Lao Tongli’s organic forms stand out against a black background, suggesting that they populate some dark, interior space despite their color. Though they look like plant forms or stylized tree branches, their resemblance to blood vessels is appropriate, having been inspired by Tongli’s fathers’ long struggle with heart disease. (On view at Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea through Sept 2nd).
With their staggered placement, Derrick Velasquez’s hand-cut strips of marine vinyl, draped over a wooden support, have shaggy ends recalling hair or fur. From close or afar, they’re pleasingly ordered but the visceral colors and bright yellow accents really bring the piece to life. (At Flowers Gallery in Chelsea through Sept 2nd).
Locks of real and synthetic hair move like undersea plants in LA artist Max Hooper Schneider’s eye-catching aquarium installation on Manhattan’s High Line park. Long drawn to aquariums as hobby and art objects, the artist gathered materials from minerals to freeze-dried vegetables to create a seabed built from layers of consumer culture detritus. (On view through March 2018).
Gardens are Joan Bankemper’s inspiration, whether she’s crafting a vase-form covered in flowers and bees or helping plan community gardens. At Chelsea’s Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Bankemper combines handmade and found flowers, vessels and spiritual beings in this riotous sculpted garden. (On view through Sept 1st).
Shortly after Teresita Fernandez made this rainbow made of acrylic cubes, she exhibited it with other sculpture to create a beautiful, stylized garden from man-made materials. With water as a theme, Fernandez also showed a swooping waterfall crafted from curving blue and white plastic alongside this rendering of light refracted in mist. (At Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s Lower East Side location through Sept 1st).
Spirit photographs from the 19th century and paranormal events from the more recent past have inspired Brooklyn-based photographer Laura Larson. In an image titled ‘Ecstasy,’ we’re tantalized by what might be going on behind the subject’s turned back in this strangely clinical, classroom-like environment. (At Chelsea’s Lennon, Weinberg, Inc through Sept 16th).
Pleione, the nymph in Greek mythology who protected sailors, shares a name with this 2016 canvas by Ron Gorchov. Painted on the artist’s signature saddle-stretchers to suggest ancient Greek shields, the colors of each panel range from fleshy to fiery as they reach skyward. (At Cheim & Read through August 25th).
The pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar bill – symbolizing long lasting power – has been rendered in outlines of U.S. currency in this piece by Nari Ward (seen here in detail). The paper money edges are askew, however, suggesting an unsound structure, while cowry shells (once used as currency elsewhere in the world) create straight and sound lines. (At Lehman Maupin Gallery in Chelsea through August 25th).
Spanish photographer Dionisio Gonzelez ignites the imagination with ideas for redeveloping New York’s skyline, were money no object. Instead of envisioning skyscrapers, Gonzalez proposes connected rooftop parks and walkways that create green space for all. Here, transit routes converge near Central Park on Fifth Ave. (On the Lower East Side at Galerie Richard through August 27th).
Studio portraits and landscape photography merge in Myoung Ho Lee’s series of trees in Mongolia and Korea, set against a white canvas backdrop. Lee digitally removes ropes and assistants, suggesting a less mediated encounter with a solitary and wonderful product of nature. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 25th).
Paa Joe’s fantasy coffins, which can take the shape of a giant coke bottle, lion and more, could make anyone glad to be buried. His untitled rendition of a fort in Ghana is more (appropriately) serious, depicting a 17th century Dutch slave trade outpost. It is one of a series commissioned by late collector and Jack Shainman Gallery co-founder Claude Simard, currently featured at the gallery’s 24th Street and Kinderhook, NY locations. (On view at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 25th).
Shot at Choucha, a Tunisian transit camp that has been a temporary home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Samuel Gratacap’s stark image of cobbled-together UN tents speaks to the innovation and desperation of camp inhabitants. (At Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 25th).
Charlotte Moorman’s renown as a performing artist who bridged the worlds of fine art and music via her cello is represented by her neon instrument from 1989. (At Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects in Chelsea through August 25th).
Though abstract, Robert Strini’s wooden sculptures resemble aliens or instruments or perhaps an instrument for an otherworldly creature. From the mid 70s, they mark a particularly fruitful chapter in Strini’s career after his move away from ceramics and before he expanded into bronze and multi-media works. (In Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery through August 18th).
Kathryn Andrews’ ‘June 21’ is strangely cheerful, though balloons that were fresh on June 21st (the day Perrotin Gallery’s summer group show opened) have turned to a commentary on the passage of time. (On the Lower East Side through August 18th).
Tel Aviv-based artist Guy Yanai’s subject matter – houses, domestic interiors and portraits of plants – is sedate but his blocky, early video game aesthetic gives the paintings a jittery edge. This plant appears to hover in space while reaching for the top edge of the canvas with an energy foreign to most potted plants. (In Chelsea at Ameringer McEnery Yohe through August 18th).
Robert Mann Gallery’s ice-cream themed summer group show runs the gamut from glossy commercial images of fake ice cream to this gritty 1950s shot by Harold Feinstein of New York urchins enjoying a treat while Christ appears to ‘let the little children come to him’ in the background. (In ‘I Scream, You Scream’ at Robert Mann Gallery through August 18th).
After years of traveling to the U.S./Mexico border, photographer Richard Misrach and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo joined forces to create sobering images and sculpture inspired by struggles of migrants determined to overcome the border’s many obstacles. This installation view of their exhibition at Pace Gallery in Chelsea features an instrument made by Galindo of items recovered from the region and Misrach’s photos of tires drug behind border patrol vehicles to make a path in which footprints can be detected. (On view through August 18th.)
A figure reclines in front of a baguette, friends walk in the woods and here, a young woman chats on the phone while resting on a huge container of an oversized art supply in ceramic sculpture and plates by Berlin-based artist Isabelle Fein. These diminutively sized snippets of life are an essay on the charms of the everyday. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through August 18th).
Patrick Jacobs – known for meticulously crafted dioramas set into the wall – offers another marvelously detailed scene in Pierogi Gallery’s summer group show ‘Double Down,’ which features artwork that involves doubling. Here, a toilet and its reflection suggest plumbing abundance in otherwise cramped quarters. (On the Lower East Side through August 12th).
Rachel Harrison’s heavily textured, expressionist painting is electrified by fuchsia shorts, a dramatic punctuation at the end of the artwork. The shorts drag a potentially intellectual AbExp artwork into the banality of everyday life; now, it’s not hard to imagine the artwork on its way to the beach or the mall. (In ‘Feedback’ at Marlborough Contemporary through August 11th).
Rife with appealing contradictions, Tyler Haughey’s photo of a New Jersey coastal motel is attractive for its saturated colors and modernist angularity but not as a model of contemporary hotel design. Devoid of people and sometimes pictured out of season, the motels in Haughey’s series ‘Ebb Tide’ both evoke nostalgia and picture an on-going culture. (In ‘At a Languorous Pace’ at Sears Peyton Gallery in Chelsea, through August 11th).
Tree fungus and corals inspired the Haas Brothers’ signature accretion vases; joined by the LA duo’s silver plated lamps (at rear), walnut furniture and paintings, they open Marianne Boesky Gallery’s summer group exhibition with an appreciation for the strange and lighthearted. (In Chelsea through August 11th).
Globe-trotting photographer and writer Teju Cole’s new book ‘Blind Spot’ explores perception through shots including this grid of curtained balconies in Beirut, an image that suggests diversity packed into a small space. Alongside is a text in which Cole bemoans a lost roll of film while acknowledging that his original viewing experience is what he most values. (On view at Steven Kasher Gallery through August 11th).
Aliza Nisenbaum’s portrait of Kayhan, sprawled on the floor surrounded by newspaper pages, is a standout in FLAG Art Foundation’s huge and engrossing group exhibition, ‘The Times,’ which gathers a range of artwork related to or inspired by the New York Times. Nisenbaum’s portraits of undocumented immigrants offer a portal into lives deliberately lived in private; here, Kayhan’s apparent comfort may not apply beyond these walls. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 11th).
Vladimir Salamun’s marble ice cream scoop stars in a deliciously food-themed show at Allan Stone Projects. Monumental and crafted in traditional art materials, this slow-to-melt pop art monument to the pleasures of taste becomes a treat for the eye as well. (On view in Chelsea through August 11th).
Eight large paintings of winter coats by Canadian super realist painter Karl Funk at 303 Gallery ostensibly deny the season; instead, isolated against icy white backgrounds and turned as if to ignore viewers, they’re as chilling as a blast of AC. Inspired by the negotiation between public and personal space on a crowded subway car, they’re a beautifully rendered insistence on privacy. (On view in Chelsea through August 18th).
Sperone Westwater’s lively group painting show, Pictograph, considers artworks that communicate in an engagingly ambiguous way. Katherine Bradford’s duo could be embracing, but the title ‘The Argument’ suggests that the washy emanation on the left could be an inner voice or an important influencer to the tie-wearing figure on the right. (On view on the Lower East Side through August 4th).
Marlborough Contemporary’s summer group exhibition ‘Feedback’ includes a wall of painted fiberglass sculptures by John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres as the show considers collaborative practices in art – in this case between artists and community residents. (On view in Chelsea through August 4th).
Nicola Tyson’s freewheeling firewood sculptures embody a grace that belies their origins in the woodpile. Stripping each piece of dried firewood of its bark, Tyson assembles fleshy ‘dancing figures’ as disproportionate assemblages of thick and thin segments that bring to mind human bodies, trees and robots. (In ‘Somebodies’ at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 4th).
