John O’Connor at Pierogi Gallery

John O’Connor’s enticingly colorful drawings at Pierogi Gallery’s Chelsea popup take viewers down the rabbit hole into surreal scenarios told with endlessly inventive typography and icons.  Here, the eye-grabbing ‘Car Crash’ pictures a fictional multi-car pileup in which cars of lesser value crash into increasingly more expensive vehicles, starting with a Honda Civic and reaching a Lotus and continuing with fictional cars (Dukes of Hazzard, Flintstones).  O’Connor explains that the spiraling drawing represents the transfer of kinetic energy from car to car, a stand-in for a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.  At the center of this dynamic, pulsing vortex is a worm hole, ready to transport cars, viewers and all into another place and time. (On view at 524 West 19th Street through Feb 10th).

John O’Connor, Car Crash, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 85 x 69.75 inches, 2023.

Jung Eun Hye at Ricco/Maresca Gallery

Jung Eun Hye’s black and white conte crayon drawings of her dog Jiro, now on view at Ricco Maresca Gallery, are a testament to the artist’s appreciation of and love for an animal she rescued nine years ago.  Jiro comes across as spunky, wise, laughing in various iterations.  Jung enhances the dog’s vivacity with lively patterning and flowers and plant life that add interest to each composition. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 17th.)

Jung Eun Hye, Brave Jiro, conte crayon on handmade Hanji paper, 28 x 23 ½ inches, 2023.

Stephane Mandelbaum at The Drawing Center

Near the entrance to the Drawing Center’s retrospective of work by late Belgian artist Stephane Mandelbaum hangs a diverse selection of portraits, arresting in their distortions and expressive immediacy, that signal his complex and conflicted experience of the aftermath of WWII.  A drawing of Francis Bacon, known for painting distorted figures reflecting collective horror at the atrocities of the war, hangs next to a portrait of Bacon’s criminally connected lover, George Dyer, which in turn is close to a portrait of embattled Nazi paramilitary leader Ernst Rohm.  Giving voice to a disturbing constellation of ideas via texts in Yiddish, French, Italian and German and pornographic imagery, the drawings explore the artist’s obsessions with sex and power which extend into his family life.  Under the portrait of Bacon pictured here is an almost totally obscured drawing of Mandelbaum’s father, artist and professor Arie Mandelbaum, visible just as a predella, a platform on which an altar would be placed.  (On view in SoHo through Feb 18th).

Stephane Mandelbaum, Bacon et predella avec portrait d’Arie (Bacon and predella with portrait of Arie), graphite on paper, 1982.

Mark Thomas Gibson at Sikkema Jenkins & Co

Mark Thomas Gibson’s new paintings at Sikkema Jenkins & Co feature hands, feet and legs but no full figures, a selective focus that ominously suggests multiple players unknown to us and perhaps to each other. White hands clasp in prayer, proffer a rope-bound fist or a broken wristwatch while a solitary Black hand holds a critical theory text by Achille Mbembe about democracy under threat.  All the while, menacing cartoonish whistles sound their warnings amid a leaking system of pipes in a cacophonous mele that seems about to explode. (On view through March 11th).

Mark Thomas Gibson, All A Go (Steampipes and Hands), ink on canvas, 66 1/8 x 86 ¼ inches, 2022.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum at Galerie Lelong

All is not well in the home that Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum pictures in ‘Front Room,’ an intriguing painting in her debut solo show at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea.  In a recent talk, the artist portrayed domestic space as a place where many emotions, from rage to comfort, can be experienced.  Here, two women (alter egos of the artist) attempt to soothe an upset woman with tenderness and understanding, while a fourth individual stands distracted in the background.  Monumental in their full, beautifully rendered garments, the women’s actions and emotions take on powerful significance. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Front Room, oil and pencil on linen, 2022.