Tag: shadow

Luchita Hurtado at Hauser & Wirth Gallery

In every roll of film Luchita Hurtado shot, there’d be an image in shadow, explains her son, the artist Matt Mullican.  Shadows dominate two walls of drawings featuring the artist’s own silhouette in a show now on view at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, conveying a rich, inner life that the artist didn’t care to display to the public.  Yet elements like a feather or these bands of vibrant color offer clues to emotions and mental states that belie Hurtado’s apparent withdrawal.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 31st.  Visits can be arranged by timed reservation.)

Luchita Hurtado, charcoal and watercolor on paper, 17 x 13 ¾ inches, c. 1970s.

Uta Barth at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Inspired by the light in her adopted home-city of LA and by the still life arrangements of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, Uta Barth employs everyday glassware as lenses. Transparent objects in various shapes, colors and combinations shift light to harness the properties of nature in service of art. (At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea through March 11th).

Uta Barth, In the Light and Shadow of Morandi (17.03), face mounted, raised, shaped, Archival Pigment print in artist’s frame, 48 ¾ x 52 ¾ inches, 2017.

Eleanor Ray at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

In her typically understated manner, Eleanor Ray treats the dramatic Icelandic landscape of Isafjordur as almost secondary to its town’s orderly buildings. Long shadows suggest a day drawing to a close or just beginning yet Ray’s painting argues for the importance of this solitary moment. (At Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects on the Lower East Side through Jan 8th).

Eleanor Ray, Isafjordur, oil on masonite, 7 ¼ x 8 3/8 inches, 2016.
Eleanor Ray, Isafjordur, oil on masonite, 7 ¼ x 8 3/8 inches, 2016.

Mary Heilmann in ‘Paintings on Paper’ at David Zwirner Gallery

Mary Heilmann’s two acrylic on paper pieces, both titled ‘Negative Space,’ in David Zwirner Gallery’s summer ‘Paintings on Paper’ group exhibition look like sections of the gallery wall coming forward into the viewer’s space and casting impossibly dark shadows behind, a clever illusion created with simple means. (In Chelsea through August 15th).

Mary Heilmann, Negative Space One, 11 ½ x 11 ½ inches (left) and Negative Space Two, 12 x 15 inches, both are acrylic on handmade paper, 2014.