Tag: brooklyn museum

Nina Chanel Abney in ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ at The Brooklyn Museum

Just around the corner from Picasso’s etchings of muscular minotaurs hovering over vulnerable sleeping nude women in the Brooklyn Museum, Nina Chanel Abney’s ‘Forbidden Fruit’ features very different hybrid characters – some with tenacles coming from their heads, others with horns or hair.  Enjoying a moment of communal relaxation, Abney’s characters adopt a picnicking pose familiar from Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe amongst other iconic artworks, while engaging a different kind of forbidden fruit – a selection of luscious watermelons, made sensitive because of their racist associations.  Both Abney and Picasso’s work feature in ‘It’s Pablo-matic:  Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby,’ a group exhibition which rethinks Picasso’s oeuvre via art by twenty and twenty-first century women artists whose work disrupts traditionally masculine modernism.  (On view through Sept 24th).

Nina Chanel Abney, Forbidden Fruit, acrylic on canvas, 2009 in ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ at the Brooklyn Museum, July 2023.

FAILE and BAST at the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn art duo FAILE and artist friend BAST put a new spin on the old question, ‘what is art?’ by teaming up at the Brooklyn Museum to present a free arcade decorated in their signature posters. According to the museum text, they aim to relieve ‘the pressure of a traditional gallery environment,’ which they do in spades – it’s hard to remember you’re in a museum. (Through Oct 4th).

Installation view of the FAILE and BAST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade, Brooklyn Museum, September, 2015.

Kehinde Wiley at Brooklyn Museum

New York artist Kehinde Wiley turns the tables on canonical western art history in paintings which substitute contemporary characters of African descent for European figures. Here, in a centerpiece of Wiley’s current Brooklyn Museum exhibition, a young man plays the role of odalisque. (Through May 24th).

Kehinde Wiley, installation view of ‘Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” Brooklyn Museum, February, 2015.

Judith Scott at Brooklyn Museum

Enabled to create her art through Oakland’s ‘Creative Growth’s studio program for artists with disabilities, Judith Scott spent the last almost 20 years of her creative life crafting yarn, thread and other materials into dense bundles. The piece in the foreground testifies to her drive – when no other materials were available to her, she gathered paper toweling from the restroom or kitchen to use. (At the Brooklyn Museum, through March 29th).

Installation view of ‘Judith Scott’ at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Foreground: Judith Scott, Untitled, fiber and found objects, 27 x 23 x 17 inches, 1994.

Zaha Hadid in ‘Killer Heels’ at the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum’s eye-popping ‘Killer Heels’ exhibition isn’t just for ladies who teeter. As well as design feats (pun intended) and works of art, the show includes architect Zaha Hadid’s NOVA shoe, created from vacuum-casted fiberglass with chrome plated external uppers. Vaguely resembling the sloping exterior of her first New York building currently under construction on the High Line in Chelsea, the shoe might be seen as a mini architectural rendering. (Through Feb 15th).

Zaha Hadid X United Nude, chromed vinyl rubber, kid napa leather, fiberglass, 2013 (left). Tea Petrovic, Wings/Variation, polyamide, faux leather, rubber, 2013 (right).