Valerie Hegarty at Burning in Water

In the shadow of Chelsea’s ultra-luxurious new residential buildings, Valerie Hegarty’s new sculptures and wall installations at Burning in Water are a poignant, contemporary vanitas, reminding us that what is fresh will soon be old.  Here, the Brooklyn-based artist’s own subway stop is the inspiration for a paint and paper installation that nestles right into a pristine wall.  (On view in Chelsea through Jan 5th).

Valerie Hegarty, Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum (My Subway Stop), paper, latex and acrylic paint, Tyvek, glue, 82 x 72 inches, 2018.

Antonio Santin at Marc Straus Gallery

Marc Straus Gallery nods to Mark Rothko’s hovering, painted rectangles of color and Josef Alber’s nests of colored squares on canvas, but the real attraction to Spain-born, New York-based artist Antonio Santin’s paintings is the fact that they’re painted at all.  Resembling tapestries, Santin’s amazing abstract paintings are made with oil paint in a variety of patterns that suggest a 3D surface with something hidden beneath.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 16th).

Antonio Santin, Apana, oil on canvas, 70.8 x 78.7 inches, 2018.

Helene Appel at James Cohan Gallery

Soap suds, sand and spaghetti are the mundane subjects of Helene Appel’s extraordinary new paintings at James Cohan Gallery.  A muted palette and minute detail make it necessary to draw close to finely detailed renderings of beach sand and glistening soap bubbles.  From a few feet away, this painting (seen in detail) delights as a trompe l’oeil rendering of a delicately colored fishing net while doubling as an energetically free, grid-busting abstraction. (On view on the Lower East Side through July 27th).

Helene Appel, detail of Blue Net Painting, acrylic and watercolor on linen, 92 ½ x 155 ½ inches, 2018.

Patrick Hughes at Flowers Gallery

British painter Patrick Hughes continues to explore what he terms ‘reverspective,’ or the upending of our expectation that paintings will appear to be in one fixed place. Walk past one of Hughes’ projecting paintings on board, and the rooms he paints appear to shift; the device is acutely appropriate to his depiction of the Barnes Foundation, the art museum which itself shifted locations by moving to downtown Philadelphia in 2012. (On view at Flowers Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 14th).

Patrick Hughes, The Barnes Foundation, oil on board construction, 59 x 207.5 x 24 cm, 2016.

Steve Wolfe at Luhring Augustine Gallery

This well-worn tome isn’t a book at all but a meticulous painting by the artist Steve Wolfe. Not only does it memorialize a classic novel but serves as a tribute to Wolfe himself, who passed away last year.  Well-known for creating trompe l’oeil paintings of favorite books and records, Wolfe indirectly created a portrait of himself and his era. (At Luhring Augustine Gallery through March 11th).

Steve Wolfe, Untitled (Portrait of the Artist), oil, silkscreen, modeling paste, and linen on stretcher, 7 ¾ x 5 x ½ inches, 1991.