On view through the month of May at the Brighton Festival Fringe, Jamie McCartney’s pubic sculpture celebrates the individuality of some 400 women. The “Great Wall of Vaginas” is a project going on five years, spanning thirty feet in length, and including models ranging in age from 18-76.

The work has just won the Erotic Signature Sculpture Prize.

More looks, via Animal, follow.

One of the highlights of Berlin’s Gallery Weekend 2011 is for sure the showcase of Chinese artist Ai WeiWei. At the gallery space at neugerriemschneider in Berlin, the artist is showing this week two new pieces of works, entitled ‘Rock’ and ‘Tree’. While the artist is still being detained by Chinese authorities, this exhibition is even more relevant. Amnesty International supporters lined up in front of the gallery, which also put up a massive “Where Is Ai WeiWei” sign on their building.

His two works shown at the gallery were executed using ancient Chinese handcraft traditions. The porcelain stones were made in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen, where porcelain production originates. They surround two trees that have been built from fallen trunks collected in the moutaineous regions of southern China. The tree fragments have been interlocked using a classic Chinese techniques. Together the installation of the works calls to mind a traditional Chinese garden.

The exhibition runs until June 4th, 2011.

Gallery Space at neugerriemschneider
Linienstrasse 155
Berlin
Germany

Photography: Curated Magazine

Many more images of the new Ai WeiWei works follow after the jump.

One of the most exciting sculptors working today, Matthew Monahan uses unconventional pedestrian materials—whose surfaces are manipulated with glitter, wax and spray paint to achieve the effects of aged bronze and other metals—to create monumentally scaled figurative sculptures. The bodies of his sculptural heroes and heroines appear to have been built from unmatched spare parts. With wires and strapping, each section is precariously tethered to the whole. As such, Monahan’s sculptures seem to hover in a state of fleeting existence, projecting the illusion that the forces of nature could turn them back into unrecognizable rubble at any moment. His works succeed in engaging the viewer in a dialogue between contemporary and ancient; alien and disparate parts. His fragmented figures—with their active postures and facial expressions—convey the struggles of coming into existence in the present moment while carrying a sense of a past long gone.

Matthew Monahan’s solo exhibition is on view at the Contemporary Arts Center through October 30, 2011.

An example of the sculptors work after the leap.

Stacey Lee Webber is a Philadelphia based artist who finds unique ways to recontextualize objects from blue collar neighborhoods.  Webber’s sculptures embody a refined aesthetic and challenge the conventional possibilities of everyday materials.  Through her investigations, Webber’ celebrates working class families which make up the heart of American culture.

More sculpture after the jump.

Taras Lesko’s full scale model of an Audi A7 is the largest papercraft sculpture of its kind. It is also spot on. (via TWBE).

Humans and animals are the central themes of ceramicist Kate MacDowell’s sculpture. Sometimes the two intertwine. Sometimes the sculptures form larger narratives – for instance she’s produced an amazing series that relates to bird hunting. And, at other times, the sculpture simply causes a bit of mental unrest.

Large or small, with baseball bat or pencil as base, Peter Schuyff’s sculpture succeeds in tantalizing form. They twist and turn, they showcase the grain of the wood, they are, essentially, excellent.

Look at a whole bunch more sculpture after the jump.

News from OHWOW -

OHWOW is pleased to announce a solo presentation of David Benjamin Sherry’s recent work that studies concepts of geometry, science, color, materiality, and the course of change. This exhibition, titled Form Forming Formation, includes both traditional color prints and photographic collage work. Through the artist’s analog approach to producing images, he examines aspects of arrangement and the visual results of alchemical and light analysis.

With his photographically based constructions (Solar System In Blood System, 2011), Sherry explores specified geometric formations, based on the mathematical design of our planet and solar system. Also referencing crop circle phenomenon, these rectilinear configurations aim to address the varied changes Earth undergoes. The work also serves to chronicle this moment in history, and to raise awareness of the natural world around us, through a visual combination of minimal form and complex pattern.

Sherry’s series of highly saturated chromogenic prints, depicting expressive rock-like structures, continue the dialogue between object and interpretation. Sculptures painstakingly created over time, then later photographed as in Royal Ruin Ultramarine Umbilical Fiend Fallen Cobalt Core, 2011, provoke an explanation of how and why these seemingly figurative forms evolved into abstracted artifacts, and are now frozen in a moment. The anthropomorphic imagery deals with ideas of evolution and shift – the systematic process of alteration and the aesthetic conclusion of transformation.

These contrasting bodies of work create a tension between each other, while they simultaneously begin to draw parallels between Earth’s properties and human existence. Sherry not only uses photography as a documentation of fact, but also as an expression of an unknown future. Each monochromatic image is then both an examination and a certainty, questioning the genesis of how thoughts become reality and illustrating the result of that action into form.

David Benjamin Sherry is a New York-based artist, with a graduate degree from Yale University. This is his first solo exhibition with OHWOW. His work is shown nationally and abroad, including recent exhibitions at The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, NY; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; Garage Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; and PS1/MOMA Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY.

OHWOW
937 North La Cienega
Los Angeles, CA

Runs April 30 to May 27, 2011.

Examples from the exhibition follow.

Japanese artist Haroshi recently opened his new “Future Primitive” exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York City.

” In Future Primitive, the artist will introduce subject matter inspired by the city of New York. Haroshi’s work reflects his unique perspective as a skate enthusiast with Japanese heritage, in that his technical approach to sculpture combines the influence of time-honored traditional methods of his homeland with the spirit of innovation and technology inherent in its contemporary culture.

Haroshi creates full-scale, three-dimensional, wooden sculptures with used skateboard decks. As a medium, skate decks differ from natural wood in that they are a processed material. Their size, shape and contours vary according to manufacturing brand and model. With his personal experience and vast knowledge, Haroshi is able to determine which skateboards fit together seamlessly. After a careful selection process, Haroshi stacks his chosen decks into layers, cuts mosaic pieces, assembles them into a desired shape and meticulously carves each form by hand with skilled precision. He achieves a colorful, striped pattern by stacking the boards with keen attention to the exposed rails (outer edges) rather than applying paint. Haroshi occasionally incorporates naturally broken boards in their original shattered form, creating textural contrast between smooth silhouette and splintered, raw edge. He also re-purposes discarded grip tape as a tool to sand and finish the surface before applying final seal.

Haroshi’s wooden mosaic technique is similar to the ancient Japanese tradition of building wooden Buddhas, in order to conserve materials and minimize the weight of the statue. Unkei, a master sculptor in 12th Century Japan, specialized in Buddha figures and used to place a crystal called Shin-gachi-rin (meaning new moon circle) in the position of the statue’s heart, to represent its soul. Haroshi takes a similar approach in his creative process, as many of his sculptures contain a metal object concealed within the shell of layered skateboards. This is sometimes a broken skateboard part from the artist’s collection or another object with personal significance. Haroshi describes this practice as “giving a soul” to the sculpture. Additionally, he produces X-rays of these works in order to reveal the objects hidden inside.”

The exhibition runs until May 14th, 2011, so make sure to pass by.

Photography by Jake Breinholt for CuratedMag.com.

Check out a complete recap of the exhibition after the jump.

Urs Fischer has installed a giant bronze bear in New York at Park Avenue Plaza. Arrested Motion got some snaps of the colorful installation, with great perspective of the scale.

More looks follow.