Yoan Capote at Jack Shainman Gallery

Evoking light from heaven as well as the rising sun, Cuban artist Yoan Capote’s use of gold in a show of new seascapes at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea locations offers immediate uplift. After a 2019 visit to Italy, where Capote had access to abundant medieval and early Renaissance art, the artist adopted gold backgrounds and the circular format of this painting to create images that are optimistic yet also anxious.  Connecting the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean with many Cubans’ struggle to cross the Caribbean, Capote embeds fishing hooks in recent work, picturing the sea as a barrier.  (On view through Aug 5th).

Yoan Capote, Requiem (vault), 24kt gold leaf, nails and fishhooks on panel of linen mounted over plywood, 53 (diameter) x 5 (depth) inches, 2021.

Introducing Tribeca’s new gallery scene…

Tribeca has quickly become one of the best places to see contemporary art in New York.  Over the past few years, some of the city’s most established galleries have opened locations here, joining mid-sized spaces and younger dealers to create a diverse and lively new art scene.  Check out the neighborhood in this video, and join me soon in Tribeca!

Roy Nachum at A Hug From the Art World

Five huge photorealist portraits by Israeli-New Yorker Roy Nachum dominate the creatively titled Chelsea gallery ‘A Hug from the Art World.’ The sense of immediacy that their size generates in this compact space is amplified by expressionist painting on their surfaces.  At first puzzling for the contrast between styles, an upstairs video reveals the paintings to be layered portraits, collaborations between Nachum and blind makers like Rosie Lopez, pictured here.  Once explained, the portraits become fascinating expressions of self-representation.  (On view through May 7th).

Roy Nachum, Rosie Lopez, oil on canvas, 84 x 71 inches, 2015 – 2022.

Rosa Barba at Luhring Augustine Gallery

Rosa Barba’s ‘Language Infinity Sphere,’ a form created from old letterpress blocks now on view at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space, speaks with its circular form to the ongoing output of these blocks over the years. Other text-related work in the show includes handwritten words on a filmstrip that rotates around a lightbox cube and a 35mm film depicting images and text from the Library of Congress’ massive campus, the largest media archive in the world.  Language appears in unexpected forms in this show, even as marks on the landscape in a film showing disposal sites for radioactive material in the western U.S.  (On view through May 21st).

Rosa Barba, Language Infinity Sphere, lead letters on steel, unique, diameter 18 1/8 inches, 2018.

David Aipperspach at Chart Gallery

The paintings in Philadelphia-based artist David Aipperspach’s current solo show at Tribeca’s Chart Gallery, ‘Prologue to a Garden Dark’ anticipate the slow end of a summer’s day by blending light and color from different times in a single scene. At the show’s entrance, a small painting tracks the path of the sun as it sinks though a grid of darkening colors, acting as a Rosetta stone for the same color shifts that appear in rectangles of stacked colors inset in the paintings.  Acting as ‘clocks,’ the rectangles break into tranquil scenes, acting as abrupt reminders of the passage of time.  (On view through April 30th in Tribeca).

David Aipperspach, 4-7pm, oil on canvas, 84 x 72 inches, 2021.