Art21 New York Close Up

Weekly Roundup

Ursula von Rydingsvard

Ursula von Rydingsvard, "Bowl with Fingers," 2007–2008. © Ursula von Rydingsvard. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong. Photograph by Rosalyn and Michael Bodycomb.

In this week’s roundup, Ursula von Rydingsvard is obsessed with wood, Do-Ho Suh incites dreaming, Andrea Zittel explores fragmented patterning, LaToya Ruby Frazier takes on Levi’s, and more.

  • Do-Ho Suh‘s “Staircase – Pulitzer Version” is on view at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (St. Louis).  This is part of Dreamscapes, an exhibition that incites questions about the act of dreaming – a succession of thoughts, images, sounds or emotions, which the mind experiences during sleep.  A free web catalogue is also available.  The show closes August 13.
  • Carrie Mae Weems‘s photography will soon be on view at the Flomenhaft Gallery (NYC) as part of the Portraits Group Exhibition.  Combining photographs with texts of African American lore, Weems reaches out to the earliest times when slaves were brought to America.  The exhibition opens on August 12.
  • Andrea Zittel is currently featured in Pattern of Habit at Sprüth Magers Berlin (Germany).  Zittel’s new work examines how “psychological structures, thought systems and beliefs are manifested as physical objects in the world that we create around ourselves.”  The show is an exploration of fragmented patterning and ways that people order and compartmentalize time.  This exhibition is on view through September 10.
  • Ursula von Rydingsvard has work on view at the DeCordova Museum’s sculpture park in Massachusetts.  Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture features the artist’s obsession with raw, fragrant cedar wood.  Her woodwork is part of a connection to a long line of Polish peasant farmers for whom wood provided basic shelter and tools to work the land.  This exhibition runs through August 28.
  • Mark your calendars.  The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago will house post-emerging contemporary artists beginning with Rashid Johnson in Spring 2012.  Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks is the artist’s first major museum solo exhibition.  Johnson’s work explores legacies of black intellectual and popular figures through various media rooted in his identity as a black man in the U.S.  The show will run April 7 – August 5, 2012.