Swiss artist Claudia Comte makes walls the focus of her latest solo show at Chelsea’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery, nodding to US politics, cave paintings and installations like Sol LeWitt’s rule-based wall drawings. Destined to be popular on Instagram as selfie-backdrops, the show reinforces Comte’s wish to make art not just for the art world elite but for everyone. (On view on 24th Street through Feb 16th).
Borders are front and center in U.S. politics and at James Cohan Gallery where Jorge Mendez Blake’s ‘Amerika’ bisects the main exhibition space, arresting both visitors’ thoughts and physical progress through the show. Mid-way along the base of the wall, Mendez Blake has placed a copy of Kafka’s ‘Amerika,’ the troubled tale of a European immigrant to New York, intimating that migration is a fraught undertaking from start to finish. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea and Lower East Side spaces through Feb 23rd).
Often political, never shy, Kay Rosen’s text-based wall art is bold and outspoken at Alexander Gray Associates. Just four letters speak volumes in this installation titled ‘White House v. America.’ (On view in Chelsea through April 7th).
Patrick Jacobs – known for meticulously crafted dioramas set into the wall – offers another marvelously detailed scene in Pierogi Gallery’s summer group show ‘Double Down,’ which features artwork that involves doubling. Here, a toilet and its reflection suggest plumbing abundance in otherwise cramped quarters. (On the Lower East Side through August 12th).
Despite her assertive pose, Dutch painter Hannah van Bart’s enigmatic young lady appears to literally blend into the background as a shape-shifting wall the color of her dress manifests over her chest. (At Marianne Boesky Gallery through Feb 4th.)
