From wood to polycarbonate and from the Whitney’s outdoor sculpture terrace to the museum’s gift shop, Frank Stella is bent on examining star shapes in endless materials and sizes. At Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, this ‘Corian Star’ is in the medium size range for Stella (at just under four feet tall), but its color scheme and unlikely material makes it an immediate draw. (On view through June 17th).
A swirling, starry sky crafted from braided electrical wire hovers over a curving organic landscape made from keyboard keys in this detail from Ethiopian artist Elias Sime’s collaged wall panel at James Cohan Gallery. Abstract yet suggestive of a landscape, this piece is testament to the resourcefulness of turning manmade objects – discarded electronics – into objects recalling natural beauty. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 17th).
New media artist Jim Campbell is known for deliberately low-res projections of crowds and individuals in movement. The focus of his current solo show at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery – images and video from January’s Women’s March in DC – is serendipitous subject matter for the artist. In this layering of still images on a lightbox, many people (and metaphorically, points of view) come together to suggest a mass action. (At Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea through June 17th).
Chelsea’s skyline – dotted with construction cranes – is a constant reminder of how much the neighborhood and city is transforming; for an even more eye-popping view of how much the city has changed, visit legendary street photographer Martha Cooper’s photos at Steven Kasher Gallery from the 80s. Here, Cooper captures a two-car painting by Duster Lizzie that demonstrates how transgressive ambition changed the landscape of New York. (At Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through June 3rd).
Man meets nature in this bronze sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, who has cast wood and marine debris collected from the Gulf of Alaska into one of her signature, horse sculptures. Butterfield’s sensitive renderings of horses bring us closer to the natural world; here, they poignantly speak to nature’s endurance in the face of environmental degradation. (At Danese Corey Gallery in Chelsea through June 23rd).
How much can a line graph really tell you about the world? Canadian artist duo Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens offer a tongue-in-cheek response to this question and the quest to present data in graphical form with sculptures like this one, that aims to illustrate ‘one man’s progress learning paths of least waste.’ (At Jane Lombard Gallery through May 26th).
Body-building and fashion magazines provide the material for Dominique Paul’s riotous collages of hybrid humans and altered insects. Using 17th and 18th century illustrations of plants and insects by artist Maria Merian as a framework, Paul mixes old and new in a bizarre but intriguing microcosm. (At Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery through May 27th).
Long strands of clear and white plastic beads by late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres are an austere version of the usually colorful plastic beading hung in homes. Here in the huge, Spartan spaces of David Zwirner Gallery (which marks joint representation of the artist with Andrea Rosen Gallery with this show), the curtain has the sobering effect intended, heightening our awareness of passing from one state to another. (On 20th Street in Chelsea through June 24th).
A devotional sculpture of Mary melds with the body of an anonymous girl in this provocative sculpture by northern Italian artist Gehard Demetz. Though each figure looks fragmented, the merger seems neither violent nor ecstatic (along the lines of Bernini’s Saint Teresa.) Instead, the girl is absorbed by the inner life shared with the saint. (At Jack Shainman Gallery through June 3rd).
Roni Horn once said that glass can convey ‘the most ideal expression of color.’ In two same-but-different cast-glass sculptures at Chelsea’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery, a tranquil, blue form immediately invites visitors to draw near and marvel at the reflections of light on the water-like surface of a substance that is neither fully liquid nor solid. (On view through July 29th).
After his recent travels to Central and South America, Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck returned with study specimens in the form of dried plants and a snake that have been heated in a huge, custom-built oven and flattened in a 50-ton hydraulic press. Backed on shaped stainless steel, the tongue-in-cheek souvenirs present botanical investigation as art. (On view in Chelsea at Marlborough Contemporary through May 20th).
Working from his own detailed photographs, Chinese artist Xiaoze Xie, transforms images of books on dusty library shelves into atmospherically lit bridges to the past. Oil paintings from his latest solo show at Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea include this New Testament translation from Oxford University, wrapped volumes from Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and tomes from the Morgan Library in New York. (On view through June 17th).
Walead Beshty’s exhibition at Petzel Gallery opens like a revenge drama on uncooperative office equipment, with this sculpture composed of a monitor, skewered by a steel pole and spewing out its interior components. Rather than commenting on frustration or alienation with technology, however, Beshty’s piece expresses his ongoing interest in exposing behind-the-scenes aspects of conceiving of, creating and displaying art. (On view through June 17th).
Iconic Brazilian Neo-Concretist Lygia Clark explored the experience of space in both two and three dimensions, in paintings and her famous bicho (critter) sculptures that could be handled and manipulated. At Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea, 2-D pieces, like this study for a modulated surface, suggests the organic world with tones that allude to earth and sky. (On view through June 17th).
Rachel Harrison’s latest solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery seems to step away from the overt politics of her most recent shows, instead questioning the value and role of art (as presented in an imagined conversation between several famous artworks featured in a gallery handout). In this piece, what appears to be a bald eagle in a bandana is held at gunpoint, a symbol of power reduced to a captive state as the color of money dominates. (In Chelsea through Jun 17th).
Brooklyn performer, writer and sculptor Lee Relvas offers tantalizing fragments of figures in her first solo show at Callicoon Fine Arts, enticing her audience into trying to grasp who and what is being portrayed. In the front, a sculpture titled ‘Deciding’ wears a friar’s belted robe, a twisting figure at rear is ‘Thinking,’ and a reticent woman is ‘Withholding.’ (On the Lower East Side through May 21st.)
In this boldly textured, late-career work by the Spanish artist Josep Grau-Garriga, soothing blue color and thick nautical-like rope recall the sea. Part of a handsome exhibition that presents work from the last forty years of the artist’s life, including early work evoking political violence, this piece evokes summons both the tranquility of the beach and excitement of the sea. (At Salon94 Bowery on the Lower East Side through June 3rd).
After WWII, Todd Webb moved to New York City and took to the streets, enthusiastically documenting the eccentricities of the everyday – from quirky storefronts to colorful characters. (On view in Chelsea at The Curator Gallery through May 20th).
Two teardrop shapes stand side-by-side on the gallery wall in Trish Tillman’s exhibition of evocative sculpture at Asya Geisberg Gallery. ‘Dressed’ identically in red, teal, and blue stripes and ruched black leather, the anthropomorphized fashionistas shelter a slim yellow protuberance as alarming as a pharoah’s ureaeus.
Life revolves around interior décor in Margeaux Walter’s photos at Winston Wachter Gallery in Chelsea. Matching hair colors, clothing and food to the floor tiles, Walter asks if lifestyle dictates design or vice-versa. (On view through May 13th).
In an homage to the way that reading has shaped her view of the world, Diane Samuels’ ‘First Lines’ inscribes the first line of text from each of the over 1,700 titles in her personal library on the pieces of handmade paper that make up this stunningly detailed wall hanging. (At Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Chelsea through May 20th).
A horizon line made of charcoal surrounds visitors to Teresita Fernandez’s haunting installation of burnt and burning landscape at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side. Though Fernandez has explained that she wants to question the reality of the ‘virgin’ landscape described by early European settlers in North America by pointing to existing slash and burn farming methods, this handsome installation tantalizingly offers many interpretations. (On view through May 20th).
A landscape is never just a beautiful view in Ori Gersht’s photographs. A past series pictured tranquil scenes not far from a former concentration camp; the more recent ‘Floating World’ images – shot in Kyoto’s formal gardens – play up the multi-layered meanings of meticulously planned spaces like this one by combining reflected and inverted images. (At CRG Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 21st).
Colorful patterns of birds, swirling handprints resembling flowers, floating bodies and looping text fill this small, intense painting by Mexico-based artist Domenico Zindato. Though isolated in triangular fields bounded by lettering, the small, anonymous characters shoot rays from their fingertips, making them pulse with energy. (At Andrew Edlin Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 4th).
A figure with a body made of rebar hunches over an iPad in Siebren Versteeg’s solo show at Bitforms Gallery, scrolling through social media, distributing ‘likes’ willy nilly. Just as a real body is not necessary to consume content, existing media is sufficient for making more art – on the walls, paintings made with software that mines Internet images mimic the form of Jay DeFeo’s famously massive ‘Rose’ painting, built up from years of accumulated paint. (At Bitforms Gallery on the Lower East Side through May 28th).
A stack of imposing, black steel frames by abstract painter Sean Scully fills the atrium-like space of Cheim & Read’s small side gallery – the first piece encountered when entering the show. By contrast, ‘Colored Stacked Frames,’ (seen here) in the furthest gallery radically alters the somber mood of the show, injecting vibrant color into Scully’s normally restrained palette. (In Chelsea through May 20th).
Dominated by dominoes and colorful concentric circles with a cent sign at the middle, this painting by Mission School artist Chris Johanson suggests that life is a game, with cents and/or sense at the center. Scenes from everyday life – a bedroom, a suburban storefront – look like they could easily disintegrate into the surrounding abstraction at any moment. (At Mitchell-Innes and Nash in Chelsea through May 13th).
CGI and hand painting merge in Matthew Stone’s uncanny portrait. Part of The Hole Gallery’s ‘Post-Analog Painting II’ show, this image questions to what extent painting is influenced by the digital. (On view on the Lower East Side through May 14th).
