Copenhagen-based painter Tal R’s latest solo show at Chelsea’s Cheim & Read features lounging female acquaintances rendered in his characteristic toned-down vibrant palette. Abstract sculpture, multiple patterned rugs, and a purple-haired model in this picture suggest an update on Matisse’s exoticism. (Through Feb 14th).
Tal R, Jacobe Smoking, pigment and rabbit skin glue on canvas, 48 x 34 5/8 inches, 2013.
Inspired by James Turrell sculptures, in which the audience looks upward through a ceiling aperture to view the sky as art, LA artist Diana Thater devised this projection on the ceiling of David Zwirner Gallery as an homage to the dung beetle, a creature which looks to the stars to guide its ecologically critical activity. (In Chelsea through Feb 21st).
Diana Thater, Science, Fiction, installation for two video projectors, media player, and lights, overall dimensions vary with installation, 2014.
As far as family portraits go, this one is by far one of the strangest I’ve seen, as a matron with a knife in her hair touches a carp’s tongue and father stands by cradling a skull while two boys look on. Wiharso has explained that in his work, tables are meant as meeting places and sites for negotiation; as such, this family has a lot to work through. (At Marc Straus on the Lower East Side through Feb 8th).
Entang Wiharso, Inheritance, graphite, resin, color pigment, thread, steel, life-size installation, 2014.
Brooklyn-based Danish artist Joachim Koester channels the wild west in a distinctly avant-garde way in his absorbing video installation, The Place of Dead Roads, in which dancers dressed as grubby gunslingers move around an eerie boarded-up space as if locked in a tense shootout, all without weapons or an obvious enemy. (At Chelsea’s GreenNaftali through Feb 14th).
Joachim Koester, The Place of Dead Roads, HD video installation, color, sound, 33:30 min, 2013.
New York artist Titus Kaphar disrupts each of his works, cutting figures out of a canvas to consider the impact of absence, whiting out and redrawing figures or peeling back a layer of canvas to literally reveal a back story. Here, a colonial-era man’s portrait is shredded and stretched to shatter any illusion of a tidy personal narrative. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through Feb 21st).
Titus Kaphar, Stripes, oil on canvas and nails, 59 ½ x 51 x 1 ½ inches, 2014.
