Tag: Nudes

Heji Shin at 52 Walker

Fashion and art photographer Heji Shin’s self-portrait at 52 Walker gives and withholds information, depicting a holographic image of her brain made with a special MRI technique that pictures neural networks in brilliant color.  Though the scans allow us to literally see her brain, more telling about Shin’s thoughts are her studio photos of pigs – their faces full of character – that appear on the surrounding walls. Titled ‘Big Nudes’ after Helmut Newton’s boldly-posed 1981 images of nude women, the images question how both photos and their subjects are consumed. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 7th).

Heji Shin, Untitled, holographic installation; glass, pedestal, and four flat screen TVs, 66 x 68 1/8 x 58 ¼ in, 2023.

Lily Ludlow at Canada

Lily Ludlow’s angular abstractions at first look like x-rays of Cubist paintings, but her deliberately indistinct canvases (actually sanded down) gradually materialize into charged interactions between nude or semi-clothed characters. (At Canada on the Lower East Side through Dec 14th).

Lily Ludlow, The Knifers, acrylic, pencil, graphite, chalk on canvas, 2014.

Irving Norman at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

Mass groups of nude men and women, pawns in a larger social design, populate European-American artist Irving Norman’s work from the late 60s to 80s, now on view at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Here, futuristic planes packed with passengers shoot out polluting smoke as they blast ominously forward. (In Chelsea through October 25th).

Irving Norman, Airport, oil on canvas, 92 x 119 ¾ inches, 1972.

Lee Friedlander, ‘Nudes’ at Pace Gallery

Lee Friedlander, Nude, gelatin silver print, 1980.
Lee Friedlander, Nude, gelatin silver print, 1980.

John Szarkowski, MoMA’s photography director for nearly 30 years, called Lee Friedlander’s nude photos, “… the most unblinkingly, unreservedly candid descriptions of other people’s bodies that serious photography has produced.”  Pace Gallery proves his point with a show of photos from the late 70s to the early 90s that practically interrogate female bodies in their intensity.  (On 57th Street through Dec 22nd).