Jade Alexis Thacker at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Though young Brooklyn-based painter and printmaker Jade Alexis Thacker’s watchful characters look too aware to be courting oblivion, they’re standouts in Fredericks & Freiser Gallery’s summer group show ‘Towards a More Beautiful Oblivion.’  Thacker’s paintings often include black and yellow color contrasts that convey danger and anxiety, but here, cool colors, an intimate embrace and the angelic, wing-like arm of the figure on the right also speak to comfort and strength in friendship.  (On view in Chelsea through August 6th).

Jade Alexis Thacker, familiar void, oil and acrylic on canvas, 70 x 42 inches, 2021.

Stuart Davis in Havana at Kasmin Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

While recovering from the Spanish flu in 1920, iconic American modernist painter Stuart Davis made a short trip to Cuba, recording its people and places in a series of alluring watercolors now on view at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery.  Often pictured in silhouette, Davis’ figures appear to be glimpsed in passing.  Suffused with light-infused, warm tones, the paintings evidence the intrigue of an unfamiliar environment.  (On view through Aug 13th.)

Stuart Davis, La Casa Rosa, watercolor on paper, 24 7/8 x 19 inches, 1920.

Allison Katz in ‘Plus One’ at Luhring Augustine

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Two fabulously colored fighting cockerels by London-based painter Allison Katz dominate Luhring Augustine’s summer group show.  Titled ‘Noli Me Tangere!’ or ‘don’t touch me’ after Christ’s post-resurrection instruction to Mary Magdalene, the birds seem less about divine mystery than hysterical escalation of conflict.  Flowing feathers create dynamic patterns, echoing the clouds in the sky and lending beauty and urgency to a scene both captivating and absurd.  (On view in Chelsea through August 6th.)

Allison Katz, Noli Me Tangere!, oil, acrylic and rice on canvas, 78 ¾ x 86 5/8 inches, 2021.

David Hammons in Subliminal Horizons at Alexander Gray Associates

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

David Hammons’ untitled bottles from the mid-80s are a standout in Alexander Gray Associates’ summer group show, which features artists of color who have a relationship to the Hudson River Valley.  Evoking messages cast adrift in bottles or carefully constructed ships in bottles, each curious form invites and eludes easy interpretation.  A white lightning bolt suggests magically captured electricity, a fish somehow survives in a glass enclosure and the zippers from the flies of pants become living insects, a series of transformations that invite wonder.  (On view through Aug 14th).

David Hammons, installation view of untitled bottles from 1985, Alexander Gray Associates.

Karyn Olivier at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Shirt sleeves, pant legs, scarves and other clothing fragments peek out intriguingly from between layers of red brick at the entrance to Karyn Olivier’s current solo show at Chelsea’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.  On the reverse side of this floor to ceiling wall, the rest of each garment hangs in a mass collage of color and pattern Titled ‘Fortified,’ the piece suggests a barrier erected and made strong by the people.  (On view in Chelsea through July 30th).

Karyn Olivier, Fortified, bricks, used clothing and steel, 144 x 240 x 30 inches, 2018-2020.

William J. O’Brien in ‘A Thought Sublime’ at Marianne Boesky Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Inspired by unschooled art and experimentation, artist and School of the Art Institute of Chicago ceramics professor William J. O’Brien presents a cluster of 42 ceramic spheres celebrating nonconformity and variety in Marianne Boesky Gallery’s summer group show.  Titled ‘Earth, Water, Fire, Wind & Space, Pt. 1,’ the installation is literally grounded yet aims to take the mind beyond the everyday.  (On view in Chelsea through Aug 6th).

William J. O’Brien, Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Space, Pt. 1, ceramic, dimensions variable, 42 ceramics, 2021.

Chloe Chiasson in ‘Fragmented Bodies II: Fluidity in Form’ at Albertz Benda

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

In Albertz Benda’s summer group exhibition, ‘Fragmented Bodies II:  Fluidity in Form,’ fluidity defines identity.  Chloe Chiasson’s Target Practice, a shaped painting that is part of the wall and leaps off of it, features a group of young men who defy stereotypes of masculine rural behavior.  Perched on a wooden fence with beer cans used for target practice, one man’s ‘Daddy’ tattoo, another’s earring and scattered daisies upend expectations.  (On view in Chelsea through July 31st).

Chloe Chiasson, Target Practice, oil, acrylic, resin, wool, denim, aluminum, lantern, wood, nails, hot glue, graphite, glitter, neopixels, cigarette butts, matches, bobby pin, sticky note, page from book, washers, ink on shaped canvas, 104 x 130 x 60 inches, 2021.

Ricardo Brey in ‘Re: Bicycling’ at Susan Inglett Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Susan Inglett Gallery’s excellent summer group exhibition, co-curated by David Platzker of Specific Object and Alex Ostroy of the cycling apparel brand Ostroy, celebrates the bike as revolutionary object.  From a late 19th century French poster depicting a woman in long dress enjoying the freedom of the road to Rodney Graham’s bike-powered, rotating psychedelic collage, the exhibition extols the power of the bike to take people in new directions.  Here, Ricardo Brey’s standout mixed media sculpture ‘Joy,’ connects bikes to heavenly paths and celestial orbits.  (On view through July 23rd).

celestial orbits. (On view through July 23rd).
Ricardo Brey, Joy, mixed media, 14 3/16 x 25 ¼ x 31 ½ inches, 2018.

Ann Agee Installation at PPOW Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Inspired by Florentine salt cellars depicting religious imagery, Ann Agee’s contemporary Madonna and child sculptures rethink traditional devotional objects.  After an online taster exhibition featuring mother and child sculpture in summer ‘20, Agee rewards an in-person visit to PPOW Gallery with dozens of sculptures in wonderfully bold patterns and styles that range from detailed to abstract.  Occupying one huge pedestal at the center of the gallery, Agee’s homage to mothers and – in this case female – children is a celebration of variety and invention. (On view in Tribeca through July 23rd.)

Ann Agee, installation view of ‘Madonnas and Handwarmers,’ July 2021.

Hugh Hayden at Lisson Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

The delicacy of hand-crafted materials crashes together with the fast-paced, action-packed nature of basketball in new sculpture by Hugh Hayden at Chelsea’s Lisson Gallery.  Fee-fi-fo-fum (pictured here) and other basketball hoops and backboards fashioned from thorny vines, rattan or synthetic hair are titled after fairy tales, alluding to the tantalizing dream of success via sports.  (On view through August 13th).

Hugh Hayden, Fee-fi-fo-fum, smilax rotundifolia (common greenbier), 118 x 108 x 28 ½ inches, 2021.

Marlene McCarty at Sikkema Jenkins & Co

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Rue is a herb that can be used as a contraceptive and in high doses can kill; it’s one of the plants in Marlene McCarty’s installation ‘Into the Weeds: Sex and Death’ at Sikkema Jenkins & Co which presents plants with medicinal and/or lethal properties in a dumpster outside the gallery and a pile of dirt lit by grow lights inside.  Rue also features in one of the McCarty’s large drawings, positioned in front of The Vessel at Hudson Yards (a symbol of developer’s power and more recently, death by suicide), two Roman sandals and more.  Explained in detail through histories of each plant posted to the gallery website, McCarty’s point is to highlight flora’s power to undermine established order.  (On view through July 30th.  Masks and social distancing required).

Marlene McCarty, installation view of ‘Into the Weeds: Sex and Death’ at Sikkema Jenkins & Co, June, 2021.

Jean Dubuffet in ‘Dubuffet/Chamberlain’ at Timothy Taylor Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Using a restricted palette dominated by primary colors, champion of non-academic art Jean Dubuffet expressed the whirl of urban life in this 1982 work on paper now on view at Timothy Taylor Gallery.  Six anonymous figures are wide-eyed and grinning but their abstract context resists interpretation, conveying only that they’re navigating their immediate surroundings in the moment.  (On view in Chelsea through July 30th.  Masks and social distancing required.)

Jean Dubuffet, Site Aleatoire avec 6 personnages, acrylic and paper collage on paper laid down on canvas, 26 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches, 1982.

Linda Goode Bryant in ‘Social Works’ at Gagosian Gallery

by Merrily KerrDon't Miss, Features & Commissions, Hottest ShowPosted on Comments are Disabled

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ piles of candy, Oscar Murillo’s pallets of freshly made chocolate and Betty Woodman’s ceramic fragments are some of the most meaningful and memorable free gifts artists have offered to New York art audiences in recent years.  Now, Linda Goode Bryant’s floating farm at Gagosian Gallery joins in with daily offerings of freshly grown and harvested produce.  Tiny bags of basil, cilantro and green beans await someone’s dinner plate but also testify to Bryant’s efforts to supply healthy food to communities with restricted access to produce via Project EATS, the urban farming organization she founded in 2009.  (On view in Chelsea through Aug 13th.  Masks and social distancing required.)

Linda Goode Bryant, Are we really that different?, installation, dimensions variable, 2021.