Katharina Fritsch’s sculptures elicit a mix of wonder and puzzlement, their careful manufacture and invitingly slick surfaces enticing us to ponder a strange shift in scale or unexpected color choice. Here, a sculpture of a car and caravan in Fritsch’s solo show at Matthew Marks Gallery generates mild confusion at the incongruity of a Mercedes hauling a small camper (highlighted by the contrast between the car’s sleek black surface and the caravan’s white finish). The artwork is based on a model of a toy that she presented at art school in 1979, a Pop art gesture that flirted with but flouted the prevalent minimalist aesthetic of the time. (On view in Chelsea through June 27th.)
Katharina Fritsch, Auto und Wohnwagen / Car and Caravan 1979/2026, vinyl ester resin, stainless steel, aluminum, lacquer, overall: 84 5/8 x 357 x 74 7/8 inches, 1979 / 2026.
Using prosthetics and costumes, Alex Da Corte has morphed into characters as varied as Marcel Duchamp and Mister Rogers. In his latest solo show at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea, he embodies the artist Paul Thek in his iconic 1967 tomb and recreates artworks on the theme of hidden spaces by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Fluxus artist Robert Watts, and others. Here, Da Corte places a cast of his own body in a Pink Panther suit. Nearby, a furry head resting on the floor completes the costume, but Da Corte’s double rejects it in favor of pink face paint, as if more fully trying to embody Pink Panther’s elusive character. Posing in a way that recalls Duane Hanson’s ‘Housepainter’ sculpture, the piece introduces a range of ideas, from the personal (Da Corte’s brother is a professional house painter) to the art historical and beyond. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 20th).
Alex Da Corte, Housepainter II, foam, plywood, resin, silicone, fur, hair, steel, paint, hardware, muslin, glass, 2025.
Thomas Demand’s photographs at Matthew Marks Gallery are a litmus test for how carefully we look at images, requiring viewers to take more than a quick glance. Despite the allure of their large size (this one measures over six feet across) many appear to represent relatively mundane scenes, at least until the feeling that something is ‘off’ leads to the realization that each artwork is a photo of a carefully constructed, life-sized paper and cardboard sculpture replicating an image from the media. Demand’s new work pictures an intercepted shipment of methamphetamines hidden amongst watermelons at the US/Mexico border and a closeup of a melting ice shelf that alludes to climate change. Here, an image recreating a memorial at the site of the 2022 racially motivated shooting at a Buffalo supermarket turns Demand’s time-consuming practice of meticulously replicating the various flowers, signs and candles into an additional act of homage to those lost. (On view in Chelsea through June 28th).
Thomas Demand, Memorial, Framed UV print, 47 ½ x 82 inches, 2025.Thomas Demand, (detail) Memorial, Framed UV print, 47 ½ x 82 inches, 2025.
Just three sculptures, varying in scale and material, yet all in white-toned materials make up LA-based sculptor Charles Ray’s current show at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. To the rear of the gallery, a nearly 9-foot-tall woman constructed of handmade paper steps out of her pants. Towards the front of the space, two slightly larger than life-size supine nude male figures made from marble lie dead on a platform while on a nearby pedestal rests a small, crashed car, hand-crafted from hundreds of pieces of paper. Though apparently unrelated, the three sculptures suggest that one could be doing something as ordinary as getting dressed one moment and encounter an accident or even death the next. Titled 8FLU100 after Ray’s own license plate and referring to a crash suffered by the artist, the car is both testament to the fragility of life and statement about art’s role in processing reality. (On view through June 29th).
Charles Ray, 8FLU100, paper, 7 7/8 x 11 ¾ x 23 ¾ inches, 2024.
In a 1971 letter, American artist Sturtevant declared her art practice not as anti-art but anti-great artist. Her trademark practice of making artwork resembling pieces by renowned artists including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and here, Robert Gober, upends expectations and interpretation when artwork easily recognizable to an art-savvy audience turns out to be something else. In that moment of realization, she explained, “you’re either jolted into immediately rejecting it, or the work stays with you like a bad buzz in your head.” A selection of six pieces from the ‘60s to 2014 at Matthew Marks Gallery includes a reconsideration of Robert Gober’s own meditation on doubling. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).
Sturtevant, Gober Partially Buried Sinks, plaster, wood, wire lathe, enamel paint, and artificial grass, sinks: 24 1/8 x 23 7/8 x 2 ¾ inches, platform: 2 x 322 7/8 x 208 5/8 inches, 1997.
Suellen Rocca, a founding member of the short-lived but hugely influential group of Chicago artists known as ‘Hairy Who,’ adopted imagery from magazine ads, Sears Roebucks catalogues and other American pop culture sources, but her late-career work took on more personal meanings. Several pieces in Matthew Marks Gallery’s exhibition of the late artist’s work in Chelsea include imagery relating to fish, which came to Rocca in a dream. Fish seem to nurse like babies, breasts morph into fish and, in this painting, fish adorn the body of a deity-like multi-armed figure, picturing female power in terms of feeding, nurture and life. (On view through Jan 29th. Masks, social distancing and proof of vaccination required.)
Suellen Rocca, Departure, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2012.
The “…in-between between everything” is New York-based painter Leidy Churchman’s focus in paintings once again on view at Chelsea’s reopened Matthew Marks Gallery. Developed from Churchman’s own spiritual study and their concept of trans experience as inbetweenness, the new work features images that invite multiple interpretation, as in ‘Karma Kagyu & Essex Street,’ a vibrantly colored temple scene made transcendent by a screen of dots resembling snow or flashing light. (On view through July 31st).
Leidy Churchman, Karma Kagyu & Essex Street (Yellow Studio)(Devotion), oil on linen, 79 x 102 inches, 2020.
Proto-surrealist James Ensor and the fantastical Netherlandish painter Hieronymous Bosch figure as influencers on Chicago Imagist Gladys Nilsson’s odd characters, no surprise, given their pervading oddness and ambiguous identities. This symmetrically arranged meeting of two couples, elderly, possibly blind, and with facial features straight out of a folk tale challenges belief even before spotting the tiny horns tucked into their mouths. Are they communicating in honks? Are they tooting at each other to avoid colliding on the sidewalk? The fun is in the guessing. (A selection of work from 1963 to 1980 is now on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through April 18th).
Gladys Nilsson, Honk, acrylic on panel in artist’s frame, 13 1/8 x 15 ¾ inches, 1964.
Vija Celmins’ once described her relationship to the ocean, which she has rendered again and again in paint, graphite and prints, as akin to wrestling something huge into a tiny 2-D space. This woodcut from 2000, created with one of printmaking’s oldest techniques, captures a particular view of the water’s surface that looks as if it could have been made yesterday or hundreds of years ago. (On view in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery through Oct 26th).
Vija Celmins, Ocean, wood engraving on Zerkall paper, 20 ¾ x 17 ¼ inches, 2000.
Late Italian photographer Ugo Mulas made his name documenting the Venice Biennials from 1954 – 1972 and establishing relationships with Italy’s major post-war artists. In the ‘60s, his purview expanded to New York where he met and photographed now iconic avant-garde artists from Barnett Newman to Marcel Duchamp. These photos and more at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea offer a peek at yesteryear’s art scene, from the police closing a Warhol loft party to intimate shots of Jasper Johns at work. Here, Roy Lichtenstein inhabits one of his cartoon scenarios with good humor. (On view through August 16th).
Ugo Mulas, Roy Lichtenstein, vintage gelatin silver print, 10 ½ x 17 7/8 inches, 1964.
Before late Swiss artist David Weiss joined forces with Peter Fischli to become the charmingly eccentric duo Fischli and Weiss, he traveled widely, drawing as he went. Also inspired by underground comics, Weiss produced drawings like this tongue-in-cheek take on Giacometti’s famously reduced figure, currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery’s 24th Street location. (On view through April 6th).
David Weiss, Untitled (Giacometti), watercolor, ink and graphite on paper, 9 3/8 x 6 ½ inches, 1978.
Late sculptor Ken Price evoked bodies and nature in a humorous, accessible and endlessly colorful way for decades until his death in 2012. In a show of work from the ‘90s to 2010 at Matthew Marks Gallery, Price’s evocative forms continue to elicit puzzlement and delight in equal measure. (On view on 24th Street in Chelsea through Dec 22nd).
Ken Price, Formerly The Slump, fired and painted clay, 5 ¼ x 18 ½ x 13 ¾ inches, 2001.
Cats feature in LA painter Linda Stark’s work as portals to the divine or the unknowable – one starred in a past painting as the cat-headed god Bastet, in another as a third eye on the artist’s self-portrait. Here, Stark’s cat, Ray, stares coolly out of a pink haze rimmed in blue that evokes Art Deco colors and neon light. (On view at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through August 17th).
Linda Stark, Ray, oil on canvas over panel, 36 x 36 inches, 2017.
Humor, irony and abjection abound in Greene Naftali Gallery’s summer group show ‘Painting Now and Forever, part III,’ a collaboration with Matthew Marks Gallery, but none of these qualities are found in British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s fictional portrait titled ‘Jubilee.’ Instead, Yiadom-Boakye’s elevated characters – backlit in this case by a golden glow – are quietly exalted, seemingly above everyday life and happy in their own company and thoughts. (On view in Chelsea through August 17th).
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jubilee, oil on canvas, 41 ½ x 35 ¾ inches, 2016.
In a gallery titled ‘the repair annex,’ two new sculptures by Charles Ray depict mechanics absorbed in their work. A man squats in a pose reminiscent of Ray’s own kneeling self-portrait from a few years back but also suggesting supplication or rapt attention to a task. Ray’s meticulous renderings, here in painted steel, can take years to realize and the attention to detail and smooth finish give the piece an elegance and preciousness that connect this subject less to an autobody shop and more to an art history of heroic bodies. (On view at Matthew Marks Gallery‘s 526 West 22nd Street location in Chelsea through June 16th).
Charles Ray, Mechanic 1 and Mechanic 2 (detail), painted steel, mechanic 2: 21 x 14 ½ x 18 ¾ inches, 2018.
Thomas Demand’s meticulous paper sculpturesfrom his ‘Dailies’ series pay homage to ordinary objects that were encountered, considered extraordinary for a moment,photographed, then forgotten. After reconstructing a scene shot on his phone as a paper sculpture, Demand prints the image as a vivid dye transfer print. Positioned on Demand’s wall of anonymous lockers, the banal becomes something wondrous again. (On view in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery through April 7th).
Thomas Demand, Daily #30, framed dye transfer print, 26 ½ x 21 ½ inches, 2017 over Locker, UV print on nonwoven wallpaper, dimensions variable, 2017.
Katharina Fritsch’s latest large-scale sculptures of familiar objects blown up to huge proportions and presented in strikingly vibrant colors are as enigmatic and enticing as ever at Matthew Marks Gallery. We immediately confront our mortality in the first gallery, with a skull and egg acting as a reminder of death and a symbol of life about to start. (On view through Dec 22nd).
Katharina Fritsch, installation view of ‘Katharina Fritsch’ at Matthew Marks Gallery, Nov 2017. Schadel/Skull, polyester, paint, 2017 in the background and Ei/Egg, plastic, paint, 2017 in the foreground.
Three leaves drift down towards the earth in glossy, saturated tones that evoke candy more than autumn colors. Part of an exhibition that considers Gary Hume’s aging mother’s fading memory, the artist’s signature fields of saturated color here suggest absence but not darkness. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 22nd).
Gary Hume, Three Leaves, enamel paint on paper mounted in artist’s frame, 75 x 55 ¾ inches, 2016 – 17.
Though abstract, Robert Strini’s wooden sculptures resemble aliens or instruments or perhaps an instrument for an otherworldly creature. From the mid 70s, they mark a particularly fruitful chapter in Strini’s career after his move away from ceramics and before he expanded into bronze and multi-media works. (In Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery through August 18th).
Robert Strini, foreground: Sheridan Piece, wood, 42 ¾ x 94 x 59 inches, 1974 and rear: Goolagong, laminated wood, 58 x 98 x 133 inches, 1975.
One stone is real, the other is a replica. Vija Celmins entices viewers to ponder which one came from the earth and which from the artist’s hand in this pairing at Matthew Marks Gallery’s 22nd Street space in Chelsea. In other works, Celmins turns her hand to the skies and the seas with meticulous realist paintings that celebrate the creative powers of the artist. (On view through April 15th).
Vija Celmins, Two Stones, one found stone and one made stone: bronze and alkyd oil, 2 ¼ x 8 x 5 ½ inches, 1977/2014-16.
From plant life to outer space, New York painter Terry Winter derives his dynamic abstract paintings from patterns and forms in the natural world. Here, ‘Skin’ suggests both an exotic lizard species and an abstracted architecture. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
Terry Winters, Skin, oil, wax and resin on linen, 60 x 45 inches, 2016.
A series of charming vintage color photos from the 70s and 80s by the late Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, currently on view in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery, use framing and balance to tell stories. This photo – cropped or layered to hide how a fancifully colored turquoise grate came to stand between us and a huge factory floor – both keeps us out and the workers in. (Through April 30th).
Luigi Ghirri, Roma, from the series Kodachrome, vintage cibachrome, 6 x 9 1/8 inches, 1978.
Strong shadows and angular forms in photos of barns and rural architecture shot between the 50s and early 80s by Ellsworth Kelly bear a striking resemblance to the abstract shapes of the artist’s paintings, offering what feels like a peek at the artist’s real-world inspirations. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through April 30th).
Ellsworth Kelly, Barn, Southampton, gelatin silver print, 8 ½ x 13 inches, 1968.
Like inedible confections, the surfaces and strange forms of San Francisco artist Ron Nagle’s tiny ceramic sculptures are delectations for the eye. But for every attractive, shiny surface, there’s an opposite impulse to reject clashing color combinations and oddly suggestive bodily forms. (At Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 24th).
Ron Nagle, Long Good Friday, ceramic, porcelain, glaze, catalyzed polyurethane, epoxy resin, 3 ¾ x 2 ½ x 3 ¾ inches, 2015.
Ken Price’s blob of shiny weirdness is an enticement to venture into Matthew Marks Gallery’s back gallery. A standout in this low-key exhibition of work by gallery artists, the shimmery, seductive surface contrasts the suggestion of an unknown organic substance moldering. (In Chelsea through Oct 24th).
Ken Price, Untitled, fired and painted clay, 18 x 17 x 16, 1996-2011.
Art made outside of New York art scene from the 60s to the present inspired Matthew Marks Gallery’s group show this summer, an exhibition that includes work by the collective ‘Forcefield’ who are known for their unconventional costuming. Here, Lord of the Rings inspires a contemporary chain mail chic. (In Chelsea through August 14th).
Forcefield, Lord of the Rings Modulator Shroud, stainless steel ID rings, 2002-15.
At age 92, just two years after his previous major multi-gallery solo show, Ellsworth Kelly is back at Matthew Marks’ Chelsea galleries (all four locations) with works so bold that a New Yorker critic was prompted to call this Kelly’s ‘all-time most thrilling gallery show.’ Here, an elegantly minimal blue shape could be a stylized arrow pointing upwards, the measure of an angle and much more. (Through June 20th).
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Angle, painted aluminum, 90 x 150 x 4 1/8 inches, 2014.
British artist Gary Hume made his name by painting hospital doors like these in the 90s, as England controversially debated public vs private health care. Here, he had doors constructed that lead in to a second gallery housing attractive glossy enamel paintings featuring disquieting subjects, including versions of an off center wheel derived from a sniper’s sight that reference conflict in Iraq. (At Matthew Marks’ 522 W. 22nd Street location through Dec 21st.)
Gary Hume, Installation view of ‘The Wonky Wheel,’ at Matthew Marks Gallery. Wheel: The Wonky Wheel (Red), enamel on aluminum, 2013. Door: How to Paint a Door, gallery door, 2013.
Exhibitions at three of Matthew Marks’ Chelsea galleries celebrate American art legend Ellsworth Kelly’s 90th birthday (which occurred earlier this week). The vibrant ‘Gold with Orange Reliefs’ is luxurious and organic, evoking lush fruits or a splendid sunrise. (Through June 29. This painting is at the 502 West 22nd Street location.)
Ellsworth Kelly, Gold with Orange Reliefs, oil and canvas and wood, three joined panels, 2013.
Paul Sietsema, "Untitled figure/ground study (Degas/Obama)," 2011. Photograph courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
If it weren’t for the schooner by the doorway at Paul Sietsema’s first New York gallery solo, I’d have missed the boat. Not-quite-right details reveal that what looks like an aged old photograph of a sailboat is in fact a meticulous drawing that demonstrates in a flash how painterly skill adds value and interest to an artwork. In this otherwise aesthetically restrained but intellectually stimulating show, Sietsema allows trace evidence of his hand in pieces that look digitally produced or printed, questioning his own role as a craftsman in the digital age and floating an inconclusive but engaging argument that artistic survival means cleverly thwarting expectations.
In the past, Sietsema has exhibited films of sculptural objects; the drawings here allow us the intimacy to appreciate his handiwork. Two untitled pieces resembling expressive abstractions in black ink also include depictions of bottles of Krylon ‘Short Cuts’ paint, humorously highlighting how Sietsema doesn’t take shortcuts in his labor intensive, cerebral, and non-emotive project. At the bottom of one, the phrase “broken down and experimental…broken down beauty,” bespeaks the pleasure of piecing together Sietsema’s deconstructions.
Two pieces titled, ‘Painter’s Mussel’ refer to shells used to hold paint but show Sietsema flexing his intellectual muscle in complicated pictures of disassembled framed photographs drawn to resemble photographic negatives which appear to have been printed. From the aged photograph of the boat and images that pit old technology (the brush) with new, to two pieces replicating the dated medium of newspaper pages (including an article on Obama reversing a Bush policy) Sietsema suggests that with passage of time ascendency fades – the smart artist adapts by working outside of traditional expectations.
Condensed version of this review published in Time Out New York, issue 815, June 2-8, 2011.
