Ruben Nusz’s contributions to the exhibition Lifelike are easy to overlook: 20 sculpted ashtrays—created using acrylic, oil, tea, and walnut ink on wax and resin, with incense and ashes—discreetly placed throughout the Walker’s public spaces and its administrative offices. Here he shares his notes on the project, which he considers “fictitious realism.”  More

An Amana 25 refrigerator, an oven/range with Perma-View glass window, a rotary phone in harvest gold: These items are part of Bremen Towne, Keith Edmier’s reconstruction of the kitchen in the suburban home of his youth. Exactingly reproduced for Lifelike, the piece is paradoxical: it’s the product of the artist’s memories, yet the act of re-creating it supplanted some of those same memories. More

Artist Kaz Oshiro creates pieces that occupy a kind of middle ground—between Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, representation and conceptualism, painting and sculpture. In a new conversation, he discusses his work in the Walker’s Lifelike exhibition and how he creates art to help address his “painting problem”—a desire to progress from exacting realism to hesitation-free abstraction.  More