Jacob Hashimoto at Miles McEnery Gallery

At first glance, the entrance to Jacob Hashimoto’s installation at Miles McEnery Gallery appears to be blocked by a super abundance of paper and bamboo disks, his signature material.  No one pauses for a moment though, before climbing the gallery stairs and whipping out a phone to photograph the strings of shapes that form a cloud overhead.  Called ‘kites’ by the artist, the forms are heavier than the airborne toys but resemble them in their paper on frame structure, sense of lightness and potential for movement.  Austere in black and white tones that echo the gallery architecture, the installation is restrained yet exuberant, balanced yet dynamic.  (On view through Oct 21st).

Jacob Hashimoto, installation view of ‘The Disappointment Engine,’ at Miles McEnery Gallery, Sept 2023.

Nina Canell at 303 Gallery

Swedish artist Nina Canell has explained that sculpture is ‘an encounter,’ meaning that the atmosphere created by a piece and its materials will drive interest.  In the artist’s first solo show at 303 Gallery in Chelsea, unusual works involving fossils and conveyors achieve this goal, prompting curiosity via strange juxtapositions.  In this piece titled ‘Mother of Dust,’ a moving conveyor belt dominates the gallery; positioned just above the belt, a broom pushes along a handful of pearls.  As large as the sculpture is, the interest is in the point at which broom and pearls meet and the constantly moving, changing pattern of pearls generated by the device.  Canell’s interest is in geology, time and the interventions of humans in nature; although humans are absent here, their presence is indicated by the broom’s work – a process that has been set in motion and left to play out as it will.  (On view through Oct 28th).

Nina Canell, Mother of Dust, pearls, broom, modified conveyor belt, 280 x 35 x 23 inches, 2023.

Kelly Akashi at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Kelly Akashi’s poetic assemblages of sculpture in glass, stone, bronze and rammed earth at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery heighten awareness of her materials and processes while juxtaposing human concepts of time with comparatively vast measures of time on earth and in the universe. Here, the glass sphere titled ‘Cosmic Axis,’ brings to mind the axis around which the earth rotates while also alluding to the connection between heavenly and terrestrial realms.  Surrounded by photos of distant nebula taken by telescopes, the sculpture feels especially present in the space of the gallery, its delicacy contrasted by a large concrete pedestal and enhanced by cherry blossoms on top that extend into the space of the sphere. (On view in Chelsea through June 10th).

Kelly Akashi, Cosmic Axis, Flame-worked borosilicate on rotating cast concrete pedestal, 77 x 22 x 22 inches, 2022-23.

Cecily Brown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cecily Brown’s energetic brushwork comes to a boil at the center of her 2006-08 painting, Memento Mori I, a highlight of her current retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.   The museum identifies the roiling mass of white, blue and pinkish tones in the foreground as a tablecloth and place settings being yanked from the table, a reference to an English poem meant to instruct young people not to tip their chairs back.  Elsewhere, a female nude dances with death (inspired by an Edvard Munch print), a tabletop still life proffers an enormous, blood red lobster claw and the heads of two children are positioned to form a skull.  Such reminders of mortality and offers of moral instruction recall highlights from the Met’s historic European painting collections, suggesting the themes’ the continued resonance.  (On view on the Upper East Side through Dec 3rd).

Cecily Brown, Memento Mori I, oil on linen, 2006-08.

Tony Cragg at Lisson Gallery

Protesters and police clash in a blaze of color in British sculptor Tony Cragg’s 1987 piece ‘Riot’ a sculptural installation running the length of one of Lisson Gallery’s Chelsea spaces.  Forty years ago, Cragg made a name for himself with artworks and installations composed of found plastic elements, a material that lacked the associations carried by more traditional media like bronze, marble or wood.  Inspired by social unrest in ‘80s Britain, Cragg employs a modern material, fragmented and formerly discarded, to illustrate conflict between citizen and state. (On view in Chelsea through April 15th).

Tony Cragg, detail of installation of Riot, 1987 at Lisson Gallery in Chelsea, March ’23.