Weekly Roundup

Arturo Herrera. “Mushrooms (detail),” 2009. Mixed media on paper; 57.625 x 44.75 in. Artwork © Arturo Herrera. Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Arturo Herrera curates a show in Texas, Cindy Sherman photos disturb in Norway, Laylah Ali showcases an abolitionist online, and more in this week’s roundup:

• Arturo Herrera has organized an exhibition for the Linda Pace Foundation (San Antonio, TX). Herrera selected objects in the Linda Pace Collection, including eight of his own works, created between 2009-2011. According to the curatorial staff, the exhibition “can almost been seen like a staircase of time exemplifying his expansion of process, imagery, materiality, collage, and ideas.” On view through September 6.

• Cindy Sherman – Untitled Horrors emphasizes the disturbing, grotesque, and disquieting sides of Cindy Sherman’s photographs, bringing together works made in the mid-1970s and up to the present day. On view at Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo, Norway) through September 22.

• Ai Weiwei: According to What? features photographs, sculpture, installation, audio and video. In these works, Ai draws attention to the complexities of a changing world, and probes such issues as freedom of expression, individual and human rights, the power of digital communication, and the range of creative practices that characterize contemporary art in China and globally. On view at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON) through October 27.

• Laylah Ali has taken the radical abolitionist John Brown as the focus for her Dia Art Foundation project, John Brown Song! Last spring, Ali asked a number of people to select a version of the song “John Brown’s Body” and record themselves singing it. She has posted this collection of videos online, creating a contemporary lyrical portrait of this complex historical figure.

• Mark Bradford‘s site-specific installation in a vacant house in La Jolla, California has been demolished. Project Hermès was based on transcribed conversations between Eloisa Haudenschild in La Jolla and Mark Bradford in Los Angeles. Haudenschild told stories of a former neighbor who harbored deep antagonism and paranoia towards her and her family. Bradford interpreted their conversations in the interior of the neighbor’s dilapidated house. Project Hermès was open for one day only in early August. View documentation of the house and process here.