Color pools and flows in Oslo-based artist Ragna Bley’s acrylic on sailcloth paintings at Downs and Ross, offering a lushly colored alternative to drab, late-winter New York. Inspired by marine biology and the endlessly fascinating shallows and depths of the sea, each painting complicates the reference to water with its dynamism and color. (On view on the Lower East Side through March 6th).
With their black skin highlighted blue and featureless faces, Alex Gardner’s characters evade racial identification and offer no way to read their expressions. In this painting at The Hole NYC, only hands supporting a foot are visible, but the title ‘Cheer Stunt’ brings to mind a group performance full of suspense and excitement. Backlighting suggests a digital space or perhaps a stadium at night while alternatively, smooth, stylized hands and foot could be part of a new sculptural monument. (On view on the Lower East Side through Dec 27th. Masks and social distancing required).
At over twenty feet tall, late Catalan fiber artist Josep Grau-Garriga’s monumental tapestry ‘February Light’ dominates visitors to Salon94 Bowery. Made in the 70s after Grau-Garriga had pioneered a move away from realist tapestries crafted with expensive materials into expressionist compositions fashioned from fibers including string, hemp and even old sacks, February Light’s wooden rods and ropes give the piece a remarkable boldness. Created in the years just after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, the many openings in the blood-red areas of the artwork seem to continue Grau-Garriga’s frequent political allusions. (On view on the Lower East Side through Feb 29th).
LA based artist Luis Flores deliberately employs the feminized craft of crochet to create self-portraits which undermine the concepts of masculinity he learned as a boy from his male relatives. Here, he fights with himself in an installation featuring a series of wrestling moves enacted by his body doubles and observed by his passive and skeptical wife. (On view at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through April 20th).
An all-powerful, muscular man subjugates woman and destroys nature in a series of potent paintings by Judy Chicago from 1984, now on view at Salon94. His invincible nature comes into question, however, in this painting from a triptych titled ‘Rainbow Man,’ in which he strains to bend a rainbow that snaps out of his hands and boomerangs back into shape. More than thirty years after being painted, the artist’s warning has only become more relevant to contemporary attitudes to the earth and the environment. (On view on the Lower East Side through March 3rd).
“Unfettered, confident, individual…” – these adjectives don’t describe art or an artist, they’re part of Dior’s marketing for its ‘Precious Rocks’ eye shadow compact, remade into a series of large-sized acrylic paintings by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury. Long a provocateur who questions fashion, consumption and ‘high’ art, Fleury’s latest series may be modeled on makeup, but it makes an unmissable nod to mid-20th century hard-edge abstraction. (On view on the Lower East Side at Salon94 Bowery through Dec 22nd).
Working blind in the dark room, David Benjamin Sherry exposes cardboard templates, acetates printed with patterns, his own body and that of his dog, Wizard to light sensitive paper. The vibrantly colored results don’t bear a recognizable likeness of the artist, but they feel intensely personal nonetheless. (At Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through July 27th).
Katy Grannan, Anonymous, Modesto, CA, archival pigment print on cotton rag paper mounted to Plexiglas, 55 x 41 inches, 2013.
Twice a day, a New Museum employee starts up and moves a motorcycle to maximum speed, its rear wheel causing a huge, cast-iron flywheel to spin for over two hours after the performance ends. Chris Burden’s contraption – The Big Wheel from 1979 – contrasts the freedom of an individual on a bike with an industrially sized wheel, visibly demonstrating both labor and energy harnessed. (On the Lower East Side through Jan 12th).
Chris Burden, The Big Wheel, three-ton, eight-foot diameter, cast-iron flywheel powered by a 1968 Benelli 250cc motorcycle, 1979.
Born in Arizona to Native American parents, raised by his adoptive German-American parents in Wisconsin and based on the Bowery for the past 23 years, Brad Kahlhamer still draws on his varied background in art that blends Native American iconography and a graffiti-like graphic sensibility in this haunting portrait of an apparition-like character. (At Jack Shainman Gallery’s 24th Street location through Nov 16th).
Brad Kahlhamer, The Way They Looked The Way They Lived, ink spray paint, acrylic and ballpoint pen on cloth, 2013.
Amy Bessone’s pencil holder fists unite in vague protest in her current solo show at Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side. A nearby poster warns, ‘Don’t Truncate Me!’ Already truncated, the hands become resistance tchotchkes. (through June 14th).
Amy Bessone, installation view of ‘In the Green Room’ (foreground is ‘Number…(Numbers),’ ceramic, pencil, 2013).
