Barbara Kruger – MoMA and David Zwirner Gallery

Have you seen this eye-grabbing new installation by Barbara Kruger in the Museum of Modern Art’s atrium?  Don’t miss the rest of the show at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea, where the gallery’s three adjoining spaces on 19th Street showcase work from a recent exhibition of Kruger’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago and the LA County Museum of Art.  Join me on a Chelsea gallery tour to see the show before it closes on Aug 12th.

Barbara Kruger, installation view of Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You at The Museum of Modern Art, July 2022.

Neri Oxman at the Museum of Modern Art

New York Art Tours celebrates the Museum of Modern Art’s reopening to the public today with a closer look at a panel by Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT’s Media Lab Neri Oxman from her reopened exhibition, ‘Material Ecology.’ This wax and resin panel is the first piece visitors encounter in an exhibition that showcases materials and processes that collaborate with nature. The panel’s attractively undulating structure is determined by the need to transmit light and accommodate heat change.  (On view through Oct 18th.  View MoMA’s new guidelines before visiting.)

Neri Oxman, detail of Cartesian Wax, rigid polyurethane casting resin composite and machinable wax, 2007. Collaborators and contributors: Mikey Siegel; MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

Shen Shaomin at Klein Sun Gallery

This painting is from the MoMA series, but it’s never been in the Museum of Modern Art. Instead, this piece of rogue modernism is a remake of Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night, painted by Chinese artist and provocateur Shen Shaomin to look as if it’s covered in bubble wrap. Even the packing tape is painted, not just trying to impress as trompe l’oeil, but suggesting that famous paintings are just another commodity. (At Klein Sun Gallery in Chelsea through April 29th).

Shen Shaomin, Handle with Care – MoMA No. 6, oil on canvas, 29 x 36 ¼ inches, 2017.

Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration at MoMA

This painting from Jacob Lawrence’s 1941 series about the Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the industrial north starkly describes how discrimination also took place in the north. (At the Museum of Modern Art through Sept 7th).

Jacob Lawrence, from the Great Migration series, tempera, 1941.

Wolfgang Tillmans at MoMA

Wolfgang Tillmans, Freischwimmer 199, chromogenic color print, 2012.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Freischwimmer 199, chromogenic color print, 2012.

The Museum of Modern Art recently rehung its contemporary art galleries, making room for an entire room of work by photography trailblazer Wolfgang Tillmans.  It includes this recent experimental abstraction created by chemical processes in the darkroom and thirty iconic photos of European youth culture, displayed in a typically unconventional arrangement.

Suzanne & Lutz, white dress, army skirt, chromogenic color print, 1993.
Suzanne & Lutz, white dress, army skirt, chromogenic color print, 1993.