Titled ‘Joy Revolution,’ Salon94’s exhibition of late French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s painting, sculpture and work on paper celebrates color, pleasure and play. Just inside Salon94’s stunning new 89th Street location, a 17,500 square foot former mansion built by philanthropist Archer Huntington, two lions originally intended as garden decoration greet visitors. Intended to entice kids to climb them, they serve here as guardians and greeters. (On view through April 24th).
Mounting material and hand-dyed mop head strands onto vinyl, French artist and Mexico City resident Yann Gerstberger makes bold, nearly abstract textiles that suggest tantalizing stories and histories. (At Lyles and King on the Lower East Side through July 28th).
This 1651-54 portrait by Velazquez of the presumptive heir to the Spanish throne, Maria Teresa, as a fresh-faced young teen is a standout in the Met’s current seven-painting show of work the famed Spanish court painter. Framed by an elaborate wig with butterfly ribbons, Maria Teresa’s round features glow with an innocence that would vanish with her future marriage to French King Louis XIV. (At the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 12th).
Fractal patterns on the walls of meticulously constructed dioramas by French artist Laetitia Soulier at Claire Oliver Gallery transform each space into a fantastical realm. The dominant cube pattern in this construction leaps off the walls and into the ever-decreasing form of this Lilliputian set of nesting rooms. (In Chelsea through April 9th).
The most understated Met Museum Roof Garden commission in recent memory, French artist Pierre Huyghe’s installation features a chunk of bedrock set on the museum’s stone tile roof within site of a tank populated with primordial-looking tadpole shrimp. In contrast to the spectacle of luxury condo growth seen just south of the park, the low-key intervention on the Met’s roof is almost disorienting. Weeds sprouting from removed floor tiles suggest a dereliction far from the norm, a crack in the Met’s perfect public face. (At the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Nov 11th).
Pierre Huyghe, Roof Garden commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015.
