Originally displayed in an outdoor exhibition by the avant-garde Gutai Art Association in 1956, a recreation of Mononaga Sadamasa’s ‘Work (Water)’ in polyethylene tubes filled with ink-colored water stretches across the Guggenheim Museum’s atrium to create elegant, hammock-like cradles for a valuable natural resource.
Motonaga Sadamasa, ‘Work (Water)’ installation view at the Guggenheim, ’56 (original), 2011.
Lisbon-based artist Jorge Queiroz barely allows a human figure to materialize in this psychologically intense painting, but his indistinct human presence turns the abstract shapes in the background into suggestions of places and objects of significance. (At Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co through March 2nd).
Jorge Queiroz, Waiting on the Room, oil stick and vinyl ink on canvas, 2012.
Known for her meticulous drawings of cult-like, all-female communities engaged in mysterious tasks, Amy Cutler explores the individual identities of select characters in ‘Brood,’ her latest solo show at Leslie Tonkonow in Chelsea. Her subjects range from beatific to stern, with this Nordic blond character falling somewhere in between. (Through March 9th).
Amy Cutler, Magda, gouache on paper, 2011.
Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s 9-screen installation at Chelsea’s Luhring Augustine has been a hands-down ‘Chelsea Gallery Tour’ favorite lately. Kjartansson and a band of musician friends occupy different rooms in a 200 year old Hudson River mansion as they perform a 53 minute song, which fades away but sticks in the memory as the group exits the house and trails away over green hills. (Through March 16th).
Ragnar Kjartansson, ‘The Visitors,’ installation view, Nine channel HD video projection, 2012.
Australian artist Patricia Piccinini has said that anxiety and wonder are at the heart of her bizarrely intriguing human-animal hybrid creatures, which explains why this fleshy fish is simultaneously repulsive and fascinating. Titled ‘Eulogy,’ the piece suggests both a connection between this businessman and toxic waters that spawned this mutant and an individual’s personal loss. (At Haunch of Venison, Chelsea, through March 2nd).
Patricia Piccinini, ‘Eulogy,’ silicon, fiberglass, human hair, clothing, 2011.
In Keith Sonnier’s ‘Ba-O-Ba’ series, lines of neon connect geometric glass shapes and bathe the surrounding space in color. Placed on the floor against the wall, the pieces originally served as performance sets that would include the performers’ bodies as a further reflected element. (At Mary Boone Gallery’s Chelsea space through Feb 23rd).
Keith Sonnier, ‘Ba-O-Ba II,’ neon, glass/transformer, 1969.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ blobby anthropomorph nestles in a spray painted chair while Anna Betbeze’s burnt, torn and cut Flokati rug on the wall behind acts as perfectly alien décor in this otherworldly group show at Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash. (Through Feb 23rd).
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, ‘Hand,’ spray paint, ceramic, chair, 2012 (foreground). Anna Betbeze, ‘Lava,’ wool and ash, 2012 (background).
West-coast conceptual art legend Allen Ruppersberg is known for adopting LA’s colorful roadside signage (popular for advertising garage sales, etc) for his text-based artwork. Here on 10th Ave and 18th Street in Chelsea, he commands a huge sign of his own to present a series of (romantic?) meditations on relationships between ‘me’ and ‘you.’ (Presented by High Line Art/Friends of the High Line through Feb 28th).
Allen Ruppersberg, You & Me, print on vinyl, 25 x 75 feet, 2013.
Artistic collaborators McDermott & McGough isolate a moment of dawning terror on the face of Anne Francis in the Twilight Zone, then make it more jolting by painting it on the face of nine, one-foot square blocks. This marriage of Minimalism and Pop amuses (by resembling a giant Rubik’s cube) while its fractured state unsettles. (At Cheim & Read through Feb 23rd.)
McDermott & McGough, Just a Memory, 1967, 9 wooden cubes, 2012.
This tidy pile of tangerines looks good enough to eat, but beware – they’re plaster sculptures created by Margaret Lee, who has become known for her ultra life-like fruits and veg. Placed next a blue cushion on a wooden table, this minimal, three-dimensional still life offers the visual pleasure of an orderly arrangment. (At Murray Guy, Chelsea through Feb 23rd).
Margaret Lee, Tangerines and Bench, mixed media, 2013.
Constructed of discarded building materials, Song Dong’s ‘Doing Nothing’ mountains mark the replacement of China’s traditional historical obstacles (‘three big mountains’) of imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, by current concerns about education, health care and housing. Neon characters on the wall spelling out ‘doing’ and ‘nothing’ are subtle protests of slow progress. (At Pace Gallery, 534 and 510 West 25th Street through Feb 23rd).
Song Dong, Doing Nothing Mountains, installation view, window, glass, hinge, doorknob, handrail, lock, multi-layer board, socket, wire and paint, 2011-12.
On a trip to Russia, New York photographer Andy Freeberg was struck by the characterful older women who act as museum guards in the country’s major museums. In a fascinating series titled ‘Guardians,’ Freeberg captures the unposed women as their postures and expressions reflect or contrast the surrounding art. (At Andrea Meislin Gallery through March 2nd).
Andy Freeberg, Mikhail Nesterov’s Blessed St Sergius of Radonezh, Russian State Museum, archival pigment print, 2009.
Young New York artist Anna Plesset’s latest solo show at the Lower East Side gallery ‘Untitled,’ is a tour de force of trompe l’oeil illusion, with work that looks photocopied but is actually hand drawn and paintings of flowers made to look like paint flicked photos. But one of the show’s most remarkable paintings is easily missed – this minute self-portrait of the artist in a partly hidden pose. (Through Feb 24th).
Anna Plesset, ‘Self Portrait,’ oil on latex, 2013.
London-based Guardian art critic Adrian Searle calls British artist David Shrigley’s artwork ‘appalling, abysmal, and painfully dire,’ but likes it so much he has it tattooed on his belly. Shrigley’s off-beat sense of humor encourages such contradictory impulses, as does this cat pairing, which seems aimed at exploiting any viewer’s insecurities with charming hokeyness. (At Chelsea’s Anton Kern Gallery through Feb 16).
David Shrigley, ‘Cat (It’s OK, It’s not OK), acrylic on canvas stuffed with foam, 2012.
Young Israeli painter Maya Bloch is making a splash on the Lower East Side with her liquidy portraits of anonymous characters. This one’s indirect gaze, sloping face and coiffure that looks more like geology than a hairdo suggests an ageless, ghostly presence. (At Thierry Goldberg Gallery through Feb 17th).
Maya Bloch, Untitled, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2012.
Bureau Gallery’s exhibition space is so small (one of the tiniest in the city), it’s hard to find room to take a photograph of ‘Monsalvat,’ a sprawling exhibition of work by over fifty artists. Inspired by the Arthurian tale of the Fischer King, artist/curator duo Merkx & Gwynne recreate a version of the king’s castle here, complete with mystical relics (including the grail) crafted by stand-out young artists. (On the Lower East Side through Feb 17th).
Installation view of ‘Monsalvat’ at Bureau Gallery, Feb 2013.
Nari Ward’s installation of 300 abandoned baby strollers culled from Harlem streets in 1993 is a far cry from the banks of stroller parking around the city’s more family-friendly neighborhoods today. Here, surrounded and entwined by flattened fire hoses (they were first displayed in an abandoned fire house) and displayed to the sounds of Mahalia Jackson’s ‘Amazing Grace,’ they’re emblems of a gritty, made-do urban existence. (At the New Museum’s Studio 231 space next door to the museum through April 21st)
Nari Ward, ‘Amazing Grace,’ installation view at Studio 231, New Museum, approx 300 baby strollers and fire hoses, 1993.
South African photograher Zwelethu Mthethwa’s mother had a hope chest, a custom made box gifted to her when she married and left her childhood home. Likened to a time capsule, women keep the chest their entire lives. In Mthethwa’s ‘Hope Chest’ series, we don’t get a look inside the boxes, but what we do see – the lives and circumstances of everyday South Africans – are just as fascinating. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through Feb 23rd).
Zwelethu Mthethwa, Untitled (Hope Chest series), digital c-print, 2012. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery.
A picture of a woman with a plastic bag, bubble wrap or toilet paper rolls on her head is going to get nothing but laughs, right? Not if it’s one of Dutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens’ portraits of his daughter, Paula, who manages an ethereal elegance while wearing a stack of doilies that evokes the elaborate collars worn by sitters in Old Master paintings. (At Danziger Gallery, Chelsea, through Feb 16th).
Hendrik Kerstens, ‘Doily,’ pigment print, 2011. Courtesy of Danziger Gallery.
Facility with any particular medium isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for making outstanding artwork any more, which makes Joseph Stashkevetch’s detailed nature scenes all the more enjoyable. Created by sanding away the surface of his rag paper and adding to it with conte crayon, his drawings have an engaging soft focus. Both Stashkevetch’s effort and the geological process he describes are astounding. (At Von Lintel Gallery through Feb 23rd).
‘Drawing in space’ is a familiar term used to describe abstract sculpture, but it turns literal in Wang Xieda’s new bronze sculpture at James Cohan Gallery, which brings Chinese calligraphy into three-dimensions. (In Chelsea through Feb 9th).
On the subject of ceramics (see yesterday’s post about Takuro Kuwata), Matthias Merkel Hess takes an amusing position on aesthetics vs use value in contemporary ceramics with these beautiful gas cans. (At Louis B. James, Lower East Side through Feb 22nd. )
Though Takuro Kuwata’s first US solo exhibition is titled ‘Flavor of Nature,’ the vivid reds, blues, golds and metallic glazes of his ceramics come across as anything but natural. This ‘stone explosion’ vessel was made by adding stones to his clay mix, which surface when fired. (At Salon 94 Bowery, Lower East Side, through Feb 25).
British conceptual artist Lucy Skaer once left a diamond and a scorpion together on an Amsterdam street. ‘Us to Them V,’ a photo of Skaer comparing natural materials to French Post-Impressionist Eduoard Vuillard’s 1895 painting ‘Album’ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, isn’t quite so dangerous. But it does make a strange juxtaposition that interrupts usual ways of thinking of 19th century art. (At Simone Subal Gallery the group show ‘It’s Over There,’ Lower East Side through Feb 10th).
Ishmael Randall Weeks’ mountain range – suspended in the middle of Eleven Rivington’s Chrystie Street space – is composed of carved texts about revolution in Latin America, turning writing about imagined utopias into a depiction of a real place. (On the Lower East Side through Feb 10th).
LA video artist Doug Aitken, known for ambitious projects like his film projections on the exterior walls of MoMA and the Hirshhorn Museum, has created a smaller scale but no less intense installation piece for his latest show at 303 Gallery in Chelsea. The centerpiece is ‘Sonic Fountain,’ which allows drips to fall from the ceiling into a hole dug in the gallery floor in patterns that create a song that’s been likened to breathing. (Through March 23rd).
Turin-based artist Fabio Viale – who started working with marble when he was 16 – once rolled a 2,000 lb marble sculpture of a tire through the city streets. These pristine marble ‘tires’ haven’t seen that much action but tied together, they’re a surprising feat of technical accomplishment. See them Saturday, Feb 9th, 2-4pm on Merrily’s Lower East Side gallery tour. (At Sperone Westwater on the Lower East Side, through Feb 23rd).
‘Festone’ (festoon) feels like the perfect title for this festive, beautifully colored acrylic painting by Turin-based painter Giorgio Griffa. Hurricane Sandy damaged the delicate-appearing work in his first New York solo show since 1970 in October; now the prolific Griffa, who folds and shelves his paintings upon completion, is back with a new selection of pleasingly minimal abstractions worth celebrating. (At Chelsea’s Casey Kaplan Gallery through March 2nd).
Context is everything when it comes to Gaylen Gerber’s ‘collaborative’ artworks, including this Nigerian cowrie shell currency basket and a Makonde mask from Mozambique/Tanzania from mid-20th century, which the artist has titled ‘Support’ and covered in white oil paint. Questions of whose work is whose and whether Gerber is defacing, erasing or enhancing the ‘supports’ mingles with thoughts of Picasso, et al’s appropriation of African art, all to provocative effect. (At Chelsea’s Wallspace Gallery through Feb 9th).
How do you morph a white-cube gallery into a revitalized, post-industrial space? Try Matthew Darbyshire’s vinyl banners, based on an architect’s rendering of public space. They create a pleasingly anodyne setting, perfect to host Darren Bader’s conceptual art piece in which plants and people converse with each other (or in the moment captured here, huddle over an iPhone.) (At Lisa Cooley Gallery, Lower East Side, through Feb 3rd).
