Exposed in its confining crib, this body-sized stick of butter (actually beeswax) by American sculptor Robert Gober is perfectly formed but slightly repulsive. Scattered apples, meticulously crafted in wood are all-American (recalling apple pie or Johnny Appleseed) but suggest that temptations lurk from the earliest days of life. (At Matthew Marks Gallery’s 523 West 24th Street location).
Robert Gober, Untitled, wood, paint, beeswax, 50 ½ x 53 ¼ x 28 inches, 1993-2013.
Color Field painter Sam Gilliam’s unstretched canvas from 1970 is a standout in Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s current exhibition ‘Beyond the Spectrum: Abstraction in African American Art, 1950-1975’ for taking the space of a painting into the space of the gallery. Like a huge paint rag or a giant apron, this piece from 1970 evokes an object with use-value, hung momentarily on the wall. (In Chelsea through March 8th).
Sam Gilliam, One Thunder, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 70 x 23 x 11 inches, 1970.
Known for her lovingly painted renditions of architecture and industrial equipment created in a single, long sitting, Josephine Halvorson has turned her attention to her more immediate surroundings in her new Massachusetts home. Using paint to render a door covered with chipped paint, Halvorson’s knowing play with her material is a pleasure to experience. (At Sikkema Jenkins & Co through March 1st).
Josephine Halvorson, Woodshed Door, oil on linen, 70 x 35 inches, 2013.
Powered by small fans at the bottom of wall-mounted glass tubes, Ping-Pong balls play a solitary game as they whiz up and down in Ohio-based artist Erwin Redl’s mesmerizing installation at Chelsea’s Bitforms Gallery. (Through March 15th).
Erwin Redl, Levitate (thirty-one), suspended glass tubes, fans, Ping-Pong balls, microprocessor, 11 x 31 x 1 ft, 2014.
Iconic abstract sculptor Richard Tuttle has turned his focus to textiles in his exhibition at Pace Gallery’s 57th Street location, a prelude to his October 2014 commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Here, a seemingly casually placed brown fabric at center sets off the texture and color of a branch at bottom while a colorful pattern of material roughly wrapped around a life-ring-like shape draws the eye in. (Through March 15th).
Richard Tuttle, Looking for the Map 10, fabric, branch, paint and plastic, 39” x 24” x 10 1/2,” 2013 – 14.
As a kid, LA-based British artist Kour Pour grew up watching his dad repair and work with carpets in his rug shop. He continues the tradition, after a fashion, by silkscreening carpets from auction catalogues onto canvas, then painting and sanding the images into something entirely new. (At Untitled Gallery through Feb 23rd).
Kour Pour, detail from ‘Kour Pour’ at Untitled Gallery Jan 2014, acrylic on canvas over panel, 96 x 72 inches.
Energy drinks, green tea tins and more consumer packaging form the basis of semi-retired fashion photography icon David LaChapelle’s latest series, ‘Refineries.’ Working with professional model builders, LaChapelle makes our consumption of fossil fuels – and the materials create from them – personal. (At Chelsea’s Paul Kasmin Gallery through March 1st.)
David LaChapelle, Land Scape Riverside, chromogenic print, 71 x 93 inches, 2013.
Montreal-born, Long Island City based sculptor David Altmejd once again excites the senses by filling Chelsea’s Andrea Rosen Gallery with one of his trademark vitrine-like sculptures. Throughout the sculpture, hands appear to manipulate various materials, suggesting the act of creation, while fake fruits and armies of ants bring to mind decay. (Through March 8th).
David Altmejd, The Flux and the Puddle, installation view at Andrea Rosen Gallery, Feb 2014, mixed media, 2014.
Roughly translated to ‘among other things,’ Mark Fox’s ‘Inter Alia’ assembles snippets of pop culture image and text in a sculpture that appears remarkably to hover next to the gallery wall. (At Robert Miller Gallery through Feb 22nd).
Mark Fox, Inter Alia, ink, marker, watercolor, pencil on paper with archival tape, 21 ½ x 16 ½ inches, 2013.
Inspired by early Christian and Mesopotamian building practices that imbued built structures with spiritual meaning, young Brooklyn-based artist Jeff Landman transformed timbers from a Pennsylvania barn into furniture-like platforms for transcendent experience for his first solo show at Tracy Williams, Ltd. (In Chelsea through Feb 22nd).
Jeff Landman, installation view of ‘Working on a Building,’ with ‘Bed,’ white oak, linen, 2013 in the foreground. Tracy Williams, Ltd., Feb 2014.
‘Eager,’ Allison Schulnik’s new stop-motion animation starts with restrained dancing figures and quickly ups the pace as nature itself joins in the dance with flowers bursting forth in bloom and swaying with exuberant fecundity. (At Chelsea’s ZieherSmith through Feb 22nd.)
Allison Schulnik, still from ‘Eager,’ clay-animated, stop-motion video, 8 min, 30 sec, ed of 5, 2014.
Though Minimalist artist Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light tubing sculputres are well-known, his editioned work on paper is less often exhibited. At David Zwirner Gallery’s 20th Street Chelsea location, this scrolled handmade paper is a cylinder on a different scale but one whose color is as electric as his signature works. (Through March 1st).
Dan Flavin, untitled, double-sided color aquatint printed in violet and yellow on Twinrocker handmade paper, rolled and stitched, 7 3/8 x 30 x 8 1/8 inches, 1994.
Small and meticulously handmade, New York artist Lori Ellison’s untitled ink on notebook paper drawings on view at McKenzie Fine Art on the Lower East Side jettison high production values in favor of an absorbingly obsessive art practice. (Through Feb 16th).
Lori Ellison, Untitled, ink on notebook paper, 11 x 8 ½ inches, 2013.
Fans of Marilyn Minter’s super realist paintings – and their sullied glitz – will want to catch her early work included in the group exhibition ‘Bad Conscience’ at Chelsea’s Metro Pictures. Here, ‘Spill’ from 1976 conveys the ‘ugh’ feeling of encountering a spilled drink on institutional linoleum. (Through Feb 22nd).
Marilyn Minter, Spill, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 1976.
John Ahearn’s plaster sculptures have memorably captured moments of New York street life for decades. Chelsea’s Alexander and Bonin Gallery is showing Ahearn’s portrait sculptures from the 1980s, made in his South Bronx studio. Here, a couple share a tight embrace that suggests struggle as much as devotion. (Through Feb 22nd).
Luis and Virginia Arroyo, acrylic on plaster, 19 ¾ x 25 ¾ x 10 3/4, 1980.
Iconic Process artist Lynda Benglis excites the senses with a new selection of ceramic sculptures hand formed from tubes and slabs of clay. (At Chelsea’s Cheim & Read through Feb 15th).
Lynda Benglis, Untitled, glazed ceramic, 20 x 16, 12 inches, 2013.
Known for using evocative materials to create sculptural mediations on the African diaspora, Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey has upped the ante in his recent exhibition at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery, where he’s exhibiting this startling taxidermied croc who appears to climb his way past memorial-like markers with dates and initials. (At Jack Shainman’s 24th Street location through Feb 15th).
Radcliffe Bailey, On Your Way Up, tarp, crocodile and steel, 120 x 106 x 10 inches, 2013.
If these photographs of farm workers holding tools of their trade look like they’re wearing masks, it’s due in part to artist Jackie Nicherson’s desire to make documentary photography that doesn’t exploit its subject. Instead, her recent series, ‘Terrain,’ shot on Southern and East African farms, zeros in on part-hidden individuals to focus attention one of Africa’s biggest industries. (At Jack Shainman Gallery’s 20th Street location through Feb 15th).
Jackie Nickerson, installation view of ‘Terrain,’ at Jack Shainman Gallery, February, 2014.
New York based artist Park McArthur’s installation of ramps she’s recently used – from a splintered board to a sturdy new ramp – to access art spaces and her residential building in downtown Manhattan tell a succinct and eye-opening tale of unintentional discrimination. (At Essex Street Gallery through Feb 23rd).
Park McArthur, installation view of ‘Ramps,’ at Essex Street Gallery, Jan 2014.
Titles like ‘Ministry of Hate’ (pictured here) and ‘Hill and Dale, Black-Ops’ reveal dark themes behind Sue Williams’ latest, vibrantly colored paintings. Each work in her solo show at Chelsea’s 303 Gallery includes abstracted representations of the WTC, comingled with bodies in an oblique comment on life during the War on Terror. (Through Feb 22nd).
Sue Williams, Ministry of Hate, oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 84,” 2013.
Bodies and furniture become one in New York artist Robert Fontinelli’s huge drawings, touching on materialism and how we define our personalities through design choices. Here in Feature, Inc’s front windows, two men merged with theater seats and each other suggest two identities becoming one. (On the Lower East Side through Feb 16th).
Robert Fontinelli, Twinks in Prouve Amphitheater Seats, 2014.
Working from collages and digitally manipulated photos, New York artist Angelina Gualdoni merges still life and abstraction to captivating effect. This painting pits a ghostly assemblage created from red and yellow color zones in the foreground against a silhouetted plant in tropical colors behind, neither of which seem to settle in their places. (At Asya Geisberg Gallery, through Feb 15th).
Angelina Gualdoni, Rooms, oil and acrylic on canvas, 47” x 52,” 2013.
For his first solo gallery show in New York since his retrospective at the Whitney Museum in fall ’12, New York based artist Wade Guyton returns to his signature style with digitally created, minimalist ‘paintings’ printed in an epic battle with his Epson printer. (At Chelsea’s Petzel Gallery through Feb 22nd).
Wade Guyton, Untitled, Epson UltraChrome K3 inkjet on linen, 2014 (one painting on each wall, both with the same title, materials and date.)
Working by the light of a lamp or with no artificial light at all, Milwaukee-based artist John Riepenhoff has created his night sky paintings in the city and country. Explaining that he can’t see much of what he’s doing while he’s painting, each is a surprise in the morning. (At Marlborough Gallery, Lower East Side through Feb 9th.)
John Riepenhoff, Plein Air (Isle of Eigg), acrylic on canvas, 2013.
Tempting and repulsive at the same time, this table loaded with cakes, fruit, petits fours and other delectables crafted from porcelain by young Brooklyn-based artist Jessica Stoller equate the female body with excess via eye-popping abundance. (At PPOW Gallery through Feb 8th).
Jessica Stoller, Still Life, porcelain, china paint, luster, mixed-media, 65 x 47 x 23 ½,” 2013.
Rotting fruits in bright hues, fiddlehead ferns, flowers, egg casings, leaves and other natural materials in various states of decay form the gorgeous palette and patterns of Tanya Marcuse’s new photo series at Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea. (Through Feb 22nd).
Tanya Marcuse, Fallen No 439 (seen here in detai)l, pigment print, 37 ¾ x 48,” ed 1/7, 2013.
Critics have unanimously praised Sarah Crowner’s colorful installation, ‘The Wave’ at Lower East Side Gallery Nicelle Beauchene, for chasing away the winter blahs with a gorgeous aqua-colored tile, stage-like floor. Here, Crowner quotes textile designs from Alexander Girard that enhance the folksy beauty of this installation. (Through Feb 2nd).
Sarah Crowner, installation view of ‘The Wave’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, Jan 2013.
Photos of anonymous women, taken from the early days of photography to the 1920s, line the walls of Jack Hanley Gallery as part of Dutch artist Mathilde Ter Heijne’s testament to the gradually improving status of women. On the back of each is a biography of a woman well-known in her time for advancing women’s causes. Visitors can take one away for inspiration. (On the Lower East Side through Feb 2nd).
Mathilde Ter Heijne, installation view of ‘Woman to Go,’ at Jack Hanley Gallery, January 2014.
