Guillermo Kuitca: Everything, Paintings and Works on Paper, 1980–2008

Albright-Knox Art Gallery
1285 Elmwood Avenue
February 9–May 30, 2010

Miami Art Museum
101 West Flagler Street
October 9, 2009–January 17, 2010

Walker Art Center
725 Vineland Place
June 26–September 29, 2010

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at Seventh Street, SW
October 21, 2010–January 9, 2011

Curated by Douglas Dreishpoon

Employing motifs such as maps, architectural plans, and genealogical charts, Guillermo Kuitca makes borders and links—as well as their political and personal mediation—central to his practice. Miami is thus a fitting location to launch this touring midcareer survey, which traces the contours of the Argentinean artist’s oeuvre with some seventy drawings and paintings. One standout is Untitled, 1992 (on view for the first time in the United States), an arrangement of twenty child-size beds with road maps of Europe painted directly onto their mattresses—elegantly cleaving public and private.

— Lisa Turvey

Haegue Yang

Walker Art Center
725 Vineland Place
September 24, 2009–February 28, 2010

Curated by Doryun Chong

In case you were wondering, Haegue Yang’s venetian-blind installations at the Venice Biennale—in the Arsenale and again in the Korean pavilion—were not intended as a reference to the city. No, those slatted shades (in addition to lamps, heaters, audio equipment, and scent blasters) are central to a distinctive sculptural vocabulary the artist has been tweaking for nearly two years. That body of work, which arises from Yang’s poetic engagement with politically charged biographies, saw its high point in Yearning Melancholy Red (coproduced by the Walker and REDCAT in Los Angeles, where it debuted in 2008). The installation forms the centerpiece to this survey of roughly a dozen works, the artist’s first museum solo show in the US (following an extensive round on the biennial and kunsthalle circuit).

— Philip Tinari