Chiharu Shiota at Templon Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

The huge line to enter Chiharu Shiota’s exhibition at Chelsea’s Templon Gallery last weekend speaks to the capacity of the Berlin-based Japanese artist to mesmerize audiences with the scale and intense labor of installations that elaborate on her ongoing theme of human connectivity.  A temporary installation fills the gallery’s front room, acting as portal to the rest of the exhibition and a place to marvel at the seemingly simultaneously chaotic and orderly network the artist created by suspending book pages in a web of thick white thread stapled to walls and floor.  Titled ‘Human Rhizome,’ the piece references an underground network of roots; in Shiota’s interpretation, the written word acts as an unseen communication network. (On view through March 9th).

Chiharu Shiota, Human Rhizome, thread and book pages, installation, ‘23

Sol LeWitt at Paula Cooper Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings – some 1,200 sets of instructions for turning architecture into art – range from the simple (e.g. drawing lines in patterns going up, down and to the side) to the kind of full-room, immersive installation currently on view at Paula Cooper Gallery.  Energizing but restrained, a matte, fresco-like orange tone dominates, setting off multi-hued, isometric pyramids of various colors that seem to float through space.  In the center of the gallery, white enamel on aluminum sculptures resemble tips of icebergs adrift on the gallery’s polished concrete floor.  Surrounded by angular geometries in the cavernous rectangle of the gallery, visitors inhabit a parallel universe governed by alternative rules of color and space.  (On view on 21st Street in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).

Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing #485 (detail), three asymmetrical pyramids with color ink washes superimposed, color wash ink, 1986. Sol LeWitt, Complex Form #6 (to the right, detail), enamel on aluminum, 1987/1988.

Jesus Raphael Soto in ‘WAVE’ at Marlborough Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Experiencing one of late Venezuelan kinetic artist Jesus Raphael Soto’s signature sculptures of hanging plastic cord in 1969, critic Guy Brett remarked that the participant’s ‘physicality was diffused,’ suggesting that moving through the piece breaks down the barrier between bodies and environment.  With or without visitors mingling among the threads in this piece in Marlborough Gallery’s summer group show of abstract and kinetic art, Soto’s installation challenges perception as it morphs from solid to ephemeral, suggesting a work always in flux.   (On view in Chelsea through Sept 10th.)

Jesus Rafael Soto, Penetrable Azul de Valencia, wood and pigmented plastic, unique, 108 5/8 x 366 1/8 x 108 ¼ inches, 1999.

Nari Ward at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Shining copper panels shaped like the squares of a sidewalk, marked with outlines of candles and other items left by mourners on a street memorial are beautiful reminders of the terrible cost of the pandemic and of racially-motivated violence in Nari Ward’s latest solo show at Lehman Maupin Gallery.  Downstairs, four text-based works in one of his signature materials – hanging shoelaces – cite songs, poetry and the Emancipation Proclamation.  ‘What’s Going On,’ references Marvin Gaye’s 1971 song, inspired by US involvement in Vietnam and the civil unrest in Watts.  In the past, Ward has collected shoelaces from museum visitors to make word-based installations, establishing an association with the personal that brings the text closer to home.  (On view in Chelsea through June 4th).

Nari Ward, What’s Going On, shoelaces, 78 x 81.5 x 1 inch, 2022.

Eva LeWitt at Luhring Augustine Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Using silicone and metal beads, sculptor Eva LeWitt creates a series of hanging spheres in Luhring Augustine’s Chelsea space that shape-shift as light passes through them.  The artist has explained that for her, spheres are ‘a beginning and an end…a period, a punctuation.’  Hung in a ring around the middle of the gallery at varying lengths, they seem gathered as if for conversation or play.  (On view in Chelsea through April 30th).

Eva LeWitt, installation view at Luhring Augustine Gallery, March 2022.