ArchiveVisual Arts Articles
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Articles
Ice Land
Paul Schmelzer
Jan 2012
Uncharted territories, even in a relatively sparsely populated state like Minnesota, are few and far between. But each January, when the average temperature lingers around 7 degrees Fahrenheit, one such place comes into being, briefly, on the frozen surface of Medicine Lake, where artists reimagine ice-fishing shacks as the locus for a vibrant pop-up community.
VA
Articles
Frank Gaard on Dionysus and Dualism
Paul Schmelzer
Jan 2012
It’s taken 32 years, but Frank Gaard’s Walker solo show marks a homecoming of sorts for the Minneapolis-based artist: Poison & Candy is the painter’s first solo show here since 1980.
VA
Articles
Tombstone for Phùng Vo
Bartholomew Ryan
Jan 2012
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” So reads the inscription on a black stone with gold-leaf engraving that will be installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden next spring. A work by Danh Vo, it will reside here until the death of the artist’s father, when it will travel to Copenhagen to mark Phùng Vo’s final resting place.
VA
Articles
The Oculus Inhabited
Paul Schmelzer
Dec 2011
Like some alien organism deep in the core of the machine it controls, Elizabeth Simonson’s biomorphic, bead-based sculptural installation is recessed into the aluminum-clad ceiling just inside the Walker’s Hennepin Avenue entrance. Commissioned for the space, which was dubbed the “oculus” by architects Herzog & de Meuron, the complex and intricate work is intended to suggest biological forms.
FV
Articles
Nathalie Djurberg’s The Parade
Eric Crosby and Dean Otto
Dec 2011
Primal and chaotic, Nathalie Djurberg’s art “doesn’t look like anything else out there,” says Eric Crosby, co-curator of the artist’s first major US museum show. In an interview, he and the Walker’s Dean Otto discuss how Djurberg’s claymation and sculptures fall outside conventions of both the film and contemporary art worlds, while channeling a “universality of experience that speaks to us all.”
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Articles
Anthony Burrill’s Advice for Living
Paul Schmelzer
Dec 2011
British designer Anthony Burrill is known for using older technology, namely Victorian wood type, to create posters bearing upbeat, quirky mantras like “Work Hard and Be Kind to People” and “Clear Your Head.” But he’s well aware how social media is changing design—and propelling his ideas around the globe.
PA
Articles
The Muscle of Art: How Cunningham and Rauschenberg Inspire Us to Flex
Abigail Sebaly
Dec 2011
“Activity and open curiosity support the muscle of art,” Robert Rauschenberg once said. His work with choreographer Merce Cunningham actively embodied this idea, spanning more than 20 collaborations, five decades, and countless creative and pragmatic challenges.
VA
Articles
The Problem of Paint
Paul Schmelzer
Dec 2011
The Walker registrar faces myriad challenges — from “weeping Barbie syndrome,” which plagues art made from PVC, to cold storage for a famed choreographer’s fur coat — but none is more prevalent than the problem of paint: protecting and preserving outdoor sculptures ravaged by sun, time and water.
FV
Articles
Chaos and Creativity
Paul Schmelzer
Nov 2011
Jumping from the ’80s activism of ACT UP to the oil fields of Iraq, the death camps of World War II to 9/11, The Smiths to The Golden Girls, Jim Hodges’ World AIDS Day film offers striking context for both Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ art and the continuing struggles for social change today.