Minimalist icon Robert Mangold continues to explore ways of painting around a void in this recent ring painting, which moves the eye around by juxtaposing an angular side and curved side while suggesting hula-hoop-like movement with an off-center white line. (At Pace Gallery’s 510 West 25th Street location through May 3rd).
Robert Mangold, Compound Ring II Variant (White Line), 2012.
Phrases like, ‘One is not born but rather becomes a woman,’ from feminist pioneer Simone de Beauvoir or actor Roseann Barr’s to-the-point observation that ‘Nobody gives you power you just take it,’ appear in Egyptian-born, Harlem-based artist Ghada Amer’s latest show at Chelsea’s Cheim and Read Gallery. Here, a bronze sculpture with text in Arabic extends the conversation to women in the Arab world. (Through May 10th).
Ghada Amer, foreground sculpture: The Words I Love the Most, bronze with black patina, 60 x 60 x 60 inches, 2012. Background painting on the right: The Big Black Bang – RFGA, acrylic, embroidery and gel medium on canvas, 102 x 132 inches, 2013.
Once loved, now up on blocks, this childhood relic looks like it’s headed for the dump if it doesn’t disintegrate first. However, like the rest of the work in this unassuming exhibition by LA-based sculptor Kristin Morgin, it’s an eye-teasing triumph made entirely of unfired clay. (At Chelsea’s Zach Feuer Gallery through May 3rd).
Kristen Morgin, Madonna with Tricycle, unfired clay, paint, ink, wood, wire, 20 x 16 x 28 inches, 2013.
Part of the Museum of Art and Design’s exhibition ‘Out of Hand,’ which showcases art and design made using digital fabrication, this extraordinary sweatshirt was created by scanning a model’s body, digitally modeling a garment that relates personally in some way to the model (in this case, a man fascinated by a story of a boy raised by a wolf), CNC laser cutting the fabric and hand assembling. (Through June 1st).
The T/Shirt Issue, No 419 from Digital Portraits Series, jersey, iron-on interface, 2008.
LA painter Laura Owens mashes together levels of reality in this huge, untitled painting, blending an inspirational phrase, a rather grotesque character pouring lemonade from his faucet-nose, a bike wheel (Duchamp homage?), a grid of varying size and thickness and a finger swipe pattern over all of it, suggesting that meaning is being uncovered or wiped away. (At Greene Naftali Gallery through April 26th).
Laura Owens, Untitled, flashe, silkscreen inks, oil, acrylic, charcoal, bike wheel and gesso on linen, 108 x 84 inches, 2014.
Strikingly beautiful photos by Dusseldorf-based photographer Elger Esser of the Giardino di Ninfa, located south of Rome, mark a return for the artist to the south of Italy, where he grew up. Situated around the abandoned ancient city of Ninfa and enhanced with English landscape elements, the garden is the definition of enchanting. (In Chelsea at Sonnabend Gallery through April 26th).
Elger Esser, Ninfa – (Kallisto), Directprint, AluDibond, Shellac, 79 7/8 x 100 ¾ inches, 2013.
Drawing on his Native American roots and life in downtown New York (where he’s lived for over 30 years), Brad Kahlhamer creates a new culture populated by figures based on Hopi katsina dolls and enigmatic heroes. (At Jack Shainman Gallery’s 20th Street location through April 26th).
Brad Kahlhamer, background: American Horse, acrylic, ink, spray paint and pencil on bed sheet, 94 ½ x 72 ½ inches, 2014. Foreground: Next Level Figures, wood, wire, bells, leather, acrylic, mirrors, spray paint, 2014.
Born to Georgia sharecroppers, based in New York, the late American painter Benny Andrews used his personal history to address injustice in works like this chilling painted collage of a monstrous hunter and his beastly hound. It’s a standout in the excellent ‘Rising Up/Uprising’ at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, a show commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (In Chelsea through May 3rd).
Benny Andrews, Hunters, 1989, oil on canvas with painted fabric collage and zipper, 72 1/8 x 52 inches.
LA-based photographer Matthew Brandt uses old technology to make up-to-date photographs in his latest show at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery. For this image of a pre-historical creature, he coated an aluminum plate with tar from the La Brea Tar Pits, covered it with a negative he shot of the fossil, and exposed it to light to record a fixed image. (Through May 10th).
Matthew Brandt, La Brea B2, heliograph made with tar from the La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles, California, on aluminum, unique, 2013.
Late German artist Martin Kippenberger stepped into the role of the living, dying, hopeful and lost by portraying different characters from Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa in his 1996 series of paintings and these photos, shot by his wife Elfie Semotan. (At Skarstedt Gallery, Upper East Side, through April 26th).
Martin Kippenberger, photographs by Elfie Semotan, installation view of ‘Raft of the Medusa’ at Skarstedt Gallery, April 2014.
Berlin-based artist couple Nina Römer and Torsten Römer travel the world photographing youth subcultures doing their own thing; here, two girls strut their Japanese street fashions. (At Freight and Volume, Chelsea, through April 26th.)
Römer & Römer, Face to Face, 79 x 104 inches, 2010.
Created from recycled materials, Rob Fischer’s ‘Good Weather (Glass House)’ on view at Chelsea’s Derek Eller Gallery offers bare bones living with a utilitarian kitchen and basic loft bedroom as well as an opportunity to commune with your surroundings, whether urban or rural. (Through April 19th).
Rob Fischer, Good Weather (Glass House),’ glass, steel, screenprint ink, acrylic and latex paint, construction adhesive, wood floor, lights, wires, 175 x 223 x 126 inches, 2014.
When hundreds of dealers from around the world converge at an art fair, how do they set themselves apart? At Art Basel Miami, Simon Preston Gallery brought their gallery doors with them per Vienna-based artist Hans Schabus’s instructions. Back in New York, with new doors installed outside, Schabus displayed the earlier versions, along with a rendering of the temporary plywood exterior and a drawing that questioned the importance of a gallery’s local setting. (On the Lower East Side through April 14, 2014).
Hans Schabus, installation view of ‘Lower East Side,’ at Simon Preston Gallery, March, 2014.
After visiting a chilling display of human bones at a cloister in Rome, Viennese artist Erwin Wurm adapted his signature ‘One Minute Sculptures’ (for which individuals pose with everyday objects in creative ways) into ‘One Minute Forever’ memento mori with a humorous twist. (At Chelsea’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery through April 19th).
Erwin Wurm, One Minute Forever (Bucket), epoxy resin, polyurethane, wood, metal, buckets, unique, 2013.
Titled ‘(In)Security,’ this detail-view of an enticing if creepy new painting by New York artist Ross Bleckner offers the unnerving suggestion that we’re being watched, albeit by a range of characterful eyes. (At Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea through April 26th).
Ross Bleckner, “(In)Security,” 27 x 144 inches, oil/linen, 2013-14.
Two tumbling cans of caffeine free Diet Coke with enlarged text freefall through copper-colored fields in LA-based artist Brenna Youngblood’s large painting. The work suggests a chemical process on copper akin to Warhol’s piss paintings but using a spray of soda instead. (At Jack Tilton Gallery on the Upper East Side, through April 19th).
Brenna Youngblood, DKNY (Classic), mixed media on wood panel, 72 3/16 x 47 ½ inches, 2014.
As we leave behind winter’s bleakness, Olaf Breuning’s whimsical ‘Clouds’ sculpture at the corner of 60th Street and Fifth Ave poised to come into its own as the park comes to life. Roll on spring! (Exhibition by Public Art Fund at Doris C. Freedman Plaza through August 24th).
Olaf Breuning, Clouds, polished and painted aluminum and steel, 2014.
The rainbow and landscape paintings, blue carpet and cat towers bedecked with fake fruit in LA-based artist Friedrich Kunath’s latest solo show at Chelsea’s Andrea Rosen Gallery are an invitation to ponder what meaning can emerge from such disparate if colorful trappings. A gallery statement suggests Kunath is offering, ‘An invitation into a perpetual joke.’ (Through April 26th.)
Friedrich Kunath, installation view of at Andrea Rosen Gallery, March 2014 including ‘Meloncholy Towers’ and work from the series, ‘I was thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie,’ 2013-14.
Guangdong-born Stanford professor Xie Xiaoze expands his ‘Chinese Library’ series with huge new paintings of tattered, scholarly books. The show also includes paintings of politically sensitive images from Chinese social media giant Weibo relating to corruption, environmental damage and more. (At Chelsea’s Chambers Fine Art through April 12th).
Xie Xiaoze, Chinese Library No. 57, oil on canvas, 48 x 74 ¼ inches, 2014.
As old buildings come down and new luxury condos go up along the High Line in Chelsea, an exhibition of American photographer Berenice Abbott’s WPA-sponsored ‘Changing New York’ photos from the 30s at Howard Greenberg Gallery puts the transformation in the context of the city’s constant evolution. This picture memorializes a modest business now replaced by the residential towers of Peter Cooper Village at the other (east) end of 23rd Street. (In the 57th Street area, through April 12th).
Berenice Abbott, Henry Maurer, 420-422 East 23rd Street, looking southeast, Manhattan, June 14, 1938, gelatin silver print; printed c. 1938, 7 5/8 x 9 5/8 inches.
New York ceramic artist Kathy Butterly’s new work at 57th Street gallery Tibor de Nagy demonstrates her inexhaustible ability to invent new, evocative forms for both standard vessels and abstract shapes. Though less than 9 inches high, the tiny artworks are powerful. (Through April 12th).
Kathy Butterly, Chatter (foreground), clay, glaze, 6 x 7 x 4 1/8 inches, 2013.
As part of a residency at Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum, New York artist Mika Tajima created textiles with a fascinating back story. Taking recordings from factories using Jacquard looms (a precursor to digital) and from server co-location sites (representing new technologies), she translated the sound waves into patterns woven on fabric which was then mounted on acoustic panels to create an object that simultaneously is cutting edge and historical. (At Eleven Rivington on the Lower East Side through April 13th).
Mika Tajima, Negative Entropy (Caledonia Dye Works, quad), cotton, wood, acoustic baffling felt; made in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, 78 x 54 inches, 2014.
A stand out in the last Whitney Biennial for slides made by aging and distressing film stock (even burying it in dirt for a specified time), Luther Price shows recent slides and work from this 80s in this sobering show that suggests humans who have experienced similarly devastating processes. (At Participant, Inc. on the Lower East Side through April 13th).
Luther Price, installation view of ‘The Years Made Flies,’ (foreground: ‘Ground Piece One (Five Life Size Figures), 1982-83, plastic, metal, dirt) at Participant, Inc., March 2014.
San Francisco-based artist Jim Campbell works with sophisticated technology to make low-res images that offer a fragment of the information we’re used to in the HD age; yet images like this one of a yellow cab whizzing by hold viewers’ attention by capturing the recognizable action of the street. (At Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery through April 19th. Also at the Museum of the Moving Image in Long Island City through June 15th.)
Jim Campbell, Untitled (Commuters), LEDs, metal, wire, custom electronics, 43 x 63 x 18 ½ inches, 2014.
A giant hare, titled after the constellation Lepus, sits tethered to a mobile suspending what appear as fragments of patterned cloth colored shades of night-blue in a new work by Anne Chu at Tracy Williams, Ltd in Chelsea. Skinned and with fur, alert yet stationary, the hare seems as momentarily suspended between states as the mobile. (Through April 19th).
Anne Chu, Lepus, leather, metal, ceramic, 2014.
A bird woman, eerie twins and a girl with branches growing out of her body are just some of the odd characters populating Swedish artist Klara Kristalova’s show of evocative new ceramic sculpture at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side. Inspired by folk tales, daily life, movies and even overheard conversations, the psychologically charged figures hint at intriguing stories. (At Lehmann Maupin Gallery through April 26th. Kristalova is also showing at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin on Madison Ave through April 12th).
Klara Kristalova, Birdwoman, glazed stoneware, 2013.
Sprawling and jam-packed with painting, sculpture, video and more, the ‘Brucennial’ – the biannual, tongue-in-cheek response to the Whitney Biennial organized by anonymous art collective ‘Bruce High Quality Foundation’ – is a hive of activity worth witnessing, especially as this version is billed as the ‘last’ Brucennial. (Through April 4th at 837 Washington Street, opposite the Standard Hotel.)
Installation view of the 2014 Brucennial, March 2014.
Belgian artist Peter Buggenhout presents a New York audience with two of his well-known ‘Blind Leading the Blind’ sculptures through the 19th of this month in Chelsea. Composed of wrecked industrial or construction materials covered in dust, and appearing to be the remnants of some long-ago disaster, they represent a chaotic but forgotten past. (At Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 21st Street location, through April 19th).
Peter Buggenhout, installation view of ‘Caterpillar Logic II,’ March 2014, Barbara Gladstone Gallery.
