Valeska Soares at Alexander Gray Associates

Five mirror-topped antique wooden tables support a host of antique glassware, installed by Valeska Soares at Alexander Gray Associates in Chelsea. Filled with spirits, and looking like the tidily assembled remnants of an epic celebration, the piece emanates a sickly smell that strongly suggests the party is over. (On view through Dec 16th).

Valeska Soares, Epilogue, mixed media, 47h x 459w x 47.75d inches, 2017.

Uta Barth at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Inspired by the light in her adopted home-city of LA and by the still life arrangements of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, Uta Barth employs everyday glassware as lenses. Transparent objects in various shapes, colors and combinations shift light to harness the properties of nature in service of art. (At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea through March 11th).

Uta Barth, In the Light and Shadow of Morandi (17.03), face mounted, raised, shaped, Archival Pigment print in artist’s frame, 48 ¾ x 52 ¾ inches, 2017.

Carlito Carvalhosa at Sonnabend Gallery

Known for artwork inspired by and interacting with architecture, Brazilian artist Carlito Carvalhosa fills two rooms of Chelsea’s Sonnabend Gallery with an installation of fluorescent lights, telephone poles and glassware that suggests a field of ungainly plants or delicately balanced, deconstructed architecture.

Carlito Carvalhosa, Possibility Matters, Poles, glasses, fluorescent lights, dimensions variable, 2014.