Veronica Ryan, ‘Retrieval’ at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Three years after winning Britain’s biggest art prize Veronica Ryan’s evocative, small-scale sculpture invite intimate inspection at Paula Cooper Gallery.  Despite the many accolades that have come her way in recent years, Ryan continues to craft humble, abstract sculptures from a combination of ephemeral and found materials that speak to the memories and associations held by everyday objects.  Titled ‘Retrieval,’ the show includes objects covered in bandages and sacks of Himalayan salt crystals that open conversations about healing.  Pillow-like forms, pincushions and a giant doily speak to the labor and care shown by Ryan’s late mother, who embroidered the family’s pillowcases and made clothing.  Here, two small towers created by stacking pie tins and held together by crocheted wool represent a structure made to house bundles of salt and ceramic seeds, symbols of healing and growth. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 22nd).

Two circular columns of stacked materials inside of two close-fitting orange and a turquoise crocheted sacks.
Veronica Ryan, Totem, pie tins, crochet wool, plaster, thread, Himalayan salt, netting, air-dried clay, acrylic paint, pink totem: 35 x 12 x 9 inches, blue totem: 30 ¼ x 9 ¼ x 9 ¼ inches, 2024-25.
A circular column inside of two crocheted forms, supporting three small sacks.
Veronica Ryan, Totem, pie tins, crochet wool, plaster, thread, Himalayan salt, netting, air-dried clay, acrylic paint, pink totem: 35 x 12 x 9 inches, blue totem: 30 ¼ x 9 ¼ x 9 ¼ inches, 2024-25.

Eric N. Mack at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Eric N. Mack calls himself a painter whose medium is fabric – new work at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea is mostly hung on stretchers that support not canvas but collaged fabric fragments.  Like painting, Mack’s work foregrounds color and pattern, but the artist doesn’t add these elements to the canvas, rather he encounters them as found materials.  Instead of creating transparency and texture from paint, these are qualities of the surface itself.  Sourced from divergent origins – Mack might use fabric from couture clothing or neighborhood markets – the artist collapses quality distinctions in his dynamic abstractions.  (On view through Dec 22nd in Chelsea).

Eric N. Mack, Strewn Sitbon, fabric on aluminum stretcher, overall: 41 x 34 ½ x 6 inches, 2023.

Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing #485 at Paula Cooper

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Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings – some 1,200 sets of instructions for turning architecture into art – range from the simple (e.g. drawing lines in patterns going up, down and to the side) to the kind of full-room, immersive installation currently on view at Paula Cooper Gallery.  Energizing but restrained, a matte, fresco-like orange tone dominates, setting off multi-hued, isometric pyramids of various colors that seem to float through space.  In the center of the gallery, white enamel on aluminum sculptures resemble tips of icebergs adrift on the gallery’s polished concrete floor.  Surrounded by angular geometries in the cavernous rectangle of the gallery, visitors inhabit a parallel universe governed by alternative rules of color and space.  (On view on 21st Street in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).

Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing #485 (detail), three asymmetrical pyramids with color ink washes superimposed, color wash ink, 1986. Sol LeWitt, Complex Form #6 (to the right, detail), enamel on aluminum, 1987/1988.

Veronica Ryan at Paula Cooper Gallery

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In her solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery, Monserrat-born, England-based artist Veronica Ryan engages themes of global movement and trade with humble materials including fruits, seeds and other organic matter.  Ryan has pointed out that familiar foods bring people together to share meals and memories; she has also incorporated materials like ash from the Soufrière Hills volcano, which has covered the town in which she was born.  Pleasure and trauma also meet in this pile of stoneware cocoa beans, a product that brings happiness to many, sometimes at the expense of enslaved workers. (On view in Chelsea through May 28th).

Veronica Ryan, Cocoa Passion in Tandem, ceramic stoneware, pigment, volcanic ash, jute rug, overall: height variable x 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 inches, 2021.

Ja’Tovia Gary at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Ja’Tovia Gary pictures the variety in Black womanhood in her new three-channel video installation at Paula Cooper Gallery with footage shot of the artist in Monet’s garden at Giverny intercut with video of Nina Simone’s 1976 performance at the Montreux Festival and street corner interviews with women of African descent in Harlem.  Through direct animation on archival film, internet footage and her own images as well as montage, Gary employs a variety of techniques to present a complex view of Black interiority. (On view in Chelsea through March 21st).

Ja’ Tovia Gary, installation view from THE GIVERNY SUITE, three-channel film installation, 2019.

Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper Gallery

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The painting furthest from the door is the first to attract attention at Paula Cooper Gallery’s show of recent work by New York abstract artist Dan Walsh.   Glowing like a tower-top beacon, a stylized ziggurat resembling the pinnacle of the Empire State Building lures visitors into minimalist painting by a self-styled ‘maximalist.’ (On view in Chelsea on 26th Street through Feb 15th).

Dan Walsh, Expo III, acrylic on canvas, 110 ¼ x 110 ¼ inches, 2019.

Hans Haacke, Helmsboro County at Paula Cooper

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If you can’t get to politically-oriented artist Hans Haacke’s New Museum retrospective before it closes on Jan 26th, check out his huge pack of Marlboros in Paula Cooper Gallery’s tiny 21st St vitrine-like space, a sculpture about the relationships between art, politics and commerce.  Made in 1990, the piece highlights cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris Company’s contradictory support both for the arts and for North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who was famously critical of government support for the arts.  Each five-foot long cigarette features a copy of the constitution (the company offered to supply a copy to anyone who asked), while the packaging bears the statement that the company’s ‘fundamental interest in the arts is self-interest.’  (On view through Jan 25th).

Hans Haacke, Helmsboro County, silkscreen prints and photographs on wood, cardboard and paper, 30 ½ x 80 x 47 ½ inches, 1990.

Meg Webster in ‘Non-Vicious Circle’ at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Unlike her mid-20th century counterparts who also employed minimalist forms, repetition, and awareness of the immediate environment in their sculpture, Meg Webster’s interest in the natural world connects her installation of five glass spheres from 1987 at Paula Cooper Gallery to the wonder of naturally occurring phenomena.  The imperfectly formed shapes are scaled up to the size of those made by huge bubble wands at a kids’ science museums yet they evoke the briefly lived magic of a floating pocket of air.  (On view in Chelsea through August 16th).

Meg Webster, Largest Blown Sphere, five glass spheres, each 36 x 36 x 36 inches, 1987.

Tauba Auerbach Installation at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Helix, wave and vortex forms have inspired Tauba Auerbach to create an array of painting, glass sculpture, woven work, video and more informed by natural forms and logical systems.  The ‘Ligature Drawings’ in her latest solo show at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery consider joined and curving forms, exploring language as a system of structured meaning.  (On view through Dec 15th).

Tauba Auerbach, installation view of Ligature Drawings, ink on paper with date stamp, each approx. 34 x 27 inches, 2016 – ongoing.

Mark di Suvero, Eppur si Muove at Paula Cooper

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“And yet it moves” is the translated titled of this new monumental steel sculpture by Mark di Suvero, referring to Galileo’s 17th century assertion (despite pressure from the Inquisition) that the earth is not stable. Likewise, this formidably weighty sculpture looks fixed but will rock on its axis if set in motion. (On view at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 3rd.)

Mark di Suvero, Eppur si Muove, stainless steel, 10.5 x 28 x 12 feet, 2017 – 2017.

 

 

Beatrice Caracciolo at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Paris-based Italian artist Beatrice Caracciolo’s ‘Tramontana’ refers in its title to a cold north wind, which appears to cause a landscape to hunker down in this expressive ink on paper artwork. (On view at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 3rd).

Beatrice Caracciolo, Tramontana, water soluble ink on paper, 58 x 65 x 1 inches, 2017.

Cecily Brown at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Inspired by shipwrecks in iconic 19th century paintings by Gericault and Delacroix, Cecily Brown’s latest oil paintings allow strange, fraught characters to emerge from the depths. In this detail from ‘Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band,’ a figure appears from swirling blue depths like a figurehead on a ship, a seemingly stray blue line forming a knowing smile. (At Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea through Dec 2nd).

Cecily Brown, detail from Sirens and Shipwrecks and Bathers and the Band, oil on linen, 97 x 151 x 1.5 inches, 2016.

Douglas Huebler at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Before documentation and text became Conceptual Art founder Douglas Huebler’s primary media, his formica sculptures considered how place was experienced as art. Here, the yellow-hued interior of an S shaped sculpture glows mysteriously as it evokes superpower, the alphabet and Truro, MA the place for which it was named. (At Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea through Nov 18th).

Douglas Huebler, Truro Series #1, formica on plywood, 35 x 54 x 21 inches, 1966.

Christian Marclay, Boneyard at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Though it looks like a memorial to the landline, Christian Marclay’s ‘Boneyard,’ now on view at Paula Cooper Gallery, is from 1990, part of a selection of past work by the artist addressing one of his signature themes. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 7th).

Christian Marclay, Boneyard, hydrostone casts of telephone receivers, in 750 parts, dimensions variable, 1990.

 

Evan Holloway at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Battery-studded forms resembling swaying kelp make for an enchantingly weird sculpture by Evan Holloway at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. Behind, a modernist-looking looping sculpture is a huge support for a tiny burning stick of incense. Unusual and unexpected, Holloway’s new sculpture engages the eye and the mind. (On view through April 22nd).

Evan Holloway, installation view at Paula Cooper Gallery, March, 2017. Foreground: Naming the Animals, plaster, steel, spent batteries, 93 ¼ x 60 x 20 inches, 2017.

Sam Durant in ‘Dissolving Margins’ at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Inspired by and titled after the final line in Martinique Surrealist Suzanne Cesaire’s ‘The Great Camouflage,’ Sam Durant locates an all-seeing eye over the Atlantic Ocean, a passageway between ‘old’ and ‘new’ worlds, questioning who ‘sees’ whom and how accurately. (At Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea through April 25th).

Sam Durant, “…the great game of hide and seek has succeeded, it is them because, on that day, the weather is most certainly too blindingly bright and beautiful to see clearly therein,” globe, acrylic (painting Steve Nunez), 32” diameter, 2014.

Sol LeWitt & Carl Andre at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Inspired by the Taoist notion that 10,000 is a number emblematic of infinity, late Minimalist Sol LeWitt created the plan for a wall drawing featuring 10,000 straight lines on each red, yellow or blue wall. In the foreground, Carl Andre’s 1979 Dracut is a more elemental but also forceful pattern created with short ‘lines’ of western red cedar. (At Paula Cooper Gallery’s 521 West 21st Street space through March 7th).

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #992: Left Panel: 10,000 straight red lines; center panel: 10,000 straight yellow lines; right panel: 10,000 straight blue lines. The lines are of any length or direction. Red, yellow, blue markers. Dimensions variable. Foreground: Carl Andre, Dracut, 11 Western red cedar timbers, each 36 x 12 x 12 in, 1979.

Mark di Suvero at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Mark di Suvero’s huge new steel sculpture ‘Little Dancer’ at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery belies its title at 19 x 36 x 15 feet.  Still, in comparison to the larger structure, spiraling forms hanging from the larger, angular structure are as graceful as tons of steel can get.   (Through June 29th).

Mark di Suvero, Little Dancer, steel, 2010-12.

Meg Webster at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Meg Webster, Polished Stainless Steel for Reflecting Outstretched Arms, mirror-polished stainless steel, 2012.
Meg Webster, Polished Stainless Steel for Reflecting Outstretched Arms, mirror-polished stainless steel, 2012.

Meg Webster’s aesthetic is minimal but rife with references to the natural world.  Her current show at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery includes paper covered with egg of free-range chickens and a sand bed from 1982/2012, which she originally brought into her studio from the beach.  Both are reflected in this cross-shaped sculpture designed to reflect outstretched arms. (Through Feb 9th).