Haegue Yang at Greene Naftali Gallery

Haegue Yang continues her ‘Trustworthy’ series – made from the patterned interiors of security envelopes – with this installation of abstract diagrams set against deeply soothing Yves Klein blue walls at Greene Naftali Gallery. Just as Klein offered a portal into the sublime, Yang points to the mystical with her eye-like shapes and totemic figure covered in bells. (In Chelsea through April 16th).

Haegue Yang, installation view of ‘Quasi-Pagan Minimal’ at Greene Naftali Gallery, March 2016.
Haegue Yang, installation view of ‘Quasi-Pagan Minimal’ at Greene Naftali Gallery, March 2016.

Lucas Ajemian at Marlborough Gallery

If you’re an artist who thinks your work might be improved by being destroyed, you might want to talk to New York based artist Lucas Ajemian. Ajemian has created this work – reminiscent of a reclining figure in a weathered fresco from a Roman villa – and the others in his latest solo show at Marlborough Gallery’s Lower East Side location by treating, then machine washing other artists’ paintings. (Through June 8th).

Lucas Ajemian, Laundered Painting (20 x 16) I, painting on canvas, 2014.

Hans Schabus at Simon Preston Gallery

When hundreds of dealers from around the world converge at an art fair, how do they set themselves apart? At Art Basel Miami, Simon Preston Gallery brought their gallery doors with them per Vienna-based artist Hans Schabus’s instructions. Back in New York, with new doors installed outside, Schabus displayed the earlier versions, along with a rendering of the temporary plywood exterior and a drawing that questioned the importance of a gallery’s local setting. (On the Lower East Side through April 14, 2014).

Hans Schabus, installation view of ‘Lower East Side,’ at Simon Preston Gallery, March, 2014.

Cindy Sherman at MoMA – The Critics Speak

Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still #56. 1980. Gelatin silver print, 6 3/8 x 9 7/16? (16.2 x 24 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder in memory of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still #56. 1980. Gelatin silver print, 6 3/8 x 9 7/16? (16.2 x 24 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder in memory of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd © 2012 Cindy Sherman

 

As the reviews come out, Cindy Sherman’s retrospective at MoMA (open Feb 26 – June 11) seems set to break ‘best-loved show’ records.  Universal critical adoration usually arouses suspicion of cliquish agreeability.  But Sherman takes the very notion of conformity to fashion and self-presentation -negotiated through society’s expectations – as her subject matter.  Absurdity and grotesquery appear at every turn in this show, making Sherman an uber-critic whose acuity forces the following homages from New York’s major cultural commentators:

Roberta Smith, New York Times:

Though Smith takes umbrage with the show’s selection and non-chronological arrangement, calling it “magnificent if somewhat flawed,” Sherman herself is “…an increasingly vehement avenging angel waging a kind of war with the camera, using it to expose what might be called both the tyranny and the inner lives of images, especially the images of women that bombard and shape all of us at every turn.”

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #463. 2007-08. Chromogenic color print, 68 5/8 x 6? (174.2 x 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled #463. 2007-08. Chromogenic color print, 68 5/8 x 6? (174.2 x 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine:

Saltz also gives Sherman fighting cred, calling her “…a warrior artist – one who has won her battles so decisively that I can’t imagine anyone ever again embarking on a lifetime of self-portraiture without coming up against her.”  He adds, “I think of Cindy Sherman as an artist who only gets better.”

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #131. 1983. Chromogenic color print, 7? 10 3/4? x 45 1/4? (240.7 x 114.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled #131. 1983. Chromogenic color print, 7? 10 3/4? x 45 1/4? (240.7 x 114.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker:

Schjeldahl affords Sherman the highest praise, saying, “The mysteries are irreducible…they qualify Sherman, to my mind, as the strongest and finest American artist of her time.”  Pointing out that delusion allows a disconnect between “inner feeling” and “outer attributes” he adds that, “…Sherman makes hard, scary truths sustainable as only great artists can.”

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #183. 1988. Chromogenic color print, 38 x 22 3/4? (96.5 x 57.8 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled #183. 1988. Chromogenic color print, 38 x 22 3/4? (96.5 x 57.8 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Howard Halle, Time Out:

Halle calls the MoMA retrospective “…the best show I’ve seen there since the Gerhard Richter survey [in 2002], and probably the best exhibit I’ve seen anywhere in a while…The way I’d put it is that Sherman uses glamour and horror to send up and celebrate the feminine mystique, including her own. She quantifies and categorizes the notion of one’s appearance, which fashion also does. But unlike Anna Wintour, Sherman isn’t in the business of marketing the cultural; she’s in the business of laying it bare.”

Uta Barth, “…and to draw a bright, white line with light,” Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Uta Barth, ...and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.2), inkjet print, 2011.  Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.
Uta Barth, ...and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.2), inkjet print, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

The centerpiece of Uta Barth’s latest solo show is a photo series depicting a continually morphing strip of light beneath her living-room curtains, a preposterously simple conceit which nevertheless yields complex optical illusions. As this diaphanous sliver shifts course over an afternoon, it variously resembles a snake, a line on an EKG or a trail of cigarette smoke, all the while transforming the space between the camera, the curtain and the window into an ambiguous territory where volumes flatten or swell, and light can pass for white paint.

Two glimpses of Barth’s hand arranging the curtain folds remind us of her agency, but it’s nature’s hand that propels the work’s attractively simple narrative as the sun’s changing position gradually increases the width of the band. At this time of year, as the onset of winter makes Barth’s invitation to contemplate sunlight especially attractive, the work entices us into the pleasures of solitary idleness that are at odds with the pace of everyday urban life.

In the back room, by comparison, a second group of photographs depicting built-in closets and drawers in the artist’s bedroom seems coldly architectural. Each image is emblazoned by squares or rectangles of light cast from an opposite window: One features a particularly bright patch that suggests celestial or alien visitation; another, a band of shadow over a door latch, creates the illusion that the surface of the print is scratched. But otherwise, the real drama of transformation takes place in the front gallery.

Originally published in Time Out New York, issue 839, Dec 1-7, 2001.