Juan Capistrán’s text-based sculpture Sundown (2021–2022), presented by CURRO, is rooted in the context of "sundown towns" and redlining across the United States. Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites. The term came from signs posted that "colored people" had to leave town by sundown. This work takes the form of a quaint, large-scale greeting sign that welcomes viewers with a picturesque sunset landscape painted within the letters forming the words “get out."

Adam Parker Smith’s new sculpture Ganymede with Jupiter’s Eagle (2022), presented by The Hole, is at first glance both instinctively recognizable and bizarrely different. The artist—working with a team of master carvers, a seven-axis reductive robot, and the digital research teams at museums like the Uffizi—has rendered some of the greatest hits of Hellenic sculpture in 3D modelling programs, before compressing each of them into a compact cube, painstakingly chiseled out of a Carrara marble block. The ancient stone draws a material through-line between the sculpture Smith has chosen for his antic homage—Apollo of Belvedere, Bernini’s David, and others—the better to defamiliarize these paradigmatic works as they appear before the viewer, radically reshaped.

Tomokazu Matsuyama’s polished steel work Dancer (2022), presented by Kavi Gupta Gallery, contemplates the total experience of his paintings and the logical relationships of the formal elements within. Laser-cut patterns in polished steel shimmer in and out of sight as viewers move around the pieces, with the broad flat facets being nearly paper-thin amid the weighty "outlines" defining their boundaries. The mirror polish is more than just “fetish finish”—it is a means of activating the surfaces. The piece’s own patterns reflect across each other, complicating their reading, and almost serving as an optical metaphor for Matsuyama’s vision of cultural exchange. The effect extends beyond the piece as its surfaces take on the colors of its environment.

Carolina Caycedo’s Patrón Mono: Ríos Libres, Pueblos Vivos (2022) was on view each night in September in Times Square as part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment program. Presented with Instituto de Visión, the work portrays the lower Cauca River canyon located in Antioquia, Colombia – a region currently impacted by the Hidroituango dam failure and where armed and environmental conflict overlap. The muleteers, fisherman, and artisanal miners of the region refer to the Cauca River as Patrón Mono (Blonde Boss), because of its yellow color and the gold found in its waters and sands. Each night from 11:57pm to midnight, flowing water and glittering gold will move in kaleidoscopic configurations across over 90 billboards in Times Square.

This new sculpture is informed and inspired by the Uli art traditions of the Igbo people from south-eastern Nigeria. It transforms found objects to examine the movements of people through voluntary and forced migration as a vital stage in the progress of our collective humanity.

In this recent work, Dávila draws upon the history of the readymade, juxtaposing a found object—a natural boulder—and sandwiching it between two stark blocks of commercially produced concrete. Held in place simply by tension, the work relies on a delicate balance of gravity to remain stable. Further drawing attention to this moment of compression, Dávila painted the boulder a vivid blue, differentiating and calling attention to the bridge connecting the natural, readymade stone and the industrial, concrete components.

This sculpture displays 29 characters of the Cherokee syllabary in the form of 19th-century letterpress typeface rising up. The syllabary is comprised of 85 characters, representing syllables, not letters. This writing system, created by Sequoyah, a Cherokee polymath, was completed and adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1821. Within two years, 90% of the Cherokee people were literate. 200 years later, Cherokee and other Indigenous languages are endangered. When a language dies, a culture ceases to be expressed and shared.  Indigenous languages reflect what societies value – their history, cosmology, medicine, myths, and humor. The undulating forms of To Rise And Begin Again suggest the lyrical rise and fall of spoken language; and, more broadly, the rise, fall – and unrelenting rise again – of Indigenous people and their cultures.

A new site-specific steel figure depicts athleticism through sculptural form. Myles Nurse’s metal figurative sculptures are most reminiscent of dancers, however the artist initially was thinking about basketball players and other athletes when creating the form. Nurse confesses his fandom of basketball and the choreography sports bring to the human silhouette. “If you pause at any given moment, they look like they are moving on a different level,” Nurse says. Nurse’s sculptures, like the athletes he describes, look to be engaged in feats of strength and sharp delicacy (the artist himself loves surfing and basketball).

A new sculpture by the artist serves as a dialogue derived from ancient and art-historical cornerstones, while simultaneously engaging conflicting expectations of womanhood. Feminine identity is presented as a balancing act: precarious and full of contrasting possibilities hovering/teetering, tight rope walking and the fragility of time. With opposing forces of softness and strength, Salas’ works command a physical presence, while remaining light and airy.