Sara R. Yazdani

  • View of Sandra Mujinga, “Hoarse Globules,” 2018.
    picks August 04, 2018

    Sandra Mujinga

    In her solo exhibition “Hoarse Globules,” Sandra Mujinga fabricates a world where tactile beings and atmospheres evolve through digital technologies into a continuation of the screens we scroll through every day. In Touch-Face 1–3, 2018, three large standing sculptures made of gray PU leather, Lycra, and polyester resemble mutant hybrids of humans and elephant trunks. On the floor, a polyester octopus-like sculpture emerges from under a pane of Plexiglas that bears a photograph of a human hand. The work, Octo Clutch / Temporary Home, 2018, connects the sensorial similarities between tentacles

  • View of “Matias Faldbakken: Effects of Good Government in the Pit,” 2017–18.
    picks October 30, 2017

    Matias Faldbakken

    In Matias Faldbakken’s latest exhibition of sculptures, paintings, and installations, a speculative future universe—where the virtual world is impossible to distinguish from the real—is offered. The simulated perhaps isn’t what one might associate with some of the brutal objects here, including Untitled (Locker Sculpture #06), 2017—several lockers strapped together with lever straps, bending the hard metal––and the four heavy concrete sculptures in Television Sculpture #1–4, 2011. Yet the three large walls covered in domestic tiles (Tile Sculpture #1–#3, all 2017) force one to encounter the

  • View of “Karl Larsson: DINOSAUR,” 2017. From left: Reverse=on, EPI-DINO-XO, Windows in the mirrors and mirrors in the windows, all 2017.
    picks April 10, 2017

    Karl Larsson

    In this exhibition––consisting of a large number of mixed-media and plaster sculptures as well as framed silk-screen prints on plaster overlaid with laser printing––Karl Larsson suggests that every object is always in a state of transformation. Windows in the mirrors and mirrors in the windows, 2017, poetically exemplifies this. Situated at the back of the enormous space, the sculpture is a steel bar set in a white stand made of plaster. A figure plastered on the stand resembles a small black bone. Next to this work is EPI-DINO-XO, 2017, a photocopier on which the artist has placed a printed

  • Benjamin Crotty and Bertand Dezetoux, Division Movement to Vungtau, 2016, 16-mm transferred to video, color, sound, 4 minutes, 12 seconds.
    picks November 08, 2016

    Benjamin Crotty

    Consider a screen showing what appear to be DIY recordings of military life. The seven projected vignettes each give a short glimpse into the life of war as seen through the lens of a 16-mm camera: military vehicles camouflaged in the Vietnamese jungle, silent moments of reading letters from home, swimming in rivers. Something, however, confuses the analogue and historical surfaces of the film: Virtual fruits appear on the screen, rupturing the reality of the original.

    This work, Division Movement to Vungtau, 2016, a digital video made by Benjamin Crotty in collaboration with Bertrand Dezoteux,

  • Wolfgang Tillmans, studio still life, c, 2014, ink-jet print, clips, 54 x 89".
    picks May 20, 2016

    Wolfgang Tillmans

    Wolfgang Tillmans’s latest exhibition—consisting of a few more recent table displays from his series “Truth Study Center,” 2005–, and photographs shown in a range of sizes, some framed, others not—presents images of corridors, flora, dismantled technologies, people, exhibition models, the ocean, and buildings, along with snapshots of past yet still influential subcultures. The show is set up as an appealing invitation to a profound artist’s studio, which, rather than being a place of production that emulates traditional ideas of art and labor, is as much a conceptual, political, and social site

  • Matias Faldbakken and Leander Djønne, Void to Void, 2014–15, blasting mats, dimensions variable.
    picks November 20, 2015

    “Art Belongs to Those Who See It”

    Essential to the latest iteration of the Norwegian Sculpture Biennale, “Art Belongs to Those Who See It,” is the mutability of the works. In a vibrant juxtaposition with the historical sculptures of Gustav Vigeland in this museum, the twenty-eight pieces on view by thirty-three artists create a vulnerable realm of steel, wood, concrete, textiles, rubber, and electrical signals, among other materials. For instance, in the main room of the institution, Steffen Håndlykken and Ingrid Lønningdal’s Projections, 2015—four painted concrete curtains installed on a wooden framework—creates an alliance