Addis Ababa-based artist Elias Sime continues to turn discarded electronics into compositions that can suggest aerial maps or abstracted landscapes in his latest show at Chelsea’s James Cohan Gallery. Computers made in China, sold in the US and discarded in Ethiopia make their way into artworks that implicitly question resource distribution and rampant consumption. (On view through June 29th.)
What happens to humanity if global warming leads to drastic sea level rise? Josh Kline envisions the end of life as we know it in a provocative sculpture series featuring submerged cities and preserved specimens of everyday 21st century life at 47 Canal on the Lower East Side. Inside lab hoods, preserved doll-house sized domestic and office environments suggest that what’s normal now may soon be a thing of the past. (On view through June 9th).
Coretta Scott King speaks in a photo held by a silent man who himself is superimposed over an elaborate ornamental structure in this photo collage by Todd Gray. Liberation and the legacy of oppression, particularly of European colonization in Africa and the architectural expressions of wealth it allowed in Europe, come head-to-head in new photo collage by Todd Gray at David Lewis Gallery on the Lower East Side. (On view through June 16th).
Whether she’s boldly charging into the Pacific Ocean or gingerly stepping into a placid pond to expose a cyanotype, Meghan Riepenhoff continues to generate fascinating and beautiful cameraless images of water. For this multi-panel work, the artist dipped her prepared photo paper into Utah’s Great Salt Lake, sprinkled on salt from the ground and allowed the work to dry, propped in the sun. (On view in Chelsea at Yossi Milo Gallery through June 22nd).
California Light and Space artist Helen Pashgian’s striking acrylic columns are both warm and austere, drawing visitors to Chelsea’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery in closer to see the mysterious, barely visible shapes within. Calling them ‘presences,’ Pashgian acknowledges that each distinct body has a character that can be perceived by alert viewers. (On view through May 24th).
Curvy harlequins and female clowns populate French artist Elsa Sahal’s latest solo show of ceramic sculpture at Natalie Karg Gallery on the Lower East Side. Inspired by Picasso’s actors in diamond-patterned clothing, these two truncated figures enact a choreography that could be read as erotic or menacing. (On view through June 15th).
In the Arctic, ‘so much believed to be white is actually – strikingly – blue,’ writes award-winning American poet Robin Coste Lewis in a text applied to the wall at the entrance to Lorna Simpson’s solo show at Hauser & Wirth. Titled ‘Darkening’ and featuring monumentally scaled paintings combining text and images from Ebony magazine, the AP and National Archives, the new work pictures bodies and icy landscapes commenting on, as Simpson has explained, ‘inhospitable conditions and how to survive those conditions.’ (On view in Chelsea through July 27th).
Frank Stella’s latest abstract sculptures are as colorfully exuberant as ever, presenting viewers at Marianne Boesky Gallery with plenty to peruse. Derived from digital processes, the twists and turns of shiny aluminum components take sculpture beyond the handmade. (On view in Chelsea through June 22nd).
Resembling a disco ball and wrecking ball, Robert Longo’s dramatic 1.5 ton sculpture ‘Death Star’ draws viewers into Metro Pictures in Chelsea to discover a sphere covered with 40,000 inert assault rifle bullets. Referring to the number of deaths by gun violence in the US in 2017, the number has more than doubled from those included in a similar piece by Longo from 1993. (On view through May 25th).
The word for Italian born, Alaska-based artist Paola Pivi’s installation of multi-colored, feathered baby bears at Perrotin Gallery on the Lower East Side is ‘cute.’ Explaining that the installation was inspired by her adopted son’s “energy, life and positivity,” Pivi developed a series of bears playfully fighting, doing acrobatics and generally looking to inspire ‘awwwws.’ (On view through June 8th).
Having painted every block on Broadway and drawn every object she owns, New York artist Elise Engler is no stranger to the long-term project. Her most recent obsession – creating a daily visual record of radio news headlines since November 2015 – has resulted in a dense installation of images on the walls of Frosch and Portman Gallery on the Lower East Side. A somber recording of natural disasters, political intrigue and more, the assembled works testify to troubled times. (On view through May 19th).
17th century Dutch still life painters delighted in the effect of light hitting rich fabric or shiny glass; contemporary Brooklyn artist Matthew Hansel is into optical delights of a different sort as he mimics digital distortion in oil and flashe paint. Included in The Hole’s continuing investigation of how digital techniques have impacted non-digitally created art, this shaped painting throws a little fun-house mirror effect into a traditional momento mori. (On view on the Lower East Side through May 19th).
Did Warhol just like Campbell’s soup? Was Roy Lichtenstein simply enamored of blonds? American pop art thrives on its ambiguous criticality towards consumption and mass media marketing, but iconic British pop art icon Peter Blake’s enjoyment of contemporary culture feels less ambiguous. In a noteworthy show at Garth Greenan Gallery, for which a portion of Blake’s London studio has been packed up and reinstalled in Chelsea, the artist’s portraits of wrestlers, clowns, musicians and Marilyn-like woman are a tribute to the more and less famous. (On view through May 18th).
Under a recreation of the night sky as it appeared at the start of the Haitian Revolution, Firelei Baez presents a dramatic installation at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side space featuring empowered female figures who assert their presence in the gallery and in history. Wearing a tignon that refers to the 18th century legal requirement for African-diasporic women to cover their hair, this casually posed yet regal figure lacks a mouth yet speaks with her eyes. (On view through June 16th).
Amid a mass of vibrant color, a solitary eye peeks out from beneath a pattern that recalls decorative fencing in this photo by Paul Anthony Smith at Jack Shainman Gallery. The barrier, created by meticulously making tiny tears in the surface of a photo, deflects our gaze, shielding the subject protectively. (On view in Chelsea through May 11th).
