Diane Simpson at the Boston ICA

Diane Simpson, Formal Wear

I definitely will go see this show. I like my "idea art" to be visually engaging on its own terms. I think Simpson succeeds. Here's what Sebastian Smee says in the Boston Globe.

To make her sculptures, Simpson transposes details of clothing or architecture that have caught her fancy — they may be Japanese kimonos, aprons, tunics, or bibs — into structural diagrams, which she then re-imagines in three dimensions. The results are superb, combining as they do aspects of Cubist sculpture (I thought in particular of Picasso’s Ballets Russes “Parade” costumes) with a lean, origami-like emphasis on structure, and a deeply original focus on materials, textures, and colors.... But as you take in each piece’s materials, another part of your brain is caught up in a set of convoluted pictorial puzzles, hinging on the interplay between diagrams and real objects, between three dimensions and two.