Tag: geometry

Anila Quayyum Agha at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Inspired by Islamic art and architecture, Anila Quayyum Agha’s pattern-based practice celebrates the intricacies and pleasures of floral and geometric design.  Her installation Beautiful Despair, commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, literally immerses the viewer in patterns that are projected from a central cube onto the floor, walls and ceiling of a room at Sundaram Tagore Gallery.  With the piece, Quayyum Agha commemorates those lost to Covid (including her sister) while expressing hope for the future.  (On view in Chelsea though Oct 8th).

Anila Quayyum Agha, Beautiful Despair, lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches, 2022.

Mary Lum at Yancey Richardson Gallery

Long walks through New York, Paris and London yield source material for Mary Lum’s complex photo and paint collages, now on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea.  Titled 11th Avenue, this piece features slices of urban architecture and facades that dynamically multiply the grid.  At center, Lum seamlessly turns a photo of metal piping into a flattened piece of paper that in turn guides our eye up and over a grey wall – all moves that keep our sense of space shifting in an engaging way.  (On view through Feb 26th).

Mary Lum, 11th Avenue, gouache, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, and photo collage on paper, 11 ¼ x 14 7/8 inches, 2021.

Mary Heilmann in ‘Abstract, Representational and so forth’ at Gladstone Gallery

Mary Heilmann’s red and black ceramic sculpture ‘Curl’ seems to defy its title with its angular panels, yet each segment dynamically spins around a central core like a step on a spiral staircase seen from above.  Each tile evokes a riser with three treads or a chunky version of the Egyptian deity Isis’ throne in Constructivist colors that make a bold statement.  (On view at Gladstone Gallery’s 24th Street Chelsea location through July 26th).

Mary Heilmann, Curl, glazed ceramic, 15 ½ x 20 ½ x 2 ¼ inches, 1984.

Robin Rhode at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

In a sequence of six photos by South African artist Robin Rhode, an acrobatic mathematician contorts his body to project a ‘Lute of Pythagoras,’ a series of pentagrams locked together in pleasing mathematical proportion. At the gallery entrance, Rhode quotes Swiss architect and urban planner Le Corbusier’s assertion that humanity attempts to save itself from chaos through geometry. Rhode’s efforts to better humanity by joining art and geometry feel poignantly quixotic. (On view at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 24th).

Robin Rhode, one of six panels in Meditation on the Lute of Pythagoras, 6 parts, each 21.5 x 28.58 x 1.5 inches, c-print, 2017.

Adriana Varejao at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

Brazilian artist Adriana Varejao explores the complicated relationship between western and indigenous cultures with a series of self-portraits that blend Native South American and mid-20th century minimalist aesthetics. Here, wavy feathered plumes contrast a stark geometric stripe running the length of her face and clouds of dots over her eyes. (At Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 16th).

Adriana Varejao, Kindred Spirits IV (detail), oil on canvas, 4 parts, each 20.47 x 17.91 x 1.38 inches, 2015.
Adriana Varejao, Kindred Spirits IV (detail), oil on canvas, 4 parts, each 20.47 x 17.91 x 1.38 inches, 2015.