Discover Chelsea’s newest gallery and more this Saturday (11am – 1pm) on Merrily’s first group gallery tour of the year! Iconic European artist Dieter Roth merged art and life to the point of exhibiting impressive chunks of his studio floor that bear the traces of decades of art making. Email merrily to reserve your spot: merrily@newyorkarttours.com. (If you’ve toured with Merrily before, take 25% off your ticket price!)
‘Nets’ by young, Maine-based painter Sascha Braunig blurs the boundaries between her subject and his/her background, begging the question of where this individual’s boundaries lie. Is (s)he real or virtual? What effects have applied? And where might we meet such a person? (At Chelsea’s Foxy Production, through Feb 9th).
German-Swiss-Icelandic artist Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998) used natural materials like chocolate, cheese, bananas, sausages and rabbit dung to make sculptures and images that would blossom with new life as they aged. Here, assistants create chocolate casts of Roth’s famous chocolate or sugar self-portrait busts, as seen on the pallet. (At Chelsea’s Hauser & Wirth through April 13th).
Boasting ‘one of the largest column-free spaces for exhibiting art in the city,’ Hauser & Wirth’s spectacular new Chelsea location even has an impressive entrance. Work no. 1461 by British conceptual art titan Martin Creed is a permanent installation consisting of 2-inch wide adhesive tapes whose vivid colors lend visitors the energy to climb the stairs. Check back tomorrow for a peek upstairs.
In the late 60s, when the avant-garde sidelined painting for Minimalism, Performance and Conceptual art, Daniel Buren forged ahead with ‘painting’ that jettisoned aesthetic concerns. He hit on a formula that he’s used ever since, using vertical stripes 8.7cm in width in site specific installations that force reconsideration of their space. Petzel’s new 18th Street gallery space has barely had time to be considered (this is only the 2nd show there), but Buren’s work has never looked more attractive.
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).
We conceive of and show off our identities via our clothes, but how often do we really ponder the look, feel, size and meaning of our garments? Julie Allen, known for her meticulous sculptures and drawings of objects important in her personal life, created this underwear from Saran Wrap and tape as one of hundreds of drawings and sculptures made to mark her recent marriage and revel in intimacies enjoyed. (At McKenzie Fine Art on the Lower East Side through Feb 3rd).
Nothing else in Chelsea looks remotely like Brooklyn-based sculptor Robert Lazzarini’s latest sculptures at Marlborough Gallery (through Feb 16th). Partly inspired by the 1973 movie Badlands, they and evoke an American roadtrip gone badly wrong.
This fence was welded together from over two-hundred individually cast steel pieces. Lazzarini’s attention to detail goes far – he even made the barbed wire. It’s the most impressive piece in the show not only in terms of how much work went into it, but in how Lazzarini reimagines a metal fence blowing as if it were a cloth or flag gently flapping the in breeze.
Lazzarini called this melting liquor sign the ‘most profound piece in the show,’ saying, ‘It speaks to a damage within society that is not easily seen.’ In person, the sculpture’s text is surprisingly difficult to read, as if we had had one too many. Its towering, ghostly presence is a highlight of the show.
Vaults, blown open and empty, are such a Hollywood staple that this twisted lockbox looks strangely familiar. Finding it twisted in the corner, as if in a fun-house mirror, is not so expected. While struggling with that not-quite-clear sense of déjà vu, check out the sculpture’s most amazing feature – its perfectly skewed lock.
Charlotte Dumas’s photographs of the horses who participate in soldier burials at Arlington National Cemetery are shot ‘at home,’ in their stables after hours. Out of their work context, they’re portrayed as individuals, and the effect is striking. Originally commissioned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, they’re now on view at Chelsea’s Julie Saul Gallery through March 9th.
Jacob Kassay’s electroplated canvases – paintings made with old photographic processes – became better known in the past year or so for their astronomical prices than their artistic merit. In Kassay’s current show at The Kitchen one of the signature silver-colored pieces sits in the gallery corner behind a beam, an unambiguous message that the artist has moved on. (At The Kitchen through Feb 16th).
Kids from PS 63 in the South Bronx discovered that coloring with crayons isn’t as easy as it seems…At least not when the crayons are over two feet long. Berlin-based South African artist Robin Rhode created wall decals and handed over the crayons, letting the children discover that being an artist can be hard work. (At Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side Gallery through March 16th).
Louise Despont brings together representations of the constellations Ophichus and Serpens with Persian carpet imagery in her amazingly intricate graphite and colored pencil drawing, ‘Serpens.’ Created on collected vintage accounting ledgers, this labor intensive piece wows with its detail and evocation of esoteric bodies of knowledge. (At Nichelle Beauchene Gallery’s new Lower East Side location, 327 Broome Street through Jan 20th.)
A cement truck crashes on an empty highway whose grey surface is mirrored in the air, the red color from the hood bleeds onto the roadway, forming a colorful abstraction, while a skinny kid in an astronaut’s helmet looks on. It could only be a painting by David Humphry, whose signature mix of abstraction and realism, saturated colors and colliding stories awaken possibilities for strange stories. (At Fredricks & Freiser through Jan 19th).
Former celebrity photographer David LaChapelle creates an uncomfortable memento mori for the jet set in his latest solo show at Paul Kasmin Gallery with ‘Still Life,’ a series begun after the National Wax Museum in Dublin was vandalized in 2009. Here, the Prince of Wales lies shattered in a box next to Heath Ledger & near Cameron Diaz. (Through Jan 19th).
Andy Warhol is at the top of the contemporary art market, Rosemarie Trockel has a well-received solo exhibition at the New Museum. Neither’s accomplishments seem to phase Sean Bluechel, whose glazed ceramic bananas (reminiscent of Warhol’s famed fruit) appear to rain down on a Trockel knit wool painting from 1986 in ‘Banana Pissing Bananas on Trockel.’ (At Chelsea’s Nicole Klagsbrun, through January 19th.)
From Belgium’s colonial past to The Disney Company’s practices, Luc Tuymans’s past paintings have obliquely referenced the exercise of power and control. By contrast, his latest body of work presents fragments from his own life, including this ominous image of a zoo building and a jacket, which looks like a modernist abstraction plus or minus a body. (At David Zwirner Gallery, 519 West 19th Street through Feb 9th).
There’s more amazing artwork in New York than we can feature! Join Merrily on a small group gallery tour and be inspired by all that the city’s galleries have to offer. Please visit New York Art Tours’ website for a schedule and to book your spot.
For her last Chelsea solo show in the fall, Andrea Zittel’s carpet, garments, and wall hangings asked how many ways a rectangle can be manipulated to create art & design. In MoMA’s 53rd Street windows, her quasi-minimalism object/humanoid characters sport coverings that could be dress or artwork.
Monika Sosnowska’s ‘Fir Tree,’ a 40 foot tall steel sculpture currently located at the southeast entrance to Central Park is just a step beyond the park’s trees but is more in keeping with the solid, man-made structures surrounding the park. It belongs to neither world, however, and its lack of cheer and melted, post-disaster appearance lend it an ominous intrigue. (Through Feb 17th).
The Museum of Modern Art recently rehung its contemporary art galleries, making room for an entire room of work by photography trailblazer Wolfgang Tillmans. It includes this recent experimental abstraction created by chemical processes in the darkroom and thirty iconic photos of European youth culture, displayed in a typically unconventional arrangement.
It’s easy to lose track of time while visiting galleries, but not at Chelsea’s Harris Lieberman Gallery, where Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade amplifies the sound of eight pocket watches, hung from the gallery ceiling. This spare installation entices viewers to wander through chains and wires, analog and digital components that prompt consideration of our place in time and space. (Through Jan 12th.)
Ed Ruscha’s legendary artist book ‘Twentysix Gasoline Stations’ (1963) zeroed in on banal subject matter to question its importance in American culture. In his latest solo show at Gagosian Gallery’s 24th Street location, Ruscha continues to pursue both books and paintings in works like Gilded, Marbled and Foiled, a painting that considers this book as a physical object more than a means of communication. (Through Jan 12th.)
‘Fresh, direct and very much of this moment,’ is how the New York Times described Brooklyn artist Keltie Ferris’ show of large, digital-looking handmade oil and acrylic paintings at Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Blurs of sprayed paint suggest a plane’s vapor trail while carefully painted pixel-like blocks of yellow-orange color lend the painting a jumpy energy. (Through Jan 12th.)
Danish painter Tal R translates the world into more vibrant colors in paintings which give everyday places a fairground appeal, albeit a slightly foreboding one. In ‘The Minute,’ the biomorphic shapes of the clouds suggest strange happenings while a dark corner looks like the folded corner of a book page. (At Chelsea’s Cheim & Read Gallery through January 12th.)
Ever struggle to print something from the computer? Wade Guyton heroizes the process, creating his artwork by devising images on his computer, then battling to run his linen supports through large printers. The untitled piece on the left started as an x typed on his screen; the multi-panel piece on the right as the word ‘us.’ (At the Whitney Museum through 1/13.)
Elegant and sinister at the same time, Jeff Zimmerman’s hand-blown and hand-shaped glass light sculptures from 2009 are now on view as part of the Museum of Art and Design’s ‘Playing with Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass.’ If you enjoy learning and sharing about contemporary art and design, consider volunteering as a MAD Docent; training begins this spring.
Ellie Murphy’s ‘Omega Female’ is a standout in ‘To Be A Lady,’ a diverse group show of work by 45 female artists at the 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery. Using acrylic yarn, cotton, and steel in one of her signature large yarn sculptures, Murphy creates a figure as totemic as it is folksy, suggesting a anthropomorphized sea creature with long tentacles as well as a prairie settler with brown braid and print-patterned, pillow-like head. (Through Jan 18th).
In a 20-year retrospective of his work at Chelsea’s Metro Pictures Gallery, Gary Simmons’ ‘Stardust, Blizzard’ from 2006 is a standout. Simmons turns two terms for cocaine into beautiful but haunting text images using his signature, hand-smearing technique. (Through Jan 19th.)
In advance of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui’s show of monumental works at the Brooklyn Museum opening early next month, Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery is currently showing elegant new, quasi-textile artworks created from the artist’s signature material – metal sourced from recycled liquor bottles. (through Jan 19th).
