Category: Features & Commissions

John Chiara at Yossi Milo Gallery

Using a homemade camera positioned in the back of a pickup truck, John Chiara records unique images onto paper prepared as a negative, creating otherworldly photos that challenge our sense of time and place.  Occasionally, a new skyscraper will loom in the background or a streetlight will invade the scene, making it undeniably contemporary, as in this East Village view.  But without storefronts or people, and under a fiery sky, Chiara’s scenes turn Manhattan into a glowing landscape of intrigue. (On view at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 27th).

John Chiara, East 2nd Street at Avenue C, negative chromogenic photograph, approx. 50 x 40 inches, unique, 2018.

Antonio Santin at Marc Straus Gallery

Marc Straus Gallery nods to Mark Rothko’s hovering, painted rectangles of color and Josef Alber’s nests of colored squares on canvas, but the real attraction to Spain-born, New York-based artist Antonio Santin’s paintings is the fact that they’re painted at all.  Resembling tapestries, Santin’s amazing abstract paintings are made with oil paint in a variety of patterns that suggest a 3D surface with something hidden beneath.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 16th).

Antonio Santin, Apana, oil on canvas, 70.8 x 78.7 inches, 2018.

Simone Leigh at Luhring Augustine Gallery

Simone Leigh continues to merge bodies and architecture in provocative ways in her debut at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea.  Highlights include the raffia-skirted figure on the left, a maternal character elevated by her tall, tent-like garment and commanding respect with her hands-on-hips pose.  Natural materials contrast the delicate porcelain flowers clustered in a wreath around her face, suggesting a woman equally at ease with the ready-made and refined.  (On view through Oct 20th).

Simone Leigh, installation view at Luhring Augustine Gallery, Sept 2018.

Ruby Sky Stiler at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

If Ruby Sky Stiler’s latest sculptures at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery seem less curvy than usual, it’s because her latest work departs from the powerful, sometimes monumental female figures she’s known for, zeroing in on dads and kids instead.  The subject of men with their children is so rare in contemporary art that it’s initially hard to grasp that the bigger figures aren’t women.  Odder still is each group’s repose – wouldn’t these kids be playing soccer with dad or at least a card game?  Stiler shatters stereotypical gender roles with aplomb. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 7th.)

Ruby Sky Stiler, installation view of ‘Fathers’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, September 2018.

Kathy Butterly at James Cohan Gallery

Vases grimace and boxes flirt in Kathy Butterly’s sometimes anthropomorphic, always charmingly eccentric ceramic sculptures.  Butterly’s new work – on view for the first time at James Cohan Gallery – is larger than ever and still defying convention with its raucous combinations of color and forms.  (In Chelsea through Oct 20th).

Kathy Butterly, Flux, clay, glaze, 7 ¾ x 7 ¼ x 7 inches, 2018.