Tara Donovan's sculptures and installations are mind-bending experiences: she transforms common everyday materials like straws and index cards turning them into elaborate, room-size sculptures that are as surreal as they are beautiful MacArthur "genius" grant recipient Tara Donovan's otherworldly sculptures have transfixed audiences for over a decade. Taking mundane materials and through clever craftsmanship, ingenuity, and repeated manipulation, the artist builds large-scale works made of rubber bands, plastic tubing, and paper plates into objects that evoke the natural world or other organic material. This volume--which accompanies a major exhibition at MCA Denver--features an expansive selection of her most significant works to date, including sculpture, drawings, works on paper, and site-responsive installations. This exhibition will be the first time that Donovan's wall-based and freestanding objects will be installed together, in order to understand fully how the artist conceptualizes her complex work. Curator Nora Burnett Abrams, along with two other leading scholars of contemporary art Jenni Sorkin and Guiliana Bruno, consider critical issues around her work: ideas related to labor, scale, process and formalism, among other key themes. The book looks at several major bodies of work realized in different formats and different settings, affording the reader a glimpse into the important themes and visual languages the artist continuously explores.
Deeply committed to social justice, artist Tomashi Jackson creates vibrant prints, paintings, videos, textiles, and sculptures that powerfully explore systemic inequities found throughout US history. This is the first book to present the evolution of Jackson’s work. Over the course of her career, Jackson has closely investigated specific histories related to cities, lands, and individuals in the United States, with the purpose of revealing how systemic racism and civil rights advocacy have informed America’s approach to housing, education, transportation, voter disenfranchisement, police brutality, migration, and agriculture. Inspired by Josef Albers’s research on the relativity of color, she employs image layering and the effects of light and perception toward illuminating underrecognized patterns of activism, resistance, oppression, and societal advances. This volume offers an opportunity to look comprehensively at overarching themes and developments in her process by gathering bodies of work in a variety of media created over time and in different locations. Jackson’s engaging and nuanced approach to US history situates her as one of the most relevant artists practicing today.
The Cowboy, Reconsidered: the enduring myth of the cowboy is a richer, more diverse story than most understand. In this survey, some of the most important artists working today take up the cowboy through the lens of queer, Black, Asian, and Latinx perspectives. Perhaps no other figure in the American popular imagination conjures the respect, mystery, and adoration than that of the cowboy. And it’s long been a favorite subject of artists from the early twentieth century to today. In this unique exhibition and accompanying catalogue, the cowboy is explored in depth from diverse perspectives and lived experience, ushering in a new vision for this long-standing pop icon. Director and co-curator Nora Burnett Abrams considers the cowboy through historical perspectives, breaking down the myth and mystique. In an extended interview, co-curator Miranda Lash talks with queer Latinx artist rafa esparza who considers the vaquero (the Spanish term for cowboy) and the influence of norteño culture in his work. Jongwoo Jeremy Kim provides an in-depth analysis of artist Kenneth Tam’s practice and deeper discussion of Asian American masculinity, sexuality, and how they are represented. Myeshia Babers shares the history of the Black rodeo cowboy, and how this figure performs and functions today, and artist R. Alan Brooks conjures the history of Dearfield, Colorado, one of the earliest Black homesteading communities in the state, through a dream-like short graphic novel. Artist List: John Baldessari, R. Alan Brooks, Mel Chin, Gregg Deal, Angela Ellsworth, rafa esparza, Fabian Guerrero, Juan Fuentes, Karl Haendel, Luis Jiménez, Kahlil Joseph, Grace Kennison, Deana Lawson, Matthew J. Mahoney, Laurel Nakadate, Richard Prince, Otis Kwame Quaicoe, Akasha Rabut, Lucy Raven, Ken Taylor Reynaga, Yumi Roth in collaboration with Emmanuel David, Ana Segovia, Amy Sherald, Stephanie Syjuco, Kenneth Tam, Andy Warhol, and Nathan Young
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