Tag: untitled

Rebecca Morris at Bortolami Gallery

In a recent interview, Rebecca Morris explained that color is the content of her painting.  On view through Saturday at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca, Morris’ light pink, blue and green abstractions are easy on the eye, even when accented by attention-grabbing metallic colors.  All titled just with the date of their making, it’s up to the viewer to puzzle out how each artistic decision – the checkerboard pattern, the shape of each zone of color and the variety of pink tonal contrasts in Untitled (#04-23), for example – creates meaning and mood.  In this painting, Morris considers cultural values placed on color saying, “Gold makes pink important…Often pink is seen as pretty, and pretty gets devalued.”  In this opulent, complex and intellectually engaging painting, pink steals the show.  (On view through Nov 4th).

Rebecca Morris, Untitled (#12-23), oil and spray paint on canvas, 2023.

David Hammons in Subliminal Horizons at Alexander Gray Associates

David Hammons’ untitled bottles from the mid-80s are a standout in Alexander Gray Associates’ summer group show, which features artists of color who have a relationship to the Hudson River Valley.  Evoking messages cast adrift in bottles or carefully constructed ships in bottles, each curious form invites and eludes easy interpretation.  A white lightning bolt suggests magically captured electricity, a fish somehow survives in a glass enclosure and the zippers from the flies of pants become living insects, a series of transformations that invite wonder.  (On view through Aug 14th).

David Hammons, installation view of untitled bottles from 1985, Alexander Gray Associates.

Myranda Gillies at Susan Inglett Gallery

Two types of chilis, lemongrass and an emergency blanket are some of the unconventional materials Myranda Gillies sourced from stores in her Brooklyn neighborhood to create this loomed work at Susan Inglett Gallery in Chelsea. Granddaughter of famed assemblage artist George Herms, Gillies shares the gallery with his sculpture, inviting a comparison between two artists whose materials are something to talk about. (On view through July 28th).

Myranda Gillies, detail of Untitled (El Dorado), monofilament, cotton, lurex, chile guajillo, chile arbol, lemongrass, emergency blanket, 49 x 29 ½ inches, 2017.

Matt Johnson at 303 Gallery

The text on this box – ‘Enjoy your delicious moments!’ – is supposed to be an encouragement to appreciate pizza, but it’s also a good way to describe the feeling of realizing that this realistic food box is actually a meticulously crafted, hand painted wooden sculpture by trompe l’oeil master Matt Johnson. (At 303 Gallery in Chelsea through Feb 25th).

Matt Johnson, Untitled (Small Pizza Box), carved wood and paint, 17 ½ x 14 ½ x 7 inches, 2016.
Matt Johnson, Untitled (Small Pizza Box), carved wood and paint, 17 ½ x 14 ½ x 7 inches, 2016.

Glenn Ligon at Luhring Augustine Gallery

Glenn Ligon turns his well-worn copy of James Baldwin’s 1953 essay, ‘Stranger in the Village,’ into a suite of prints, each more or less obscured by paint and fingerprints left behind by years of reference use in Ligon’s studio. Ligon’s marks testify to the personal importance of Baldwin’s text, while the parts that remain visible leap out as a kind of charged concrete poetry. (At Luhring Augustine through April 2nd).

Glenn Ligon, Untitled, from a suite of 17 archival pigment prints, 71 x 49 inches, 2016.
Glenn Ligon, Untitled, from a suite of 17 archival pigment prints, 71 x 49 inches, 2016.