Using his signature long exposure technique, Matthew Pillsbury turns his lens for his latest show, ‘Sanctuary’ at Benrubi Gallery, on basic rights – assembly and expression – that are often taken for granted. Here, a participant pauses in front of Matthew Chavez’s ‘Subway Therapy’ project, which provided pens and post-its for New Yorkers to express their thoughts after the 2016 presidential election. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 22nd).
Kathleen Ryan creates colossal pearls from bowling balls in her New York solo debut at Arsenal Contemporary on the Lower East Side. This piece and others shift our expectations of scale and turn quotidian balls into oversized, luxury jewelry. (On view through Nov 5th).
Claes Oldenburg’s new sculptures remix objects familiar from his and parter Coosje van Bruggen’s career (a pencil once proposed as a New York monument, a banana skin flapping in the wind, yellow and brown potato chips). Collectively titled ‘Shelf Life,’ Oldenberg’s relatively small-scale assemblages beg the question of an idea’s staying power and continued relevance. (At Pace Gallery’s 24th Street location through Nov 11th).
From Graceland to the former steel town of Bethlehem, PA, an assortment of iconic ‘American’ locations inspired Keith Mayerson’s ambiguous portrait of the country at Marlborough Contemporary. Here, Three Mile Island represents conversations around the definition of ‘clean’ power as the famed sight of a 1979 accident has been slated to close in 2019. (On view in Chelsea through Nov 11th).
Inspired to reconsider Malcolm X’s ideology while participating in an Algerian arts festival in 1969, Barbara Chase-Rimboud began a series of bronze sculptures, titled after the activist, fourteen of which are now on view at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Created with a knotted silk base and bronze forms made by casting worked sheets of wax, the mix of materials signals strength and finery. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
In 1977, Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone grew potatoes inside casts of his ear, mouth and nose. The resulting face-shaped potatoes were cast in bronze and are set among real potatoes in Hauser and Wirth Gallery’s huge showcase of the Italian art movement that embraced ‘poor’ materials and rethought what art could be. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
Tom Sachs creates an updated cabinet of curiosities in his latest show at Sperone Westwater with his display of fake moon rocks. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 28th).
No other gallery security staff are as subtle as Tom Friedman’s ‘Guardian,’ a light projection above Luhring Augustine’s exit. Friedman’s entire show does away with his usual labor-intensive sculpture techniques, substituting instead alluring objects and figures that might disappear at the press of a power button. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
Young Columbian artist Maria Berrio envisions harmony between humans and nature in richly patterned Japanese paper collages that delight the senses. In this detail, a lush landscape is setting to a thoughtful folkloric character perfectly at home as human and monkey habitat merge. (On view at Praxis International Art in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
Transparency, an interest in organic forms and a desire to push her materials drove late artist Ruth Asawa’s to create the undulating, hanging wire sculptures, currently on view at David Zwirner Gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location. (On view through Oct 21st).
August Sander’s iconic ‘People of the 20th Century,’ a photographic project documenting the German people in the early 20th century is the starting point for Omer Fast’s ‘August,’ a captivating video imagining Sander’s haunted later years. Here, Fast restages Sander’s oft-reproduced image of young farmers as an opportunity to consider the photographer’s stagecraft. (On view at James Cohan Gallery through Oct 29th).
Fluorescent acrylic beams contrast Bortolami Gallery’s solid black cast iron columns in an eye-popping show of colorful new work by Barbara Kasten. Like a giant glowing Jenga block pile, the sculpture suggests precariousness and possibility while bridging the viewer’s way to Kasten’s new body of work – studio photos mounted with projecting acrylic forms that blur the boundaries between depicted and actual space. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 21st).
Robert Lazzarini’s waving fences and distorted phone booths have satisfied his audiences’ craving for trompe l’oeil effect created with impressive craftsmanship. After a four year hiatus, Lazzarini is back with a gallery full of paintings and this sculpture, a Hollywood Regency style decorative dogwood branch supersized and distorted to suggest luxurious decor gone wild. (On view at De Buck Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 26th).
A reflective countertop doubles the size and lightens the tone of Holly Coulis’ reductive still life, currently on view in her solo show at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. Multiple outlines around a tissue box, a carafe and two buds holding a pear give these everyday objects an electrifying glow. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 22nd).
Popeye, Chinese landscape painting and pre-Columbian art are among the many influences on Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s small-scale but boldly conceived ceramics. Vessels like this untitled head reimagine use-value while introducing enticingly idiosyncratic characters. (On view at Kaufman Repetto in Chelsea through Oct 21st).
Last year, from the decks of a decommissioned Navy ship, artist Duke Riley orchestrated dramatic light shows with over one thousand pigeons carrying LED lights on their legs. If the birds seemed anonymous as they put on a light show in the dark, their identities come into focus now at a two-gallery exhibition of related artwork, including a room of hand-painted and embroidered portraits of 1,000 birds. (On view at Magnan Metz Gallery’s pop up location at 524 West 26th Street and 521 West 26th Street through Oct 21st).
These shoes may not be the most ambition artworks in Sally Saul’s debut show at Rachel Uffner Gallery, but their unassuming quality – a quotidian appreciation for the quiet pleasures in life, such as the perfect shoes for the occasion – is the perfect introduction to a show of what critic John Yau calls ‘funny, sweet and tender’ artworks. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 29th).
Moroccan-born artist Mounir Fatmi’s installation ‘Inside the Fire Circle’ offers the idea of literally jump starting conversation via his arrangement of jumper cables, typewriters and paper on which the public is invited to contribute thoughts. The centerpiece of a show that considers the limits of freedom, the installation suggests that self-expression can be risky. (On view at Jane Lombard Gallery through Oct 21st).
“In Delaware, it is illegal to consume perfume.” This law and other seemingly dated statutes meant to address particular situations are the subject of Olivia Locher’s entertaining solo show ‘I Fought the Law’ at Chelsea’s Steven Kasher Gallery. Locher’s staged ‘crimes’ highlight odd ordinances in the 50 states, making for memorable images that question what else is on the books. (On view through Oct 21st).
Terri Friedman’s multi-part fiber artworks have huge presence; bold colors – from lush green to fiery orange – suggest abstracted strata of the earth and the making process is never far from the surface of a viewer’s consciousness. (On view at James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 14th).
Branch-like, bead-covered forms wrap around a hollow, multicolored cast of a forearm in Eva Rothchild’s latest show at 303 Gallery. Dark, glittery and talismanic, her latest sculptures offer an almost tactic experience for the eyes, turning surface and form into territory to be minutely explored. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 28th).
A monster’s human mask falls away in Mark Thomas Gibson’s ‘Washed Up,’ or is a disguise being applied? Either way, to judge by the quivering, fearful eyes, it seems like the game’s up and this creatures underlying monstrous identity will soon be revealed. (On view at Fredericks Freiser Gallery through Oct 14th).
British painter Patrick Hughes continues to explore what he terms ‘reverspective,’ or the upending of our expectation that paintings will appear to be in one fixed place. Walk past one of Hughes’ projecting paintings on board, and the rooms he paints appear to shift; the device is acutely appropriate to his depiction of the Barnes Foundation, the art museum which itself shifted locations by moving to downtown Philadelphia in 2012. (On view at Flowers Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 14th).
In a show dedicated to the legacy of Alexander Calder, Li Jingxiong’s snake skin footballs are a standout. Hung like buoys or a flattened Calder mobile, the balls marry beauty, with their craftsmanship, and danger, with their material. (At Klein Sun Gallery in Chelsea through Oct 7th).
Four paintings hang against chain link fencing at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea, inaccessible to the public except by a narrow corridor between the fence and the wall, which has been painted with towering figures of sinuous dancers, themselves depicted behind a painted fence. The show is titled ‘Paradise Lost’ and follows Ofili’s ‘The Caged Bird’s Song’ at London’s National Gallery, for which the artist alluded to the practice in his adopted home, Trinidad, of raising caged songbirds. Here, aggressive fencing suggests that it is not the song of the caged bird that is sweeter. (On view through Oct 21st).
Amid a gorgeous Hudson Valley landscape, friends mingle on the porch of ramshackle Rokeby mansion in Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s colorful celebration of togetherness at Marlborough Contemporary. Anchored by homeowner Ricky Aldrich in a blue jumpsuit, this multiage gathering of babies, dogs, kids and neighbors pays homage to community. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 7th).
Since 2001, Sze Tsung Nicolas Leong has photographed horizon lines around the world from a tantalizing distance, hanging his images so that the Kenyan countryside abuts a view of Toledo, Spain, for example. In this detail, the wind whips tourists on a landscape so barren they look like actors on a stage-set. (On view at Danziger Gallery, in collaboration with Yossi Milo Gallery, on the Lower East Side through Oct 28th.)
Charles Ritchie’s tiny, meticulous watercolor and graphite drawings include reflections in the windows of his suburban home, offering a scene of the outdoors that’s at the same time, a view of his workplace. The merged locations feel dream-like and explore connectedness between interior and exterior realms. (At BravinLee Programs in Chelsea through Oct 14th).
Perfect craftsmanship allows Wim Delvoye’s fabricated, ready-made sculptures to fool the eye, tricking us into thinking he’s performing magic with pieces like this twisting tire. Constructed completely in polished and patinated stainless steel, this remade motorbike tire is fit for a stunt bike. (On view on the Lower East Side at Perrotin through Oct 28th).
