: 212.NEW.YORK
Web site
<www.nycgovparks.org/art>
active posturing, the cast fiberglass,

steel-lined sculptures act as
pedestals on which to pose, tablets
for the insertion of body parts, and
freestanding headdresses. But
choose your photo backdrop carefully, your decision might reveal more
than you intend. Are you The Guilty
Wans
Knislinge, Sweden
Wanas 2010
Roxy Paine, Ann-Sofi Sidn, and
Anne Thulin all worked at Wanas
early in their careers, and this year,
they have returned to revisit past
achievements and investigate new
ideas. Paine reprises his 1998 field
of weeds/social commentary Bad
Lawn and takes a new direction in
the large-scale, painted steel Faade/

Billboard. Thulin re-creates Ultra
Marine, her 1994 intervention in
the 18th-century stable, and
engages the entire park with Double
Dribble, oversized bright red balls
bouncing through the trees. Sidns
new video installation Another Way
follows her 720-kilometer journey
from Stockholm to Wans by horse.
Travel as artistic expression also
guides works by 18 young artists
who, like Sidn (their mentor for
the project), set off from Stockholm
without relying on artificial fuel.
Their films, sculptures, drawings,
installations, and performances
explore the romance and trials of
old-world travel (bicycle, foot, and
sailboat) in a new-world age.
Tel: + 46 44 660 71
Web site <www.wanas.se>
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commissions
Bruce Beasley, Destiny, 2009. Welded steel, 75 x 75 ft.
lower level of the riverbed park. The arched and angled crossbeam gathers variously sized cubes and trapezoids in response
to the surrounding landscape. A shallow stairway slopes down
from the street into the park, and a path leads visitors directly
beneath the huge welded steel forms. The composition is typical
of this phase of my work, Beasley says. As an abstract
Modernist sculptor, there really isnt a concept that can be verbally expressed. It is solely a visual expression. However,
the scale of the piece is very importantI wanted the arch-like
element to encompass a really stunning amount of space.
Beasley oriented Destiny to capture the notch or saddle in the
mountains behind it and it straddles two levels, so I am very
happy with how it relates to the site. With an adjacent highway
and, Beasley says, a lot of foot traffic along the street, the work
is seen by a huge number of Monterrey residents and visitors.
The area of the park below the sculpture will be used for special
events as well as everyday recreational use, affording park-goers
a breathtaking view of the mountains as well as a transformed
outdoor space.
Anne Neil
The Water Dance
Peel Region, Australia
Bruce Beasley
Destiny
Monterrey, Mexico
Bruce Beasleys monumental Destiny forms a striking gateway
to a new park on the site of a reclaimed riverbed in Monterrey, the
capital of northeastern Mexicos state of Nuevo Len. The city
sits below the Sierra Madre mountains; Rio Santa Catarina Park
was created after the construction of a dam upriver. As Beasley
describes, Before there was a dam built in the mountains, the
river was dry most of the time, but very wide and turbulent during
rain storms. Now the flow of the river is controlled. This has
left a very large area of available land that has become the long,
lineal park.
Commissioned by the state government, Destiny, which reaches
75 feet high, plays on post-and-lintel construction, twisting static
stability into an active contrapposto as one of its enormous rectangular supports rises from street level and the other from the
Anne Neil led a team of artists to create The Water Dance,

a sweeping addition to a new highway in the state of Western
Australia. Drivers encounter the eight five-and-a-half-meter-high,
inverted aluminum cones and 16 poles while traveling along
Forrest Highway, a 112-mile-long stretch of road that connects
Perth, the state capital, and Bunbury, a regional city. The funnelshaped sculptures include cutouts and lines that swirl around
the forms, the gentle wave patterns in the marine-grade aluminum revealing blue-painted interiors. At night, solar-powered
LED lights inside the cones are illuminated, shifting among a
range of watery blues and greens.
Neils concept evokes water, which connects her work to the
nearby Indian Ocean and wetlands that define the region. She
envisions the cones as hands or vessels upturned to collect
falling raindrops and the poles as abstracted representations of
the markers used to measure water levels. The poles, placed at
slight angles to continue the cones sense of motion, are painted
the same silver and blue. While the large scale makes The Water
Dance accessible to passing drivers, its proximity to a rest stop
allows viewers to explore it in greater detail.
The team behind The Water Dance, commissioned by the
Southern Gateway Alliance, included artists Mark Datodi and
Olga Cironis and architect Elisabetta Guj, who assisted with conceptual and design work, and artists Steve Tepper and Michelle
Seah, who assisted with fabrication. In addition to the large aluminum sculptures, they created complementary designs for the
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Above: Anne Neil, The Water Dance, 2009. Aluminum, paint,

and solar lighting, 8 5.5-meter-high cones and 16 poles. Right:
David Black, Liftoff, 2009. Aluminum and polyurethane, 40
x 30 x 20 ft.
walls of six highway interchanges along the road. The

concrete abutmentsall are painted in abstract designs,
and several also incorporate low-relief sculpture
include a range of palettes, from earthier grays and
reds to the cool colors and wave forms of The Water
Dance. Neils work creates cohesion along the highway, immersing drivers in their surroundings and
providing them with an intriguing landmark.
NEIL: COURTESY THE ARTIST
David Black
Liftoff
Washington, DC
Kites flying on the National Mall inspired David Blacks
Liftoff, which was commissioned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for a paved plaza at
5th and K Streets Northwest. When Black was visiting
the city as a finalist in the competition, he happened
to watch the annual [Smithsonian] Kite FestivalThe
visual effect, the rippling form in Liftoff, was inspired
by the those fantastic kites rippling with the wind.
Black says that his criss-crossing aluminum forms are
not meant to represent a kite literally; instead, the
aerial acrobatics that he witnessed served as a guiding
concept and meaningful local connection.
The three elements that Black wanted to emphasize
were movement, light, and a welcoming quality, resulting in an open, airy, convoluted structure, not unlike
the forms of his other public sculptures. He says that
passersby should interpret his design as almost kinetic
as [they] move about and cut through the corner site.
He incorporated light by creating a raised canopy of
loosely interconnected, undulating forms supported by
two central, crossed beams. The configuration certainly
recalls his inspiration, especially when viewed from
above or below. Seating, provided by a swooping rib-
bon of aluminum that reaches down to form a bench at the center of the structure, invites viewers to pause, look through the openings above and perhaps
see the shadow patterns below, to rest[and] perhaps to linger.
Fabrication was an interesting challenge, Black says, because the canopy is
a chain of scalloped planes, like the twisting tail of a kite, and each scallop is curved, as well as flat. The aluminum work is coated in light-yellow
polyurethanethe color bright without becoming overwhelming or cloying.
Since Liftoff was commissioned as part of a local redevelopment plan, Black
was glad to hear that residents and nearby business owners, who responded
enthusiastically to its free spirit, consider this new addition as an identification point for the area.
Elizabeth Lynch
Juries are convened each month to select works for Commissions. Information
on recently completed commissions, along with quality 35mm slides/transparencies
or high-resolution digital images (300 dpi at 4 x 5 in. minimum) and an SASE for
return of slides, should be sent to: Commissions, Sculpture, 1633 Connecticut
Avenue NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20009.
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NICHOLAS HLOBO, COURTESY MICHAEL STEVENSON, CAPE TOWN
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Chumisa (interior), 2008. Gauze, organza, polyester, ribbon, batting, and steel cable, 3 x 7 x 10 meters.
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Where Is Your Navel?

BY PAMELA ALLARA
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received the prestigious Standard Bank

Young Artist Award in Visual Art, a prize
that included a year-long touring exhibition with stops at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and the Iziko South
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Above: Chumisa, 2008. Gauze, organza, polyester, ribbon, batting, and steel cable, 3 x 7 x
10 meters. Below: Ndimnandi ndindodwa, 2008,
Chair, vinyl, rubber, ribbon, organza, and silicone,
115 x 270 x 155 cm.
According to South African critic Amy

Halliday, contemporary art from the African continent is often either excluded
from, or uncomfortably assimilated into,
an overarching Western narrative. Nicholas Hlobo, a young South African sculptor,
mined this narrative for his 2008 installation at Bostons Institute of Contemporary
Art, where his work was featured as part
of the Momentum emerging artists series.
Hlobo has been exhibiting internationally
since his graduation from the Technikon
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 2002,
effortlessly adapting the vocabulary
of international contemporary art to reference his own uncomfortable assimilation into a globalized culture while maintaining his Xhosa heritage and South
African gay male identity. He recently
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Thoba, utsale umnxeba, 2008. Fabric, rubber inner

tube, ribbon, lace, tassels, and impepho mat, view
of ICA performance.
JOHN KENNARD, NICHOLAS HLOBO, COURTESY MICHAEL STEVENSON, CAPE TOWN
African National Gallery in Cape Town,

among other venues. This year, he was
selected for the Liverpool Biennial (opening September 18). He has also won the
Visual Arts award in the Rolex Mentor
and Protg Art Initiative and will spend
the next year working with Anish Kapoor.
Although Hlobo uses a wide variety of
disparate materials, from colored ribbons
and organza to rubber tire tubing and
metal chains, his imagery has remained

relatively constant. Technical virtuosity
and an expanding formal vocabulary have
enabled him to insert his work into the
transcultural conversation that characterizes contemporary art today.
When Hlobo was a student in the late
1990s, his teachers required their classes
to address a central issue of the new South
African democracyidentity. Although
Hlobos hybrid heritage was a central focus

of his work, the assignment permitted him
to examine his identity as a gay black male
within a culture that rejects homosexuality.
Whereas the American queer art movement
of the 1980s veered between emotional
extremes of euphoria and mourning as gay
liberation collided with the AIDS crisis, in
South Africa during those same years, gay
politics took a back seat to ending apartheid, and any artistic expression of a gay
sensibility was muted. Today, even though
the liberal constitution assures equal rights
for gays, cultural biases have been difficult
to dislodge, and many people still believe
that homosexuality was imported by white
colonists. For his thesis exhibition in 2001,
Hlobo crafted inventive objects from cast
ceramic, sewn fabric, and paper. Untitled
(2001) consists of a fabric and paper anus/
horn of plenty, to which multiple white
ceramic castserect phalluses and rounded buttocksseem hypnotically drawn.
Witty and sensuous, Untitled subverts possible preconceptions of a gay-themed art,
presenting instead a celebratory ritual.
Hlobos two-part ICA exhibition, Vula zibhuqe (Xhosa for people who keep quiet
about wrongdoing), was his first solo show
in an American museum. A corner installation, which featured in an opening performance, marked the entrance to the gallery;
in the main space, a monumental hanging
sculpture burst through the wall, its second
face returning the viewer from the interior
to the entrance area. Although the title suggested that the show would reference current political scandals, both in South Africa
and the United States, such editorializing
was at best oblique. Hlobo prefers to work
with metaphors capable of bridging his personal frame of reference and viewers presumed Western mindset. His use of Xhosa
to title his pieces is not an affectation or
a simplistic device for signaling otherness;
instead, it is a means of resisting reductive
interpretations, a strategy that requires the
Umphanda ongazaliyo, 2008. Rubber, ribbon, zips,
steel, wood, and plaster, dimensions variable.
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viewer to gain at least a passing familiarity

with the artists culture, so that a basis for
dialogue about commonalities and differences can be established. Simply put, by
using his native language, one that is especially difficult for Westerners to pronounce,
Hlobo avoids having his work co-opted into
a dominant Western narrative.
The initial, performance-rooted work
served as a welcoming introduction to
Xhosa culture, as well as to broader aspects
of South African life. Thoba, utsale umnxeba (to lower oneself and make a call, as
a gesture of respect) created an intimate
ritual space that referenced the hybrid
nature of South African religion, a blend

of missionary Christianity and indigenous
spiritual traditions. During his performance,
Hlobo was seated on an oval nest of
impepho, or curry bush, a spice used as
incense in Xhosa rituals. His eyes were
closed, and every few minutes, he bowed
deeply. The very lack of exhibitionism in
his modest demeanor reminded the assembled art crowd of what is involved in looking
at unfamiliar art: namely, a willingness to
be contemplative rather than judgmental.
The bowing gesture was not without its
sarcastic edge, of courseHlobo was very
likely acknowledging his dependence on
Left: Umkwetha, 2006. Silicone and rubber, view

of performance. Right: Installation view with Umkwetha and Isisindo samadlozi, 2006, rubber inner
tube, scale, ribbon, plastic tube, and fabric.
the influential patrons in the audience.

The solemnity of Hlobos gesture was
further reflected in his handmade costume.
The black, pleated coat-dress with its white
collar recalled Christian Zionist church
robes, often sewn by parishioners for their
local priests, as well as judicial robes, Dutch
colonial garments, and designer fashions.
By implication, the robe pointed out that
the power commanded by male authority
figures such as judges and priests is so
blinding that they never appear to be
crossing-over into cross-dressing.
In the midst of such austerity, Hlobos
elaborate headdress made a striking statement. It resembled the woolen hats worn
by adherents of the Rastafari movement,
another hybrid Western and African religion
with a significant following in South Africa.
Tentacles of braided ribbon ending in 17
embroidered caps branched out from the
core of the hat, affixing Hlobo to the walls
behind him. Like the ropes of braided hair
that Magdalena Campos-Pons uses as symbolic ties to her native Cuba, Hlobos
radiating network suggested a process of
transnational communication. The oval nest
on which he meditated/mediated was sigInstallation view with Imtyibilizi xa yomile, 2006,
organza, rubber, and ribbon, 260 x 600 x 330 cm;
and boots from the performance Igqirha lendlela.
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nificant not only because churches so often

serve as emotional homes for impoverished
South Africans, but also because in Xhosa
culture, a newborns afterbirth and umbilical cord are buried in the village, and the
traditional greeting is Inkaba yakhoiphe?
or Where is your navel? Indeed the largest
extension from the cap appeared to
be plugged into the floor, reinforcing the
metaphor of connection and groundedness.
The few steps from this public entrance
space to the main gallery doubled as a journey from public ritual to the private realm
of the body. Umphanda ongazaliyo, as its
title suggests, is a vessel that never fills up.
The rubber, ribbon, leather, and organza
structure, suspended from the ceiling to
just above the floor, resembled a womb or
stomach. The reference to bodily organs was
unmistakable, and like Louise Bourgeoiss
Lairs, once inside the body, gender distinctions became blurred, if not effaced.
The sack shape permitted a play with binaries (inside and outside, surface and space)
an insight that Hlobo gained from an
undergraduate assignment to make a bag.
The rubber inner tubes used in Umphanda
ongazaliyo are among Hlobos favorite
materials. In a 2005 artist statement, he
says that rubber almost resembles flesh
in its tone, finish, elasticity, and even
fragility. In addition, he points out that
the Xhosa word for intestine is ithumbu,
or inflatable tube. In this bag/organ, the
rubber tubes kept their protruding valves,
phallic beaks begging for air to keep the
sack inflated (and desire sated). In addition
to the dominant theme of sexual desire,
the vessel also contained subtle political
content. Discarded inner tubes are ubiquitous in South African townships, where the
primary means of transport to the cities is
via overcrowded mini-buses. The cheap
tires (manufactured in Korea and the U.S.)
wear out quickly, often causing serious
accidents. The rubber skin of the vessel
thus references the vulnerability of a disadvantaged population whose lives have
not substantially improved under ANC rule:
their empty stomachs have not been filled.
These earth-bound metaphors yielded
to cosmic ones when the viewer peered
through openings in the skin to glimpse
the infinite firmament of the interior,
where the play of bright ribbons against

darkness suggested a private world of
pleasure balancing the external world of
pain. With its plaited ribbon extensions
and beaded fringes, Umphanda ongaza-
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Above: Izinqanda mathe, 2008. Saddle, ribbon,

rubber, and chains, 130 x 138 x 105 cm. Below:
Ntywilela ngaphantsi, 2006. Rubber inner tube,
ribbon, wooden base with wheels, leather harness, wrist and ankle cuffs, 146 x 105 x 280 cm.
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Above: Ingubo Yesizwe, 2008. Leather, rubber,

gauze, ribbon, steel, ball-and-claw chair leg, butcher's hook, and chain, 150 x 260 x 3000 cm. Below:
Undwendwe, 2008, Leather, rubber, and ribbon,
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A tube, colon, or tail extended from

Umphanda, breaking through the wall
to form an exuberant orifice on the side.
Reprising the euphoria of Hlobos 2001
horn of plenty, the ithumbu/tube, like
dimensions variable.
liyo morphed into a monumental Xhosa

purse, a celebration of the indigenous
craft traditions that provide the inspiration for so much of South African cultural
production today.
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JOHN HODGKISS, NICHOLAS HLOBO, COURTESY MICHAEL STEVENSON, CAPE TOWN
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the ubiquitous images of birth canals in

Matthew Barneys Cremaster series, queried
the genesis of male sexuality. Hlobos recent
installation at the Guangzhou Triennial in
China, a hanging saddle with a protruding
phallic horn and enormous saddle bags/
testicles, explored similar territory. Laughably
obvious at first, Izinqanda mathe (the loved
one) could be interpreted as a blunt rebuke
of the law banning homosexuality in China.
But, in his Triennial statement, Hlobo said
that the saddle form reminded him of the
European explorers who traveled to Africa.
In creating his transcultural dialogue,
Hlobo prefers to keep his metaphors openended. But this does not mean that viewers
have an easy job. To understand this work,
which revels in a kind of reverse elitism, they
must cross Hlobos visual bridges into Xhosa
territory. Like the form of Umphanda
ongazaliyo, the visual and linguistic metaphors are expansive but specific, and they do
not permit Westerners to absorb/swallow
them into their own parochial frame of reference. As Hlobo has said, he takes meaning
from the formal qualities of his native language, pronouncing it, listening to its
sounds, while using its proverbs and symbolism to explore his identity. His complex
mind games visually reflect the nuanced
registers of expression and different levels
of communication possible in Xhosa. In his
world of shifting and overlapping meanings,
nothing is quite stable. Sex, for instance can
turn from a joyous celebration into a dark
reflection of the selfishness, self-gratification, and arrogance of power. Despite such
twists in meaning, Hlobos work remains
devoted to materials, harnessing the associative potential of pink satin ribbon, rubber
inner tubes, leather, lace, weathered wood,
and colonial-style artifacts. He says that he
could be painting his stories but I am not,
I am choosing these materials. Like Hlobos
heritage, his work is a hybrid that builds on
difference and convolution. In South Africa,
he says, it is difficult to separate influencesThe Xhosa have never really rejected
foreign influences. If you cant beat them,
join them, right? Personally I love those
influences, colonial and traditional.
Pamela Allara writes regularly on South
African contemporary and feminist art.
Top: Izithunzi and Kubomvu (works in progress), 2009. Rubber inner tube, ribbon, organza, lace, found objects,
steel, and couch, dimensions variable. Above: Detail from Izithunzi.
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The Art of Activism

A Conversation with
BY COLLETTE CHATTOPADHYAY
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Dango, 2010. Shredded junk

mail, 20 x 23 x 50 ft., each dango
approximately 24 in. diameter.
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JOHN FAIER
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Collette Chattopadhyay: Youve moved to a new city. Where has

your work taken you since you left Los Angeles?
Barbara Hashimoto: Its been a fruitful and very challenging time
for me because my entire working situation is different. My current work as an artist-in-residence at BauerLatoza Studio, a multidisciplinary architectural firm in Chicago, has put me in a very
different position. In Los Angeles, I was working alone. My working
patterns in Chicago are different, and a new direction has emerged
from that. I experienced something similar when I was in Japan,
in terms of what kinds of space, equipment, and materials were
available. I didnt have much access to ceramic facilities here, as
I did in past studio locations, so I looked for something else to
work with. Being an artist-in-residence at the architecture firm, I
was looking for a project that would engage everyone. Thats how
I started the Junk Mail Experiment, but its taken on a life that I
didnt really expect.
CC: Your current work appears to be pursuing a different direction
from the ceramic and sculptural pieces that you created only
a few years ago, though it does converse with feminist dialogues
from certain vantage points. How did the junk mail project emerge
and evolve?
BH: When I began collecting junk mail, I thought that I would
devote a year to the project. At that point, I couldnt imagine what
would happen as one project led to another. People started asking
me to present my constructions in relation to things that they were

doing. In the case of the Chicago Arts District project, they invited
me to present the work for a month in relation to Art Chicago.
But that initial one-month exhibition period ended up being 10
months. What excited me with this project was that it reached
out to people and they then invited me to take the process somewhere else. That concept is very different from the ways in which
Ive worked before. I had not overtly discussed these kinds of environmental issueswasting paper and the destruction of trees and
forestsin my earlier work. These issues, along with an exploration of privacy and consumerism, reach the hearts of many people who are working for social change. And, Im not an activist.
CC: Well, it sure looks like you are now. Tell me about the size and
public appeal of these works.
BH: I collected some 3,000 cubic feet of junk mail for the Chicago
Arts District installation, which was a meditative and playful environment. People responded because everyone has something to
say about the accumulation of junk mail in their lives. Activists and
environmental groups came to see the work, as well as others who
werent activists and who wanted to know what they could do.
So, Id share the names of organizations, places to sign petitions,
or rallies to join.
CC: Do you think that part of the works reception and the spread
of information about it has to do with the nature of Chicago ?
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SHELLEY ANDERSON
Barbara Hashimotos recent work resides at the intersection of sculpture, conWhite Trash, 2008. Shredded junk mail
sumer culture, and environmental concerns. She collects and shreds junk mail and Japanese tansu chest, 5 x 16 x 6 ft.
to build large-scale naturalistic forms that ironically resemble the earth itself.
Transitory and site-specific, these pieces expose the excessive use, and even abuse, of natural resources that
enables the seemingly limitless supply of printed advertisements delivered in the mail every day.
Many people learned about Hashimotos Junk Mail Experiment during a 10-month-long exhibition in the
Chicago Arts District (2008). Conversation spread via the Internet, garnering the work not only local, but also
national and international attention. During the fall of 2009, she created an installation at the Muse du
Montparnasse-Paris at the request of Les Amis de la Terre, who championed her project for its commitment
to using the earths resources with prudence and care.
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Installation view of junk mail sculptures with Wave, Haystack, and Tail,
2008.
cleaning the temple before you pray. Its always spotless, but
cleaning the temple, preparing the space, was also part of my job
as a studio apprentice in Japan in the early part of my career
keeping the studio clean, preparing materials, and preparing the
space. That led to a foundation for how I work: cleaning the studio, preparing the materials, and preparing the shredded materials
are a version of that type of process.
I felt something very strong in the spaces at Tokyo Bay. I wanted
to clean them out, and after I did so, I filled them with materials
from the area as well as with saffron monks cloth. I had just come
back from Thailand where all of the monks wear that kind of cloth.
I wanted to create a type of sanctuary, like those I had seen in
the countryside in Thailandvery sparse, very clean, and very
simple. Thats where people came to meditate, and thats what
I wanted to create in Tokyo Bay Project. I realize now, in thinking
about this in relation to Junk Mail Experiment, that thats what I
wanted to create in both of these installations. I wanted people
to come in and be in the space with the material.
Junk Mail Landscape, 2008. Shredded junk mail received at the studio
over the course of one year, 8 x 40 x 40 ft.
TOP: SHELLEY ANDERSON / BOTTOM: ARCHIE FLORCRUZ
BH: Its a smaller and very beautiful city. The Chicago Arts District
project really opened things up here. It was a huge space, very
visible and lit up at night. The exhibition could be seen 24 hours
a day. Social communities related to the Web and Point-2-Technologies started video sharing and blogging. Web sites belonging to
environmental groups as well as to individuals started spreading
the word. One person would put the installation on their site and
then other environmental groups, for example, would see it. Someone came at night, photographed the exhibition through a window, and put the pictures on Flickr. Thats how news of the work
reached Paris, and the French environmental group Les Amis de
la Terre asked me to collaborate with them.
CC: Does the Junk Mail Experiment have conceptual links to some
of your earlier projects? In Tokyo Bay Project, you were taking
something unwanted or undesirable and transforming its perception in society. Do you see synergy between these works?
BH: They are dealing with different conceptual issues. Tokyo Bay
Project was about the conflicts and reconciliations of a place
associated with war, making a place of contemplation at a site
that had been used for military embankments on the mouth of
Tokyo Bay. I created something similar in the Tokyo Bay Project
space in as much as the place was a mess, a dumping ground for
the community. At the time, I was studying Zen Buddhism, and
part of Zen practiceespecially when you do a retreatinvolves
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Top: Pods, 2010. Shredded junk mail, 7 x 30 x 25 ft. Above: Shredded Junk Mail
with Grand Piano, 2007. 3 months of studio junk mail and piano, 9 x 16 x 12 ft.
Below and opposite: Junk Mail with Grand Piano, 2007. Video stills of performance with Barbara Hashimoto and Edward Torrez.
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CC: The relationship of the junk mail project to feminist dialogues

also seems interesting, in terms of picking up, cleaning up: activities traditionally assigned to women. At the same time, the junk
mail works seem both whimsical and hilarious in ways that break
standard meaningsfor instance, the burying of the piano
under junk mail and the muffling of sound and its associated
meanings.
BH: The performance piece still remains my favorite part of the
whole experiment so far, and it happened very early on. It was
my first public presentation. It was one of those moments when
everything came together, and so simply, without extensive labor.
I had just started to collect junk mail in June, and we did that performance in October 2007. I have a concert grand piano in my
studio by default. Thats where it was (in the building), and
of course, its a beautiful instrument.
CC: What a wonderful thing to inherit.
BH: I know. I often work late at night, shredding and shredding.
You know how that moment happens, when you look at something and then you look at something else and it just comes
together? Thats how I knew that I wanted to build an installation using the piano. I started playing around at night, tossing
shredded junk mail onto the piano, playing the piano, and then
noticing how everything was muffled. Immediately, I knew
I wanted to do a performance with somebody playing and me
building the installation. Edward Torrez, a principal of the architecture firm, is also a musician. So, I approached him. We had a
little dialogue, and he knew exactly what I wanted. We had one
simple rehearsal. For the performance, he played one of his own
pieces, and it became a duet as we responded to each other.
Someone shot it straight on with one video camera, not editing
anything, and thats how it was recorded.
The junk mail, of course, just kept coming and coming. At some
points, it got frantic, and as my movements became frantic, he
played in a way that responded. As a conclusion, I lay down and
fell asleep in the mound that had been created. At the end,
I got up and he unburied himself as people clapped. Then there
was a surge, begun by children and followed by adults, as people
started jumping and playing in the mounds of junk mail. The
children built nests, and by the end of the reception, everyone
was in there.
CC: What did you plan for Paris with the junk mail project?
BH: First, I went to work with the space and to see what had
evolved. Before I arrived, Les Amis de la Terre organized groups
38
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TOP: JOHN FAIER / CENTER: ERIC YOUNG SMITH / BOTTOM: ERIC HOFFHINES
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Sculpture 29.7
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TOP AND CENTER: JOHN FAIER / BOTTOM: ERIC HOFFHINES
sculpture
of children to collect junk mail. They brought the material to the

exhibition space about three or four days before the opening, and
we started building and shredding there. I invited the community
to participate in the process. They also asked me to do a performance. I didnt plan anything specificI wanted to let the space
and the whole process speak to me.
In Chicago, I was able to control every aspect of how the work
was presented, from the lighting to everything else. The Paris
project, by contrast, was a real collaboration and a huge risk
because I left it up to them to bring the junk mail to the site. Of
course, they have their own priorities, which relate to actions
about the environment. And I have my priority, which is to create
my work and show it in a certain way. This is something that I
really cant plan much.
CC: Another issue thats interesting in relation to this body of work
is the subliminal emphasis on the abject as manifest in your rescuing, salvaging, and making art from things that are usually
tossed out and assumed to be irrelevant. That, of course, lends
irony and poignancy to your junk mail projects.
BH: I want to do some large weavings and cast sculptures made
of paper. I have all of this material that I want to use and remake
into something else. My original idea was to cast something, but
I really want to get into the studio and experiment more. After
working with these environmental issues, I cant just take this
stuff to the dump and trash it. Its a problem because I have
hundreds of garbage bags and people in the studio dont like it.
They want it out of here. They dont understand that I need to
have it here, so its a difficult situation.
CC: Have the junk mail pieces moved your work from its earlier,
material-centered focus toward the transitory and ephemeral?
The furrows, rows, and mounds that you created in Junk Mail
Landscape in the Chicago Arts District exhibition (April 2008)
have disappeared. How did you come to be interested in the
ephemeral in sculpture, and are you at peace with transient
physicality?
BH: Thats interesting in relation to basic Japanese artistic processes. As you know, I have worked for a long time in ceramics,
which is probably one of the most durable of all mediums. I want
to tell you about my initial training in Japan and my natural interest in the tenets of wabi-sabi, one of them being the imperfect
and the ephemeral. I really pushed the ceramic medium, so that
some of those pieces are very, very thin. Since I was interested in
ceramics in that way, I dont see such a huge shift. Of course, my
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Above and detail: Red Solicitations #2 and #3, 2009. Shredded credit card
solicitations, dye, encaustic, and pastel, 4 x 5.5 x 5 and 11 x 12 x 14 in.
past installation work was transitory. The materials for Pink Tatami,
which I did in Japan, were returned to a farmer as straw matting
that went back into the earth as compost. However, I am also
interested in creating works that will last longer, and one of my
dreams would be to take that mass of junk mail and turn it into
some kind of permanent public art piece here in Chicago, encased
perhaps in Plexiglas, that would tell the story of one years collection of junk mail.
CC: Whats next?
BH: I want to continue with this work because I have a dream
about doing a public art piece out of junk mail. I like the direction that Im taking by working with environmental groups like
Les Amis de la Terre. I would love to start working in Europe
more.
Collette Chattopadhyay is a writer living in Los Angeles.
39
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Spains
Landscape
Art
Initiative
in
Huesca
BY PAULA LLULL LLOBERA

Translated by Fernando Feliu-Moggi
sculpture
Located in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, Huesca is one

of the most beautiful and least populated provinces in Spain.
Half of its territory consists of mountainous natural parks that
protect an array of endangered species, and many of its valleys
are guarded by Romanesque-style churches. One of these valleys
houses Plan, a minute village chosen by Per Kirkeby as the site
for his recent addition to Huescas Art and Nature project.
It is uncommon to get three different government agencies
to engage in a long-term cultural initiative. But Art and Nature,
a focal point for art-making and landscape art in Europe, is the
result of cooperation between the region of Aragon, the provincial
government, and the city of Huesca. Since the presentation of the
first work in 1994Richard Longs A Circle in Huesca, in Maladetaseven site-specific works have been completed. A lecture
Per Kirkeby, Plan, 1998. Brick, view of work at Cabaera de la Montaa, Plan,
Huesca.
ANDRES FERRER, CDAN, 2009
Art and Nature
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CDAN ARCHIVES
sculpture
series featuring renowned artists and

experts complements the creative side of
the project, offering analyses of the relationship between artistic creation and
landscape. Presentations have included
talks on art and nature, public art, the
garden as art, the city, and thought and
landscape.
In addition to Longs Circle, previous
works include Ulrich Rckriems Siglo XX
(1995, in Abiego), Siah Armajanis Mesa
de picnic para Huesca (Picnic Table for
Huesca, 2000, in Valle de Pineta), Fernando Casss rboles como arqueologa
(Trees as Archaeology, 2003, in Hoya de
Huesca), David Nashs Three Sun Vessels
for Huesca (2005, in Berdn), and Alberto
Carneiros As rvores florescem em Huesca
(Trees Bloom in Huesca, 2006). With the
exception of Armajanis picnic table, which
is placed near a camping ground, the sculptures are located in fairly remote sites,
some very hard to reachLongs stone
circle is at an altitude of more than 2,000
metersand others in the middle of
nowhere, only accessible via unpaved
roads. Whether the works are found at
high altitude, in valleys, along riverfronts,
in forests, or among arid rocky fords, they
invite us to discover and explore their
details, overwhelming us with their unexpected presence in places so distant from
the traditional spaces of contemporary art.
Huescas provincial government grants
project participants access to vast
open spaces, a privilege that represents a
gift and a great challenge to the artists,
who can choose any site for their work,
no matter how remote, and whose only
limitations are the obstacles imposed
by terrain and budgetary constraints.
In 2006, Art and Nature opened a center in the city of Huesca that serves not
only as an administrative seat, but also as
an international point of reference for the
project. The Centro de Arte y Naturaleza
(Center for Art and Nature, CDAN) offers
annual grants and extensive research
facilities. The commissioning of Kirkebys
work marks the coming of age of this
important collection.
Kirkeby achieved international acclaim
in the 1980s as one of the leading figures
of German New Figuration. Although his
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Above: Richard Long, A Circle in Huesca, 1994. Stone, view of work in Maladeta, Huesca. Below: Ulrich
Rckriem, Siglo XX, 1995. 20 granite stelae, view of work in Abiego, Huesca.
work defies classificationhe makes use of performance, fiction, and stage design, as
well as sculpture and paintingit is primordially linked to nature. He has also authored
several essays exploring the ideas that inspire and drive his creative work. Regardless of
his wide-ranging interests, his artistic trajectory cannot be understood without considering his interest in science. Before entering Copenhagens Independent School of Art,
Kirkeby studied Quaternary Geology and participated in numerous scientific expeditions
to Greenland and Latin America. His scientific training and exploration of new cultures
are fundamental to his artistic practice.
Halfway between architecture and sculpture, Kirkebys constructions, which he calls
Architectonesa term borrowed from Kazimir Malevich, who used it to refer to his
projectionsuse red clay brick as their fundamental element. This material references
the relationship between Kirkebys artistic work and his training as a geologist, so much
41
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Above: Siah Armanjani, Mesa de picnic para Huesca, 2000. Wood, view of work installed
at Valle de Pineta, Huesca. Below: Alberto Carneiro, As rvores florescem em Huesca,
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so that in his writings he refers to the material as

tectonic brick, stressing his association of architecture with plate tectonics.
In the Chistau valley of Huesca, Kirkeby found the
perfect location for his third red brick sculpture in
Spain. The overwhelming visual impact of the work
relies strongly on the natural landscape, which becomes
its primary protagonist. Plan (named for the nearby
village) is located in a pasture by the Cinquenta river
and surrounded by the imposing peaks of the Central
Pyrenees, a short distance from the French border.
As Kirkeby set to work, the 300 residents of Plan
watched, perplexed; the artist was a new kind of visitor, one less interested in hiking and skiing than in
introducing new ways of looking at art. The base of
the sculpture consists of two identical, intersecting
squares that open into a third, smaller one. The three
volumes are accessible through door-like openings,
and, from inside, visitors experience the striking landscape of the Pyrenees (also visible through the open
roof) from a variety of perspectives.
The appeal of Plan lies in its ability to be almost
inconspicuous, surrendering primacy to the landscape. Kirkeby has stressed the importance of creating
transparent works; he wants to avoid building false
expectations in viewers who might try to guess what
CDAN ARCHIVES
2006. Bronze and stone, view of work at Chopera de Belsu, Huesca.
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Sculpture 29.7
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Above: David Nash, Three Sun Vessels for Huesca, 2005. Oak and bronze, view of work at the Hermitage of Santa Luca, Berdn, Huesca. Below: Per Kirkeby,
TOP: CDAN ARCHIVES / BOTTOM: ANDRES FERRER, CDAN, 2009
floor plan of Plan, 2009. Brick, view of work at the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza (CDAN).
a sculpture holds inside when seen from afar. In his own words, the transparency of a
construction consists of having its exterior be a reflection of its interior. Despite appearances, Kirkebys constructions have nothing to do with buildings, and they are not functional. The use of traditional building materials initially distracts viewers from questioning
the meaning of the work. By using ashlars, doors, windows, and especially the red bricks
so common to northern European architecture, Kirkeby strips the sculpture of its intellectual charge and prevents it from competing with its surroundings. In order to achieve
this effect in Huesca, he explored more than a dozen possible sites throughout the
province before deciding on a final location. In the end, he decided to distance Plan
from the village and from the high mountains in order to allow both landscape features
to retain their prominence.
The plasticity achieved through the use of an element as simple as a baked mud rectangle is one of the main accomplishments of the work. The red bricks, joined with
simple mortar, function as a signature sculptural element, allowing Kirkeby to explore
infinite formal and visual combinations. In the specific case of Plan, interior and exterior
achieve unity thanks to the projection of

landscape views through its nooks and
crannies, an effect that serves as a marvelous illustration for the notion of tectonic architecture defined in Kirkebys
writings.
In Plan, Kirkebys geological spaces
achieve their most genuine form. The
structures manage to frame the surrounding
landscape, and the brick walls act as a geodesic point from which to grasp nature in
all its breadthan accomplish that underscores the mission of Art and Nature.
Paula Llull Llobera is writer living in Spain.
43
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Willard Boepple
sculpture
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ETIENNE FROSSARD
sculpture
The Way Things Work #3, 2008.
BY DAVID COHEN
sculpture
Cast resin, 49 x 16.5 x 11.5 in.
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sculpture
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Left: Barra 2, 1989. White cedar, 86 x 40 x 47 in. Right: The Woman who Blamed Life on a Spaniard #4, 1999. Pine and graphite, 51 x 40 x 27 in.
The sculptures of Willard Boepple are a

riposte to Plato. At the very least, they
engage in a game of cat and mouse with
the Platonic concept of archetypes. Created
in series, Boepples forms are utilitarian,
commonplace, timeless things like ladders, shelves, rooms, railings, sawhorses,
and benches. Though far from being functional within their given categories, the
sculptures are, nonetheless, invariably recognizable and nameable in relation to the
object-series to which they belong. They
are also radically abstract, in the sense
that they remove the viewer from any literal association with ladders, shelves, or
rooms to a place where the given objects
related phenomenology is pushed to the
fore: ascent and descent, storage and display, closure and disclosure. Boepple
explores these pairings as dichotomies
through processes of elaboration that are,
by definition, the opposite of essence.
He works through each series until some
hybrid suggests the next step. The ladders
begat the shelves, for instance: populating

the ladders rungs with various elements
challenged verticality with a new, horizontal aspect. The rooms sprang from a desire
to see the shelves in a context. And the
rooms, which had dominated Boepples
output since the turn of the century,
inspired the new forms of the last couple
of years. These frame structures, or looms
as he calls them, suggest supports for
folding, drying, or dyeing fabric or yarn
my own first association was with grandstands at parades. This openness to evolution from one series to the next in Boepples
practice bolsters the sense that experience
removed from intended function motivates
and sustains his sculptural curiosity when
it comes to these primary-structure objects
and tools.
Such cool, cerebral, and sometimes aloof
sculpture fully embraces an aesthetic of
economy. There is an air of classical refinement about Boepples work that speaks to
his origins. In his formative years, both in
Bennington, Vermont, where he was born

and now works for half of the year, and in
New York City, his acknowledged influences
were Modernist painters and sculptors like
Jules Olitski, David Smith, Anthony Caro,
and Donald Juddall, in their way, reductive artists. (Less so Isaac Witkin, an important early mentor, or Richard Diebenkorn,
who first empowered Boepple with artistic
ambitions, in California, where he grew up.)
But, however pared-down Boepples structures, they are emphatically not schematic.
Unlike an early Joel Shapiro house or a
Martin Puryear ladder (despite its poetic
sense of craft and surface), a Boepple ladder or room would never do as a logo or
sign. The resemblance of his streamlined
language to store-bought items, the wooden
frame of a house, or a ready-made shelving
unit is misleading: that bare-bones first
impression quickly gives way to a realization of eccentricity and variation.
Boepples sensibility, it could be argued,
is perpetually poised between reduction
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Sculpture 29.7
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Preston, 2008. Poplar, 29 x 59.5 x 24 in.
and elaboration. His constructive approach,

his proximity at times to Smiths drawingin-space idiom, might evoke a sense of the
skeletal, but if so, Boepples skeleton is one
yearning for flesh, not the gravea skeleton with a lust for life.
The evolution of his sculptural ideas,
however, rarely submits to a pattern of
the simple moving toward the complex,
or vice versa; he often bounces back and
forth between possibilities. In the ladder
series, for instance, The Weir (1986), a
work in steel, has a stark literalism, except
that each rung is punctured so that equalsized stumps adhere to the vertical sides;
Famous Grouse (1987), in white cedar,
is haphazardly crammed full of irregular
lumps and fragments, as if ready to transform from ladder to shelf; and Natural
History #1 (1988), in metal again, reverts
to the minimal discipline of The Weir. It is
a tripod in which the front climbing frame
separates like marching legs, the abbreviated rungs taking on irregular thicknesses
and positions.
Despite the aura of stasis that pervades
Boepples calm, undemonstrative, clean-cut
style, some of his sculptures encapsulate a
certain dynamism, at least within his own
restrained terms. Developments within the
shelf series offer a striking case in point.
While spawning the rooms, the shelves also
gave rise to two mini-series, one static, the
other dynamic. The static group includes
what Boepple would come to call the
temples: forbiddingly austere, compact
little structures with one or more apertures hinting at a dark interior, the walls
otherwise firmly closed to the world. Contemporary with the frame-construction
rooms, the temples formed a (literal) counterweight to Boepples drawing-in-space.
The dynamic group arose from shelf pieces
like The Sense of Things (1995), bringing
their static dividers or slats resembling stationary boxes to life in sculptures that seem
to be utilitarian structures in motion. With
its flaps or paddles, the quixotically titled
The Woman who Blamed Life on a Spaniard
(1998) brings to mind a mail-sorting device.
In First Shift, Red (1996), four circular bins

resemble the bottom-hinged doors of
garbage chutes and mailboxes, apparently
arrested at different stages of rotation. The
overt theatricality of such depictive gestures is the more startling in sculptures
whose syntax (as formalists are prone
to put it) remains resolutely Modernist.
Art historically, abstracted machine parts
caught in arrested motion recall the
Futurist machine aesthetic, particularly

Umberto Boccionis Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913).
The rooms and looms achieve a dynamism
of which any formalist would approve by
virtue of the viewers mobility and the cognition, even when the viewer is stationary,
of thin lines in space. In the larger versions
of the rooms, viewers are able to walk into
and through the piece, making it a literally
Room 3, 2003. Aluminum, 96 x 96 x 96 in.
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kinetic experience. The complexity of angles

and planes described by these overlapping
lines creates a constant redefinition of relationships. Critics often relate the experience
of Boepples work to music, and with good
reason, since this choral conductors son
works so acutely with interval and duration. The looms, though continuing the
idea of utilitarian form, even taking their
names from industrial mill towns in the
north of England like Blackburn, Bradford,
and Preston, do so in a toned-down way.
These are not easily familiar, let alone ubiquitous forms. Free even of the possibility of
literalism and certainly not readily associational, they leave the eye to do all the work.
As such, they feel closer to Boepples Modernist beginnings in the 1970sassembled
colored steel sculptures that took their cue,
like so much sculpture of that time, from
Caros work of the 1960s.
Boepple first started to explore ladders in
reaction to Caro, reckoning (as had Clement
Greenberg, after the death of David Smith)
that Caro was the strongest individual force
in sculpture. During an extended visit
to England in 1970, Boepple met Caro and,
just as importantly, several of his followers,
among them Phillip King and Tim Scott.
Boepples first group of works leading to
the utilitarian form series, sculptures that
like Stick Around (1979) alluded to fireplaces, shared a ground-hugging horizontality with Caros early works. (The irregular
intersection of bent diagonal planes in Stick

Around, incidentally, found a later echo
in the flaps of the machine aesthetic shelf
pieces.) Boepple searched for a vertical
form that was not figuralhe wanted to
be abstract in the sense of having more
to do with being non-figurative than nonobjective. The ladder series, begun in 1980,
fit the bill because the form was emphatically separate from and unlike the body,
being triangular and top-hinged, although
it followed a function determined by the
needs of the body, which it extends.
That Boepple became so involved with an
object separate from, yet co-dependent on,
the bodywhich it mimics in terms of
its measure and proportionhas, in retrospect, an almost ominous quality, for in
1982, he was struck by Guillain-Barr syndrome. This neurological disorder left him
on life-support, completely paralyzed for
months, and now permanently disabled.
Besides mobility issues that require him to
use crutches, he faces challenges in dexterity. As a welder, this new situation forced
him to rethink how to make sculpture (he
had been Olitskis fabricator, as well as an
assistant to Witkin and to the David Smith
estate). Since then, Boepple has depended
on assistants for the realization of his work,
and wood has replaced metal as his medium,
though many works end up fabricated in
metal. Beyond day-to-day, practical considerations, physical realities have been
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The Way Things Work #1, 2008. Cast resin, 52

x 22 x 11 in.
a determining factor in many attitudes

that are fundamental to Boepples work:
craft, medium, scale, and even subject
matter.
Enigmatic, intriguing, enticing at so
many levels though it can be, Boepples
work can also seem somewhat aloof in
its measured, almost blue-blooded calm:
surfaces are barely invested with texture; color, though axiomatic, can come
across as politely autonomous from the
sculptural direction of the work; materials are functional and under-expressive. This is not to say that surfaces are
neglected. Some of the steel-fabricated
rooms such as Room 3 (2003), an eightfoot-square frame construction, are burnished to give a dazzling, enlivening finish.
The colors applied to the wood pieces
are often warm and rich, and there is
the startling, occasional bonus of polychromy. But color is invariably a late
thought in the evolution of Boepples
sculpture. Color matters to Boepple to
the extent that he makes his own pigments and will strip a work down if the
color does not work for him, that is,
does not assist in the clarity of the form.
But one intention of color would seem
to be anti-sensual, in that it serves
to deprive wood of its distracting natural
48
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ETIENNE FROSSARD
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Sculpture 29.7
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The Way Things Work #2, 2008. Cast resin, 40
ETIENNE FROSSARD
x 21 x 12 in.
qualities. For an artist who started out as

a painterbefore working for Witkin
it is hard to imagine that, had Boepple
had a conventional, hands-on sculptors
career, his priorities would so privilege
the visual at the expense of the tactile.
Though it is true that for the Caro generation, painting was the paradigm for
Modernist sculpture, that the experience
of sculpture was eyes only, untiland
even whensculptors specifically invited the viewer to walk into and through
their sculptures. But considering
the direction taken by Caro himself, or by
William Tucker and Alain Kirili whose early
work shared the skeletal aspect of Boepples sculpture, it is hard not to imagine
a sculptor answering the clarion call to
enfleshment.
The theatricality of Boepples machine
aesthetic, despite the anti-sensual finish,
the alienation implicit in the lack of sensuality, and the need for literal or metaphorical movement in static works all
lend an unexpected, existential twist to
his sculpture once the element of biography is factored in. Suddenly, Boepples
work takes on an affinity to that of Alberto
Giacometti. The haptic Giacometti and the
optic Boepple share a propensity for the
taut, wiry, and intense.
A recent commission to design a radio

tower in Syracuse, New York, triggered a
new series, one that inevitably connects
to the Russian Constructivists. It also fuses
various elements in Boepples personal
history: verticality, a line in space, the
machine as both alien and anthropomorphic, and, vital to his working through
assistants, disembodied communication.
Two additional developments are taking
Boepple in a different direction. For some
years, he has worked for long stretches
at workshops in England, with sculptor
Phil Stroud, who specializes in cast resins,
and with master printer Kip Gresham, a
specialist in experimental screen printing.
These sessions have produced bodies
of work in which color and texture play
an integral role, unlike elsewhere in his
oeuvre. Boepples cast resin works, made
at Colbar Arts in Queens, New York, include
The Way Things Work (2008), a group
of four sculptures commissioned for the
lobby of a boutique office building in
midtown Manhattan. These are worked
from variants of his shelf series; The Way
Things Work: Flaps, for instance, incorporates aspects of The Woman who Blamed
Life on a Spaniard and First Shift, Red.
Resin, in Boepples handling of the
material, has twin effects that are, aesthetically speaking, mutually exclusive.
It is very visceral: sensing its stickiness,
plasticity, and former liquid state adds
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to the feeling of movement. But it is

also ethereal: the intense colorblood
red in the case of Flapsis suspended
rather than adhering, and the form is
semi-transparent. The sensation of seeing inside and through excited Boepple,
recalling his experience of the traversable room sculptures. But an ability to
see right into the sculpture makes the
inside more mysterious, not less, rather
like an x-ray.
The screen prints grew out of the resin
sculptures and the desire to extend the
sense of seeing-through an image. They
are monoprints, each impression a unique
arrangement of the stencils in differing
color variants. The first few images came
directly from elements in the resin sculptures and explore an abstract, ideographic
vocabulary. There is both emphatic flatness and layering, with the overlap of
planes determining color mixes.
In both resin casting and screen printing,
Boepple has found ways to work in which
his assistants, too, depend on chance. It
could also be said of both the resins and
the screen prints that the results reconcile the haptic and the optic to the extent
that they entail both disembodiment and
sensuality.
David Cohen is editor and publisher of artcritical.com and gallery director of the
New York Studio School.
49
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Maria Artemis
MINING MATERIALS
sculpture
MICHAEL JENSEN, COURTESY THE ARTIST
BY REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN
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The best ideas often come when you least

expect them. For a year, Maria Artemis
worked on her show for the Museum of
Contemporary Art of Georgia. Armed with
a Working Artists Program award from the
Charles Loridans Foundation, which
provided her with financial support and
a paid studio assistant for one year, the
Atlanta-based artist assembled an impressive group of sculptures and a video installation. But one piece remained a sketch,
an idea whose physical manifestation had
yet to be resolved. One day, while walking
at her farm outside Athens, Artemis passed
by a pile of discarded branches recently
pruned from a fig tree. The intertwining
of the twigs reminded her of the latticework that she was trying to resolve in her
drawing. Dragging an armful back to the
studio, she began to experiment, and in
a relatively short time, Hermeion (2009),
Opposite: Hermeion, 2009. Fig and poplar wood,
beeswax, and pigment, 4 x 10 x 4.5 ft. Left: Spin
II, 2000. Wood, bronze, steel, and paint, 8 x 4 x 4
COURTESY THE ARTIST
ft. Below: Kairos, 2009. Granite, 3.25 x 9.5 x 7 ft.
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Ex-Static, 199596. Aluminum, steel, and stainless steel cable, 16 x 30 x 90 ft.
which Artemis translates as windfall, or gift of the gods, was created. This exquisite
piece is representative of Artemiss work in many ways. An intuitive artist who capitalizes on random discoveries, she also has a sensitivity to materials that allows her, in
her words, to mine the essence of each one to visually express her thoughts or ideas.
Sometimes this means leaving sections in their natural state; other times, it means
carefully working a material into the desired shape and texture.
Hermeion features both approaches. Artemis carefully crafted the lower half of the
sculpture from planes of poplar laminated together and carved into one of her favorite
forms, a water-bound vessel. Into this, she set the fig branches, adding nothing more than
a layer of beeswax. The contrast is palpable: where the bottom is sleek and efficient, the
top is gnarly and twisted. The work seems an apt response to one of her sage-like quips,
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that in life we can direct our responses but

cannot always control our circumstances.
Contrasts of texture, finish, and color lie
at the heart of Artemiss work. Sometimes
the differences come from the materials
themselves, as in Spin II (2000), which
combines wood, paint, and bronze screen.
Other times, difference derives from various treatments of those materials, as
in Kairos (2009), where Artemis responds
kinesthetically to a block of granite, leaving
some areas rough-hewn and working others
to a high polish.
Kairos combines the vessel shape with
another of Artemiss recurring forms, the
vortex, which first appeared in the largescale earthwork Analemma, created for
the Piedmont Arts Festival in 1985. Using
earth-moving tractors and then shovels,
she sculpted a descending spiral 12 feet
into the Georgia red clay. The shape reappeared in Ex-Static, a public commission
for the 1996 Olympics made from a combination of Plexiglas and donated Lockheed
Martin airplane parts scattered across a
large traffic island. That the form reappeared in 2009 as Kairos in yet a third
material with a very different look testifies to her dexterity.
While Artemis has clearly developed
a vocabulary for her ideas, it is her treatment of mostly natural materialswood,
stone, moss, and waterthat stands out.
She uses them intuitively to explore personal investigations that originate in scientific and spiritual concerns. For example, Kairos developed from her reading on
how the two sides of the brain process
information differently, and the multimedia installation Quotidian Rift (200405)
was a built around the passage of time.
The sculptures, which can be considered
physical manifestations of these explorations, are not about finding answers;
instead, they provide a focal point for the
energy required to ponder and mine the
questions.
This Zen-like quality filters through all
of Artemiss work. Her compositions are
balanced but never equal. The best
capture a sense of wonderment or awe,
noting lifes ability to teeter on the edge
without toppling over. It is not surprising
that Artemis earned her undergraduate
52
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Epigenesis, 19992001. Granite, stainless steel, stainless steel cable, and water, 14 x 50
PAM DRAKE, COURTESY THE ARTIST
x 50 ft.
degree in psychology at Agnes Scott College. She focused on sculpture in

graduate school, receiving a masters degree in ceramics from the University
of Georgia. When her work entered a grand scale, she furthered her studies
at the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, earning
a second masters.
Artemiss knowledge of structural engineering and architecture continues
to serve her well as she compliments her gallery-oriented work with largescale public art projects. In the fall of 2009, she completed Poesis, a series
of windows containing images and literary text for the Hamilton Mill Library
in Dacula, Georgia. This followed on the heels of the inauguration of the
Donald Lee Hollowell Memorial and Sprayground in Center Hill Park, commissioned by the City of Atlanta Office of Parks and Recreation.
Both works flow from one of Artemiss most successful projects to date,
Epigenesis (19992001), commissioned by the General Services Administration. For this site-specific installation at the Centers for Disease Control
and Preventions National Center for Environmental Health in Chamblee,
Georgia, Artemis worked closely with resident scientists to create a thoughtprovoking yet restful public space. She etched molecular structures into
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stone pavers and inset them into a spiral pattern in

the central courtyard (the vortex again). At one end,
she placed large stone boulders, subtly smoothed in
certain areas to invite sitting (similar to the textural
definitions in Kairos). Opposite, a totemic 12-ton
granite boulder is transformed into a fountain. Water
cascades down its glistening black form and lands in
a pool of water at the base. Cantilevered in front of
this, a one-ton granite boulder hovers just above the
surface of the pool and appears almost weightless as
it twists and turns with the wind.
A stone that defies its weight challenges us to
see beyond our assumptions, explains Artemis, who
loves to push the limits of possibility. As she consistently tames large boulders, sharp wire, and gnarly
branches, she leaves viewers with provocative and
ultimately peaceful works that invite thoughtful contemplation.
Rebecca Dimling Cochran is a writer and curator
living in Atlanta.
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sculpture
A Conversation with
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Olivia Robinson, Josh MacPhee,

and Dara Greenwald
Artists Olivia Robinson, Josh MacPhee, and

Dara Greenwald make the invisible visible,
from daily routines to entire cultural
moments. Passing through the streets of
Troy, New York, the trio felt a mounting
sense of dismay at the changing cityscape
and the loss of visible history. So, they
hatched a project to re-create the faade
of a missing building and thereby trigger
its psycho-physical space in the landscape
as well as its historical context. An examination of possible sites led them to a twofold prizea vanished building and a revolutionary abolitionist.
Liberty Street Church was located at the
corner of Liberty and Franklin; in 1840, it
housed a black congregation and a whirl-
sculpture
wind of a pastor, Henry Highland Garnet. That year, his leg was amputated, which only
seemed to spur him on. He fired blistering sermons from the pulpit, preparing the way
for his famous 1843 speech, Call to Rebellion: An Address to the Slaves of the United
States of America. This was not mere rhetoric: You act as though your daughters were
born to pamper the lusts of your masters and overseersyou tamely submit while your
lords tear your wives from your embraceswe ask you, are you men? Where is the blood
of your fathers? Has it all run out of your veins? Awake, awake; millions of voices are
calling you! Your dead fathers speak to you from their graves. Heaven, as with a voice
of thunder, calls on you to arise from the dust.
For the artists, to find the spirit of Garnetgrandson of an African warrior prince captured in battle, amputee, ferocious oratorin the blank space of the parking lot laid
over the holy ground of Liberty Street Church was a call to arms. It is hardly surprising
that Robinson, who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, would answer that
call. Her countless projects, including initiatives in federal prisons, manage this exact
blend of recall and revolution. Her work continually makes the point that communities
must preserve themselves through action and memory. On May 30, 2008, Robinson,
MacPhee, Greenwald, and a coterie of assistants set in motion a large-scale remembrance.
PETE BARVOETS
BY JESSE BALL
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Opposite and this page: Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Olivia Robinson,
Spectres of Liberty: Ghost of Liberty Street Church, 2008. Plastic, clear tape,
fan, video projectors, speakers, and animation, 35 x 25 x 35 ft.
LEFT: BART WOODSTRUP / RIGHT: CHRIS HARVEY
At the corner of Liberty and Franklin, a ghost rose from the

pavement, trembling and expanding. Liberty Street Church,
a symbol of African American liberty and the center of Garnets
struggle, long consigned to dust, was clearly visible against the
night sky. Passersby stopped in droves, and cars slowed to note
the powerful phenomenonon the sides of the inflated structure,
images and text, part and parcel of the pastors battle, played for
all to see: Let our motto be resistance! Resistance! Resistance!
No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. At nights end, the ghost church subsided, and morning
came to an empty lot. As Robinson says, Art is in the bodies of
those who experience it. At least this church, disappeared from
living memory, exists again as long as those who saw it.
Jesse Ball: Did you choose materials based on the needs of the
structure, or did the structure evolve out of your expertise with
particular materials?
Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Olivia Robinson: Seems like
a pretty synergistic combination of both. Olivia wanted to make
inflatables related to Troy architecture, and our combined brainstorming led to the church, which led to the ghost church idea,
which fit perfectly with a clear plastic inflatable, and our budget
(which was zero).
JB: Were there particular materials that you especially liked?
DG, JM, and OR: We especially wanted social interactiontalking
with people about the project, inviting them to comethe physical materials were given meaning by the social context that the
project both highlighted and created.
JB: Do the materials add to the metaphorical content?
DG, JM, and OR: The plastic creates an amazing ghostly quality.
We call this project Ghost of Liberty Street Church, and its part
of the Spectres of Liberty series. It seems both solid and permeable, opaque and transparent. The ropes holding the church
seemed metaphorical as wellas if it needed to be held down
because of the power of Henry Highland Garnets words. The
video/animation of words spilling out of Garnets mouth and dispersing into the atmosphere was a metaphor for his thoughts
dispersing across the social fabric.
JB: The project combined physical structure, community event, and
video installation, molding them into a single whole-cloth experience. Were planning and coordinating a big part of the process?
Did you have to leave room for last-minute epiphanies?
DG, JM, and OR: Planning and coordinating were as important as
working with the physical materials. We see organizing as part
of our artistic process. We worked closely with a number of people
and had an immense amount of help in preparing the structure,
doing test inflations, working on the animations, acquiring the
location, and promoting the event. With each interaction, each
test run, ideas evolved and changed for the final installation. We
were making decisions up until the night of the event. Even then,
we did not realize how much room we had left for epiphanies from
the audience. Steven Tyson, who erected the historical marker at
the same site, gave an unprepared but extremely moving speech
about the site and the event.
JB: Did the public cause the work to change?
DG, JM, and OR: Yes, at the event, people asked us to speak and
answer questions, which we had not planned on, and Tysons
participation was also unplanned.
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JB: You live at some distance from one another. Did that change the style of
the collaboration?
DG, JM, and OR: We used web technologies, a Wiki, and e-mail lists to help
us organize, but what really brought the project to fruition was three weeks
of face-to-face organizing and work, where we met almost every morning
and determined what needed to be accomplished that day. We realized that
for us, there is no replacement for face-to-face contact and brainstorming.
That is absolutely necessary for us to take on projects of this size.
JB: How did you negotiate the space of collaboration?
DG, JM, and OR: We each have different skill sets, and we ended up working
that out in different ways. By the installation, very little was solely the sphere
of one person, but we each took on heavier workloads for different kinds
of labor. In the process, we learned a significant amount from each other and
about all of the expertise involved, including video, animation, documentation, graphics production, promotion, outreach, inflatable construction,
printmaking, text editing, and labor organization.
JB: Did the controversial material create any friction within your collaboration?
Or were you all as respectful as three owls in a tree?
DG, JM, and OR: Luckily we tended to agree about the interpretation and
understanding of the material. With this project, we were trying to inject
historical specificity into a location from which it had been stripped, but we
did not want to circumscribe the audience to only a single possible reading.
So, we had to agree less on interpretations of history and more on the
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Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Olivia Robinson, Spectres of

Liberty: Ghost of Liberty Street Church, 2008. Interior view.
importance of how to share that history, letting the

audience take from it what they could and would. We
had long conversations about how much to explain
and how much to leave up to interpretation.
JB: Did you expect the physicality of the church to
accomplish as much as it did?
DG, JM, and OR: The physicality of the church was
really impressive. Even after three or four test runs, we
were still in awe of the size and form that this simple
pile of plastic was able to take. It was amazing to see
people interact with it. It is so simple yet so hard to
wrap your head around how plastic sheeting and a fan
can fill a parking lot three stories high.
JB: How long did everything take, from start to finish
on the day in question, including the preparation and
clean-up?
DG, JM, and OR: Fourteen hours or so.
JB: What is at the heart of your upcoming project?
DG, JM, and OR: All of our projects have been about
the challenge of re-animating history, pulling ideas,
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BART WOODSTRUP
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Sculpture 29.7
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Left and above: Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Olivia

Robinson, Spectres of Liberty: Ghost of Liberty Street Church,
LEFT: BART WOODSTRUP / RIGHT: CHRIS HARVEY
2008. Exterior and interior views.
images, and lives from the past and reframing them so that they resonate in
the present. Malcolm X once said, Only by knowing where weve been can
we know where we are and look to where we want to go. In the upcoming
Syracuse project, we are working with Jermain Loguens idea of the Open City
from the 1850s. Syracuse has a rich, though not well-known history as a radical city in the 19th century. Today, it is full of social justice groups, such as
the Peace Council, the oldest peace organization in the nation. The current
groups and activities are less celebrated than those of the past. The past lends
a certain legitimacy to ideas, especially ideas about change. Through a series
of cultural events and a visceral artistic experience, we hope to celebrate and
acknowledge the connections between past and present social justice work
in Syracuse, while envisioning even more ways for the city to be Open.
JB: How is the Syracuse project linked to Ghost of Liberty Street Church?
DG, JM, and OR: Both projects are built around the idea that the past of a
location means something to the present. Some of these meanings tend to
be over-determined and well represented, while others may be suppressed
or mis-represented. We have found that the more strident, outspoken, and
militant parts of abolitionist history are downplayed today, even though they
might be the very aspects that speak most to current social conditions.
JB: What did you learn from the Troy project that you are bringing to the
Syracuse project?
DG, JM, and OR: One of the tools wielded by art and culture is the ability to
create a sense of wonder and inquisitiveness in an audience. Traditional his-
tory telling or political organizing can rarely do this.

In Troy, we were able to create that sense of wonder,
and we hope to do the same in Syracuse. We are
turning everyday materials like plywood, car parts,
and bicycles into giant analog animation machines.
JB: What is the relationship between the form you have
chosena workshop and large-scale zoetropesand
abolitionism?
DG, JM, and OR: Abolitionism in upstate New York was
not simply an idea, but an embodied set of interlocking
communities and institutions that aided slaves in their
escape to freedom and kept them out of the hands of
those who wished to return them to their masters.
In Syracuse, this took the metaphorical form of the
Open City, which was the call of abolitionist preacher
Jermain Loguen. In the Open City, abolitionists would
not have to live in fear for their beliefs and former
slaves would not have to fear being captured and
returned to the South in chains. Our workshop is an
attempt to parallel this sense of community; we hope
to use it as a platform to connect to others who are
interested in the idea of the Open City, both
as a historical concept and as an arrow that points
to possibilities for the Syracuse of the present and
the future. The zoetropes are a tool to animate this
process, to visualize the Open City with a series of
technologies developed in the mid-19th century, at
the same time as the struggle to end slavery in the
United States.
Jesse Ball is a novelist and assistant professor at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Michael
Aurbach
Secrecy,
the Promethean
Weapon
BY DOROTHY M. JOINER
sculpture
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Chained to an icy crag by Zeus and tormented by an eagle,

Prometheus had one weapon, a secret: he knew who
would bear the son fated to dethrone the father of the
gods. Secrets, the myth tells us, give power to their bearers,
however vulnerable they might seem. While Prometheus
is a hero, having given fire to man, other secret-bearers
are far less admirable. For the last 17 years, the malignant collusion of secrecy and power has informed the
sculpture of Michael Aurbach. This focus evolved from his
earlier investigations into the dark corners of American
life: inequality, white-collar fraud, middle-class pomposityall derived from what he calls the Leave It to
Beaver environment of Wichita, Kansas, where he graduated in the same high school class as David Salle and Tom
Otterness. Aurbach was raised to expect people to tell
the truth, to treat each other fairly, to be faithful to
their spouses, and not to cheat on their taxes.
But the assassinations of Kennedy and King, the Vietnam morass, and, finally, Watergate, shattered the illusions of his generation. While Aurbach joined the flood of
students enrolling in journalism, sculpture became his
platform. Drawing on an interest in social issues as well as
a Jewish legacy of somber, often fatalistic humor, he pokes
indignant fun at societal ills, especially the secrecy with
which authority shields itself from scrutiny. In light of
recent abuses of powerthe Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay,
the global financial collapse, the Vaticans concealment of
sexual abuseAurbachs relentless emphasis on the interplay between clandestinity and power is chillingly apt.
Two works foreshadow his interest in the unholy
alliance of secrecy and power. Untitled (1993), for Martin
Luther King, couples admiration for the Civil Rights leader
with castigation of public passivity and covert government
surveillance of his activities. Confessional (1994) parodies
the Roman Catholic tradition that holds confessed sins in
strict confidence. Providing a virtual confession, Aurbachs imposing interactive installation vents away the
penitents secret sins and their toxic fumes.
Aurbachs next series (1998) contains personal secrets.
Fashioned after a standing 1930s radio, Witness: Conspiracy No. 1 is dominated by an Art Deco arch. A display case
opens like a book to uncover a cassette tape under Plexiglas. Witness: Conspiracy No. 2, a miniature triumphal
arch, brings to mind both Imperial Rome and Mussolini,
who sought to reinstate the empire. Conflating a pyramid
and a mastaba, Witness: Conspiracy No. 3 features a set
of scales alluding to the ancient Egyptian belief that, after
death, ones fate was determined by weighing the heart
against the feather of Maat, or divine order. One of Aurbachs scales contains a roll of film, evidence far heavier
than a feather. Surveillance apparatusmicrophones,
cameras, headsetsprovide an ironic inversion of the
Witness: Conspiracy No. 3, 1998. Mixed media, 40 x 36 x 15 in.
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Above: Administrative Trial and Error, 2008. Mixed media, 8 x 8 x 12 ft. Right and detail: The
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Institution, 1997. Mixed media, 8 x 18 x 12 ft.
clich, Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. For Aurbach, these sculptures
are part safe-deposit box, part reliquary casket, and part Pandoras box.
They contain damning information about a colleague and an administrator
involved in the convoluted procedures surrounding his bid for promotion,
piquing the viewers desire to know but ultimately refusing to satisfy it.
In The Institution (1997), Aurbach mocks the university and other large
organizations as cryptic and defensive. A simulated triumphal arch greets
visitors, while message boards broadcast one-liners such as A committee is
being formed to review the situation. Closed-circuit TV surveillance and
the irritating hiss of a motion detector accompany ones progress toward a
shrunken fortification and undersized tower, insulting symbols for the little
men in charge. Imitating a trouser inseam, the entrance continues to satirize
the male. The door is zipped up, its tab flaccid. Curtains flanking the
entrance spark a crimson flare as they open. More disconcerting, viewers see
their own backsides on a TV screen. With paranoic apprehension, the institution ogles those who spy on it. Switches, a keyboard, and a telephone
none operativeindicate an absentee flunky. Message boards reinforce the
party line: Avoid direct contact with employees, Never reveal your sources.
The institutions pretensions are underscored by the make-believe rustication
on the faades lower half. Made of the same material used to simulate genuine
foundations at the base of trailers, this detail calls attention to the institutions
tenuous reality. Though fortress-like in appearance, the structure is more spectral than substantive. Modular in design, it disassembles easily for transport.
When seen in a certain light, moreover, the metal seems to dissolve, confirming
that the institutions power is at best illusory.
Administrative Trial and Error (2008) joins the notion of authorityof both
church and statewith a bizarre, pseudo-scientific experiment. A grandiose
enclosure of shiny metal bars, with double padlocks announcing confinement,
encloses a monastic choir: facing rows of red velvet stalls, each equipped with
leg shackles. Inverted near each stall, feeder bottles designed for research animals facilitate sucking up and provide sips of the party line. A throne,
upholstered in imperial purple with fasces on either side and a gavel (all
emblems of absolute authority), stands at the head of the table between the
stalls. A bishops mitre and crown (with an outsized

industrial nuthes mad!) await the unseen autocrats
assumption of rule. A button-operated hoist facilitates
self-coronation la Napoleon. That all of this is an elaborate project gone wrong is underscored by the megamousetrap on the table. From one angle, it shows a
rodents face; from another, its a KKK hood.
Aurbach has lately shifted his focus from administration to the foibles of scholarship. Deriding the ludicrous
excesses of trendy academics, Critical Theorys Secret
(2010) consists of a clear Plexiglas safe with a nonworkable door and a dial lock. Setting this strong box
inside a vitrine accentuates its pseudo-value, for like
the emperors new clothes, the safe is empty.
Although Aurbachs work derives from university life,
its message is universal. Offering active engagement and
incisive wit (sometimes guffaws), he not only entertains,
but also, in Susan Sontags words, educates the sensibility. His idea that secrecy serves power is perhaps so
self-evident that it might otherwise be overlooked. It is
not known if Prometheus ever revealed his secret; but
he was rescued, and Zeus no longer reigns on Olympus.
Dorothy M. Joiner is a writer living in Decatur, Georgia.
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HANNA HEINRICH, WILLIAM POPE.L, COURTESY THE ALLAN KAPROW ESTATE AND HAUSER & WIRTH
Reiterating
Allan Kaprows
Yard
BY ROBERT C. MORGAN
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LEFT: KEN HEYMANWOODFIN CAMP, COURTESY ALLAN KAPROW ESTATE AND HAUSER & WIRTH, AND THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES / RIGHT: ALEX SLADE, COURTESY ALLAN KAPROW ESTATE AND HAUSER & WIRTH
sculpture
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Opposite: William Pope.L, Yard (To Harrow), 1961/2009. Tires and mixed media, installation view. This page, left: Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961. Tires and tar
paper, dimensions variable. View of work at the Martha Jackson Gallery, NY. Right: Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1998. Tires and tar paper, reinvention at MOCA, LA.
For Allan Kaprow, prodigious artist, theorist, and inventor of

Happenings in the late 50s, art and life were not separate. He
wanted art to reflect life directly. While his Happenings did not
always rise to the level of his intentions, when they did, the
experience could prove exhilarating. One might say the same
about Pollock, an influence on Kaprow, who admitted that not
every painting during his breakthrough period was successful.
Putting art within a course of action, and thereby presenting it
as a mirror of life, can be precarious. Because Kaprows Happenings
and Environments relied on people who were willing to perform,
often self-consciously, within a given space or place, over a designated period of time, their success was never guaranteed. A
great deal was left to chance, indeterminate interactions between
people and materials, a lesson that Kaprow learned from another
mentor, John Cage. Despite the risk, a certain element of chance
is necessary not only for the survival of art, but also for the survival of human beings on this planet. The persistence of culture
often depends on risking what we love.
Although Kaprow began as an abstract painter and student of
Hans Hofmann, early on, he turned his attention to working in a
neo-Dada assemblage style. By the late 50s, these two modes of
workingone formal, the other avant-gardewere implicitly in
competition. While Hofmann influenced the former, the latter

developed in the wake of Rauschenberg and, to some extent,
Jasper Johns. Kaprow respected Hofmann immensely (and for
a while tried to combine the two approaches), but he saw more
options in relation to Pollock. One might say that the true point
of departure for the Happenings was Kaprows essay, The Legacy
of Jackson Pollock, published in Artnews (1958) two years after
the painters untimely death. While Kaprow recognized the importance of Pollocks paintings, he was most interested in the choreographed process and movement revealed in Hans Namuths photographs of the painter at work. This is what took Kaprow out of
the frame and into the everyday world of popular culturea place
where he was free to move at will and observe everything that
had been excluded from art.
When an artist is no longer around to defend his or her ideas,
it becomes difficult to ascertain the intention behind the work.
Not that the artists intention is necessarily the last wordas
Duchamp made clear in his famous lecture in Houston, titled The
Creative Act (1957)but it does serve as an indicator or pointer
to establish the course that one might follow to order to arrive at
an accurate understanding. This is particularly evident if the work
has a conceptual or, shall we say, allegorical intention. Kaprows
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Above: Josiah McElheny, Yard (Junkyard), 1961/2009.

Photograph, 90 x 30 ft. Left: Sharon Hayes, Yard (Sign),
Yard (1961) has both. Its premise is conceptual, meaning that it is anti-aesthetic
(against form), interactive (against the separation of the perceiver and the
perceived), and performative (against the viewer having a static relationship
with the work). By challenging the venerated notion of beauty, Yard implicitly
attacked the established notion of formalism. Art did not have to be separated
into mediumistic categories, such as painting and sculpture, in order to pursue a resolution through abstract form; instead, it could exist somewhere in
between, namely in the space of the everyday world.

By encouraging an interactive relationship with the
work, people were allowed to touch, feel, smell, hold,
and rearrange the materials, in this case, used tires.
Viewers were not relegated to standing outside or
remaining distant from the work but were given license
to transform themselves into participants.
The allegorical intention is more complex, but something that Kaprow was always willing to engage.
In other words, the work might remind the artist (or
viewer) of another place or time. One might associate
it with a Zen rock garden in Kyoto or a blackened coal
cellar. Either comparison would be acceptable. In 1982,
Kaprow was invited to do a re-installation of Yard for
the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlintwo decades after
its inaugural setting in the rear courtyard of the Martha
Jackson Gallery in New York. Even at that time, he still
referred to the work as an Environmentnot as an
installation. The term Environment was closer to
what he had in mind when he conceived the work. He
wanted it to exist as a place where people could come
and go and participate in the space. When asked to
reinvent Yard, he wrote a statement reflecting on
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COURTESY THE ALLAN KAPROW ESTATE AND HAUSER & WIRTH
1961/2009. Signs, dimensions variable.
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GIOVANNI RICCI, MILANO
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his intention: Put into the backyard, the heaps of old

tires and tar paper felt somewhat cut off from the
aesthetic of the inside gallery, and from the other art
works exhibited there. It reminded you less of art (in
those days) than of an industrial dump. I was pleased
I wanted to develop an art which would depart radically
from the art history and contexts we traditionally associate with art.
In Yards recent posthumous reincarnation, it moved
back to its original location, to the same building that
once housed the Martha Jackson Gallery, now occupied
by Hauser & Wirth. Given that the interior has changed
over the years, and that the courtyard is no longer on
the premises of the gallery, curator Helen Molesworth
decided to restage Yard as a series of three reinventions. In addition to installing a new version of Yard
at the gallery, she wanted to make use of two additional outlying sites. Thus, she invited three artists to
reinvent the famous work from their respective points
of viewa technique that Kaprow himself employed
throughout his career whenever he was asked to do a
piece in another setting. William Pope.L was chosen
to do an installation for the ground floor of the gallery,
while Josiah McElheny developed a time-based project
based on images taken of the Iron Triangle at Willets
Point in Queens and ultimately displayed as an enormous 30-by-90-foot photograph in the Panorama room
at the Queens Museum of Art. Sharon Hayes produced
Yard (Sign), a temporary intervention for the New York
Marble Cemetery on Manhattans Lower East Side.
Each of these works was dated 1961/2009, thereby
acknowledging the structuralthough not necessarily
the visual or even conceptualconnection to Kaprows
work. (The absence of any overt visual or conceptual
connection is particularly evident in Hayess work.)
I recall reading a short statement written by Kaprow
in the early 90s, around the time of his retrospective
at the Fondazione Mudima in Milan, in which he
makes a historical distinction between his earlier notion
of Environment and Happenings and what was being
called installation and performance by a younger
generation of artists, critics, and curators. His concept was about viewers being inside the work, whereas
much of the newer work (at the time) was about distancing viewers by relegating them to an outside, more
theatrical position. What for Kaprow had been tactile,
a later generation returned to the virtual.
In the case of William Pope.Ls installation, which
comes closest to Kaprows tactile and material concept,
the accumulation of old tires is roughly the same. On
entering the gallery, viewers were confronted with old
tires piled throughout the space. Specially constructed
rafters at the back supported piles of body bags. Pope.L
recalled that tar paper was used to cover classical stat-
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Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961/1991. Tires and tar paper, reinvention at the Fondazione
Mudima, Milan.
uary in the courtyard garden during the original installation of Yard so as

not to divert attention from the transformation of the site into an industrial
dump. Pope.Ls body bags served a similar function, deflecting earlier antiaesthetic notions into something more ambiguously political. The aesthetic/
anti-aesthetic tension of the piece was further enhanced with Pollock-like
cables overhead, flashing white and red lights at various intervals.
The primary ingredient that the three artists appropriated from Kaprow was
aggregation: Pope.L transformed the gallery by accumulating tires, hanging
lights, and piling body bags; McElheny built up a panoramic view of a wellknown industrial site in Queens via a complex, virtual means of transcription;
and Hayes replaced Kaprows Yard with yard signs, thus designating a continuance of the life-line. Each reinvention of Kaprows Environment was
radically different from the others, yet somehow a common structural thread
wove through them. The detritus of timethe past history of cultureis not
about an ideal state of being. The legacy of Yard is about how materials and
ideas reveal themselves on a structural level and, by doing so, become engaged
with life. From another perspective, Yard and its reiterations may reveal how
life is perpetually given new focus through the discovery and reinvention of art.
Robert C. Morgan is a critic, artist, curator, and art historian who has
written and lectured frequently on the work of Allan Kaprow.
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N e w Yo r k
COURTESY MICHAEL WERNER GALLERY, NY, AND GALERIA ZERO, MILAN
Whitney Biennial 2010

Whitney Museum of American Art
Labeled by some as the Recession

Biennial, Whitney 2010 took a
decidedly low-key approach. Unlike
the last two biennials, this show
had fewer installations and bypassed
spectacle for a more thoughtful and
object-oriented approach that
looked backward and forward at the
same time. On the museums top
floor, Collecting Biennials surveyed
artists from earlier exhibitions,
while on the floors below, curators
Francesco Bonami and Gary CarrionMurayari installed work by 55 artists
that, in their view, reflects presentday anxiety and optimism.
The body served as a metaphor
for a number of pieces, none more
so than Thomas Houseagos 10foot-tall Baby. Fashioned astutely
from rebar, plaster, and Styrofoam,
this towering figure both squats
and crouches, its beckoning yet
menacing form and skull-like head
alluding to birth, death, and evolution.
Huma Bhabha shares Houseagos
interest in multiple perspectives
and non-traditional sculptural materials. A crate that could also be
a coffin acts as a platform for the
shape-shifting assemblage, My Skull
is Too Small. Like Houseago, Bhabha
reduces sculpture to a viscerally
primitive, pre-linguistic stateone
that accents process over any direct
articulation of meaning.
Jessica Jackson Hutchinss Couch
For a Long Time comments on contemporary concerns from a perspective of sly domesticity. A couch covered with newspaper clippings referencing Obama becomes the site
where presidential agenda and daily
life interact. Like the two lumpy
ceramic vessels, one brown and one
Thomas Houseago, Baby, 200910. Tuf-Cal, hemp, iron rebar, wood, graphite, and charcoal, 260.4 x 228.6 x
205.7 cm. Work shown in the Whitney Biennial 2010.
white, that nestle on it, the sofa promotes the homey context of the
everyday, a place where pragmatic
compromise and domestic comfort
co-exist. Hannah Greely also
addressed the quotidian in an installation of a real diner booth and its
fabricated double. Exploring percep-
tion, simulacra, and memory, Greely

uses mirrors and subtle shifts in
scale, along with such nostalgic
details as a telephone mounted on
the rear of the booth, upholstered
seats, and even framed landscape
paintings, to accent the disjuncture
between desired genuineness and
manipulated facsimile. Attentive

museum guards unfortunately kept
Greelys perceptual sleight of hand
at a distance, forestalling any close
examination and thus blunting the
conceptual impact of its adroit
inquiry into authenticity and the
recycling of the past.
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Robert Grosvenors large sculptural

forms continued the dialogue
between reality and manufactured
artifice while also referencing the
body and nature. Reminiscent of
a park, a bridge, and a playground,
and placed in a large gallery where
one could wander through or step
back for a broader view, his installation juxtaposed a group of strangely
familiar abstract shapes with subtle
barriers that led to discoveries about
space, structure, and the evocative
sculptural potential of industrial
materials like fiberglass, flocking, and
aluminum.
The Bruce High Quality Foundations provocative We Like America
and America Likes Us prefers drama
to contemplative exploration. In a
darkened gallery on the fourth floor,
a 50s-era white Cadillac that doubles as a hearse cast one forlorn
headlight onto a blank wall, as a
collage of images taken from television, Hollywood movies, and the
Internet projected across the front

window to the accompaniment of a
womans voice intoning a Whitmanlike elegy to America. Referencing
a 1972 Joseph Beuys performance
that also involved a Cadillac, this
installation intends to be instructive
and transformative, but its message
of love, dysfunction, and abuse
and its screened spectacle of sex,
violence, and racial tension dwells
on clichs and a coy, overly romanticized vision of contemporary culture.
Martin Kerselss assemblage in
the lobby provided a much-needed
participatory environment. A
five-part sculpture made up of found
and fabricated objects including
a turntable, his piece served as a
stage for artists, poets, musicians,
DJs, and choreographers who
could rearrange it any way they

liked. Practical and playful, improvisational yet productive, Kerselss
sculpture proved to be the perfect
prop for a biennial devoted to art
preoccupied with contingency and
the fluctuating impulses of our
peculiar historical moment.
Susan Canning
Wa s h i n gto n , D C
Barbara Josephs Liotta

Reyes + Davis Gallery and the
Phillips Collection
Six of Barbara Josephs Liottas seven

recent granite-shard installations
at Reyes + Davis featured titles referring to the Pleiades, the seven
daughters of Electra and a cluster
of stars in the Taurus constellation.
With the exception of a seventh
(much larger and more horizontal)
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rock cluster (Poseidon Project Part I),

each installation hung at roughly
the same horizontal distance from
one of the gallerys two longer
walls and occupied an imaginary
vertical shaft from ceiling to floor
above its invisible footprint of about
10 inches. Because the Pleiades
differentiated themselves one from
the next only subtly and were separated by repeated intervals, serial
form overshadowed content, and any
hint of narrative or drama resided
within each cluster rather than
between them. Aligning the configurations close to the walls subverted
their in-the-round identities while
playfully transforming the entire
installation into a kind of air-infused
relief sculpture.
The essentially monochromatic
range of each work tells us that, for
BHABHA: COURTESY SALON 94, NY / HUTCHINS: DAN KVITKA, COURTESY SMALL A PROJECTS, NY, AND DEREK ELLER GALLERY, NY
sculpture
Top left: Huma Bhabha, My Skull Is

Too Small, 2009. Clay, wood, wire,
Styrofoam, aluminum, cast iron,
acrylic paint, paper, and charcoal, 93
x 28 x 92 in. Top right: Jessica Jackson
Hutchins, Couch For a Long Time,
2009. Couch, newspaper, and ceramic,
76 x 29 x 35.5 in. Both works from
the Whitney Biennial 2010. Right:
Barbara Josephs Liotta, Icarus, 2009.
Black cord and granite, 15 x 15 ft.
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required its own room to contain

a footprint of six by eight feet.
Viewers were able to walk around
and even through portions of the
piece. A tiny child could have tottered about underneath it without
ever touching a stone.
The Phillips Collection hosted the
most soaring accomplishment of
Liottas two-part show as part of its
Intersections series of contemporary
artists. Icarus is a symmetrical,
ascending parabola whose smallish
rock pairs insinuate a spinal column. Two implied curving planes
extend from the spine as wing-like
extrusions, formed by Venetian
blind cords. The mythical character
occupied fully half of its room and
invoked Christs Descent from the
Cross, a magnificent insect in midflight, as well as the doomed Icarus.
While the vertically inert Pleaides
playfully posed questions of existential scale and time, Icarus provided
an anti-gravitational counterpoint
by dwarfing natures power in favor
of flawed humanity.
Mark S. Price
Liotta, color is secondary. At least
one strong light source threw elegantly nuanced shadows from each
Pleiade onto adjacent walls or floors.
The tonal subtleties surpassed the
color relationships in drama and
interest. Liotta employs competing
archetypes. Broken-off pieces of
already polished granite entangle
the Promethean reach of man with
the hand of a creator-god. Or each
pebble on a string could be Davids
missile about to be slung at Goliath.
They are as likely to be a lapidarians
raw materials as weapons in a childrens rock-throwing fight.
Poseidon Project Part I, Liottas
final piece at Reyes + Davis,
Lincoln, Massachuset ts
Arthur Simms
Clark Gallery
At first encounter, the work of Arthur

Simmsdump-picked components
assembled in quirky wayslooks
like that of a self-taught artist.
Further analysis changes our minds:
frameworks, when used, are well
constructed; theres no flimsiness to
how things are joined together; and
bases, when there are any, are carpentered with skill. The give-away,
though, is that Simms has a signature technique that not only renders
each work coherent, but also unifies
his entire body of worktwo concerns that seldom occur to naive
sculptors. Almost every piece is
wrapped in a netting of binders
twine, wire, or rope, a process that
provides solidity, as well as mystery.
A native of Kingston, Jamaica,
Simms moved to New York at the
age of seven. He earned a BFA at
Brooklyn College, then a scholarship
to Skowhegan School of Painting
and Sculpture in Maine, worked for
and was mentored by art dealers,
and returned for an MFA. He now
teaches at Brooklyn College. His

childhood in a poor country, where
people are ingenious about making
do with whatever they have,
inspires his sculpture. Rather than
buying a cart, he remembers that
people would cobble one together,
sometimes even making the
wheels. He made his own toys from
sticks and scraps.
Simms began his career focused
on two-dimensional art, but at
Skowhegan, his work began to
segue into the third dimension. He
has not left flat work behind, yet it
would appear that his true inclinations blossom in sculpture. Many
pieces are built on wheels, often discarded skateboards, sometimes
tricycles. Nineteen Forty-One begins
with one of those toddler trikes
devoid of pedals, but Simms has
affixed a very small skateboard
crosswise, negating the possibility
of forward motion. A kind of mast
with a rusty Tonka truck on top rises
from the tricycle, lashed to a brass
shell casing tied to some crude aluminum rods that mimic a dynamite
detonator. Everything is wrapped in
Above: Barbara Josephs Liotta, Storm

Pleiade 2, 2009. Granite and lift chord,
9 ft. long. Right: Arthur Simms, Tricycle, 2009. Rope, wood, glue, tricycle, skateboards, toy truck, bottles,
and wire, 30 x 45 x 28 in.
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Left: Mel Kendrick, Markers, 2009.

Cast concrete, work installed at
Madison Square Park. Below: Carmel
Buckley, installation view of Trace,
2009.
wire. Toy Horse features the kind

of toy horse that bounces up and
down and doesnt go anywhere,
adds a bicycle frame with its wheels
placed sideways to the frame, front
and back, and three more useless
wheels horizontally on top, just
under a childs chair made of
delaminating plywood. Simms uses
the trick of wheels aimed at crosspurposes to each other more than
once, implying both a migratory
history and a stasis, a mired-downness. One might find further
metaphor for this black artist in the
fact that the sculptures are bound.
Simmss pieces are lashed together
with a fierce, no-nonsense firmness.
He likes to join things like bottles
neck-first, and light bulbs base-first,
to a larger section; probably
no other method than his many
wrapped layers of stout wire would
hold such a precarious junction.
The energy of the process manifests
itself at first glance and persists
under close examination.
Marty Carlock
crete elements. The five works consist of black and white layers of
poured concrete. The layering, which
acts as a focusing device, suggests,
subliminally or not, Italian Gothic
cathedrals. As an inspired departure
from Kendricks usual working material of wood, Markers breaks new
ground, while it continues the display of process that has been
his hallmark for more than three
decades.
This was Kendricks first truly public work, and its success as a public
project was obvious in that it affected passersby who might not go to
galleries to see art. The sculptures
were also featured in various blogs,
demonstrating a response beyond
the usual critical art world reaction.
Views of the individual works
with people conversing and children
playing around them reveal that
Markers supported casual interactions in the park and fulfilled the
requirements of a successful public

work. The individual pieces are quite
tall (about 10 feet high), so that
their stature and mass, suggestive
of monuments, became obvious
when seen in conjunction with the
human figure. Although Markers references long periods of time with
its black and white strata, it also
played out a specifically cultural significance in the middle of a park
whose tall trees serve as a reminder
of natures presence in the middle
of downtown New York.
As happens with Kendricks wooden
works, the individual Markers demonstrate impressively cut planes,
which allow volume to be explored
in terms of both interiority and exteriority, with intimations of weight
and lightness. Holes and openings
break into the solid walls of striped
concrete, adding complexity to the
overall gestalt, as well as offering
playful ways to see through the
sculptures to the spaces beyond

them. Each work consists of two
pieces, one set on top of the other,
and the disconnect between, or
overlapping of, black and white layers results in a complicated visual
display that intimates Modernist
influences. The individual works are
full of surprises. A walk around a
particular piece reveals that its surfaces can change from solid wall
to an exterior that isnt really there,
consisting mostly of empty space.
Kendrick is a meticulous artist, both
in a formal sense and as an expert
with materials. A practiced and original sculptor, he has used his wide
experience and sharp eye to build
works that manage to be sophisticated and accessible at the same
time. He is working at the height
of his powers.
Jonathan Goodman
C i n c i n n at i
Carmel Buckley
Weston Art Gallery
In the entrancing exhibition Trace,

Carmel Buckley evokes the spirit
of place through sculptural objects,
N e w Yo r k
Mel Kendrick
Madison Square Park
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sculpture
KENDRICK: JAMES EWING, MSPC 2009
Commissioned by the Madison

Square Park Conservancy, Mel
Kendricks multi-part Markers (2009)
graced Madison Square Parks oval
lawn for several months last fall
and winter. From the start, Kendrick
knew that he wanted to do a series,
and he carefully chose the placement of and distance between the
individual works so that they would
be seen both as a group and as dis-
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sculpture
drawings, monotypes, and video. By

using objects and qualities discovered in a house and surrounding
woods to which she recently relocated, Buckley set forth a project as
an artist-cum-archaeologist. Rather
than trying to re-create the entire
environment, she offers a series of
idiosyncratic fragments that blend
the place to which she refers and
the place in which the viewer
encounters her work. Two videos of
tree foliage with a soundtrack of the
early morning breeze and birdsong
are all that is needed to evoke a
fairy-tale forest. The psychological
tone of these layered, partial spaces
is palpable.
The exhibition evades mimesis,
offering a series of works that are
first of all themselves, only further
radiated by the honorific art. Buckley is a conceptual artist insofar as
a large portion of her creative manipulation of the recovered objects takes
place in the mind and eye. Her deft
and controlled placement and organization of mostly unaltered (and
thereby unharmed) objects manages to imbue them with intent. To
take a thing that has been at home
in one location and simply display it
in a new space would possess the
sharp discomfort of the readymade,
a historical precedent that is
not recalled in Buckleys approach.
Rather, what might be sensed
as the displacement of these forms,
such as the green tool shed uprooted
from the artists back yard and
installed in the space, is addressed
through tempered whimsy. The
shed, for instance, is presented atop
gold-papered cinder blocks that
glow beneath its rickety structure.
Many of Buckleys alterations are
almost hidden, such as golden
thread wrapped delicately around
areas of wire caging or the replacement of a broken area in a wooden
basket with similarly colored and
patterned paper. Buckley attaches
magic to the discovery process;
to find these minute details is to
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become so involved with humble

matters of reality that one finds
poetic or transcendent attributes
that were there to begin with.
The prints in the exhibition also
operate as found objects in that
they are impressions of different
materials from the artists life.
Window screens and fly swatters
have been inked with a motherof-pearl shade, resulting in pale,
hauntingly minimal traces. In
another, grass-green print, a fabric
embossed with leafy patterns testifies to the artists hunt. The texture
becomes all the more suggestive of
the outdoors in such a color.
The spiritualized tone is summarized in a pair of five-gallon plastic
buckets, overturned and fitted with
fragments of rusted metal buckets.
Like the other works, this piece is
left untitled, inviting viewers to
invent and intuit an explanation.
As iconic and austere as high
Minimalism, these twin forms are
augmented by their unknown but
apparent history, broken in by time
and use.
Matthew Morris
Philadelphia
Jeanne Quinn, A Thousand Tiny Deaths, 2009. Porcelain, balloons, and
State of the Union:

Contemporary Craft in
Dialogue
Philadelphia Arts Alliance
string, 13 x 8 x 8 ft. Work shown in State of the Union.
People often talk as if there was

an opposition between what is
beautiful and what is useful. Oscar
Wildes summary of the debate
between craft and fine art still rings
true, even as definitions are constantly redefined and artists blur
the remaining lines between the
fields. State of the Union, which
sought to comment on the dialogue
that connects art, design, and craft,
also attempted to demonstrate
(in the words of curator Melissa
Caldwell) that craft has the potential of questioning the boundaries
of its own conventions, even more
so than other fields of contemporary art.
Many featured artists address the

question of utility in craft, especially
form dictated by function. In a
series of spoons, Fidelity I, II, III, IV,
and V (200608), Haley Bates modifies each form slightly, rendering
her sleek modern designs useless
and questioning how utility defines
certain objects. Batess Dissection
(2005) offers another example of
how perceptions of an object can
be changed by small adjustments.
Starting with a spoon, she eliminates one aspect of its form in each
successive iteration, until it is
reduced to a teardrop outline. Gord
Peterans A Table Made of Wood
(1999), a clever comment on what
constitutes a table, is made of
numerous individual pieces of wood,
including the handle of a paintbrush. He focuses on the material

rather than the object so that the
viewer notices the wood first.
Peterans table may serve the familiar function, but he takes the focus
away from utility.
Decoration faces the opposite critique, being merely pretty. For A
Thousand Tiny Deaths (2009), Jeanne
Quinn inflated approximately
50 balloons inside black vases and
then suspended them from the ceiling. As the balloons slowly deflated,
the vases dropped, crashing into
pieces on a platform below. Quinn
creates movement and anticipation
in an object considered static,
theatrically contrasting the permanence of classical forms with the
73
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fragility of their medium. Jen

Blazinas Refused (2002), a salonstyle wall covered with lithographs
in white decorative frames, recreates traditional-style family portraits. The lithographs become universal because they are presented
within familiar decorative frames.
Jill Baker Gowers Flesh Collar #2
(2007), a silicone collar with gem
and pearl embellishment, reveals
layers of personal ornamentation,
from decorative dress to body modification. Like other works in State
of the Union, it shows that the
merely ornamental can be used to
evoke a sensory response.
Rachel Abrams and Tetsuya
Yamada use techniques and materials once marginalized as for craft
only. Yamadas Everyday City
(200506) combines hand-thrown
plates, cups, bowls, and vases into
an urban horizon that emphasizes
their mass-production. Glass beads
and copper wire create an organic
anemone-like form in Abramss
Biological Accumulations (potentiators) (2009). Adelaide Pauls life-size,
blue leather dog, Valgus (2009),
questions taxidermy and its relation
to art. The life-like eyes, visible
stitching, and body positioning force
viewers to question their assumptions about taxidermys techniques
and final product.
State of the Union explored
nuances in the relationship
between art and craft, eschewing
precise definitions while focusing
on preconceived notions of utility,
ornamentation, and our classification of certain techniques and
materials. Caldwell successfully
showcased artists whose work gives
a sense of the history, broad scope,
and future evolution of craft.
Elizabeth Wilson
Memphis
Greely Myatt
David Lusk Gallery
Specks of dust and flecks of paint

drifted into the air as Greely Myatt
pulled back the plaster-embedded
zipper beneath the signature piece
in his recent exhibition. There are
few artists whose final touch on a
work of art is to break it. Although
Myatt is no iconoclast in the traditional sense, the performance of
unzipping the shows neatly painted
title, and exactly, is an apt
metaphor for his creative process of
imaging, de-imaging, and re-imaging. The text-act destroys any
sense of personal or temporal definition and expresses the innate need
to constantly reinvent, to make
something, then split it open and
see whats inside.
In fact, judging from the works on
display in the Lusk show, which was
one of nine exhibitions that made up
a retrospective to mark Myatts
20th year working and teaching in
Memphis, the artist is more
alchemist than iconoclast. One of
the primary dictums of the ancient
practice is solve et coagula: dissolve
and coagulate, or separate and join
together. Through this process,
alchemy seeks to turn common
metals into something precious and
valuable, to produce a commodity
that possesses properties not present in its original components.
Two different groups of work in this
show pulled off just such a feat. On
entering the gallery, the viewer confronted 12 individual phrases con-
structed from found signs (aluminum, wood, plastic) that had

been separated and joined together
to produce witty expressions back-lit
with fluorescent light. Given Myatts
previous work incorporating speech
balloons, the illuminated words
hovering from the wall combined to
form a cacophony of voices. Unlike
the signs in their original form, each
one with its specific, clear message,
Myatts signs use skillfully reassembled letters and varying fonts and
sizes to create clever turns of phrase
that provoke rather than communicate. In works such as Not Sold in
Stores, Seeem, or Lapses to Kill, he
playfully questions and pokes fun
at art, the viewer, and, most often,
himself.
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Salvaged street signs re-crafted

into three quilts with different patterns hung in the back of the gallery.
Here, as in much of Myatts work,
he uses re-purposed urban materials
to explore his rural Southern roots.
More than creating something rare
from mundane objects, his quilts
transform impersonal, cold, and
reflective metal into homey, inviting
blankets that absorb and entertain.
In this show and throughout the
entire retrospective, it was evident
that one of Myatts primary goals is
to constantly reinvent, to push himself beyond spatial boundaries, traditional mediums, and artistic categories. At the same time, he feels
no need to answer exactly what 20
years of work amounts to. Instead,
hes more than willing to pass the
questions along to the viewer in a
deceptively simple Southern intonation, Reckon?
Todd Richardson
MYATT: COURTESY DAVID LUSK GALLERY
sculpture
Above: Greely Myatt, and exactly,

2009. Zipper, plaster, and paint, 3
x 16 x .5 in. Right: Gonzalo Fonseca,
Two Heads, 1968. Painted and carved
wood, 57.75 x 30 x 9 in. From Constructivism in Relief.
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H o u sto n
Constructivism in Relief:
Taller Torres-Garca
Sicardi Gallery
Last year, Houston was ablaze with

shows by Hispanic artists from the
second wave of Constructivism. In
addition to the Menils exhibition
and handsome book dedicated to
Joaqun Torres-Garca, Sicardi Gallery
hosted a show on the artists of
Torres-Garcas workshop, a relatively
small but suggestive selection that
ranged from Julio Alpuys exquisite
Fish (2003) in blond wood to the
Uruguyan Alceu Ribeiros striking
Still life in Relief (1947). Ascetic
by comparison, Jose Gurvitchs basrelief (1962), composed of oils layered on board, was easily the most
attractive piece. Augusto Torress
Constructivo (1968), a stunning
cement relief with mysterious incisions, was equally attractive but in
an entirely different key. None of
these pieces carry particularly distinctive titles, but they are strikingly
original as formal compositions, in
their inner balance as well as in the
vitality of their components.
The Sicardi show was a minor revelation, due to the diversity of works
and the excellence of the installation. Francisco Matto was represented by a bas-relief of a snake
(Serpiente). The most original composition was Alpuys huge Untitled
Relief (1963) in painted and incised
wood, containing several inner collages, expressively placed holes for
eyes, and an unusual composition
that plays on architectural forms,
rhythmically engaged in a would-be
modernistic musical suite.
Derived from European Constructivism, these works display their
own logic and foundations. At first
glance, the distance between them
and classical Constructivism seems
to lie in the injection of biomorphism (or psychomorphism), plus
the addition of inner dimensions,
which were clearly absent in the
first wave of Constructivism.
Juan Batalla, The condition, 2009. Tires, wood, and red pigment, 94 x 136 x 99 cm.
Aron Gurvitchs Collage of forms

in Relief (1962), easily the most outstanding piece in the show with its
arresting conciseness, human scale,
and boldly contrasting color harmonies, expresses all of these originary influences in sublimated form.
It reflects a visible innovation in
method developed by second-wave
Constructivism, such as the alternation between planar composition
and discrete relief created with
colors layered on board. Figurative
elements are barely alluded to,
absorbed by intense color and highly
original orchestration.
Uruguayan-born Gonzalo Fonseca
opens a door to the imaginary,
where the feeling of mystery looms
large. He studied painting with
Torres-Garca in Montevideo, and
the architecture of his dwellings
is Chirico-esque, giving rise to an
astounding metaphysical perspective. Fonseca travels back and forth
between his metaphysical models
and a contemporary style, gathered
from a complex amalgam of influ-
ences. Above all, his signature is

identifiable with the ineffable feeling of solitude that emanates
from the signs and symbols with
which he endows his creations.
Architectural forms abound, with
constant references to cities, plazas,
esplanades, terraces, forts,
stairs, and porticos; their solitude
and silence create an atmosphere
of the tertiary, from which man is
totally absent.
Fonsecas work has not only a mysteriously evocative quality, but also,
in the plenary sense of the term,
a synthetic activity. Intuitively, he
merges styles and forms coming
from different worlds in time and
space. The diversity of these abstract
models lent them their inimitable
appealthat was the central teaching of the Taller Torres-Garca, which
made fruitful excursions into the
primitive but brought its models upto-date through skill and imagination
to bridge the gap between ancient
spirituality and a desiccated present,
still avid for a beyond.
The allure of these minimal works

stems from a love of abstractions
intrinsic beauty, independent of any
external message. The aggressive
monumentality of first-wave Constructivism is totally absent here.
The tendency is toward reduction
(rather than aggrandizement) of the
human figure, where man functions as a symbol for a non-heroic
universal.
Ileana Marcoulesco
Buenos Aires
Juan Batalla
Recoleta Cultural Center
The Argentine artist Juan Batalla

connects art with the sacred, transforming his creations into icons that
carry the cult of ancestral Afro-Latin
divinities (orixs), as well as personal
history, especially in relation to his
practice of bodybuilding. It is important to note that neither practice is
deemed honorable in high-culture
circles, a fact that complicates how
people approach these meta-cultures.
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Installation view of A Procession of

Sculptures, 2009, with works by
Jeroen Henneman and Peer Veneman.
Batalla presents a mysterious

world that participates in our reality
while also interacting with a transcendent level, a dialectic communication wherein the thesis-antithesis-synthesis circuit closes in the artwork. His works combine certain
aesthetic codes with the perception
of a bodyhis ownthat constantly
changes. As he says, Changing my
body radically and developing physical strengthwere experiences I
relate to the passionwhen I work
in my workshop with the hammer
in my hand.
In his recent works, Batalla uses
rubber from bicycle tires. Used tires
act as memorials; they keep record
of time and the personal imprint,
unique and irreplaceable. Having
experimented with geometry and
construction (always with a tendency
to circular forms), he now creates
a hidden tension between wall-hung
piecesconnected as an organic
frameworkand those sculptures
that have no recognizable forms.
Drawings and photographs introduce the presence of a muscular
body. The association of body and
ritual practice emerges clearly:
the orixs are divinities free of prejudice; they embrace eroticism,
humor, and irony as opposed to
moral and religious rigidity.
These sculpturessome of which

were also shown in Batallas solo
exhibition at the Recoleta Cultural
Center in Buenos Aires in April
explore connections between primitive forms. Illumination becomes
fundamental: the volcanic sculptures
made of rubber-covered wood, for
instance, contain hidden engines
that activate the opening and closing of their covers. Some of the redpainted sculptures become so realistic as to resemble flesh. For Batalla,
sculpture represents a state
of mind, a vibrating frequency from
where I read reality and translate it
into images. His creations participate in the present and also contemplate age-old beliefs, avoiding contemporary assumptions about the
primitive and the essential. The special attention paid to lightness and
weight relates Batallas work to that
of Jos Bedia and Cornelia Parker.
From solid intellectual ground,
Batalla dares to consider new points
of view, even when there is no
longer a clear identification with the
past. He makes no interpretations,
nor does he question his choices; he
lets his works go with the flow
and trusts that time will place them
where they belong: I see artists
afraid of their own creations because
they cant make them fit into their
conceptual presumptions. Personally,
I choose to set them free. It is better
if they run before me.
Maria Carolina Baulo
O t t e r lo , t h e N e t h e r l a n d s
A Procession of Sculptures:
Ten Dutch Sculptors
Krller-Mller Museum
Relationships ruled in A Procession

of Sculptures: Ten Dutch Sculptors.
Much of the work was current,
although these Dutch or Dutch-based
artists form a generation born
around the time of World War II and
have established reputations. Guest
curators Rudi Fuchs and Maarten
Bertheux trained their sights on how
the works, sometimes figurative and
sometimes abstract, interacted with
one another.
The first gallery immediately established the rules of the game. Adam
Coltons sculptures are all about
mass. His opaque, white or off-white,
amorphous forms bulge from the
wall or lie on the floor, where they
appear as natural as boulders in a
stream. Michael Jacklin, on the other
hand, draws in the air with slender
metal shafts to form tilted, geometrically based structures, enclosing
space with the slightest touch.
Shown together, these very different
works produced a visual resonance.
Jos Kruit explores three dimensions
in transparent polyester, so that
space is both enclosed and visible.
Piet Tuytel outlines space in structural
steel, the precision enhanced by
proximity to a pale, rosy see-through
construction by Kruit. In the same
room, Leo Vroegindeweijs focus was
fully on materials in a hanging struc-
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ture made up of small plastic balls,

as well as two wheelbarrows that
stood solidly on the floor, made into
one unit by an iron chain.
Recognizable human representation came into being in stylized
works by Peer Veneman and
Shinkichi Tajiri. The former wittily
demolishes the whole idea of portrait
busts as a serious art form in The
Higher The Hat The Closer To God.
Three identical pristine-white heads,
cast in synthetic materials, are each
topped by fantastical colored headdresses that mock pretension in
an amiable but devastating manner.
Tajiris Wachter (Guard) sculptures
stand life-size, Cubist-inspired interpretations of Japanese samurai warriors whose heads are fashioned into
weapon shapes. Venemans wallhung relief suggesting a standing
figure, another part of this mise-enscne, also has Cubist roots. Frolicking among these austere humans
were aluminum animal figures by
Jeroen Henneman. Like cutouts given
three-dimensional form, they played
teasingly against two-dimensional
works by the same artist.
Avery Preesman and Jan Maaskant
also move freely between two and
three dimensions. For each of these
artists, the spatial tension elicited
between individual pieces is part
of the overall effect. Maaskant sometimes inserts sculptural elements
between colored panels, which may
themselves contain drawn or photographic images. Pressman does
the same, summoning religious overtones with Untitled, Last Silver
Painting in Prussian Blue, Triptych
(2005). Here, two paintings flank a
muscular sculpture extending from
the wall like a bold line drawing.
More than just a collection of contemporary Dutch sculpture, this exhibition revealed common themes and
intense relationships among the
selected works. Careful and attentive
curation made for an experience that
rewarded close attention.
Jane Durrell
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BOB GOEDEWAAGEN
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NATHALIE BARKI, COURTESY THE ARTIST
11th Istanbul Biennial
Cultural events that contribute to a

citys evolution as a transnational
marketplace, biennials also serve as
places where curators can experiment with truth and presentation,
translate cultural theories and artistic proposals, and provide context
and content for the public and the
host city. With a long history of
negotiating between cultural, religious, and political influences from
both West and East, Istanbul is an
ideal location for an international
exhibition. The 11th Istanbul
Biennial, What Keeps Mankind
Alive, was curated by WHW (which
stands for what, how, and for
whom), a collective of four Slovak
women whose politicized exhibition
attempted to provide a glimpse
of a civil majority or a third-world
humanism.
WHW explain that our main
objective is to educate, to find a
way out of the double bind of global
neoliberalism and local nationalism,
and to cover everything from global
poverty to gender inequality. They
employ the Brechtian idea of entertainment/exhibition as a didactic
method capable of provoking social
change and inducing emotional
reactions, in contrast to the curatorial role as it is commonly understood today: the curator retreating
from center stage and standing to
the side ofrather than thematically in front ofthe artworks. As
curators, WHW acted as teachers or
propagandists and produced an
MFA thesis-like show. Dry, didactic,
and predictable, in some instances,
it was brave and well choreographedallowing some works to
stand out and engage on more poetic levels.
I was struck by Trevor Paglens 18
large black photographs pierced by
pinhole light dots, a mapping
of international military reconnaissance/intelligence satellites in the
sky over Istanbul. The same room
included Palestinian artist Wafa

Houranis cardboard models
of buildings, toy cars, antennas,
fences, and lightsall emanating
a quiet music that gave an added
illusion of the real. Qalandia 2087
(2009) is a future projection, the
third in a series that includes a military checkpoint and refugee camp
containing 10,000 people.
Scrunched red papers were scattered across the floor of three exhibition spaces. One could easily have
dismissed them as garbage, but a
closer look revealed that each page
was printed with phrases describing
the uncomfortable position of
women in Turkey. Turkish Report
(2009), by Sanja Ivekovic, repeatedly
insisted that these issues be discussed, spread, and communicated.
A Buenos Aires collective, Etctera,
which consists of visual artists,
poets, puppeteers, and actors,
presented The Errorist Kabaret, a
fun Dadaist interactive installation
charged with black humor.
Unfortunately, this biennial was
weighted by its propagandist tone.
The curators considered the show
as oppositional to political instrumentalization yet in the service of
political instrumentalizationthat
is, as politics is in the service of
the market, of wealth and profit. This
tension between propaganda and
autonomy was something we tried
to play with, but were definitely
not proposing the answer.
Politics and aesthetics found a

balance in several works, including
Hans-Peter Feldmanns Bread Slice.
Framing absence and emptiness, a
slice of French bread with the middle cut out lay atop a conventional
museum pedestal. Z32, a startling
video by the Israeli artist Avi Mograbi that employs Brechts method
of interweaving music, politics,
emotions, object, subject, and symbol, was wonderful. Turkish artist
Canan Senol contributed the standout video work Exemplary, which
employs classical Ottoman miniature painting and calligraphy to
unravel a narrative of female sexual
longingslike poetry, it transcends
itself.
For the feminist Beyond Guilt
The Trilogy (2004), Israeli artists Ruti
Sela and Maayan Amir shot a video
in a Tel Aviv hotel room, using men
Above: Wafa Hourani, Qalandia 2087,

2009. Below: Hans-Peter Feldmann,
Bread Slice, 2009. Both works shown
in the Istanbul Biennial.
chosen from an Internet chat room.

One man, a former terrorist, spoke
of his shocking activities during the
war. Presenting an interesting counterpoint to his words, the videographers posed him as a reclining
nude, like Titians Venus of Urbino
or Manets brazen Olympia. Unlike
those art historical icons, however,
this nude references the female
gaze.
Including so many women artists
and so many unfamiliar biennial
artists was laudable. One might say
that this was an activist gesture,
but ultimately it could not override
the monochromatic message that
defined the entire exhibition. Art
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sculpture
may aim at the political as the ultimate means of emancipation and

absolute freedom from commodificationif such is still possiblebut
as brave as the intent here, the
didactic predictability to which each
artwork conformed routinely disappointed the surprise factor.
Carolee Thea
Beijing
Qiu Zhijie
The Ullens Center for
Contemporary Art
Two sculptures by Qiu Zhijie, featured in a show of eight key Chinese

artists, reveal that, even in three
dimensions, Qiu still thinks like a
calligrapher. His creations morph
from the painterly to sculptural
installation, but his most cogent
works remain focused on ink. His
early work Tattoo (1997) saw the
Chinese word Bu (No) slathered in
rich red ink across his bare chest,
and in Ten Tang Poems (200001),
reversed calligraphy literally vanished into nothingness. Ink culture
and writing are ingrained in the

Chinese soul, and it is difficult for
Westerners to fathom the deep
effect that a character-based language and its compulsory brushstrokes can have on the psyche.
The hours required to memorize
the strokes that compose a single
word are formidable.
Qiu has that type of hand/eye
motor coordination hard-wired into
him, and when he leaves the realm
of stroke, ideogram, ink, and allusion
to linguistics, his work loses velocity.
For instance, Ataraxic consists of two
enormous glass gourds stoppered
with enlarged stainless steel
syringes. The bubble-like transparent
globes are populated with air and
lethargic black butterflies that occasionally pat their pretty wings together. Perhaps the sleepy creatures are a
metaphor for Chinas treatment of its
natural resources, but the big gourds
(placed like lumps in the middle of
the gallery) lack focus.
The second sculpture, All Those
Whom I Have Forgotten, offers a pro-
found look into pollution, toxicity,

and, in a backhanded way, the
beauty of ink. The roar from the
15-foot-high black waterfall overwhelms any other sound, and the
musky smell of the thick ropes of
cascading ink is as theatrical as
an exhibit in a theme park.
Approaching the sculpture, one is
unavoidably splattered by the misty
black sprayI tasted it on my
tongue. An inky pond surrounds the
waterfall, bubbling up into a
makeshift frothy lagoon encased in
an undulating metal frame. The
lagoon is populated with stuffed
black crows mounted on black
sticks. There is a gorgeous lusciousness in this immersion, as if the horror of pollution is wiped out by the
sheer adoration of the medium.
In dealing with his first love, Qui
shines. It is as if the repetition of
the ink stroke, even if abstracted
and removed from its original
meaning, is his real raison dtre.
Ellen Pearlman
Qiu Zhijie, All Those Whom I Have Forgotten, 2009. Iron, ink, iron rails, railroad ties, water pump, and bird specimens,
15 x 10 x 7.5 meters.
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D i s patc h
New Directions in
Performance and Sculpture
Performance art has become ubiquitous in New York: archived, sold by

commercial galleries in limited editions, and celebrated annually
by numerous institutions, including
Creative Time, Performa, the Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council, and
AIOPArt in Odd Places. Brooklyn,
the Bronx, and Governors Island also
have annual performance series in
place. Last fall, Performa included
a Lust Weekend inspired by Futurist
Valentine De Saint-Point and a sizzling, comic reading by Tracey Emin,
as well as a food art banquet. Three
high-level examples of craft, concept,
and sculpture in performance
art stood out in the busy fall season.
At the 2009 Pinta Art fair,
Philadelphia-based Peruvian artist
Cecilia Paredes painted herself into
Chinese and Japanese tapestries. She
became those tapestriesa standin for the countless women effaced
by centuries of subservience and
bondage in Asian cultures. When she
transformed one side of her body
into a snake, the rest, including her
head, was buried under tons of sand.
As a fish, a dragonfly, and an armadillo, Paredes was exploring non-human
forms that most of us take for granted. She becomes other bodies
creatures whose existence is peripheral, marginal. All of her disguises
are constructed with beauty and
craftclassic notions that Paredes
updates with a contemporary understanding of spiritual, mythical, and
secular states of being.
During four sold-out performances
at the biennial Performa festival, up
to 100 people per night entered the
crotch of a giant spacesuit to view
35 models parading space couture.
Mother Earth, Sister Moon, a collaborative Gestamtkunstwerk involving
theater, monumental sculpture, and
music, was created by Christian
Tomaszewski and Joanna Malinowska, Polish-born New Yorkers whose
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PAREDES: COURTESY DIANA LOWENSTEIN FINE ARTS GALLERY, MIAMI
sculpture
history-laced projects merge Western

and Eastern cultures. This piece alluded to Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanislaw Lem,
Pawel Althamer, and Ilya and Emilia
Kabakov, among other sources. For
example, the 50-foot-long Tyvek
spacesuit paid homage to Russias
first female cosmonaut, Valentina
Tereshkova, and is sized to fit Niki
de Saint Phalles She-A-Cathedral.
Masami Tomihisas accompanying
futuristic music combined voice,
cello, electric guitar, piano, acoustic
bass, and three kinds of percussion.
Adults, as well as children, became
Lilliputian participants in an orchestrated drama that included a friendly
giant brown bear and a bar serving
milk. Tomaszewski teaches sculpture
at Princeton and is the recipient
of numerous awards. Malinowskas
2009 projects included a solo show
at Manhattans Canada Gallery and
a Guggenheim Fellowship. This year,
their mega-cosmonaut was included
in The Future Under Communism,
at the Nottingham Contemporary Art
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Above: Duke Riley, Those About

to Die Salute You, 2009. Top right:
Cecilia Paredes, Rhythmic Garland,
2009. Right: Christian Tomaszewski
and Joanna Malinowska, Mother
Earth, Sister Moon, 2009.
Center in England, and Malinowska

contributed an installation and performance to Knights Move at the
SculptureCenter.
Duke Riley is a maestro of historytinged naval performance art.
In Those About to Die Salute You, he
staged a battle between green- and
red-helmeted, armor-clad Museo del
Barrio and Queens Museum teams on
a former Worlds Fair pond in Corona
Park near the Queens Museum. As the
sun was setting, costumed viewers
consumed abundant free alcohol and
danced to a raunchy live band at the
museum before heading to the pond
where dancing girls revved up the
crowd. Soon, the teams manned historically styled boats, including a
Venetian gondola with giraffe heads
fore and aft, an old model Staten

Island ferry, and a tank-like submarine,
all setting forth from a harbor complete with Roman-style buildings. As
the teams fought, viewers opened
prepared boxes of microwaved tomatoes and melons and plunged into
action in the shallow lake. Riley made
no attempt to micro-manage the
resulting melee, which quickly got out
of hand. The burning of the Queen
Mary II in effigy and a fireworks display signaled that it was time to dry
off and go home. The freedoms (the
trajectory of the battle was in the
hands of the participants and viewers)
and framing devices (an ancient city,
incongruous fleet, historic park setting) of this performance piece made
it great.
One feels strangely revitalized sitting (enwombed) inside a giant belly

listening to space music and watching
wild-looking mannequins enter and
exit by unzipping various body parts.
A naval battle is different. More dangerous, it was also a trumped-up war
in a neighborhood where gang warfare still exists. Both pieces carried a
strong message, yet their particular
aesthetics and viewer participation
were equally important. Performance
art at its best, as in these works,
involves synaesthesia, capturing your
full attention with its partsits core,
its score, its body, how it uses time
and spacewhether or not it has
something to say, and whether or
not it changes your point of view.
Jan Garden Castro
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P E O P L E , P L AC E S , A N D E V E N T S
2 0 1 0 L I F E T I M E AC H I E V E M E N T G A L A H O N O R S P H I L L I P K I N G A N D W I L L I A M T U C K E R
bk
1 Phillip King, recipient of the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award. 2 William Tucker, recipient of the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award. 3 Sir Anthony
4 Keith Patrick, guest speaker at the gala. 5 Peter Murray, guest speaker at the gala. 6 Guests at the Lifetime
Achievement Award gala. 7 Carole Feuerman, guest of John Valpocelli, Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, and Mr. and Mrs. John Valpocelli. 8 Ann FitzGibbons,
Bill FitzGibbons, and Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. 9Richard Hunt, Tom Scarff, Jerry Ross Barrish, and John Grande. bk Helen Glazer, Bruce Daniels, Brooke
Caro, guest speaker at the gala.
Barrie, and Brian Carey.
Highlights of the evening included heartwarming, and often

humorous, remarks by the galas presenters: sculptor Sir Anthony
Caro, ON, CBE; Keith Patrick, art critic, curator, and editor; and
Peter Murray, OBE, Executive Director of Yorkshire Sculpture
Park.
We would like to extend a special thanks to gala sponsors
Nadine Witkin/Estate of Isaac Witkin, The Kanter Family
Foundation, and Chelsea College of Art & Design/University of
the Arts London. We would also like to acknowledge Pangolin
London, Gallery Kasahara, and especially Kate Sedwell and
Chris Wainwright.
Thanks to everyone who attended and showed their support
for these most deserving artists. We hope to see many of our
members at the ISCs 50th Anniversary Celebration, October
22nd in New York City.
VALERIE FRIEDMAN
The ISCs Board of Directors established the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991 to recognize individual sculptors who have
made exemplary contributions to the field of sculpture. Candidates for the award are masters of sculptural processes and
techniques who have devoted their careers to the development
of a laudable body of work as well as to the advancement of the
field as a whole.
This years Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to
Phillip King and William Tucker, who joined a prestigious list of
previous winners. On April 9th, they gathered with members
of the arts community who came together to celebrate their lives
and careers, at Chelsea College of Art & Designs 45 Millbank, in
London. Nearly 150 people from around the globe, ranging from
established artists and past Lifetime Achievement Award recipients to aspiring artists and patrons, attended this sold-out event.
Vol. 29, No. 7 2010. Sculpture (ISSN 0889-728X) is published monthly, except February and August, by the International Sculpture Center. Editorial office: 1633 Connecticut Ave. NW, 4th floor, Washington, DC
20009. ISC Membership and Subscription office: 19 Fairgrounds Rd., Suite B, Hamilton, NJ 08619, U.S.A. Tel. 609.689.1051. Fax 609.689.1061. E-mail <isc@sculpture.org>.
_______ Annual membership dues are US $100;
subscription only, US $55. (For subscriptions or memberships outside the U.S., Canada, and Mexico add US $20, includes airmail delivery.) Permission is required for any reproduction. Sculpture is not responsible for unsolicited material. Please send an SASE with material requiring return. Opinions expressed and validity of information herein are the responsibility of the author, not the ISC. Advertising in Sculpture
is not an indication of endorsement by the ISC, and the ISC disclaims liability for any claims made by advertisers and for images reproduced by advertisers. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send change of address to International Sculpture Center, 19 Fairgrounds Rd., Suite B, Hamilton, NJ 08619, U.S.A. U.S. newsstand distribution by CMG, Inc., 250 W. 55th
Street, New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. Tel. 866.473.4800. Fax 858.677.3235.
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From the Chairman

ISC Board of Directors

16 Forum Chelsea and SoHo Chinese Style: The

Nicholas Hlobo: Where Is Your Navel? by Pamela Allara

The Art of Activism: A Conversation with Barbara Hashimoto by Collette Chattopadhyay

Willard Boepple: Disembodiment and Sensuality by David Cohen

Maria Artemis: Mining Materials by Rebecca Dimling Cochran

Revolutionizing History: A Conversation with Olivia Robinson, Josh MacPhee, and

Michael Aurbach: Secrecy, the Promethean Weapon by Dorothy M. Joiner

Reiterating Allan Kaprows Yard by Robert C. Morgan

Contemporary Art Scene in Beijing and Shanghai

Dara Greenwald by Jesse Ball

New York: Whitney Biennial 2010

Washington, DC: Barbara Josephs Liotta

Lincoln, Massachusetts: Arthur Simms

New York: Mel Kendrick

Cincinnati: Carmel Buckley

Philadelphia: State of the Union

Memphis: Greely Myatt

Houston: Contructivism in Relief

Buenos Aires: Juan Batalla

Otterlo, the Netherlands: A Procession of

Istanbul: 11th Istanbul Biennial

Beijing: Qiu Zhijie

Dispatch: New Directions in Performance

On the Cover: Nicholas Hlobo, Umphanda

Installation at the ICA Boston. Photograph:

Michael Stevenson, Cape Town.

Sculpture September 2010

Address all editorial correspondence to:

Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and

Major Donors ($50,000+)

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The James J. and Joan A.

Melody Sawyer Richardson

About the ISC

This program is made possible in

This issue is supported

Patrons Circle ($2,5004,999)

Agnes Gund & Daniel Shapiro

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John & Deborah Lahey

James S. GibsonJohn GillEdmund GlassRoger GoldenGordon Huether

OHaraMichelle OMichaelJames ONealScott PalsceGertrud Parker

Sculpture September 2010

Vedova, Venice, 2010.

Full body scanning

Screen shot of data

Screen shot of tool path data

Statue of Four Lies

When I went to western China

ings. Compared to Chelsea,

bios of the artists. Some of the

slickened-up natural materials.

Left: View of Mao Zedong sculpture

studio. The galleries are rather