Bartholomew Ryan

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  previews January 2010

  “Leopards in the Temple”

  Fifteen artists—most of them young and European—infiltrate SculptureCenter this winter wielding highly divergent practices.

  Fifteen artists—most of them young and European—infiltrate SculptureCenter this winter wielding highly divergent practices: Aleana Egan translates facets of the built environment into pared-down sculptural abstractions; Patrick Hill slathers concrete onto canvas and dyes it a playful red; Nina Canell makes diminutive constructions that emit light, sound, and mist. Meanwhile, Anthology Film Archives will screen collaborative shorts by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva and by Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer (working as Nashashibi/Skaer). Knit loosely together by Kafka’s

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  print January 2010

  Barthélémy Toguo

  Born in Cameroon in 1967 and now living in Paris, Barthélémy Toguo deploys various strategies to address the subject of cultural hybridity. Humor, parody, deliberate overdetermination, semantic dexterity, and medium-specific virtuosity are prominent among them, as was evidenced in this recent exhibition of work made over the past ten years. The mainstay of the show was a large installation to the rear of the gallery, which one entered through a curtain of white mosquito netting. Inside, the same material was draped, veil-like, onto a series of wooden cots stacked with clothes, evoking an African

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  print October 2009

  Unica Zürn

  This compelling exhibition reflected a growing recognition of Unica Zürn as an important late Surrealist. Her first major exhibition in the United States since a well-received show at New York’s Ubu Gallery in 2005, it featured forty-nine of the German-born artist’s works—primarily drawings on paper in ink, pencil, and/or gouache, as well as three paintings. None larger than a large sketch pad, the works were arranged around the blue-gray painted walls of the gallery in a generally chronological hang spanning 1953 to 1970.

  Zürn had been a writer before she met the Surrealist photographer Hans