Tag: mural

Mujeres Muralistas Soi Noma in ‘The Precious Life of a Liquid Heart’ at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art

This seven-foot painting on canvas by Soi Noma, a collective of female mural artists from the Shipibo-Conibo community in Lima, Peru adds a blast of color to the small but impactful group exhibition ‘The Precious Life of a Liquid Heart’ at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art in Tribeca.  Addressing water crisis in Latin America and the spiritual importance of rivers and water bodies to indigenous communities, the show includes work by artists who decry environmental damage and others who focus on an appreciation of the natural world.  Soi Noma’s ‘Manifesto against Contamination’ mixes both approaches, employing kene, geometric patterns that express world views of the community, and images of animals to picture a come-back from contamination caused by oil companies. (On view through Feb 10th).

Mujeres Muralistas Soi Noma, Manifesto against Contamination, mixed media on canvas, triptych: 86 x 51 x 1/16 inches, 2022.

Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian Gallery

Created for the atrium of the theatrical management agency Creative Arts Agency’s IM Pei designed headquarters in 1989, Roy Lichtenstein’s Bauhaus Stairway Mural dominates a single cavernous room at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea.  Featuring the artist’s signature Benday dots and primary colors that imitate commercial printing techniques, the painting remakes Oscar Schlemmer’s famous 1932 painting of students at the Bauhaus, the famous pre-WWII German school of art and design.  Though the original was created in response to the Nazi closing of the school, Lichtenstein’s streamlined forms and bright colors on a huge scale suggest a more positive outlook on the upward movement of arts and ideas.  (On view through Dec 22nd).

Roy Lichtenstein, Bauhaus Stairway Mural, oil and magna on canvas, 26 x 5 ¾’ x 17’ x 11 ¾ inches, 1989.

Robin Rhode at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

A man with skin composed of overlapping shells arranges his hands on a wall in Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s front room as if to peer into the vibrantly colored picture before him – a mural depicting a block of flats.  ‘Die Strandloper – Man’ or ‘The Beachwalker – Man,’ an installation by South African artist Robin Rhode, is titled after a term used to refer to one of South Africa’s oldest people groups, the Khoisan, who have lived along southwest Africa’s coasts and whose lifestyles have been under threat for centuries by European settlement and now climate change.  Resembling the streamlined forms of hotels from the game Monopoly, the structures in their non-natural colors are a sharp contrast to the figures’ close physical relationship with the natural world. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 11th).

Robin Rhode, Die Strandloper – Man (The Beachwalker – Man) and Die Strandloper – Boy (The Beachwalker – Boy), both are glass fiber reinforced plastic and shells, ’22 and Block of Flats (Wall Painting), acrylic paint, dimensions variable, ‘23

Elle Street Art at Hudson Yards

Renowned and prolific international street artist Elle has transformed the 11th Ave approach to Hudson Yards with this 2,000 sq ft mural.  Hoping “to instill passion and hope and peace in the people who see it,” Elle pictures a mother and daughter looking forward into a brighter future.  (On view on 11th Ave in Hudson Yards through 2020).

Sarah Morris at 1285 Avenue of the Americas

On your way to the newly reopened MoMA?  If it’s that or something else that takes you to mid-town Manhattan, be sure to check out Sarah Morris’ UBS Wall Painting in the UBS building on 6th Ave right around the corner from the museum.  Morris’ mural packs a punch from the sidewalk, towering over passersby and offering an abstracted image of the city grid (including this very building) that’s livelier and more colorful than the real version surrounding it.  (On view at 1285 Avenue of the Americas.)

Sarah Morris, UBS Wall Painting, household gloss paint on wall, 195.6 x 536 inches, 2001/2019.