Chicago artist and member of the iconic Hairy Who artist group, Suellen Rocca devises a language of her own in this symbol-laden, nearly 10-foot long canvas from 1965 at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. Dominated by the perfect beauties of advertising, simplified down to their silhouettes and made sinister with modified features, Rocca’s painting ponders the temptations of consumer culture. (Through Oct 22nd).
British artist Cornelia Parker merges the all-American image of the red barn with the equally iconic exterior of Norman Bates’ house from Hitchcock’s Psycho in her delightfully eerie Roof Garden commission at the Met. Constructed from an old barn and consisting of only two facades, the home invites comparison to the largely vacant 432 Park Ave that dominates the skyline in the background. (At the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Oct 31st).
Alix Pearlstein is known for artworks which juxtapose individuals from different demographics in order to question their relationships; for her recent solo show at On Stellar Rays, she substitutes cats for people, setting up dozens of relationships between the animals which are complicated by the installation’s title, Harem ROOM 1. (On the Lower East Side through Oct 18th).
Brie Ruais’ wall mounted sculpture is designed to record the trace of her hands forming the shape of the sculpture, Sally Saul’s little women offer a kind of canvas for her ceramic compositions and Sara Murphy’s leg sawhorses provide a support for unnamed table-top activities. All expound on the human body as inspiration for creativity. (At Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side through Oct 23rd).
Taking the doubts of Christ’s disciple Thomas as subject matter, Beijing-based artist Miao Xiaochun attempts a radical transformation of his own, departing from traditional art-making techniques to explore how hand drawing on canvas from 3D models might energize his paintings. (At Klein Sun Gallery through Oct 8th).
Awash in light, Hung Liu’s painting of an American sharecropper from near Jackson Mississippi belies the difficulty of this Depression era woman’s life as originally pictured in a photo by Dorothea Lange. Liu lifts her subject from the realm of documentary and considers her – via the same image – from an alternative angle. (At Nancy Hoffman Gallery through Oct 22nd).
Number 181 is a powerful presence at the entrance to abstract sculptor Leonardo Drew’s latest solo show at Chelsea gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Thick clusters of driftwood project out over viewers who draw close to explore small sticks with white ends laid out in lines between rows of variously shaped pieces of wood. In this and the show’s other sculptures, Drew powerfully juxtaposes chaotic arrangements and careful order. (Through Oct 8th).
Digital technology allows us to be (at least in our conscious minds) in more than one place at a time. Abstract painter Sarah Walker engages the possibility of seeing multiple dimensions at once in her ‘space machine’ paintings, canvases that seem to offer portals into parallel universes. (At Pierogi on the Lower East Side through Oct 9th).
The colors of Gustav Klimt’s famous portrait of Viennese girl Mada Primavesi (in the Met’s collection) inspired this lush painting by British artist Ian Davenport, seen here in detail. In Klimt’s original, Mada’s slim figure barely stands out against a background of white, lilac and pink color; here, Davenport allows the colors to take over fully. (At Paul Kasmin Gallery through Oct 22nd).
Hands down, the best views from any piece of New York real estate are to be had from a tiny, isolated shack on the side of a hill overlooking New York Bay. You can’t actually enter Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Cabin,’ for which she cast a small structure in concrete, but the surroundings are more the point anyway. With Manhattan’s skyscrapers in view to the north and the Statue of Liberty looking over from the east, this new permanent public artwork is both isolated and at the center of the city. (On permanent view on Governors Island).
Judith Schaechter’s relatively small stained glass work, ‘Botanical Study,’ opens a show of new work that pits the human body against fabulous depictions of nature in all its rich abundance. Here, Schaechter ignores humans entirely, zeroing in on a single drop of rich plant and insect life, amplifying the wonders of the natural world. (In Chelsea at Claire Oliver Gallery, through Oct 22nd).
LA artist Wayne White combines set design with his signature word paintings to eye-popping effect in his latest Chelsea solo exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery. Using found prints or paintings as backgrounds, he adds phrases that are completely at odds with their tranquil subject matter and more in keeping with iconic movie lines; here, the phrase, ‘I’m gonna play like you didn say that’ dominates a mountainscape. (Through Oct 8th).
While living in an artfully converted shipping container next to a Costco parking lot in Queens, New York sculptor Lars Fisk developed his hugely entertaining concept of a real-world place rolled up into a tidy, circular package. His first show at Chelsea’s Marlborough Gallery features the largest ‘Lot Ball’ to date, along with balls inspired by subway signs and a Mr Softee truck. (Through Oct 15th).
At the center of Rashid Johnson’s ‘architectural grid work,’ classically trained pianist Antoine Baldwin plays jazz compositions on a piano fixed high in the structure. Complex and intriguing sounds merge with an arrangement of evocative objects – plants in planters hand-made by the artist, blocks of shea butter, stacks of books relating to African-American culture and early video work by Johnson. Together they continue the artist’s theme of freedom and anxiety experienced by African-American men in America, offering escape through lush greenery (signaling travel to a warmer land) and abundant reading material (liberation for the mind) or imprisonment by a rigid grid. (At Hauser & Wirth Gallery through Oct 22nd).
Without cell phones at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers had to make do with paintings made after the fact. Not so in Mark Wagner’s imaginatively collaged ‘Wish You Were Here,’ in which he collages a scene from the back of the $2 bill with myriad fragments of $1 bills to portray George Washington through a different lens. (At Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 15th).
In David Opdyke’s nimble hands, subtly altered vintage postcards meant to stoke civic pride instead provoke dismay in a new series on view at Chelsea’s Magnan Metz Gallery. Opdyke prophesies doom in drawings, textiles and animations themed on class warfare and a dysfunctional government. Here, an august Chicago High School experiences a surreal trauma inflicted by a giant pencil (Through Oct 22nd).
Jonas Woods’ monumental painting of late basketball player Dwayne Schintzius offers a tragic figure for contemplation. After a promising start in college basketball, health problems thwarted Schintzius’ career before he died due to complications of leukemia in his early 40s. At over seven feet tall, with a mullet hairstyle as renowned as his sports skills, Schintzius was a particular type of American hero; Woods prompts us to ask what kind with his over nine-feet-tall canvas. (At Chelsea’s Anton Kern Gallery through Oct 22nd).
Art audiences love experiential art (witness long lines at every Yayoi Kusama walk-in sculpture, the Rain Room, etc), so it’s somewhat surprising how few painters offer to envelop viewers in their work. Sarah Cain is not one of the reticent artists, however. Her installation, Dark Matter, at Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong covers the gallery floor in bold patterns on lino, competing with but also complimenting vibrant canvases that employ beads, pinwheels, string and more to take the composition off the canvas. (Through Oct 15th).
Lynn Katsafouros updates the Byzantine icon with this painting of a saintly woman with a resigned stoic look, surrounded by tiny birds and wearing what could be an artist’s smock. (At Prince Street Gallery through Oct 1st).
Excessive squeezes of oil paint – created using pastry bags – on Xu Zhen’s canvases reach toward the viewer like living creatures, invoking coral or clusters of candy-colored undersea invertebrates. Produced by the artist’s ‘MadeIn Company’ and titled ‘Made in Heaven,’ the work nods to factory-like art production (referencing Jeff Koons’ ‘Made in Heaven’ photo series, for example) while offering a lush abstraction that looks good enough to eat. (At James Cohan Gallery through Oct 8th).
Gillian Wearing’s now classic video of herself dancing uninhibitedly in a London shopping arcade in 1994 – causing discomfort with the idea of turning public into private space – is precedent setting in the International Center of Photography’s group show ‘Public, Private, Secret,’ which considers how identity is created both openly and in secret. (Through Jan 8, 2017).
Ydessa Hendeles’ ‘Partners (The Teddy Bear Project)’ is a standout in ‘The Keeper,’ the New Museum’s intriguing homage to obsessive collections of deeply meaningful, often personal, artifacts. The installation presents over three thousand photographs from diverse family albums of individuals with their teddy bears, taken since the stuffed animal came into existence thanks to Teddy Roosevelt’s hunting exploits. Here, teddies break through class barriers, age differences and cultural divides as the world embraces a mass-produced consumer good. (Through Sept 25th).
Martin Puryear’s huge wooden structure, sheathed in chain-link fencing and capped with a gold-leafed shackle, towers over Madison Square Park’s main lawn like a seated animal. Its shape echoes the Phrygian cap, associated with French revolutionaries and freedom and explored recently by the artist, and is topped off with a gorgeously gleaming shackle – a gilded symbol of servitude. (At Madison Square Park through January 8th, 2017).
Sleeping bags filled with rubble from nearby construction sites make for an eerie sculpture by British artist Mike Nelson. Placed in semi-hidden locations on the High Line, the bags contrast the luxurious living conditions being created in the neighborhood’s new buildings with solitary, make-do survival. (In ‘Wanderlust’ on the High Line through March 2017).
Smart cars snag great parking spaces in New York; this one, created by Harlem-based artist Nari Ward, enjoys a privileged place on the High Line where an admiring audience regularly surrounds it. Inspired by an abandoned car that hosted a lime tree in his father’s yard in Jamaica, Ward planted an apple tree in this car, lining the exterior with rubber tire treads and turning a symbol of nimble urban driving into a stationary support for nature. (On the High Line through March 2017).
Matt Johnson’s ‘Untitled (Swan)’ marries industrial materials to the natural world by shaping a train track into the shape of an abstract swan set in the High Line’s lush gardens. Known for morphing everyday items – a crumpled Starbucks cup carved from wood and painted, a stack of plastic party cups actually rendered in painted bronze – into objects of wonder, this twisted rail pays homage to the former rail line on which it’s installed. (In ‘Wanderlust’ on the High Line through March 2017).
Tony Matelli pioneered his hyper-realistic sculptures before the social media era, yet they seem made for photographing and sharing. This bronze sleepwalker is a major traffic-stopper on the High Line not just as an art object in its own right but as a catalyst for audience interaction. (In ‘Wanderlust’ on the High Line through March 2017).
