Vija Celmins at Matthew Marks Gallery

Titled ‘Winter,’ Viya Celmins first New York solo show in six years at Matthew Marks Gallery sees out the season with paintings featuring snow against dark backgrounds.  Those familiar with the artist’s signature subject matter may identify the work as a night sky painting for which she is renowned, but what look like stars are in fact flakes of snow.  Celmins has explained in an interview that she aims to wrestle something vast down into the space of the canvas, fixing it there.  The new snow-related paintings suggest she’s taken the universe and transposed it into something positioned right before our eyes.  In a further twist, the piece’s title, ‘Snowfall(coat)’ reveals that the snow is not actually seen in front of the darkness of night but has been pictured instead on a black coat. (On view in Chelsea through April 6th).

Vija Celmins, Snowfall (coat), oil on canvas, 19 5/8 x 13 1/8 inches, 2021 – 23.

Maureen Gallace at Gladstone Gallery

Maureen Gallace’s signature small-sized oil paintings, now on view at Gladstone Gallery, are a welcome reprieve from February in New York, her renditions of bright yellow roadside flowers, the sun rising over Long Island Sound and crashing ocean waves promising that winter will eventually end.  Recent life changes find her living in a house by the beach in Connecticut where she takes account of her surroundings in paintings that isolate pleasurable impressions.  (On view through March 9th).

Maureen Gallace, Late August, oil on panel, 9 x 12 inches, 2023.

Thomas Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery

Known for gallery-filling installations made of cardboard and packing tape, Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn marshals these materials to transform Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street location into a room resembling a destroyed command center or gaming parlor.  Titled ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it’ the gallery’s huge space houses rows of desks littered with cigarettes and coffee cups cut roughly from polystyrene and cardboard computers (some with smashed screens) featuring war-destroyed buildings from both real places and video games.  Hanging from lengths of packing tape, images of soldiers taken from video games populate the room’s aisles, their faces covered by emojis, which also hang like mobiles from the gallery ceiling.  Hirschhorn’s deliberately low-tech materials contrast the realistic imagery from the video game (seen in this photo on one screen) and disturbingly blur the line between real and fake. (On view in Chelsea through March 2nd).

Thomas Hirschhorn, installation view of ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it,’ cardboard, prints, tape, polystyrene, aluminum foil, dimensions variable, 2023.

Jennifer Guidi at Gagosian Gallery

Jennifer Guidi wants to share ‘calm and joy’ in her vibrant landscapes and abstractions, she says of paintings now on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea.  Based on views of the hills in LA and in southern France where the artist recently exhibited at the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery, Guidi uses her signature materials of sand on canvas to depict pleasingly smooth geological forms as a counter to explosive activity in the skies.  Starburst patterns appear in both representational and abstract canvases, spreading color and energy over the landscapes like a shower of beneficence.  (On view through March 2nd).

Jennifer Guidi, Let the Light Fall Gently, sand, acrylic, oil and rocks on linen, 60 x 48 x 1.5 inches, 2023.

Apollinaria Broche at Marianne Boesky Gallery

To a soundtrack featuring readings from Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil,’ Apollinaria Broche’s ceramic and bronze flowers strike gangly poses in her solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, exuding both wonky charm and maleficence.  Like an insect to nectar, viewers are drawn into the center of colorful ceramic flowers that feature tiny bronze sculptures – a winged horse, a contented-looking cat – of cavorting magical creatures.  More ominous figures – snakes, flies – appear as well, suggesting that the flowers inhabit a garden less welcoming than it first appears.  In this detail image of ‘I hid my tracks Spit out all my hair,’ skulls and daggers mingle with the seeds of this lush blossoming plant, summoning a specter of death and violence where it might least be expected.  (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24th.)

Apollinaria Broche, (detail) I hid my tracks Spit out all my air, glazed ceramic, bronze, 63 x 21 x 18 inches, 2023.