Nicolas Party at Hauser and Wirth Gallery

At the entrance to New York artist Nicolas Party’s exhibition of new work at Hauser and Wirth Gallery is a vividly colored, full-wall pastel painting of a forest fire.  A nearby drawing depicts a vulnerable-looking baby while further into the show, a tiny oil on copper painting of a dinosaur adds to a meditation on changes to the earth’s climate that forewarns an extinction event.  In this tiny triptych, Party repeats the forest fire imagery as backdrop to a portrait resembling a northern Renaissance devotional image, typically verdant and detailed-filled vistas replaced by destruction.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 21st).

Nicolas Party, Triptych with Red Forest, oil on copper and oil on wood, open: 12 3/16 x 19 5/16 x 2 9/16 inches, 2023.

Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth

The monumental mixed media artwork ‘Manifest Destiny’ dominates the first room of Mark Bradford’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, its tattered surfaces giving it the feeling of a barely surviving relic, its huge scale making it unavoidable.  Emblazoned with a phrase, ‘Johnny Buys Houses,’ that brings to mind road-side signage for fly-by-night real estate operatives and titled after a term that describes relentless European expansion across the North American continent, the piece signals dubious practices with regard to land, property and ownership. (On view in Chelsea through July 28th).

Mark Bradford, Manifest Destiny, mixed media, dimensions variable, ’23.

Pat Steir at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

A record number of monumental paintings are dominating Chelsea galleries this month; at just over thirty-seven feet long, Pat Steir’s ‘Blue River’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery is one of the largest and most absorbing.  Painted in 2005 and hung along more recent work, the gallery explains that the piece is intended to point viewers’ minds toward the vastness and power of the universe.  Washes of blue and white running down the canvas suggest a waterfall while a red border to one side evokes a stage curtain, nodding to the fact that this extremely large rendition of a natural scene is filtered through human imagination.  (On view through Dec 17th.)

Pat Steir, installation view of Blue River, Hauser and Wirth Gallery, Nov 2022. Blue River, oil on canvas, 135 ¼ x 447 inches, 2005.

Avery Singer at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

Beneath an overlay of doodles depicting the Wojak meme in various iterations including Martin Luther, an executioner and a victim of the guillotine, the hulking face of Maximilien Robespierre exudes menace in Avery Singer’s painting at Hauser & Wirth Gallery.  Reintroduced to the bloodthirsty leader of the French revolution’s ‘Reign of Terror’ via the game Assassin’s Creed, Singer blends adopts this oversized historical personage to consider modern-day digital expressions of violence. Titled ‘Edgelord,’ the piece draws parallels between the destruction wrought on-line today and by extreme characters of the past.  (On view through Oct 30th).

Avery Singer, Edgelord, acrylic on canvas stretched over wood panel, 100 ¼ x 120 ¼ x 2 1/8 inches, 2021.

Philip Guston at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

When Philip Guston stopped painting in an abstract expressionist style and adopted a new, faux-naïve look in 1970, art world response was so negative that the artist relocated to Rome for the better part of the following year.  ‘Pittore,’ part of a major show of Guston’s late work at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, expresses some of the anxiety that Guston must have felt as a painter, as well as his need to change to a representational style to engage in a more overt way with the politics of the day.  Here, the artist lies awake in bed at night, his paint and brush beside him.  Smoking, his eyes bloodshot, and with a clock rising behind him like a moon dominating a landscape, the pressure is palpable.  (On view in Chelsea.  Proof of vaccination, photo ID and masks are required).

Philip Guston, Pittore, oil on canvas, 72 ¾ x 80 ½ inches, 1973.