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Chuck Hoberman is an artist, designer, and engineer. He founded the multidisciplinary firm Hoberman Associates, is a member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and is one of the inaugural faculty members of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s new Masters in Design Engineering (MDE) program. Currently his exhibition 10° is on view at Le Laboratoire in Cambridge. Megan Gregory: Judging from your work thus far, it seems like transformation is a very important theme and inspiration. What is it about transformation that interests you? Chuck Hoberman: Well, you might…
Leah Piepgras was finishing final preparations for her solo show, Parallel Universe, now on view at GRIN when we had the following conversation. It was early October and we were eager to talk about all things abstraction, Richard Serra, physicality, opposites, materiality, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, time, labor, and synchronism. We hadn’t met yet but spoke over google doc, which allowed our conversation unfold in real time as we juggled our everyday lives. Reading our conversation now, I’m struck by the hope that Piepgras intones when she says she says that for her,…
Steve Locke has two concurrent exhibitions taking place at Gallery Kayafas and Samsøñ called “FAMILY PICTURES” and” SCHOOL OF LOVE” The two exhibitions, which are on view now and run through November 26th. We spoke recently. Robert Moeller: There is a barely contained ferocity present in this work, like a pot spilling over. Was it difficult to mediate the connections between what is historical and events that continue to happen today with all too much frequency? Specifically this almost linear and constant progression from lynchings to police killings, as one example, that…
Jessica Deane Rosner can’t discuss the inspiration for her latest exhibit. It might suffice to say that, last September, she experienced a terrible and life-changing event. It forced Rosner to reconsider her self-concept as someone bold and brave. The aftermath of this episode forms the subject matter of Manuscript:Word Drawings, in which Rosner spills the entire story, her “way of saying it without saying it.” A substantive psychic injury is retold in a set of notepaper-sized drawings, each illustrated in Rosner’s thoughtful and unflinching style. The excruciating details shine brightly through clouds…
Walking along the improved stretch of Mass Ave in Arlington, I saw a couple coming out of the 13FOREST Gallery. They pointed at Mia Cross’s painting Agnes and Avi in the front window. They seemed enamored of the sensitive, experimental portrait and talked excitedly about it and other work they’d just seen in the gallery. Inside, I overheard Marc Gurton talking with a guest about the layaway plan they offer. TENFOLD, 13FOREST’s ten-year anniversary exhibition, which opened the night before is on view. Gurton said it represents the past, present and future…
I recently had the opportunity to engage in a wonderful conversation with Betty Jarvis, a recent Master’s graduate from the Art History program at Rutgers University. I find that conversations outside of the studio are just as important as your inner dialogue, if not more! After graduate school I spoke with visiting artists at the Vermont Studio Center and am really missing that dialogue, so I wanted to foster one myself. My work was included in an exhibition called Accumulating Experience, curated by Betty, at the Newark Open Doors Arts Festival. The…
In the months leading up to Tory Fair’s latest show, Paperweight at VERY gallery, VERY director John Guthrie and I made two studio visits to view the work in progress. On the first occasion, I met John outside a large wooden building, an erstwhile printing press, and we tramped up the stairs to Fair’s studio to find her rearranging two sculptures. She had cast a tree in a mixture of rubber, plaster, clay, wax, and foam and they stood erect in the middle of the studio. On our next visit, the trees were…
Conceptual art is often too subtle to reach the edges of our preconceptions, or it is so blatant it prevents our own imaginative leaps. Anila Quayyum Agha’s “Intersections” (2012, laser-cut steel, light bulb), recently on view at the Peabody Essex Museum, lies refreshingly in between. Image itself does the heavy lifting: a steel box suspended from the ceiling is scrolled with Islamic-inspired geometric designs—richly decorative, non-confrontational. At its center, and what brings this artwork alive, is a single light bulb that casts a radius of shadows. One has the sense of being…