Sculpturalist

sculpturalist[at]gmail.com

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In 2010, the Japanese artist Mariko Mori created a sculpture called Tom Na H-iu, a glass object in the middle of a pond, located within a bamboo grove on Japan’s Teshima Island. Tom Na H-iu glows whenever a star has died, or rather, a supernova explosion has happened. It is linked by a computer to the Kamioka Observatory in Hida, Japan. 

The piece is linked by a computer to the Kamioka Observatory in Hida, Japan. The location is an ancient site where souls are said to spend time before migrating.

According to the Benesse Art House website, “Watching this sculpture projecting the light of neutrinos — the soul of the universe — onto the water surface, we will feel that we are linked to the universe, or indeed that we are ourselves the universe, relating our living in the eternal of time to Tom Na H-iu.”

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In 2014, to celebrate the 56th anniversary of Philip Johnson’s Glass House, the Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya created a site-specific fog installation titled Veil. Now in her 80s, Nakaya is known as the first artist to use fog as as sculptural medium.

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New York-based artist Eric N. Mack created new works for Wales Bonner’s SS18 and FW18 runway shows, which are now on view at Totokaelo in New York City. 

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This shoe combines the upper of the Air Max Plus with the sole of the Air Max 97. The “Layer Cake” colorway for women includes “Mica Green,” “Leche Blue,” and “Light Orewood Brown.”

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Barbara Kruger made this plate, Untitled (Platter War), to support LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), LA’s longest-running artist space. The editioned piece is available from February 1 to December 31.

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Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates theatrical sets from which to photograph cloud formations. Titled Breaking the Fourth Wall, this set will be on view at this year’s Armory Show in New York City from Ronchini Gallery.

Berndnaut Smilde, Breaking the Fourth Wall, presented by Ronchini Gallery at The Armory Show 2018: Platform, 8 – 11 March 2018, www.ronchinigallery.com

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The artist Sean Scully has installed 15 new paintings and sculptures at the late architect Luis Barragán's Cuadra San Cristóbal. Titled “Sean Scully — San Cristóbal,” the exhibition is on view at the estate outside Mexico City timed to this year’s Zona Maco art fair.

“What I love about stone, is that you’re not actually fabricating, you’re only reorganizing what’s already there,” says Scully. "A kind of Machu Picchu, you know? You can ask it questions, but it never answers."

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The New York Earth Room is an installation by the late artist Walter De Maria located in SoHo, filled with 140 tons of dirt. It was installed on the second floor of 141 Wooster Street in 1977 and has been preserved by the Dia Foundation ever since.

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On February 8, the Museum of Sex in New York City will open an exhibition of works by photographer Nobuyoshi Araki titled “The Incomplete Araki.” It will include an interactive installation of his photo books.

“I want to make photographs that maintain their incompleteness,” says Araki. “I don't want them to lose their reality, presence, speed, heat, or humidity. Therefore, I stop and shoot before they become refined or sophisticated.” 

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The artist Carsten Höller was recently commissioned to install a dizzying, nine-story slide installation at Aventura Mall in Miami. It has two steel slides that are reached by a spiral staircase: one that goes clockwise and one that goes counterclockwise. Those who use it can reach speeds of up to 15 miles per hour. 

Aventura is known for previous art commissions by Louise Bourgeois, Ugo Rondinone, and Daniel Arsham. Höller’s Aventura Slide Tower is now open to the public.

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This is a Bauhaus-inspired penguin pool designed by Berthold Lubetkin, which originally debuted in 1934 at the London Zoo. Lubetkin’s design was in direct response to modernization in Europe and suggested similar applications for human dwelling.

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Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Chris Burden’s Urban Light installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The lamps, originally from the 1920s, were purchased and restored by Burden, who bought them from a vendor at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. According to Michael Govan, LACMA’s director, Burden described Urban Light as “a statement about what constitutes a sophisticated society — ‘safe after dark and beautiful to behold.’”

“One of the most beautiful lamps, I think, is called the Broadway Rose,” says Burden. “There’s an artichoke in the finial, and also rosebuds. These lamps have a very interesting history. Their finials are very, very long, and for the first several years they were installed downtown. There are six of them in Urban Light and eleven of them left in Los Angeles.”

As of February 2018, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation donated energy-efficient bulbs to Urban Light. 

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The British artist Haroon Mirza will create a new series of sculptures titled stone circle 10 miles north of Marfa, Texas. The piece, reminiscent of Stonehenge and contextually similar to Elmgreen & Dragset’s Prada Marfa, is an arrangement of boulders with solar panels attached to them that release energy according to phases of the moon. 

stone circle will be installed in Winter 2018 and be on view for the following five years, at least.

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On February 21, David Zwirner Gallery in New York City will open “in daylight or cool white,” an exhibition focused on Dan Flavin’s use of white light since the ‘60s. The title comes from Flavin’s "‘… in daylight or cool white.’ an autobiographical sketch," published in the December 1965 issue of Artforum.

Referring to light, Flavin once said: “It is what it is, and it ain’t nothin’ else... There is no overwhelming spirituality you are supposed to come into contact with... It’s in a sense a ‘get-in-get-out’ situation. And it is very easy to understand. One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.”

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Marina Abramovic, Iris Van Herpen, and Marco Brambilla have collaborated on Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande opera. Abramovic did the set design, Van Herpen did the costumes, and Brambilla made the film backdrop. The goal was to create a “contemporary retelling” of the work, which marks 100 years since Debussy’s death.

For his films, Brambilla used photographs taken by NASA’s Hubble telescope. “Both the libretto and the music have always screamed of the cosmos to me. There are so many references to looking, eyesite, and vision. It compelled me to look up,” says Brambilla. 

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Archaeologists recently discovered a one-inch stick of red ochre, a clay pigment, at a dig site on the England coast. Some are calling it a “10,000 year old crayon” used for documentation and possibly art-making.

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Currently enjoying this image of Sol Lewitt’s 1983 Wall Drawing number #373: Lines in Four Directions (equal spacing on an unequal wall) at the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague. It was reinstalled in 2000 and made using pencil, fixative, varnish, graphite, Indian ink, and latex.