Tag: Jack Shainman

Paul Anthony Smith at Jack Shainman Gallery

Titled ‘Tradewinds,’ Paul Anthony Smith’s latest show of hand-worked photos at Jack Shainman Gallery celebrates home, memory and the act of celebration itself.  More contemplative than some of the artist’s images of parties and get-togethers, this image suggests thoughts as a kind of cloud-cover or camouflage around this young man.  Here, Smith’s signature picotage technique – involving a series of tiny rips on the surface of the image – becomes a kind of simultaneous damage and decoration.  (On view in Chelsea through April 3rd).

Paul Anthony Smith, detail of Islands #2, unique picotage with spray paint on inkjet print, mounted on museum board and sintra, 60 x 40 inches, 2020-21.

Gordon Parks at Jack Shainman Gallery

Joy arises from moments of hope in photos of Harlem rallies shot by Gordon Parks in 1963, now on view at Jack Shainman Gallery.  Elsewhere, a protester’s sign reading ‘Policy brutality must go’ connects powerfully to today’s protests while iconic images from Parks’ series Segregation Story document the lives of Alabama families impacted by discrimination.  (On view at Jack Shainman Gallery’s two Chelsea locations through Feb 20th).

Gordon Parks, Untitled, Harlem, New York, archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 1963.

Nina Chanel Abney at Jack Shainman Gallery

Nina Chanel Abney describes her new paintings at Jack Shainman Gallery as picturing ‘Black autonomy’ in scenes of ‘care, cultivation and collective leisure.’  Individuals farm, fish, ride bikes and race boats, sometimes without clothing, in scenes that question what utopia is.  (On view in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).

Nina Chanel Abney, Plenty of Fish, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 48 x 48 inches.

Toyin Ojih Odutola at jackshainman.com

Behind Toyin Ojih Odutola’s portrait-like drawings (including this 2017 artwork from New York Art Tours archives) are fictional narratives, hinted at through the images but not detailed in words.  Her latest body of work opens on-line this week at Jack Shainman Gallery as protesters around the world demand respect for black lives and justice for George Floyd and others killed by police.  Ojih Odutola’s new work continues to picture the complexity of black subjectivity in an uncharacteristic pairing of images and texts in which, as the artist puts it, “exactitude is elusive.”  Instead, meaning comes from the gap between pictures and words, a place that prompts viewers to consider how their expectations inform interpretation.

Toyin Ojih Odutola, Manifesto, charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper, 18 ¾ x 23 ¾ inches, 2017.

Becky Suss at Jack Shainman Gallery

The deep impact of children’s literature on young imaginations is the subject of Becky Suss’s marvelously detailed new paintings at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery, each of which focuses on a particular text.  Here, Suss calls on her own childhood experience of acting out Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Egypt Game with neighborhood friends, her memories of the book and the actual play mingled together in her recollection. (On view through March 28th).

Becky Suss, Behind the A-Z (Set vs Isis/Nefertiti), oil on canvas, 84 x 60 x 1 ½ inches, 2020.