Indonesian artist Mulyana’s signature colorful crocheted coral reef sculptures give way in his latest solo show at Sapar Contemporary to clusters of white forms resembling bleached coral. Fashioned in plastic instead of yarn, the new work is every bit as intricately crafted and pleasingly detailed as his previous work, but the attraction is uncomfortable. Made from a material harmful to sea life and speaking to damage done by climate change, the work has an elegiac quality as sad as it is beautiful. (On view through Nov 20th. Curated by John Silvis).
Mulyana, Betty 27, plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.Mulyana, Betty 27 (detail), plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.
If we were on a planet in another solar system, would we see color differently? In his ongoing engagement with intense color, Alteronce Gumby’s scintillating new paintings at Nicola Vassell Gallery refuse to take our experience of the visible spectrum for granted. Inspired by NASA’s James Webb telescope, art historical forebears and travel that has allowed him to witness the vibrant Holi festival in Indian, the Northern Lights and much more, Gumby’s new ‘Moonwalker paintings’ lure viewers in with their rich color and reflective surfaces. Each piece resembles nebula and strata of the earth, taking us both into the heavens and down through geological history. Shaped in a way to suggest speed and defiance of gravity and incorporating semi-precious stones and gems, each piece is infused with the pleasure of transport. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 14th).
Alteronce Gumby, Waves of Possibilities, lapis lazuli, glass and acrylic on panel, 72 x 90 inches, 2024.Alteronce Gumby, (detail) Waves of Possibilities, lapis lazuli, glass and acrylic on panel, 72 x 90 inches, 2024.
Cameron Welch’s mosaics at Yossi Milo Gallery pack a punch with their energetic collage-like mix of contemporary and historic imagery. Here, Orpheus, the hero of Greek mythology who unsuccessfully descended into the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice, holds the musical instrument with which he could charm both living and dead. Crafted in ceramic, glass, marble and stone and enhanced with oil and acrylic paint, the artwork not only rethinks a mythological figure but melds ancient and contemporary material tradition. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 9th).
Cameron Welch, Orpheus in the Garden, marble, glass, ceramic, stone, spray enamel, oil and acrylic on panel, 96 ¾ x 80 5/8 inches, 2024.
In an interview accompanying her recent show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, iconic photographer and artist Carrie Mae Weems said, “I know that I will be living with injustice for the rest of my life,” before going on to express her determination to advocate for change as it is currently needed. Her 7-part video ‘Cyclorama: The Shape of Things,’ now on view at Gladstone Gallery after several museum appearances, combines vintage film of circus acts, footage from Amy Cooper’s notorious 2020 Central Park phone call, and scenes from the January 6th insurrection with shots of methodically moving contemporary dancers and more in a collage of imagery that ranges from beautiful to horrifying. Projected on a circular screen like a 19th century narrative painting accompanied by changing lights and sound, Weems immerses us in the present moment, amplifying and clarifying the conversations and conflicts of the day. (On view at Gladstone Gallery through Nov 9th).
Carrie Mae Weems, installation view of Cyclorama: The Shape of Things, A Video in 7 Parts, 2021, 7 parts, duration: 40 min, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, September 2024.
To appreciate Pieter Schoolwerth’s paintings in his current solo exhibition at Petzel Gallery, it’s advisable to first check out ‘Supporting Actor,’ the CG animation he made with artist Phil Vanderhyden. While the priority given to computer-generated content might be a surprising move for most painters, that’s not the case for Schoolwerth, who has long been interested in how the digital world has impacted the space and time of painting. Starring a digital avatar of musician Aaron Dilloway, who created the piece’s soundtrack, the animation starts with Dilloway’s transportation from art gallery (pictured here) to a bathroom to a bizarre nightclub of gyrating alien-figures. In the gallery’s main space, paintings inspired by the animation combine inkjet-printed paintings with real paint in an ever more complicated consideration of where the ‘real’ lies and which medium plays the role of ‘supporting actor’. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 26th).
Pieter Schoolwerth, still from Supporting Actor, 4K video with sound by Aaron Dilloway, 2024, installed at Petzel Gallery, Sept 2024.
Expanding concentric circles of flamenco dresses surround a soft sculpture of a Spanish ship in an eye-catching installation in Margarita Cabrera’s current solo show at Jane Lombard Gallery. The abundant dynamic ruffles of the dress material suggest that though small, the ship is making its presence felt from Spanish arrival in the Americas to the present day. Crafted from material used for US/Mexico border patrol uniforms, the ship and the show’s other engaging sculptures invite discussion of migration past and present. (On view through Oct 26th).
Margarita Cabrera, installation view of El Vaiven del Mar, Flamenco dresses, uniform fabric, 120 x 168 x 36 inches, 2024.
It’s carnival season in Jamaica-born, Brooklyn based multi-media artist Paul Anthony Smith’s latest body of work now on view at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. Starting with photos he took during celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago, Smith manipulates the images, prints them, adds paint and employs his signature picotage technique by which he creates patterns of tiny tears in the surface of the painted photographs. Here, as in many pieces, the tear patterns take the form of fences or walls constructed of patterned concrete blocks. Placed between viewers and the celebrants, the barriers allow looking but give viewers pause to question what kind of access we have to the places and cultures pictured. (On view through Oct 26th).
Paul Anthony Smith, To be titled, unique picotage and spray paint on inkjet, print mounted on Dibond, acrylic paint, 51 ¼ x 81 x 2 ¼ inches, 2024.
Sky Glabush, a Canadian artist who lives and works in the countryside outside of London, Ontario, takes inspiration from nature and early modernist art. His arresting landscape paintings at Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca alternate electric orange and yellow toned scenes with tranquil blues and purples, conveying a breadth of responses to an abundantly varied natural world. Marked by their geometricized orderliness, Glabush’s huge paintings of forest scenes emphasize a linear quality that’s echoed in the vertical forms of gallery visitors standing before them. Vibrant and driven by pattern and form, Glabush’s landscapes enticingly argue for the transformative and wondrous aspects of the natural world. (On view through Oct 17th).
Sky Glabush, River Through Trees, oil and sand on canvas, 96 x 72 inches, 2024.
Inspired by sources from European folk tales to fables from India’s Panchatantra, Karen Knorr’s extravagantly beautiful mini-retrospective of photographs at Sundaram Tagore Gallery taps into the complex relations between humans and animals. In her most recent body of work, Scavi, the artist pictures excavated sites in southern Italy that were covered by the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius. To these she adds images shot elsewhere of animals, creating surprising connections. Titled ‘Bacchus in Attendance, House of Neptune and Amphitrite,’ this image from a garden courtyard in Herculaneum features a leopard seated before a glass paste mosaic of Neptune and his wife, Amphitrite. Associated with the god of wine, Bacchus, the leopard becomes a stand-in for the deity in a regal portrait of three divinities. (On view through Oct 19th).
Karen Knorr, Bacchus in Attendance, House of Neptune and Amphitrite, Herculaneum, 58 x 72.5 inches, 2024.
Performance is key to New York artist Aki Sasamoto’s practice, but for her latest show at Bortolami Gallery, she outsources the action to her sculpture and to gallery visitors. Titled ‘Sounding Lines,’ after the devices used to test water depth from a vessel, the show consists of handmade sculptures resembling giant fishing lures and lengths of long springs stretched across the gallery between them. Occasionally, a motorized arm causes one of the springs to dance around and unaware visitors to react with surprise. Delightful yet disconcerting, the installation foregrounds our own response to (literally) alluring art. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19th.)
Aki Sasamoto, ‘Sounding Line (black, red, yellow – whip whisk), wood (red cedar), whip whisk, acrylic paint, epoxy, Mylar, plexiglass, stainless steel wire and springs, bronze rod, fishhooks, stainless-steel hardware, steel, AC motor, speed controller, timer, 9 ¼ x 27 x 1 ½ inches, 2024.
Late San Francisco artist Steve Wolfe’s trompe l’oeil versions of books, boxes of books, book covers, sketchbooks and records at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space continue to testify to the personal significance of iconic works of art, literature, music and more. Here, Wolfe’s recreation of a Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karina’ – made with oil paint, enamel, ink transfer, modeling paste, canvas and wood – looks used but intact. Other ‘books’ have ripped or dingy covers, indications of having been well-used, while dated cover art offers its own history of design. Wolfe’s New York Times obituary from 2016 included the newspaper’s critic Holland Cotter’s note that “…the histories trapped in the work are what warm up the optical tours de force.” Eight years after Wolfe’s passing, his work continues to fascinate not just for the pleasure of his sculptural skill but for the personal connections and memories the volumes evoke. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19th).
Steve Wolfe, Untitled (Anna Karenina), oil, enamel, ink transfer, modeling paste, canvas and wood, 7 ½ x 5 x 2 ¼ inches, 1987.Steve Wolfe, Untitled (Anna Karenina), oil, enamel, ink transfer, modeling paste, canvas and wood, 7 ½ x 5 x 2 ¼ inches, 1987.
Titled ‘Comfortcore,’ and inspired by a Scandinavian concept of snug interior décor, Gina Beavers’ show of sculptural paintings at Marianne Boesky Gallery pictures chunky blankets, cheerful cushions and thick towel sets which together poke fun at the rampant marketing and consumption of coziness. Having recently moved into a home of her own, Beavers explains that online searches for furnishings led to ceaseless ads for similar products. Here, in a thick, 3-D painting she cut from foam and built up with putty and paper pulp before painting, Beavers collages together so many items with similar prints that it’s hard to tell where the products start and stop. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 5th).
Gina Beavers, Full circle in Jungle, oil, acrylic, putty, paper pulp, foam and wood stain on panel, 60 x 51 x 5 ½ inches, 2024.
At the entrance to Leonardo Drew’s current solo show at Galerie Lelong is a huge, ten-foot-high grid of panels, each hosting a rich abundance of fragments, yet this towering, orderly artwork is overwhelmed by the dynamic chaos of a floor-to ceiling installation in the main gallery beyond. The materials – wood, plaster and paint – appear to be weathered fragments from a natural disaster but are in fact deliberately distressed and arranged in clusters around the gallery’s two main columns. In his urge to reinvent, Drew has reused elements from previous installations – projects for Art Basel in ’22 and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in ’23 – to respond to the specifics of Galerie Lelong’s industrial-architecture-turned-white-cube by banishing its austerity and taking over the space. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Leonardo Drew, installation view of Number 427, wood, plaster and paint, 3 parts, overall dimensions variable, 2024.
Wangari Mathenga doesn’t dream the way most people do. Able to dream while awake and be awake yet dreaming, Mathenga eventually realized that her sleep patterns were atypical and, in her recent body of painting at Nicola Vassell Gallery, pictures herself between states of consciousness. Though we see her pajama’d figure lying down, the artist’s interest is in the brain in an active sleep state and her pictures emerge from data taken from the cameras she set up in her home and the dream journals she keeps. Originally intending to paint the dreams she recorded, Mathenge instead focused on her own moving figure in canvases that offer intimate insights yet picture a state of consciousness accessible only to her. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
Wangari Mathenga, I’ve Learned How to Fly (Bedimmed Boundaries), oil on canvas, 55 x 82 inches, 2024.
Over the past several decades, photographer Mitch Epstein’s series have memorably pictured conflict over land, energy consumption in the US, and landmarked trees in NYC; his latest body of work at Chelsea’s Yancey Richardson Gallery, ‘Old Growth’ continues to picture the land in a stunning homage to ancient trees across the country. A redwood emerges from fog, a striated bristlecone pine stands at attention and this enormous sequoia towers over a tiny human in images that aim to inspire the protection of forests in light of their beauty and essential function in the environment. (On view through Oct 19th).
Mitch Epstein, Congress Trail, Sequoia National Park, California, from the series Old Growth, 45 ¾ x 36 ¾ inches, 2021.
The title of Hillary Pecis’ current New York solo show at David Kordansky Gallery, ‘Warm Rhythm’ perfectly describes the vibrant colors and abundant patterning of her new paintings. Set in LA and often inspired by scenes she encounters in her cross-country runs or daily life in the city, her paintings both sooth and excite with their tranquil subject matter rendered in bold color. The delectable quality of a still life with half-eaten lunch or this cozy scene with cat, reading lamp and mug carries over into delight at an orange house set against lush greens of a verdant front yard or the blooms spilling out of a vividly painted flower shop. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 12th).
Hilary Pecis, Pepita, acrylic on linen, 44 x 34 x 1 ½ inches, 2024.
If figures appear at all in Praxis NY’s summer group show ‘Missapes,’ they pose in place or rarely dominate. Instead, still lives are a commanding presence, particularly Francisco’s Ratti’s large indistinct arrangements of objects that simultaneously look low-res digital and handmade. The Argentina-based artist’s practice involves drawing on a cell phone screen, then transferring his images to canvas. Here, ‘Naturaleza’ (Nature) is a pleasant, conventional arrangement of flowers, plants and food stuffs but includes a more realistic painting of a tree trunk inserted onto the larger painting’s surface. Gashed and supporting a haphazard sign warning that a property is being monitored, the tree imagery complicates what a painting can offer at one time. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 30th).
Francisco Ratti, Naturaleza, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 78 ¾ inches, 2023.Francisco Ratti, Naturaleza, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 78 ¾ inches, 2023.
Late Sao Paola tapestry artist Norberto Nicola’s untitled hanging abstraction in Kasmin Gallery’s summer group show ‘Crossings’ is a standout among the varied and lively woven and textile-based works on view. Influenced by Magdalena Abakanowicz’s huge woven sculptural forms, Nicola developed his own hanging fiber artworks that rise up from the flat surface in various dynamic arrangements. (On view through Aug 9th).
Norberto Nicola, Untitled, wool, natural fibers and pigments, 98 3/8 x 59 inches, ca 1980s.Norberto Nicola, Untitled, wool, natural fibers and pigments, 98 3/8 x 59 inches, ca 1980s.
Asya Geisberg Gallery’s summer group show ‘Cover Band,’ curated by gallery artist Gabriela Vainsencher, features artwork by fourteen artists whose work playfully engages with their artist forebears. Rebecca Morgan recasts Artemisia Gentileschi’s Penitent Magdalene as a self-portrait of the artist, bug-eyed and suffering from ailments including the effects of the ADHD medicine shortage. Elisa Soliven remakes and updates an intriguing square-bodied torso made by an unknown neolithic artist while here, 20th century German-Brazilian artist Eleanore Koch’s ‘Study for a Dreaming Palm Tree’ appears through a window of Lisha Bai’s hanging fabric work, as Bai retains but complicates Koch’s pared down style. (On view in Tribeca through Aug 16th).
Lisha Bai, View of Estudio para Palmeira Sonhando, linen, ramie and voile, 74.5 x 57 inches, 2024.
A shocking pink wall, lime green front desk and aqua-colored chair greet visitors to Mary Heilmann’s show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, creating a bold statement not quite in keeping with the subtlety of the exhibition’s content – small-scale work on paper from the 70s to the early ‘00s. Nevertheless, one of the show’s smallest pieces, a black and blue watercolor and pencil drawing that brings to mind a game board, an overview of a pool or architectural forms, inspired Heilmann’s new, hugely enjoyable wall-filling new site-specific drawing, ‘A Long Lost Soul.’ (On view through July 26th in Chelsea).
Mary Heilmann, installation view of ‘A Long Lost Soul, acrylic on wall, 168 x 349 ½ inches, 2024.Mary Heilmann, Untitled Watercolor Study, watercolor and pencil on paper, 5 x 7 inches, 1982-84 c.
Known for imagining idiosyncratic characters from dreamed up worlds, Brazilian street-artist twins, Osemegos are back at Lehmann Maupin Gallery with paintings and two installations that fill the gallery with vivid color and sound from a built-in DJ booth. Pictured here, the gallery’s west wall houses a mystical architectural construction presided over by a nude man whose body has split in two to reveal a glowing inner self. To either side, a celestial goddess holds a planet in her hand while a man whose head in encircled by flower petals smiles serenely. In the sky, two heads circled by colorful lights – one of which is emerging from a UFO – light up the already bright skies over an installation that delights and entertains. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 16th).
Osgemeos, installation view of ‘Cultivating Dreams,’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, June 2024.
Diamond Stingily’s ‘Entryway’ sculptures, two of which are on view in her current solo show at 52 Walker, feature a well-worn front door, held upright in the gallery space and supporting a baseball bat. Inspired by her grandmother’s practice of keeping a bat against the door for protection, Stingily rejects narratives of victimization in favor of female agency. In other work, the artist sets closets into the gallery wall, their familiar louvered doors signaling the intimate space of the bedroom. Open to reveal a collection of bats, a stack of bricks or a row of identical white shirts, the objects inside and accompanying articles from the newspaper-lined closet walls touch on a variety of topics, several to do with the exploitation or protection of female bodies. (On view through Sept 14th in Tribeca).
Diamond Stingily, Entryway (City), door, bat and hardware, overall dimensions variable – as installed: 82 x 33 ½ x 83 inches, 2024.
Nature supplies materials and inspiration to the artists in James Cohan Gallery’s 2-venue summer group show ‘Mother Lode: Material and Memory,’ an engaging and diverse exhibition that elicits sensitive regard for the environment. Yu-Wen Wu’s ‘Acculturation III,’ composed of 143 gilded tea leaves arranged in a grid on the wall, is a standout in the show, and ruminates on the artist’s experience after she arrived from Taiwan to the US as a child. Using tea – a material related to her family life in both locations – in arrangements that individually recall letters or collectively resemble an instructional diagram, Wu’s piece speaks to both similarity and uniqueness of each segment of tea branch, all encased in a precious material that testifies to the value of individual and group. (On view through June 26th).
Yu-Wen Wu, Acculturation III, 143 gilded tea leaves, metal pins, 10 x 96 inches 2022 – 24.Yu-Wen Wu, (detail of) Acculturation III, 143 gilded tea leaves, metal pins, 10 x 96 inches 2022 – 24.
Known for repurposing industrial and scrap materials into bold sculptural installations, Virginia Overton’s powerful show at Bortolami Gallery features new work generated from large-scale, deconstructed outdoor signage. Overton’s evocative material aestheticizes objects that were once functional while alluding to continuous urban change and the desire to remember the past. Upstairs, as part of a group show, three of Overton’s Skylight Gem (NYC) sculptures dangle from the ceiling and rest on the floor. Similar to the pieces Overton installed at the Delta Terminal at LaGuardia airport, the sculptures are at once iconic New York emblems, both present in today’s landscape and nostalgic as they point to past lives lived under the skylights. (On view through Aug 30th).
Virginia Overton, Skylight Gem (NYC) coated copper, wired glass, electrical components, (suspended) 36 x 36 x 18 inches and (floor) 35 x 35 x 26 inches, 2024.
Dogs take the stage in Timothy Taylor’s summer group show ‘Dog Days of Summer,’ an exhibition featuring canine-themed artworks by over 50 artists. A few animals play supporting roles to humans, but the majority star in their own performance as they wisely look at to sea (Sean Landers), raise a stream-lined muzzle to pluck fruit from a table (Justin Liam O’Brien) or pose with a haloed head while barking (Peter Saul). Here, Will Ryman’s stainless-steel dog shines like a precious object as it raises its elegant head in an expressive howl. (On view through Aug 23rd).
Will Ryman, Sitting Dog, stainless steel, 12 x 9 x 20 inches, 2020.
Known for fashioning sheets of oil paint into sculptural forms or collaging oil skins into 2-D works, Leslie Wayne turns her medium in a new direction with curiously-shaped canvases at Jack Shainman Gallery. Tall, narrow panels 7 feet high and less than 2 feet wide with names like ‘Rush,’ ‘Summer Slope’ and ‘Low Tide,’ at times suggest core samples of the earth and are accompanied by another series of realist paintings featuring aerial views of the landscape set in special frames that mimic airplane windows. Titled ‘This Land’ after Woody Guthrie’s classic folk song, the show was inspired by Wayne’s 2021 flight across the Western US and offers views of the landscape, distant or abstracted, that step away from divisions and conflict represented by place. (On view in Chelsea through August 2nd).
Leslie Wayne, Summer Slope, oil on wood, 84 x 16 ¾ x 3 ½ inches, 2023.Leslie Wayne, (detail of) Summer Slope, oil on wood, 84 x 16 ¾ x 3 ½ inches, 2023.
Berlin and Mexico City-based artist Beatriz Morales’s monumental hanging fiber artwork ‘Quimera’ dominates Praxis Art’s Chelsea gallery like a living wall of color and undulating form. The cascading agave fibers that give the artwork such dynamism nod to Mexico’s history with this material prior to the introduction of synthetics and are dyed with natural substances native to the country. Described as ‘3D brushstrokes’ by the gallery, the fiber bunches join abstractions on the jute surface that suggest eyes, ancient wall paintings, maps and more. (On view in Chelsea through July 5th).
Beatriz Morales, Quimera, agave fiber, natural dyes, ink, acrylic and cotton embroidery on jute, 106 ¼ x 192 7/8 inches, 2024.Beatriz Morales, (detail of) Quimera, agave fiber, natural dyes, ink, acrylic and cotton embroidery on jute, 106 ¼ x 192 7/8 inches, 2024.
Just three sculptures, varying in scale and material, yet all in white-toned materials make up LA-based sculptor Charles Ray’s current show at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. To the rear of the gallery, a nearly 9-foot-tall woman constructed of handmade paper steps out of her pants. Towards the front of the space, two slightly larger than life-size supine nude male figures made from marble lie dead on a platform while on a nearby pedestal rests a small, crashed car, hand-crafted from hundreds of pieces of paper. Though apparently unrelated, the three sculptures suggest that one could be doing something as ordinary as getting dressed one moment and encounter an accident or even death the next. Titled 8FLU100 after Ray’s own license plate and referring to a crash suffered by the artist, the car is both testament to the fragility of life and statement about art’s role in processing reality. (On view through June 29th).
Charles Ray, 8FLU100, paper, 7 7/8 x 11 ¾ x 23 ¾ inches, 2024.
Inspired by visitations from a spiritual entity, late self-taught British artist Madge Gill produced drawings of anonymous female figures surrounded by patterns; selections of her work from the ‘40s and ‘50s ground Nicelle Beauchene Gallery’s vibrant 3-person show in Tribeca. Bright, patterned paintings by Chelsea Culprit and lushly glazed ceramics by Jennie Jieun Lee add color and, in the case of Lee’s sculpted heads, introduce decidedly otherworldly figures with appealingly ambiguous identities. (On view through June 29th).
Jennie Jieun Lee, Red Face, slipcast porcelain, glaze, stoneware stand, 10 x 8 x 8 inches, stoneware stand 2 x 6 x 6 inches, 2024.
Beijing-based artist Zheng Lu’s signature steel sculptures feature lassoing splashes of water that allude to a person’s changing inner states; Zheng’s new work at Chelsea’s Sundaram Tagore Gallery introduces more abstracted forms inspired by the natural world, including this piece titled ‘Colosseum,’ a stainless-steel whirlpool which visitors can enter. Viewed from the outside, ‘Colosseum’ allows viewers to observe the scale and consequence of the swirling vortex on one who may be inside. In Chinese poetry, water has long pointed to a person’s inner state; here, Zheng suggests dramatic workings of the mind. (On view through July 12th).
Zheng Lu, Colosseum, stainless steel, 46.46 x 46.46 x 188.92 inches, 2024.Zheng Lu, Colosseum, stainless steel, 46.46 x 46.46 x 188.92 inches, 2024.
It’s always a perfect day in Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ landscape paintings, now on view at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea. The sky is blue, the road is open and the wildflowers are abundant in scenes of the natural world rendered in soft and pleasing tones. Based on found vintage photographs, each image was originally meant to epitomize the beauty of a landscape and remind the photographer of an ideal moment. (On view through July 3rd).
Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Wildflower Hill, mixed media oil on canvas, 34 x 34 inches, 2023.
Born in Ecuador and raised in New York, Ronny Quevedo incorporates concepts of movement and migration into subtle yet dynamic abstractions at Alexander Gray Associates in Tribeca. Incorporating McCall’s clothing patterns that act like maps of the body and referring to the checkerboard-like grid of the Aymara flag in pieces like ‘broadway wiphala,’ Quevedo posits the body as register of both cultural continuity and change in diasporic life. Titled ‘quipu (and another one)’ after the Incan tool for record keeping and recording information, the long strips in this piece echo the arrangement of a quipu’s cords while the broken colors allude to the abstract but essential information represented by its knots. (On view through June 15th.)
Ronny Quevedo, quipu (and another one), pattern paper and screenprint on muslin, 50 x 70 x 2 inches, 2023.Ronny Quevedo, (detail) quipu (and another one), pattern paper and screenprint on muslin, 50 x 70 x 2 inches, 2023.
London-based Polish artist Goshka Macuga – known for making artwork that relates to the archives and collections of art institutions – had a major New York moment in 2019 when she installed an enormous tapestry in MoMA’s education building picturing herself surrounded by books featuring work in the museum’s collections. That tableau was in turn a restaging of a photo of Andre Malraux similarly surrounded by his own ‘museum’ of reproductions. Now on view at Andrew Kreps Gallery in Tribeca, Macuga’s image from the MoMA tapestry manifests as a jacquard woven soft sculpture, positioned on the floor of the gallery’s double-height space. Titled ‘Fallen Artists/Comfort,’ the work approaches fallenness from various thought-provoking viewpoints by literally looks as if the artist has fallen from the upper gallery space and including a soft book featuring a photo of Nan Goldin’s photos of herself battered and of Nazi-sympathizers and MoMA employees Philip Johnson and Alan Blackburn when they resigned from the museum. (On view through June 15th).
Goshka Macuga, Fallen Artists / Comfort, jacquard soft sculpture, 127 ½ x 53 ½ inches, 2023.
Hugh Hayden’s last show in 2021 at Lisson Gallery featured church pews installed like a chapel in the gallery; his current exhibition again transforms the space, this time into a restroom with artworks in multiple stalls, including a functioning urinal. Visitors open doors to find pieces that refer generally to human experience: education (a distorted school desk), diasporic culinary arts and music (cooking pans merged with West African masks) and sexuality (several male torsos make a connection between guns and phalluses.) Sequestered in their own stalls, each sculpture can be viewed alone or – though it feels strange, given the public restroom environment – with others. Engaging with the show is irresistible; curious visitors are rewarded with beautifully crafted, surreal sculptures that prompt us to explore specific cultural commonalities. (On view in Chelsea through June 15th).
Hugh Hayden, installation view of ‘Hughmans’ at Lisson Gallery, June 2024.
Realistic yet alluding to dancing figures, a creeping crustacean, a crown and more, Danish artist Marianne Nielsen’s stoneware leaf sculptures at HB381 delight in nature and its rearrangement. In a recent essay, design expert Glenn Adamson points out the subtlety of Nielson’s ceramics in a field crowded with bold statements, noting that the sculpture nevertheless grabs attention with its craft and imagination. Matching our delight at nature’s wonders with pleasure at her clever and skillful iterations of plant life, Nielsen’s artworks take on a life of their own. (On view in Tribeca through June 15th).
Marianne Nielsen, Large Leaves, glazed stoneware, 10.25” h x 10.75” l, 2023.
Disaffected nudes, a lurking skeletal figure and an embracing couple titled after Symbolist painter Ferdinand Hodler’s macabre painting ‘The Night’ channel the expressive qualities of late 19th century painting in Sahara Longe’s show of new paintings at Timothy Taylor Gallery in Tribeca. Here, ‘Liar,’ features a painted frame of cloudy red, white and green colored areas that recall the wispiness of Edvard Munch’s skies in ‘The Scream.’ A white-clad individual on his knees with hands in a prayerful position in the foreground contrasts with a shadowy figure behind…possibly a second self or the ‘liar’ referred to in the title? (On view through June 15th).
Inspired by tree fungus, coral and other structures in the natural world that build up over time, The Haas Brothers’ bronzes at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery are typically quirky in form and attractive in their shiny and patinaed bronze surfaces. Inspired by psychedelic aspects of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 album ‘Innervisions,’ after which the artists titled the show, the works trend towards the hallucinatory. In this piece, tentacle-like forms seem to reach out towards visitors like living extensions of the seed-like form below. On the wall, patterned paintings formed by squeezing bottles of acrylic paint echo the accretion process used to make the bronzes while adding lush color to the exhibition. (On view through June 15th).
The Haas Bros, Holden Ball-field, patinated cast bronze, marble base, bronze: 34 x 28 x 13 inches, 2024.
Water, chickens, talismans and chairs are some of the goods on sale in vibrant and lively paintings of tradesmen and women in Lubaina Himid’s show of new paintings and prints at Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea. Accompanying each merchant is a signboard touting the seller’s wares in phenetic spellings that encouraging visitors to sound out each sales slogan. Here, a woman selling baskets leans into a breeze while the world behind her manifests as a sturdy woven framework. Her signboard touts the tight weave of her baskets; on the verso appear the seller’s private thoughts – in this case, an invitation, ‘feel them with your fingertips.’ (On view through June 15th).
Lubaina Himid, Basket Seller, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 72 inches, 2023.Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska, Baskets Tightly Woven, unique screenprint acrylic paint, and Charbonnel etching ink on Somerset Tub Sized 600 gsm paper (double-sided), 36 5/8 x 29 7/8 inches, 2024.Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska, Baskets Tightly Woven (verso), 2024.
“I had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug,” said artist Niki de Saint Phalle of her ‘Shooting Pictures’ from the ‘60s, for which she fired a shotgun at surfaces prepared with bags of paint. Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Sunday,’ a 71’ wall of gold-plated steel panels marked with holes and bullets on view at Gagosian Gallery, argues something similar, but with the U.S. as the speaker. Telling the New York Times in a recent interview that “we are completely immersed in violence every day, and we’ve gotten used to it,” Cattelan hired locals at a New York shooting range to create a bullet-riddled gold and steel wall that towers over gallery visitors, confronting us with our own reflections amid the damage. (On view in Chelsea through June 15th).
Maurizio Cattelan, (detail of) Sunday, 24-karat gold plated steel panel shot with different caliber weapons, 854 x 213.5 x 1.5 inches, 2024.
In her 70+ year career, Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz helped pioneer fiber art as fine art, teaching for decades at Drexel University and placing her work in both corporate and public collections. Two years after she passed away at the age of 94, Pacanosky Bobrowicz’s beautiful and complex sculptural work is on view at Sapar Contemporary in Tribeca. Created from knotted monofilament which she mixed with fiber and gold leaf, the artist’s signature ‘cosmic energy fields,’ as she called them, express her fascination with physics and philosophy. (On view through June 1st).
Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz, Cosmic Series Amber, 16 x 14 x 4 inches, monofilament, 2015.
LA artist Diedrick Brackens has called his weavings ‘a small healing tribute’ to those who came before him, depicting Black figures in moments of peace but using materials like cotton which have a heavy history in the U.S. His latest solo show, on view at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea and Tribeca locations, includes the dramatic, ‘if you have ghosts,’ which features a silhouetted figure surrounded by a swirling wind. Reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s perfect proportions expressed by his Vitruvian Man drawing and including Romanesque architecture, the figure appears to step forth from history to command this supernatural event. (On view through May 24th in Tribeca and June 1st in Chelsea).
Diedrick Brackens, if you have ghosts, cotton and acrylic yarn, 105 x 105 inches (approx.), 2024.
From the caves of Cuba’s Vinales Valley to the Aurora Borealis, Teresita Fernandez’s elegant sculpture is inspired by the beauty of nature but questions mankind’s relationship with the land. In ‘Soil Horizon,’ Fernandez’s current solo show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, the artist titles several works – ‘Bardo,’ ‘Sky/Burial’ – after Buddhist concepts relating to the gap between lives. A 24’ long concrete arch hints at a burial mound while thousands of ceramic cubes installed on the wall speak to a body’s dispersal after death. A third piece in tiny ceramic tile suggests weather systems or other dynamic forces that create larger or small-scale impact on humans and the planet. (On view through June 1st).
Teresita Fernandez, installation view of ‘Soil Horizon’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, May 2024.
Ernie Barnes’ ‘Room Ful’A Sistahs’ at Ortuzar Projects is a painting conveying a moment of joy, a highlight of the artist’s current solo exhibition featuring work from 1966 to 2000. After a brief career in pro-football, the artist served as the AFL’s official artist and artist of the ’84 Olympic Games while creating iconic artworks like ‘Sugar Shack,’ which appeared as an album cover for Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Want You.’ Sports, dance, church and everyday life provide subject matter for dynamic paintings populated by lithe figures that move through the world with grace and beauty. (On view in Tribeca through June 15th).
Ernie Barnes, Room Ful’A Sistahs, acrylic on canvas, 25 7/8 x 37 ¾ inches, acrylic on canvas, 1994.
Titled ‘Meta-Painting,’ Korean artist Kimsooja’s exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery questions the essence of painting via an installation of unpainted panels and a light-absorbing black orb. In one of the gallery’s main spaces, raw linen on stretchers hang from the ceiling while the artist’s signature bottari (a cloth bundle referencing the act of packing one’s belongings in bedclothing) rest nearby. Kimsooja speaks of both panels and bundles as paintings, though they were not made with paint, much as Deductive Object – a welded steel oblong covered in paint that absorbs ambient light – has presence in its own gallery yet has boundaries that are difficult to perceive. Linked to the Brahmanda stone of Indian origin, this mysterious object hints at profound mysteries of life. (On view through June 14th).
Kimsooja, Deductive Object, painted welded steel, mirror, wood, 72 x 43 ¼ x 43 ¼ inches, 2016.
The Latin words ‘Equulus Duo’ (two horses, in English) might bring an exalted equestrian sculpture to mind, while the designation ‘two horseys’ shrinks the words down to the speech of a small child. Both phrases are included in the title of Lucy Puls’ ‘Equulus Duo (Two Horseys),’ a sculpture of two ‘My Little Pony’ toys encased in resin and now on view in Tribeca in Puls’ mini retrospective at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Sculpture from Puls’ ‘In Resin’ series elaborates on the passage of time and the vicissitudes of consumer culture by presenting once sought after consumer items – a mid 80s Mackintosh 512, a stack of vinyl singles – preserved as if in amber. (On view in Tribeca through May 18th).
Lucy Puls, Equulus Duo (Two Horseys), resin, steel, toy horses, 6 ½h x 12w x 5d inches, 1993.
Once small-scale and resolutely abstract, New York painter Lumin Wakoa’s latest paintings at Harper’s Gallery have grown explosively in size and dynamic allusion to the natural world. Branching forms appear in many works, supporting abundant blossoms or snaking between zones of color that suggest the blinding sun, bright flowers or cool, blue oases. Here, intense yellow and orange flowers dematerialize into a mass of pleasurable tones while the work’s title, ‘Briefly Brilliant,’ suggests that there is a time limit on this glorious display. (On view in Chelsea through May 5th).
Lumin Wakoa, Briefly Brilliant, oil on linen, 82 x 70 inches, 2023.
Cal Lane’s steel sculptures of lacy underwear – incongruous in their industrial material vs subject matter – are real attention grabbers but take a back seat to altered found materials in the artist’s mini-retrospective at C24 Gallery in Chelsea. Though they appear light and whimsical, these shovels from 2016 recall steel sculptural panels commissioned by the MTA for Knickerbocker Ave station which were inspired by the area’s architecture. The wheelbarrow is one of the show’s best pieces for pushing the material, achieving a surprising delicacy via intricate patterning. (On view through May 10th).
Cal Lane, Untitled (Wheel Barrow), plasma cut wheel barrow, 55.5 x 25.5 x 6 inches, 2007 and 3 x Untitled (Shovel), plasma cut steel and wood, 2016.
Modeled after El Greco’s ‘The Penitent Mary Magdalene,’ Mary Carlson’s small-scale sculpture of one of Christ’s most devoted followers is both delicate in her tiny features and monumental in her seated, robed body. Now on view at Kerry Schuss Gallery, displayed on wall-mounted wooden shelves amid scrolling copper piping, Carlson’s new sculptures evoke the figures and decorative designs on the pages of medieval manuscripts. Characterized by world-weariness vs El Greco’s doe-eyed young woman, Carlson’s saint is pictured in the process of receiving a revelation and puts a hand to her bare chest. Less erotic than El Greco’s version, Carlson’s Mary is a substantial woman engaged with the life of the mind and spirit. (On view in Tribeca through April 27th).
Mary Carlson, Mary Magdalene (after El Greco), glazed porcelain, wood, copper, 29 x 36 x 8.75 inches, 2024.Mary Carlson, Mary Magdalene (after El Greco), glazed porcelain, wood, copper, 29 x 36 x 8.75 inches, 2024.
Red-orange skies appear to be ablaze in Maria Calandra’s landscape painting of Weir Island in Maine while her blue skies over Como, Italy are a tranquil color but feature roiling clouds. Apocalyptic in their color and Mannerist in their elongated forms, Calandra’s paintings at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery are hallucinogenic visions that offer visual pleasure via their dynamic fluidity. Here, Mont Sainte-Victoire, made famous by Paul Cezanne’s many images of the mountain near Aix-en-Provence, rises above a field of flowers and greenery that appears to be flowing up the mountain. (On view in Chelsea through April 13th.)
Maria Calandra, Mont Sainte-Victoire, acrylic on linen, 2023.
Inspired by 17th century German scholar Athanasius Kircher’s cat organ, which elicited sounds made by cats, British artist Oliver Beer created ‘Cat Orchestra,’ a musical instrument crafted from 37 found objects in the form of hollow cat vessels. Now on view at Almine Rech Gallery’s Tribeca space, the piece’s sound is activated by a keyboard that turns on microphones in each vessel to produce resonances that together form an ethereal musical performance. Motivated to find music where it’s least expected, Beer awakens viewers to possibilities everywhere. (On view through April 27th).
Oliver Beer, installation view of Cat Orchestra, 37 hollow cat vessels and sculptures, plinths, microphones, speakers, audio equipment, dimensions variable, 2024.
Nairobi-based artist Kaloki Nyamai’s New York solo debut at James Cohan Gallery introduces an artist who uses acrylic paint, stitching and photo transfer to create complex surfaces that suggest complicated histories. This painting’s title, ‘The one who stole my heart,’ features a figure leaning back into a man whose outward-looking eyes connect with our gaze. In contrast to the couple’s intimate, relaxed moment, partially visible figures in the background raise their arms in what could be celebration or protest. Elsewhere, photo transfers contrast happy moments of communal activity with news articles about political unrest as Nyamai juxtaposes the lives of individuals with larger social happenings. (On view through May 4th).
Kaloki Nyamai, Ula wosiee ngoo yakwa II (The one who stole my heart), mixed media, acrylic, collage stitching on canvas, 2024.Kaloki Nyamai, (detail) Ula wosiee ngoo yakwa II (The one who stole my heart), mixed media, acrylic, collage stitching on canvas, 2024.
Fascinated for decades by Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne, painter Mernet Larsen applies her own delightfully eccentric perspectival distortions to her French forebear’s iconic imagery in new work at James Cohan Gallery. Larsen diversifies the cast of characters in ‘The Bathers (after Cezanne)’ adding bikinis to figures more robotic than robust and emphasizing artificiality in the human figures that replace Cezanne’s stabilizing triangle of trees in the original. A diving figure heading into flat waves akin to the slats in Japanese Bunraku puppet theater (which allow figures to move through water) and a woman to the left literally holding up the top of the painting add dynamism and complexity. By alluding to Cezanne but shifting away from his focus and results, Larsen emphasizes the choices behind a painting’s design and nods to the many iconic painters who have moved beyond inspiration to find their own unique results. (On view in Tribeca through March 16th).
Mernet Larsen, The Bathers (after Cezanne), acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 59 ¼ x 39 ½ inches, 2023.
Known for gallery-filling installations made of cardboard and packing tape, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn marshals these materials to transform Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street location into a room resembling a destroyed command center or gaming parlor. Titled ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it’ the gallery’s huge space houses rows of desks littered with cigarettes and coffee cups cut roughly from polystyrene and cardboard computers (some with smashed screens) featuring war-destroyed buildings from both real places and video games. Hanging from lengths of packing tape, images of soldiers taken from video games populate the room’s aisles, their faces covered by emojis, which also hang like mobiles from the gallery ceiling. Hirschhorn’s deliberately low-tech materials contrast the realistic imagery from the video game (seen in this photo on one screen) and disturbingly blur the line between real and fake. (On view in Chelsea through March 2nd).
Thomas Hirschhorn, installation view of ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it,’ cardboard, prints, tape, polystyrene, aluminum foil, dimensions variable, 2023.
Jennifer Guidi wants to share ‘calm and joy’ in her vibrant landscapes and abstractions, she says of paintings now on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Based on views of the hills in LA and in southern France where the artist recently exhibited at the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery, Guidi uses her signature materials of sand on canvas to depict pleasingly smooth geological forms as a counter to explosive activity in the skies. Starburst patterns appear in both representational and abstract canvases, spreading color and energy over the landscapes like a shower of beneficence. (On view through March 2nd).
Jennifer Guidi, Let the Light Fall Gently, sand, acrylic, oil and rocks on linen, 60 x 48 x 1.5 inches, 2023.
Even in the dark, Jack Shainman Gallery’s new Tribeca space looks stunning, its vast hall accommodating Richard Mosse’s film ‘Broken Spectre, an extraordinary warning-cry against ongoing environmental devastation in the Amazon. Shown on a 60’ wide screen and toggling between ariel views of the landscape, on-the-ground footage of people involved in rainforest clearing, mining and agri-business, and microscopic views of minute ecosystems on the forest floor, Mosse catalogues the destruction using technology – multi-spectral video, infrared film and UV microscopy – that provides unique views of the environment. Alarming and beautiful, Mosse’s film is the culmination of two years of work in the Amazon and, along with Ben Frost’s powerful soundtrack, is a persuasive argument for action. (On view in Tribeca through March 16th).
Richard Mosse, installation of Broken Spectre at Jack Shainman Gallery, 2024.
To a soundtrack featuring readings from Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil,’ Apollinaria Broche’s ceramic and bronze flowers strike gangly poses in her solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, exuding both wonky charm and maleficence. Like an insect to nectar, viewers are drawn into the center of colorful ceramic flowers that feature tiny bronze sculptures – a winged horse, a contented-looking cat – of cavorting magical creatures. More ominous figures – snakes, flies – appear as well, suggesting that the flowers inhabit a garden less welcoming than it first appears. In this detail image of ‘I hid my tracks Spit out all my hair,’ skulls and daggers mingle with the seeds of this lush blossoming plant, summoning a specter of death and violence where it might least be expected. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24th.)
Apollinaria Broche, (detail) I hid my tracks Spit out all my air, glazed ceramic, bronze, 63 x 21 x 18 inches, 2023.
Initially trained as a ballet dancer, Madeline Hollander incorporates movement into her artistic practice in surprising and delightful ways. Her current solo show at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca titled ‘Entanglement Choreography’ presents a grid of six mirrored pods on round pedestals which at first glance belie the magic of peering inside. Each sculpture houses a tiny rotating dancing figure, abstracted like a Matisse nude, which at a certain angle appears to both float above the pod and be contained within it. Nodding in the title to the notion in physics of quantum entanglement, when two separate particles demonstrate a connection with each other as if moving as if in a dance, Hollander’s partners manifest what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance.’ (On view in Tribeca through March 2nd).
Madeline Hollander, Entanglement Choreography VI (figs. 6, 12, 18, 24), 24 x 24 x 32 ½ inches, 2023.
The striking figures of three life-sized Greek goddesses, accompanied by the silhouettes of three women adopting positions from a how-to book about drawing the nude figure pose dramatically at the center of Luciana Pinchiero’s first NY solo at Praxis Gallery in Chelsea. Crafted from flat pieces of material, these classic and current representations of women literally lack dimensionality. Inspired by ancient stories of idealized women from Pygmalion’s sculpture-turned-live-woman to the Venus de Capua who poses as if holding up a mirror, Pinchiero’s sculpture and her paper collages juxtapose imagery from different eras to question how much representation of women has actually changed over time. (On view in Chelsea through March 9th).
Luciana Pinchiero, installation view of Bad Posture at Praxis International Art, Jan ’24.
Spread over James Cohan Gallery’s three spaces, the immensely enjoyable group exhibition ‘Arcadia and Elsewhere’ features paintings of nature from the realist to the abstract, the mundane to the sublime. Many pieces portray idyllic natural landscapes, other scenes get more complicated, especially when humans or their traces appear. Here, Lindsay Adams’ Lonely Fire excites feeling through the fiery tones of the background and the lush colors of individual flowers that stand apart from each other while contributing to a whole that speaks to the beauty of variety. (On view through Feb 10th).
Lindsay Adams, Lonely Fire, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, 2023.
John O’Connor’s enticingly colorful drawings at Pierogi Gallery’s Chelsea popup take viewers down the rabbit hole into surreal scenarios told with endlessly inventive typography and icons. Here, the eye-grabbing ‘Car Crash’ pictures a fictional multi-car pileup in which cars of lesser value crash into increasingly more expensive vehicles, starting with a Honda Civic and reaching a Lotus and continuing with fictional cars (Dukes of Hazzard, Flintstones). O’Connor explains that the spiraling drawing represents the transfer of kinetic energy from car to car, a stand-in for a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. At the center of this dynamic, pulsing vortex is a worm hole, ready to transport cars, viewers and all into another place and time. (On view at 524 West 19th Street through Feb 10th).
John O’Connor, Car Crash, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 85 x 69.75 inches, 2023.
Material generates form in ‘Echoes of Circumstance,’ a visually rich group exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery of work by three artists (El Anatsui, Garnett Puett and Lyne LaPointe) whose work is driven by the non-traditional art materials they employ. Hawaii-based 4th generation beekeeper Puett partners with bees who create honeycombs around steel structures, resulting in surreal forms. Also using a (handmade) beehive, Canadian artist Lyne LaPointe’s ‘The Song of the Queen Virgin’ presents a mystical figure shrouded in fabric. Internationally renowned Ghanaian artist El Anatsui draws inspiration from Kente cloth to make patterned, wall-mounted textiles of aluminum liquor bottle caps stitched together by copper wire. (On view in Chelsea through March 2nd.)
Garnett Puett, (foreground) Forged Dance; Entropic Subconscious Matris (3), wax, forged steel, 40 ½ x 20 x 20 inches, 2019. … El Anatsui, (background) Skin of Earth, found aluminum and copper wire, 180 x 192 inches, 2006.Lyne LaPointe, The Song of the Queen Virgin, antique handmade beehive, cotton mesh, ink, paper and varnish on linen in an artist frame, 83 x 44 ½ x 2 ¼ inches, 2022-23.
Iconic Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist is acutely attuned to the comfort of her audiences. Visitors to her atrium-filling video installation at MoMA in 2008 might have lounged on a low couch while another level of relaxation – beds – awaited at the artist’s New Museum retrospective in 2016. Rist’s current show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea offers both a bed and assorted furniture, enticing the public into the artwork itself to be bathed in constantly morphing patterns and images. Rist (seen in this photo conversing with visitors) conceived of Hauser & Wirth’s back gallery space as a living room; her simultaneous show at Luhring Augustine Gallery is a projection-filled back yard. (On view at Hauser & Wirth through Jan 13th and at Luhring Augustine through Feb 3rd).
Pipilotti Rist, (installation view) Welling Color Island West, video installation with projector skirt, projection on carpet, plants and furniture, silent, unique, dimensions variable, 2023.
Forty years after the release of the independent film ‘Wild Style,’ a chronicle of the early days of New York hip hop culture, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery celebrates with a star-studded exhibition of writing, painting and sculpture that captures the creativity and energy of emerging urban youth cultures in the late 70s and early 80s. Rammellzee’s sculpture Gasholear, surrounded by a cloud of spacecraft capable of producing lettering, is an astounding sight at the center of the main gallery. Grasping a combination guitar/double halberd, this futuristic character is a machine/robot/human force to reckon with. (On view in SoHo through Jan 13th).
Rammellzee, The Gasholear (THE RAMM:ELLl:ZEE), c. 1987-1998, 180 pound exoskeleton of the RAMM:ELLl:ZEE, found objects, wireless sound system, paint and resin), dimensions variable.
Octogenarian artist and Process Art icon Lynda Benglis continues to explore organic abstraction in lively new works at 125 Newbury in Tribeca. By placing sheets of abaca paper – from a type of banana tree native to the Philippines – on either side of forms made of bamboo reeds or aluminum wire, Benglis creates dynamic shapes that recall exoskeletons or chrysalises. Titled ‘Skeletonizer,’ the show’s work references types of moths, appropriate to the dynamic sculptures that appear to climb the gallery walls. (Gallery opening hours change during the holidays. Check opening hours before visiting. On view through Jan 13th).
Installation view of ‘Skeletonizer’ at 125 Newbury, Dec 2023.
Botswanan-American artist Meleko Mokgosi’s recent paintings at Jack Shainman Gallery, grouped under the title ‘Spaces of Subjection,’ dig into the formation of subjecthood – how does a person being pictured become who they are to viewers Inspired in part by French philosopher Michel Foucault’s writings about identity formation as it derives from networks of societal influences, Mokgosi’s paintings picture individuals from various sources including studio photographs and advertising. Here, he combines a photograph taken in Atlanta of Nelson and Winnie Mandela who were speaking in the US, an image of the Mandelas with Coretta Scott King and her children, and a young woman seated on the floor and a man in a tux from South African studio portraiture from the 1950s. Known for being both subordinated by power and on the flip side, representing power, the Mandelas and Kings also exist in a power relationship with each other (enacted in Coretta Scott King’s 1986 trip to South Africa) that contrasts the presence of the two lesser-known figures. (On view through Dec 22nd).
Meleko Mokgosi, Spaces of Subjection: Black Painting V, oil on canvas, 96 x 72 x 2 inches, 2022.
LA painter Calida Rawles’ realist paintings of women and girls submerged in water both clearly define their subjects and at the same time obscure them through shadow and reflection, suggesting a simultaneous state of knowing and unknowing. Titled ‘A Certain Oblivion,’ Rawles first major solo show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery presents still and clean bodies of water that appear to offer a place of refuge, even therapy to women who float in or glide through the water, faces barely breaking the surface. Yet several paintings come from source photos taken after dark and were even painted in low light in the studio, complicating and making uncertain the watery realms depicted. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 16th).
Calida Rawles, We Knew It Was Coming, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 120 x 2 inches, 2023.
Eric N. Mack calls himself a painter whose medium is fabric – new work at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea is mostly hung on stretchers that support not canvas but collaged fabric fragments. Like painting, Mack’s work foregrounds color and pattern, but the artist doesn’t add these elements to the canvas, rather he encounters them as found materials. Instead of creating transparency and texture from paint, these are qualities of the surface itself. Sourced from divergent origins – Mack might use fabric from couture clothing or neighborhood markets – the artist collapses quality distinctions in his dynamic abstractions. (On view through Dec 22nd in Chelsea).
Eric N. Mack, Strewn Sitbon, fabric on aluminum stretcher, overall: 41 x 34 ½ x 6 inches, 2023.
With only fossilized remains to go on, how do we know what dinosaurs actually looked like? German sculptor Stefan Rinck asks (and answers) this tongue-in-cheek question to humorous effect in a show of stone sculpture featuring cute lizards, now on view at Nino Mier Gallery’s Tribeca space. Though the ancient reptiles have been fashioned of even more ancient material – stones including sandstone, marble and limestone, their look is decidedly contemporary – some even sport Crocs. In the case of ‘Baguettesaurier,’ a horned creature of polished diabase, who’s to say dinosaurs didn’t also pick up a baguette on the way home? (On view through Dec 16th).
Stefan Rinck, Baguettesaurier, diabase, limestone, 31 ½ x 18 7/8 x 19 ¾ inches, 2023.
Fifty years after Picasso’s death, international gallery Almine Rech launches its new Tribeca space with ‘The Echo of Picasso,’ a group exhibition of work by contemporary artists whose work converses with their influential forebear. Farah Atassi’s ‘Reclining Woman with Oranges’ at the gallery’s entrance juxtaposes various grids – rectangular picture frames, grey lines against a peach-toned background and angular patterns on the central figure’s dress – with curving, organic forms that include a chaise longue and scattered oranges. In a show heavy on the human figure, artists from Karel Appel to Rashid Johnson explore contemporary consciousness through distortions pioneered in the early 20th century. (On view through Dec 16th).
Farah Atassi, Reclining Woman with Oranges, oil and glycerol on linen, 63 x 78 ½ inches, 2023.
Known for sculpture and 2-D work that incorporates textiles originally inspired by Dutch wax printed fabrics, British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare gives new life to his signature material in pieces that resemble flying cloth at James Cohan Gallery. Shonibare has explained that his new bronzes came from thinking about the wind that filled the sails of ships involved in transatlantic trade and forced migration in past centuries. Now, the dynamic pieces resemble dancing forms as they elegantly and energetically swirl on their pedestals in the gallery. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 22nd).
Yinka Shonibare, Abstract Bronze I, bronze sculpture, hand-painted with Dutch wax pattern, 78 ¾ x 57 ¾ x 49 ¾ in, 2023.
New York painter Katherine Bradford’s swimmers – a recurring subject – include ephemeral, washy suggestions of submerged figures and bolder, mostly visible individuals standing still in the water. New work at Canada in Tribeca favors more dominant figures, filling the space of the canvas with their solid forms and often expressionless faces. ‘In the Lake,’ features individuals who float, walk or stand in dark water perhaps lit by the moon, each in their own space; with their arms outstretched, several figures appear to be relaxing while an orange-topped figure waits and a man starts to exit the scene to the right. Bradford excels at complex realities, as past shows suggest – e.g. the terror and pleasure of waves in 2016 or the comforting and confining closeness of mothers and children in 2021. Here, mostly placid faces suggest tranquility but closeness and individual isolation among the swimmers leaves room to wonder. (On view through Dec 22nd).
Katherine Bradford, In the Lake, acrylic on canvas, diptych: 80 x 136 inches, 2023.
“If you look at the work, it is actually posing for you,’ explained New York artist Kayode Ojo in a past video describing his elegantly spare sculptural installations, now on view at 52 Walker in Tribeca. Having studied photography before becoming known for in-the-round artworks, Ojo now creates arrangements of fast-fashion clothing, accessories and other objects sourced via on-line shopping that elicit admiration and desire. By titling each artwork with the text originally used to sell each it, Ojo centers his practice squarely in conversations about consumption while transporting each piece into the realm of luxury art object. (On view in Tribeca through Jan 6th).
Kayode Ojo, Comfort, New Orleans 4-Light Clear Unique/Statement Geometric Chandelier with Crystal Accents, 84 x 72 x 16 inches, 2023.
‘Uncontrollable Desirrs,’ ‘Between Places’ and ‘Until they Dsiappear’ are among the suggestive phrases that appear in Shilpa Gupta’s ‘StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream’ flapboard sculpture at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. The sound of the board’s moving panels creates a sense of dynamism and anticipation as the text constantly changes, while the words themselves conjure unsettled feelings compounded by Gupta’s use of alternative spellings of select words. In the show’s other works, Gupta speaks the works of jailed poets into bottles, capping them and arranging them in an ‘reimagined library’ and presents a sound installation of protest songs sung globally, a collective tribute to the power of words and the need to protect freedom of speech. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 16th).
StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream, motion flapboard, 35 min loop, 93 ½ x 5 x 9 ½ inches, 2021.
Titled ‘All Shall Be Well,’ after a record of visions experienced by a medieval English religious recluse, British painter Martyn Cross’ show of mystical new paintings at Marianne Boesky Gallery emphasizes the connectedness of humans and nature. Here, in ‘You and I Are Earth,’ the link is literal, with a seascape manifesting in human form; in other paintings, a root system morphs into an old man and a giant eye appears in the clouds. Fresh from a residency on England’s fossil-rich southern coast, a UNESCO World Heritage site known as the ‘Jurassic Coast,’ Cross merely scratches the surface of deep time but prompts viewers to recenter their thinking about our relationship with the earth. (On view through Dec 22ndin Chelsea).
Martyn Cross, You and I Are Earth, oil on canvas, 86 ¾ x 63 inches, 2023.
Underexposed to art as a kid and inspired by American painters like Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell, Bo Bartlett has continued in a vein of realism that presents tantalizing, slightly surreal narratives. In ‘La Corrida’ or ‘The Bullfight,’ a highlight of Bartlett’s current solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea, the toreador has fallen and the bull eyes the open gate from which the artist has perhaps dashed, leaving behind his jacket and materials. Flecked with blood, the bull has been provoked and further disaster is coming; the absence of people leaves viewers to ponder the question of culpability. (On view through Dec 9th).
Bo Bartlett, La Corrida, oil on linen, 88 x 120 inches, 2023.
Candice Lin’s fantastical tale of a lithium factory worker reincarnated as a sex demon draws viewers in through an abundance of media including paintings on textile, adapted Korean fermentation vessels, video and workstations featuring ceramic computers, clocks and more in a bizarre but masterful exhibition at Canal Projects. The installation – coproduced and commissioned by the 14th Gwangju Biennial and Canal Projects – is accompanied by a text detailing the story of a young woman who attempted to steal lithium to make a new life for herself and her lover. Apparently killed in the effort, she finds herself in the body of a demon – inspired by spirits in Japanese, Chinese and Malaysian lore who are attracted to bodily fluids and functions – who makes her way back to the human realm to haunt the lithium factory and its workers. Dehumanized by factory work performed to service our reliance on lithium, Lin’s worker ceases to be human, an outcome that serves as a warning to viewers. (On through on Canal Street through Dec 16th).
Candice Lin, installation view of Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory, Canal Projects, Sept – Dec 2023.
Surprisingly, Louis Fratino’s still lives can be the most dynamic of his works – a sink full of dishes or an arrangement of fish in a market stall appear as a jumble of curving or stacked forms in constant motion. In ‘Latteria,’ from Fratino’s current show at Sikkema Jenkins and Co., the artist creates an intriguing balance of action and repose as he combines the bustle of the figures in the café, tables that tilt and floor tiles that rear up with the stillness of the central figure who sits with a quiet and pensive look. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 9th).
Louis Fratino, Latteria, oil on canvas, 47 x 42 inches, 2023.
Warhol’s poppies, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 painting ‘Gullscape’ and a urinal recalling Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ all make an appearance in Willie Stewart’s new 3-D, wall-mounted sculpture now on view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, signaling the artist’s intent to make something new from modern art samplings. Set upon a support that resembles a shelf or mantelpiece, Stewart’s Springer Spaniel represents the idea of the loyal family pet; paired with Warhol’s poppies, flowers associated with remembrance, the piece turns nostalgic and wistful. (On view through Nov 25th).
Willie Stewart, Dog (Springer Spaniel), colored pencil with ink, gouache, and graphite on cotton board, polychrome wood and acrylic on canvas over artist-made panels, 60 h x 69 w x 5.5 d inches, 2023.
Water worn rocks, amoebas, cells, sea creatures and more come to mind in Sui Park’s exhibition of colorful abstract sculpture at Sapar Contemporary in Tribeca. Crafting her work from looped cable ties and monofilaments, Park turns mass-produced plastic materials into artworks that, ironically, foster appreciation of the natural world. This installation’s handsome black background color is somewhat misleading; titled ‘Sprinkles,’ Park has explained that she was inspired by dessert sprinkles. (On view through Nov 27th.)
Sui Park, Sprinkles, cable ties, hand-dyed cable ties, variable size, 2023.
In a recent interview, Rebecca Morris explained that color is the content of her painting. On view through Saturday at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca, Morris’ light pink, blue and green abstractions are easy on the eye, even when accented by attention-grabbing metallic colors. All titled just with the date of their making, it’s up to the viewer to puzzle out how each artistic decision – the checkerboard pattern, the shape of each zone of color and the variety of pink tonal contrasts in Untitled (#04-23), for example – creates meaning and mood. In this painting, Morris considers cultural values placed on color saying, “Gold makes pink important…Often pink is seen as pretty, and pretty gets devalued.” In this opulent, complex and intellectually engaging painting, pink steals the show. (On view through Nov 4th).
Rebecca Morris, Untitled (#12-23), oil and spray paint on canvas, 2023.
Scherezade Garcia’s baroque paintings at Praxis Gallery of water-borne women are part of the ‘liquid turn’ or ‘blue humanities,’ explains Lesley A. Wolff in a gallery handout, a field of study that finds inspiration in the fluidity and transformative qualities of the sea. Characterized by their ‘cinnamon skin,’ which Garcia creates by mixing primary and secondary colors, and inspired by the artist’s female relatives, figures positioned directly in the water are a metaphor for ‘layered, fluid, transformative’ identities. Surrounded by lush flower swags, ornate scrolling forms, decorative lace and gold – from decorative tiles at the top to a duck-shaped life preserver – each character’s ornate environment speaks to a complex, self-inventing identity. (On view through Nov 4th).
Scherezade Garcia, Harvest of the Sea, acrylic, pigment, charcoal, ink on linen, 84 x 180 inches, 2023.
At one end of David Zwirner Gallery’s vast white cube space hangs a detailed painting of tangled, leafless branches by Toba Khedoori; across the room is the artist’s painting of a grid of variously hued blue rectangles. In the juxtaposition of natural forms vs those that echo the built environment, Khedoori presents dichotomies of art practice: expressive freedom or impersonal rigidity. While most imagery in Khedoor’s show is centered at the middle of large sheets of wax-coated paper, one painting of tall grasses offers linear forms arranged to depict wildness, bridging the dynamic and measured in one small canvas. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).
Toba Khedoori, Untitled, oil and graphite on canvas, 27 ½ x 24 ½ inches, 2023.
At the entrance to New York artist Nicolas Party’s exhibition of new work at Hauser and Wirth Gallery is a vividly colored, full-wall pastel painting of a forest fire. A nearby drawing depicts a vulnerable-looking baby while further into the show, a tiny oil on copper painting of a dinosaur adds to a meditation on changes to the earth’s climate that forewarns an extinction event. In this tiny triptych, Party repeats the forest fire imagery as backdrop to a portrait resembling a northern Renaissance devotional image, typically verdant and detailed-filled vistas replaced by destruction. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).
Nicolas Party, Triptych with Red Forest, oil on copper and oil on wood, open: 12 3/16 x 19 5/16 x 2 9/16 inches, 2023.
From Marilyn Monroe to Marlene Dietrich, Yasumasa Morimura mimics the iconic looks of famous figures in the series ‘100 M’s Self-Portraits,’ now on view at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca gallery space. Having made a name for himself in the ‘80s through to the present day via vividly colored photos that depict his reenactments of famous artworks with himself dressed as the main character (he started as Van Gogh with a bandaged ear), the now 72-year-old photographer opted for smaller format black and white images to create his 100 piece portrait series from the 1993-2000. Here, he takes his version of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s into the subway, having his audience watch a passerby react as we also consider the implications of his race and gender transgressing role play. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 21st).
Yasumasa Morimura, one image from ‘Once Hundred M’s self-portraits, 100 gelatin silver photographs, each 13 ¾ x 11 inches, 1993-2000.
Workers are expendable in the alienated world depicted by Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida in the late artist’s paintings at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Coming into adulthood in the Japan’s economic depression in the ‘90s, known as the country’s ‘Lost Decade,’ Ishida catalogued the dehumanizing effect of corporate culture in images that depict workers taking in food from nozzles as if in a gas station or emerging from train doors in the form of boxes with heads, ready for delivery and consumption. Here, in ‘Exercise Equipment,’ a worried looking individual with Ishida’s features runs not for the health benefits, but to keep ahead of the workers poised to yank him from the treadmill. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).
Tetsuya Ishida, Exercise Equipment, acrylic on board, 1997.
German artist Kathrin Linkersdorff’s ‘Fairies,’ a series of vividly colored yet ethereal photographs of flowers now on view at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery, takes up the age-old concept of memento mori – a reminder of life’s brevity – with contemporary imagery of flowers. While spending time working in Japan as an architect, Linkersdorff embraced her host country’s reverence for nature as well as the concept of wabi-sabi, or acceptance of imperfection and impermanence. With both philosophies in mind, Linkersdorff dries flowers over long periods of time, extracting their pigment and reintroducing it into a liquid medium in which the flowers are suspended. Resulting images like this one emphasize the delicacy and structure of the plants. Pictured as if the pigments had suddenly dropped away from the petals, the artist suggests a magical deviation from expectation. (On view through Oct 21st).
‘Meet me on the Equinox,’ the title of Sanford Biggers’ show at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea deliberately evokes a point of convergence between different places or ideas, appropriate for new work that combines objects from a mix of cultures. Pieces like this marble, wood and textile sculpture titled The Repatriate, continue Biggers’ interest in combining artifacts with different backgrounds, in this case a mask that is itself a collage of various African masks, a wooden platform inspired by bases of roadside shrines in Asia and beyond, and quilts that recall stories of textiles used to send messages on the Underground Railroad. As its title suggests, Biggers explains that he was thinking of objects with identities that have been altered by context; as ownership changes, identity continues to evolve. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 14th).
Sanford Biggers, The Repatriate, green marble and antique quilts on custom cedar plinth, 73 x 24 x 24 inches overall, unique within a series, 2023.
Tiny figures perform enormous undertakings in delightfully absurd new sculpture and 2-D works by Liliana Porter at Bienvenu, Steinberg and J in Tribeca. Miniscule men with leaf blowers raise up a storm of swirling forms while a little woman with an even smaller a basket of glitter spreads the shiny material into an expanding field of brightness. Ruptures in scale and contrasts between the real and represented are the stock in trade of Porter’s six decades of artmaking. Here, magical scenarios convert mundane acts by individuals into aesthetic gestures for the public. (On view through Oct 14th).
Liliana Porter, Untitled with her, gold glitter and metal figurine, dimensions variable, 2023.
Standing in a circle of flames or wearing a crown of skulls, Buddhist protector deities can manifest in terrifying ways. Mongolian artist Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu’s guardians, now on view in her solo show at Sapar Contemporary in Tribeca, are more obviously benevolent. Wearing Converse with her armor, this enlightened female figure holds a lotus as a symbol of her state of awareness while gazing forward with confidence. Perched on an outcrop of land instead of the typical lotus and supported below by the flower of the edelweiss plant, a hardy species found from the Himalayas to Mongolia, Dagvasambuu’s figure engages tradition from a contemporary perspective with humor and respect. (On view through Oct 10th).
Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu, Security 1, acrylic on canvas, 2023.
‘Fold Me,’ German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans first solo show at David Zwirner Gallery in New York since his blockbuster MoMA retrospective last year, embraces the concept of the fold – the antithesis of linearity. In the curves of a river shot from overhead or the crumpled forms of a dropped item of clothing, the artist subtly positions the viewer to question defined boundaries and the distinctions between inside and out. In this piece, ‘Lennartz Factory Washroom,’ Tillmans pictures orderly rows of sinks in the washroom of a tool manufacturer in his hometown of Remsheid. With this subject matter, Tillmans himself cycles back to a place he once lived in, disrupting the idea of an artist leaving never to return. Though the room’s design is an exercise in repetition – like factory labor itself – with recurring sets of sinks, arrangement of windows, rows of pipes and lighting fixtures on the ceiling and a grid of floor tiles, the picture comes alive with towels that break the uniformity. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 14th).
Wolfgang Tillmans, Lennartz Factory Washroom, inkjet print on paper mounted on Dibond aluminum in artist’s frame, 2023.
Philadelphia-based self-styled ‘village potter,’ artist, poet and activist Robert Lugo makes his NY solo show debut at R and Company with an exhibition inspired by art history and his own life experiences. Known for his ceramic vessels that feature renowned African Americans (many grace the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s vibrant Afro-Futurist period room), this show includes portraits of Lugo’s community members modeled after relief sculptures by Renaissance artist Andrea della Robbia and vessels that resemble Greek amphora but feature scenes from the artist’s childhood neighborhood. Painted in the orange and black colors of prison uniforms, this striking vessel depicts mass tire theft in the neighborhood. (On view through Oct 27th).
Robert Lugo, The Day We Had Church and Tires Were Stolen, from the Orange and Black series, glazed stoneware, 2023.
Created for the atrium of the theatrical management agency Creative Arts Agency’s IM Pei designed headquarters in 1989, Roy Lichtenstein’s Bauhaus Stairway Mural dominates a single cavernous room at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Featuring the artist’s signature Benday dots and primary colors that imitate commercial printing techniques, the painting remakes Oscar Schlemmer’s famous 1932 painting of students at the Bauhaus, the famous pre-WWII German school of art and design. Though the original was created in response to the Nazi closing of the school, Lichtenstein’s streamlined forms and bright colors on a huge scale suggest a more positive outlook on the upward movement of arts and ideas. (On view through Dec 22nd).
Roy Lichtenstein, Bauhaus Stairway Mural, oil and magna on canvas, 26 x 5 ¾’ x 17’ x 11 ¾ inches, 1989.
In an oasis of plants and a richly colored and patterned domestic environment, LA-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby poses with her baby on lap, looking out to meet the viewer’s eye in a standout piece in her current solo show at David Zwirner Gallery. As a self-portrait as artist and mother, Akunyili Crosby projects poise and confidence amid a superabundance of imagery from Nigerian media sources, a signature element in her work. Using transfers on paper (in addition to acrylic, colored pencil and collage) Akunyili Crosby assembles photos from the worlds of Nigerian music, fashion, sports, culture and more into collages. Taking the form of plants, architecture and more, the artist fashions influence into images that speak to her identity as both a Nigerian and an American. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, acrylic, colored pencil, collage, and transfers on paper, 2021.
From its vibrant, patterned wall mural to the abundance of vivid paintings in saturated color, Jeffrey Gibson’s solo show at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co is one of the most eye-catching exhibitions in Chelsea. Titled ‘Superbloom,’ in reference to an especially bountiful appearance of wildflowers, the show features work in Gibson’s signature formats, including beaded punching bags, which invite admiration not violence, and patterned paintings recalling Native American design and bearing phrases taken from pop songs or various texts. In this piece on painted elk hide titled and including the text SPIRIT AND MATTER, viewers encounter a central circular form recalling both a meditative diagram and a target. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).
Jeffrey Gibson, SPIRIT AND MATTER, acrylic paint on elk hide inset in custom wood frame, 2023.
Fashion and art photographer Heji Shin’s self-portrait at 52 Walker gives and withholds information, depicting a holographic image of her brain made with a special MRI technique that pictures neural networks in brilliant color. Though the scans allow us to literally see her brain, more telling about Shin’s thoughts are her studio photos of pigs – their faces full of character – that appear on the surrounding walls. Titled ‘Big Nudes’ after Helmut Newton’s boldly-posed 1981 images of nude women, the images question how both photos and their subjects are consumed. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 7th).
Heji Shin, Untitled, holographic installation; glass, pedestal, and four flat screen TVs, 66 x 68 1/8 x 58 ¼ in, 2023.
Calling Old Master paintings her ‘powerful allies’ yet seeking to ‘shine a light on disparities’ in them, Elise Ansel considers the messages conveyed by iconic art historical works by reworking them as abstractions in new work at Miles McEnery Gallery. A comparison of specific artworks, in this case, Paolo Veronese’s 16th century Allegory of Virtue and Vice and the similarly composed and colored piece by Ansel titled ‘Virture and Vice III,’ reveals how the colors of the original convey meaning; our eye is drawn to the hero at center, Hercules, as he flees the enticements and electric orange tones of the woman at bottom right for the more sober green color of Virtue. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 31st).
Elise Ansel, Virtue and Vice III, oil on linen, 2023.
Rita Mawuena Benissan’s royal umbrella is a standout at Mitchell-Innes and Nash Gallery’s summer group exhibition of work by artists who live in Ghana. At eight by ten feet, Benissan’s large, regal cover – traditionally employed to protect a king or queen and show authority – was crafted with help from professional chief umbrella makers and connects to a tradition of royal use. At the same time, the artist explains in a statement that she intends viewers to ask questions about how the umbrella might be used today – for royalty? A community? Viewers? Titled ‘The Damsen of Succession,’ damsen refers to the deep, attractive purple color, while the notion of succession prompts consideration of the object in new contexts. (On view through Aug 25th).
Rita Mawuena Benissan, The Damson of Succession, umbrella, fabric and wood, 100” diam. X 120” height, 2023.
In a statement accompanying work from her Yale MFA studies (grad ’22), New-Orleans-based artist Ashley Teamer cites the batture – the constantly shifting land between low tide and the levee along the Mississippi River – as inspiration. Her dynamic image collage ‘4912 St Bernard Ave’ in the group show ‘We Buy Gold’ at Nicola Vassell Gallery is a highlight of an exhibition described by its curator as being about change, slippage and breakthrough. A figure in pink shoes and dress (like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) appears to plunge down into a tangle of branches both photographed and drawn while above, among the clouds and in another realm, is another figure with their back to us. Teamer tempts viewers to ask what will transpire next in this evocative story. (Curated by Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels. The exhibition is also at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea space through Aug 11th.)
Ashley Teamer, 4912 St Bernard Ave, inkjet print, twine, oil pastel, graphite, 83 x 89 ½ inches, 2021.
Curious crustaceans, a creepy-cute sea creature in the form of a cat and plenty of sandy beach landscapes feature in Nino Meier’s two-gallery summer group show ‘Beach,’ but Woomin Kim’s textile is a standout for its texture and color, a reference to the Korean markets that inspire her fabric collage. Places for shopping, meeting friends and, here, enjoying seafood, Kim’s market scenes celebrate a beloved institution. (On view through Aug 5th).
Woomin Kim, Shijang: SusanMul (seafood), fabric, 2022.
Jessie Henson’s sewn works on paper at Broadway Gallery’s project room are unabashedly beautiful, harnessing the allure of gold to draw viewers in. Abstract yet evoking natural forms – earth’s strata, a horizon – Henson composes patterns with thread and her industrial sewing machine. Waves of textured color wash across the surface of each piece, made more dynamic by the literal bending of paper loaded with thread. Abundant use of 12, 18 and 24K gold – together with areas of day-glo orange, flecks of blue or pink – resist the suggestion of realistic representation, creating a kind of hybrid beauty derived from nature and the man-made. (On view in Tribeca through July 28th).
Jessie Henson, You are Many All on Your Own, II, 12, 18 and 24K gold with polyester and rayon thread on paper, 35.5 x 26.25 x 3 inches, 2023.
