The biggest show in town – literally – starts with a fifty-foot long walk between two thirteen foot high steel plates. Then it’s into a slightly disorienting and unexpected labyrinth of open and constricted spaces that challenge viewers to take the measure of Richard Serra’s NJ-1 with our own bodies. (At Gagosian Gallery’s 522 West 21st Street location through July 29th).
Aaron Siskind’s 1954 photographs of high divers leaping into Lake Michigan are included in Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s engaging group show ‘Songs and the Sky’ as an example of the artists’ desire to align his images with music, ‘…in terms of rhythm and repetitions that can be expressed visually.” The gallery takes the connection a step further by actually pairing the photos with sound; in Siskind’s case with a selection by John Cage: 44 Harmonies from Apartment House – 1776 and Cheap Imitation. (In Chelsea through June 18th).
Press images of 1920s movie stars inspired Cindy Sherman’s latest body of work – photos of women who have aged out of the young starlet role but who still wear cupid lips, smoky eye shadow and wistful expressions. (At Metro Pictures in Chelsea through June 11th).
Columbian artists Diego Alvarez and Maria Paula Alvarez treat wood as if it were paper in both meticulous lattices that mimic Bogota’s fencing and this cedar oak plywood sheet that drapes over a Plexiglas shelf like a piece of fabric. (At Magnan Metz Gallery through May 21st.)
Susie MacMurray’s stately ‘Medusa,’ dignifies the maligned mythological character by refashioning her imposing figure in a beautiful surface of tiny, interlocked copper rings. (At Chelsea’s Danese Corey Gallery through May 21st.)
