Zaria Forman’s monumental polar landscapes, rendered in intricate detail in pastel, have afforded her national recognition and the chance to work with NASA as an artist. In her latest solo show at Winston Wachter Gallery in Chelsea, Forman continues to capture the beauty of ice in renderings of an Icelandic glacial lagoon. Fragments of ice washed ashore and resting on black volcanic sand look like jewels, while bubbles trapped in ice form a dynamic, abstract composition. Forman’s focus is on the specifics of landscape vs the climate changes impacting it, and her work offers a moment to appreciate the sublime as it presently exists. (On view in Chelsea through March 30th in SoHo).
Tag: chelsea galleries
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).
Ugo Rondinone at Gladstone Gallery
Lightning strikes three times in the same spot at Gladstone Gallery’s high-ceilinged 21st Street space in the form of bronze sculpture by Swiss New Yorker Ugo Rondinone. Trees scanned, 3-D printed and cast in bronze have been inverted to resemble day glow yellow bolts of light; at the same time, they belong to the terrestrial realm by still clearly resembling trees. As nature upends our expectations again and again through storms, floods and extreme temperatures, Rondinone questions the natural order. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 9th.
Enoc Perez at Harper’s Books
Based on vintage Bacardi rum ads and travel brochures, Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez’s paintings of his home country at Harper’s Gallery feature pristine beaches, bright blue pools and abundant tropical vegetation. Created in a painting style akin to printmaking, for which the artist rubs paint onto canvas using an oil coated sheet of paper and a pencil, the details of each supposed paradise are rendered slightly indistinct. Titled ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ the paintings revel in an abundance of natural beauty yet withhold a richer appreciation of it, forcing the question of how much of each image is just marketing. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 11th).
Jay DeFeo at Paula Cooper Gallery
After completing her iconic 2,000+ lb painting ‘The Rose,’ in 1966, Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo delved into photography, creating the 70 photographs, collages and photocopies now on view at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. Like ‘The Rose,’ DeFeo’s photographs feature complex textures, moody tonal contrasts and nature-related imagery in straight shots of mushrooms on a fallen tree or chemigrams – abstract images created in the darkroom. Among the representational works, a single resting hand seen from the side or a section of an illuminated lampshade pictured from below against a black background convey stillness while this powerful shot of rushing water embodies nature’s dynamism and power. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).