Tag: marlborough

Jesus Raphael Soto in ‘WAVE’ at Marlborough Gallery

Experiencing one of late Venezuelan kinetic artist Jesus Raphael Soto’s signature sculptures of hanging plastic cord in 1969, critic Guy Brett remarked that the participant’s ‘physicality was diffused,’ suggesting that moving through the piece breaks down the barrier between bodies and environment.  With or without visitors mingling among the threads in this piece in Marlborough Gallery’s summer group show of abstract and kinetic art, Soto’s installation challenges perception as it morphs from solid to ephemeral, suggesting a work always in flux.   (On view in Chelsea through Sept 10th.)

Jesus Rafael Soto, Penetrable Azul de Valencia, wood and pigmented plastic, unique, 108 5/8 x 366 1/8 x 108 ¼ inches, 1999.

Tomas Sanchez at Marlborough Gallery

It’s no surprise that #meditation is one of the first tags Cuban painter Tomas Sanchez uses when posting images of new paintings to Instagram.  His intensely detailed, imagined landscapes are inspired by his daily meditative practice and celebrate the sublime on both a vast and tiny scale, eliciting wonder at nature’s complexity.  Sanchez’s first show at Marlborough New York in over 15 years offers a decade of work – new and loaned from collections.  It features not only verdant scenes but a selection of paintings featuring vast fields of discarded consumer items and trash, a disturbing contrast to the boundlessness of nature in the paintings. (On view through Jan 22nd. Note holiday hours and closures.)

Tomas Sanchez, Inner Lagoon…Thought-Cloud, acrylic on canvas, 78 ¾ x 78 ½ inches, 2016.

Alice Aycock in ‘Wild At Heart’ at Marlborough Gallery

Alice Aycock’s sizeable ‘Wavy Enneper’ sculpture in Marlborough Gallery’s summer group show is tantalizingly familiar, resembling an underwater organism or a fungus. However, its enticingly curving, dynamic form was actually inspired by a diagram of a self-intersecting surface introduced by 19th century German mathematician Alfred Enneper. (On view in Chelsea through Sept 11th).

Alice Aycock, Wavy Enneper, fiberglass, aluminum and acrylic, ed of 3 + 1AP, 84 x 116 3/8 x 102 inches, 2011.

Stephen Hannock at Marlborough Gallery

Ophelia, who lost her life by drowning in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is transported to a North American landscape in recent work by Stephen Hannock at Marlborough Gallery.  An homage to the artist’s late wife whose ill health took away her freedom, Hannock’s Ophelia series draws on John Everett Millais’ famous painting of Ophelia and Thomas Cole’s renowned 1836 depiction of the Connecticut River’s oxbow.  Together, tragic individual experience merges with the sublime and healing possibility of nature.  (On view through July 2nd.  Masks and social distancing required).

Blue Water with Ophelia Rising (Mass MoCA #328), polished mixed media on canvas, 23 x 18 ½ inches, 2021.

Red Grooms at Marlborough Gallery

Is Red Grooms a ‘zany genius’ or ‘so much kitsch?’  The New York Times pondered the question in a 2018 profile of the New York-based creator of ‘sculpto-picto-ramas’ – sculptures of New Yorkers and their habitats.  Now, visitors to Marlborough Gallery’s exhibition of Grooms’ work from ’74 to the present have the opportunity to consider anew Grooms’ affectionately eccentric characters, such as this dog-walker from 1981.  (On view in Chelsea through May 8th).

Red Grooms, Walking the Dogs, painted canvas, papier-mache and metal chain on wood support, 36 ¾ x 20 x 22 ½ inches, 1981.