Cayce Zavaglia pushes realism into new territory in her stunningly deft embroidered portraits of friends and family. Long stitches become smooth lengths of hair while tiny dense ones create the interplay of light and color on skin. Here, Hudson’s youthful face and textured plaid shirt stand out against an electric, lime-colored background. (On view in Chelsea at Lyons Wier Gallery through June 2nd).
Perspective is unmoored in Mernet Larsen’s discombobulating scene of a high-level government meeting. The sense of disorientation suits an array of stiff, featureless leaders who with their flat physiques look as if they might go in whichever direction the wind blows. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 16th).
What Huang Yong Ping’s ‘Bank of Sand, Sand of Bank’ lacks in subtlety it makes up for in presence, filling Barbara Gladstone Gallery’s 21st Street Chelsea location with 20 tons of sand and concrete molded to resemble the former HSBC Bank in Shanghai. Once a symbol of opulence, here an omen of potential economic collapse, the hulking neoclassical building was used as a government building after the Chinese revolution and has since been adopted as home by the Pudong Development Bank. (On view through June 9th).
Sarah Peters takes her stylized bronze head sculptures to a newly disquieting level in her current exhibition at Van Doren Waxter on the Lower East Side. Riffing on Greek dramatic masks, ancient Assyrian or Akkadian heads, and sex dolls, figures heads like this one embody ziggurat-like architectural form, as if place and priestess had merged into one haunting figure. (On view on the Lower East Side through June 2nd).
Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard describes this wall mounted cedar relief sculpture as beginning ‘gently then growing belligerent’ as its rows of cavities expand and lose their form closer to the floor. On the flip side of aggressive, the carved wood forms are characterized by a softness that suggests disintegration. Rising, falling and sliding along the wall, this sculpture’s shapes appear to be in constant motion. (On view at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea through June 23rd).
It can be easy to focus on the bright, pop side of Takashi Murakami’s production, even as his cute, anime-inspired characters sprout fangs. His current solo show on all three floors of Perrotin’s Lower East Side gallery continues to probe darker sides of life (a strain in his work that’s grown since Japan’s 2011 tsunami and earthquake) by engaging with select paintings by Francis Bacon. Here, Bacon’s famous painting of rival and friend Lucian Freud is springboard for Murakami’s own alternative characters – multi-eyed alien creatures that suggest humor and menace in equal measure. (On view through June 17th).
Using patterns scanned and printed from her collection of vintage kimonos, Chicago-based artist Mayumi Lake creates floral abstractions – adding a fringe of beads and other elements – that mix tradition and contemporary life. Designed to resemble huge flowers that might decorate a sacred place, the blooms grow in size and color in proportion to life’s difficulties. (On view at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery in Chelsea through May 25th).
Angolan artist Keyezua’s ‘Fortia’ series (translated as ‘Strength’) features female figures in handmade masks and dramatic red gowns posing in an eroded landscape outside Luanda. Citing her father’s disability and early death, the artist aims to explore how her own identity developed as a young woman experiencing loss. (In ‘Refraction: New Photography of Africa and its Diaspora’ at Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea through June 2nd).
A Christmas cactus tangos with a dramatically dark black tulip in the foreground of Inka Essenhigh’s ‘Party of the Flames and Flowers,’ a standout painting in the artist’s solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea. Personified flowers compete to show off their beauty in an intriguing venue that mysteriously appears to be undersea. (On view through May 25th).
This 1980 painting on hand-woven linen by video art pioneer Beryl Korot (seen in detail) demonstrates the language she devised, based on the grid of woven cloth. The text is based on the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, an account in which language fragments. For Korot, Babel offers a chance to consider the ways that language and technology relate to human behavior. (On view at Bitforms through May 20th).
Mylar, balloon-shaped sculptures are the centerpiece of Tomas Saraceno’s stunning ‘Solar Rhythms’ exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea – a show that envisions fossil fuel free flight via balloon. Reflected light decorates the gallery in ethereal patterns that connect our earthly realm to the wonderous possibilities of life in the air. (On view through June 9th).
When it comes to perspective in his paintings, David Hockney famously takes the road less traveled by adopting multiple viewpoints in one image. In this vibrantly colored painting of Garrowby Hill in Yorkshire, on view at Pace Gallery through the weekend, Hockney eliminates the corners of his canvas, introducing a technique that guides viewers on an enticingly colorful and quirky journey into an expanding landscape. (On view at Pace Gallery’s 25th Street Chelsea location through May 12th).
Inspired by Louis Lozowick’s 1935 ‘Strike Scene’ lithograph, Hank Willis Thomas’s stainless steel ‘Strike’ is a powerful symbol of resistance. A highlight of the artist’s latest two-gallery solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery, the sculpture presents a fragment of a scenario that speaks to a broader history of struggle. (On view in Chelsea through May 12th).
A paper floats into the frame of a Krazy Kat cartoon, and Krazy questions the ‘kwee mokks’ all over it. This scenario captivates one of Marcus Weber’s oddball characters, who are themselves unexpected and unexplained. Though their unibrows suggest an adult seriousness, they avidly read the funnies, positioning their identity somewhere between adult and kid and tantalizingly out of reach. (At Thomas Erben Gallery in Chelsea through May 19th).
Ceramics get comic and weird in The Hole NYC’s sprawling exhibition of art made from clay. Theo A. Rosenblum’s ‘King Carrot’ grins enthusiastically in the main gallery, setting the tone for a show that includes Alice Mackler’s amorphous female figures, a delinquent Bart Simpson portrait by FriendsWithYou and much, much more. (On view on the Lower East Side through May 6th).
