Enticing to the eye but lacking color, Beth Lipman’s glass sculptures at Nohra Haime Gallery replicate sumptuous still life arrangements but deny the satisfaction of seeing them clearly. Created from black or clear glass, the details of the sculptures can be hard to discern. The effect is deliberate, intended to provoke low-level frustration that might prompt viewers to question the desire to consume. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 16th).
A cascade of color greets visitors to Kasmin Gallery’s cavernous 27th Street gallery in the form of British artist Ian Davenport’s large-scale poured paintings. Inspired by the gorgeous colors he once encountered in a field of bluebonnets, the artist planned sequences of poured lines of paint that would translate a natural vision into a powerful, mediated experience of color. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 9th).
As a new year approaches and many hope for better times ahead, west coast painter Hung Liu marks time in a personal and captivating way in two new paintings at Nancy Hoffman Gallery. Every twelve years, at the start of the Chinese zodiac and in the Year of the Rat in which she was born, the artist creates a self-portrait paired with an important symbolic animal or object. In 2020, the most recent year of the rat, the artist marks her 72nd year with an image of herself draped in and masked by the US flag, a contrast to the red scarf she wears in her 1972 portrait as she lived through China’s Cultural Revolution. To the right, she repeats a five-stroke Chinese character to recall the prisoner’s act of marking time in strokes on the wall. (On view through Jan 2nd in Chelsea. Masks and social distancing are required.)
Pain and promise are embodied in one of the most beautiful and sobering artworks in Hauser & Wirth’s exhibition of late artist Jack Whitten’s paintings from the ‘90s. A tribute to the children killed in the 1995 mass shooting, ‘Mask III: For the Children of Dunblane, Scotland’ memorializes lost lives in a blaze of color created with chips of acrylic paint fashioned together in Whitten’s signature collage-like technique. Honoring the dead and acting as witness, Whitten galvanizes his audience to resist what’s wrong and unify for higher purpose. (On view through Jan 23rd).
Both chance paint pours and deliberate, meticulous mark-making comprise Barbara Takenaga’s otherworldly abstractions at DC Moore Gallery. New, profuse forms suggest fireworks displays or the wonders of unseen life under a microscope. This small detail of a larger canvas sets paint swirls against hanging strings of beaded forms, two elements that would seem incompatible but which instead offer unexpected depth and an apparent glimpse into a mysterious world. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 23rd. Masks and social distancing required).
With their black skin highlighted blue and featureless faces, Alex Gardner’s characters evade racial identification and offer no way to read their expressions. In this painting at The Hole NYC, only hands supporting a foot are visible, but the title ‘Cheer Stunt’ brings to mind a group performance full of suspense and excitement. Backlighting suggests a digital space or perhaps a stadium at night while alternatively, smooth, stylized hands and foot could be part of a new sculptural monument. (On view on the Lower East Side through Dec 27th. Masks and social distancing required).
Nina Chanel Abney describes her new paintings at Jack Shainman Gallery as picturing ‘Black autonomy’ in scenes of ‘care, cultivation and collective leisure.’ Individuals farm, fish, ride bikes and race boats, sometimes without clothing, in scenes that question what utopia is. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 23rd).
To Argentinian-French artist Julio Le Parc, the individual’s experience of his work is everything. From inventing games that could be played on the street to constructing installations of moving lights, Le Parc has experimented with ways to draw in his audience and heighten their perceptions of the world around them. Here, at Perrotin Gallery, hanging aluminum shapes reflect the gallery and visitors, bringing both into the experience of the sculpture. (On view on the Lower East Side through Dec 23rd. Masks and social distancing are required).
Etel Adnan’s ‘Danse Nocturne’ is a standout in her current show of painting and tapestry at Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong, its bold lines and saturated color communicating a vibrant energy that reaches right across the gallery space. Abstracted landscapes, starting with an image of an olive tree at the gallery’s entrance, suggest a joyful experience of nature rendered in a rich material – wool tapestry. Adnan has explained that that an artist’s materials are like a co-author, conveying meaning in a unique way; here, tapestry mediates the work’s expressionistic immediacy and conveying a considered appreciation of natural beauty. (On view through Dec 19th. Masks and social distancing are required).
History looms large in succinct and powerful sculptures by Martin Puryear at Matthew Marks Gallery that include a huge civil war cap with a cannon hidden inside and a classical fluted column supporting a stylized shackle – a monument to Sally Hemings. Here, a precariously situated wagon reimagines the vehicles the Boers used to move into South Africa’s interior in the 19th century. Titled ‘New Voortrekker,’ after the term the Boers used for themselves, the sculpture’s wagon features a spiral staircase with a mirror at its base, as if to offer ascending/descending settlers a different view of themselves. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 19th. Masks, social distancing and appointments are required).
Real and virtual space combine in provocative ways in Melissa Brown’s new paintings at Derek Eller Gallery. Inspired by routines that have been upended by the pandemic, Brown pictures include familiar New York haunts like the Met Museum but with digital distortions, and interior scenes that feature screens or mirrors to suggest portals into other worlds. Here, a hand shifts two balls around in front of the window of an empty train overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset – a frenetic activity in a strangely quiet place. (On view on the Lower East Side through Dec 19th.)
Derek Fordjour’s tour de force exhibition at Petzel Gallery includes two dramatic sculptural installations, a puppet show performed twice daily and two distinct bodies of collaged 2-D work, each as powerful as the next. Continuing to address themes of systemic racism in the US, Fordjour was prompted by George Floyd’s death to directly address Black grief, mourning and the specter of death in several powerful paintings. He also returns to his signature themes of performance and games to consider the complex lives of Black performers in the spotlight. The synchronized swimmers in this image join marching bands, dancers, jugglers who occupy ambiguous identities as they keep the show on the road. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 19th. Masks and social distancing are required.)
Anna Ostoya’s oil paintings of bodies in motion leap, surge forward, jump and float, each canvas presenting a different manner of group movement. This activity and the presence of protesters in other works in her show at Tribeca’s Bortolami Gallery lends a Futurist-like energy and an urgency to her abstracted scenes. “I’m trying to get Slap to look violent and fragile and to pull all of the contrasting colors together to slap the eyes,” explains Ostoya in a succinct explanation of this work’s dramatic impact. (On view through Dec 19th. Masks and social distancing are required).
On a recent visit to Basel, Switzerland, iconic Color Field painter Sam Gilliam was struck by how a recent influx of African immigrants has changed the city’s demographics. Gilliam began pondering architectural forms from the African continent; a variety of pyramidal forms and circular buildings (e.g. Great Zimbabwe) come to mind on entering his arrangement of beautifully toned wood and aluminum sculptures at Pace Gallery. Resting on wheels, the pieces have the potential to be moved (though not by gallery visitors) – an improvisation like a musical composition. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 19th. Masks and social distancing are required).
