Yashua Klos at Sikkema Jenkins & Co

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Curious to know what African cultures were part of his ancestry, New York artist Yashua Klos took a DNA test that unexpectedly ended up reconnecting him with his large Detroit-based family.  New work now on view at Sikkema Jenkins Gallery includes a handsomely presented row of masks that merge a welding mask – symbol of Detroit’s automobile industry and part of his own family’s history – with various masks influenced by African examples.  Klos considers each a symbol of ‘invocation and protection’ and torches the exterior as a transformational act akin to activating the mask’s power.  (On view in Chelsea through Dec 3rd).

Yashua Klos, Dan Protection Power Welding Mask, stained and charred wood, 13 ¼ x 10 ¾ x 11 1/8 inches, 2021.

Lucas Samaras in ‘Wild Strawberries’ at 125 Newbury

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“I continuously shift my attention to things that bother or frighten me,” Lucas Samaras wrote in a statement from 1966.  These two angled chairs, covered in geometric patterns with yarn and resting on a bed of pins, signal discomfort and precarity despite their attractive colors.  Part of 125 Newbury’s inaugural show in Tribeca, titled ‘Wild Strawberries’ after a surreal and disturbing scene in Ingmar Bergman’s film by the same name, the chairs suggest a threat that’s unclear but palpably present.  (On view through Nov 19th).

Lucas Samaras, Two Chairs, mixed media, 19 x 16 ½ x 21 inches, c. 1970s.

Christina Forrer at Luhring Augustine Gallery

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LA-based Swiss artist Christina Forrer’s new tapestries at Luhring Augustine continue to explore complex and troubled relationships, specifically between mankind and nature in the show’s most dramatic work, ‘Sepulcher.’  Titled after the space in which a dead person would be laid, the piece features a blazing sun, burning fields, bolts of lightning and icy breath from a blue figure in the sky, all signs of nature wreaking havoc.  Yet lady bugs, a waterfall and a fertile orchard suggest continued benefit and abundance.  All crafted in bright and pleasing colors, Forrer’s apocalypse is tempered by love of and hope for the natural world.  (On view in Tribeca through Oct 29th).

Christina Forrer, Sepulcher, cotton, wool and linen, 97 x 162 inches, 2021.

Marco Maggi at Bienvenu Steinberg & J

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You need good eyesight to appreciate Marco Maggi’s minutely crafted cut paper collages and etched glass, but ironically in the artwork ‘Global Myopia’ at Bienvenu Steinberg & J, the artist proposes that our collective vision has deteriorated as technology has come to dominate our lives.  Quoting the artist, the gallery explains, “We live inside a phone: a screen that brings us closer to what is faraway and takes us away from what is close to us.” Maggi covers this huge lens with minute geometries as delicately engraved as frost.  Viewers are invited to slow down and view the work carefully, appreciating the details and the process of discovering them.  (On view in Tribeca through Nov 12th).

Marco Maggi, Global Myopia, engraving on biconvex lens, 20 in h x 20 in w x 3 in d, 2022.

Emily Mae Smith at Petzel Gallery

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Inspired by the manically busy brooms in Disney’s Fantasia, Emily Mae Smith’s recurring broom character is set apart – an individual posing with tense self-assurance in several of the artist’s new works now on view at Petzel Gallery.  Initially, Smith saw the brooms as representative of unrecognized female labor; separated from the pack, they become lone underdogs constructed from the discards of wheat production but forming identities of their own. This figure is host to two mice on her legs and birds and a squirrel on her head, offering sanctuary and even enduring abuse as part of her relationship to nature.  (On view through Nov 12th).

Emily Mae Smith, Habitat, oil on linen, 2022.

Kohei Nawa at Pace Gallery

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Pixels and biological cells are the focus of Japanese artist Kohei Nawa’s ‘PixCell’ artworks at Pace Gallery, sculptures that invite viewers to consider the relationship between the natural and artificial.  In this sculpture of a baby deer, the surface is rendered in spheres of various sizes, as if distorted by being viewed through a lens.  Transparent and appearing to rise up from the surface of the animal, the cells speak to the title of the show, ‘Aether,’ by giving the deer an ephemeral quality that belies its physical weight and form.  (On view through Oct 22nd).

Kohei Nawa, PixCell-Bambi #24 (Aurora), mixed media (glass beads, resin, Taxidermy, aluminum plate), 26 1/8 x 25 9/16 x 25 9/16 inches, 2021.

Jenny Holzer at Hauser & Wirth

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‘ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE’ is one of Jenny Holzer’s most famous ‘Truisms’ (a series of short quotes from academic texts she started collecting in the late 70s) and one that comes readily to mind in her current exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Gallery.  Lining the walls and scattered on the floor are versions of ‘curse tablets’ popular in ancient Greece and Rome, small metal plates inscribed with ill wishes toward a rival.  Holzer’s contemporary versions, printed on lead and copper, then distressed, bear tweets from Donald Trump and Q, founder of QAnon that appear to extend the tablet tradition into the present day.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).

Jenny Holzer, installation view of ‘Demented Words’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Sept 2022.

Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing #485 at Paula Cooper

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Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings – some 1,200 sets of instructions for turning architecture into art – range from the simple (e.g. drawing lines in patterns going up, down and to the side) to the kind of full-room, immersive installation currently on view at Paula Cooper Gallery.  Energizing but restrained, a matte, fresco-like orange tone dominates, setting off multi-hued, isometric pyramids of various colors that seem to float through space.  In the center of the gallery, white enamel on aluminum sculptures resemble tips of icebergs adrift on the gallery’s polished concrete floor.  Surrounded by angular geometries in the cavernous rectangle of the gallery, visitors inhabit a parallel universe governed by alternative rules of color and space.  (On view on 21st Street in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).

Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing #485 (detail), three asymmetrical pyramids with color ink washes superimposed, color wash ink, 1986. Sol LeWitt, Complex Form #6 (to the right, detail), enamel on aluminum, 1987/1988.

Beatriz Milhazes at Pace Gallery

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Made recently but rendered antique-looking by strategically distressed paint, Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes’ paintings at Pace Gallery exist to celebrate the histories and abundant possibilities of design.  Scrolling stems, chains of periwinkles and clusters of Klimt-like gold circles in this painting join colorful wave forms and triangular patterns in creating strong horizontals, broken by large leaf-like forms at the center of the canvas.  Does nature compete with design?  A merger of organic and geometric shapes in the vertical strip at the center of this painting suggests a harmonious and dynamic relationship between the two.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 29th).

Beatriz Milhazes, Azulão, acrylic on linen, 75 inches × 63 inches, 2021 – 22.

Do Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

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Historic monuments are a hot topic today, but Do Ho Suh’s engagement with public sculpture goes back decades, questioning what and who we memorialize.  Over twenty years ago, he crafted a large pedestal, empty on top but supported by scores of tiny sculptures of people holding up the base, suggesting that it takes the efforts of many to elevate select individuals.  Now, the new sculpture ‘Inverted Pedestal,’ the first piece to greet visitors to his exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, offers a pedestal that appears to have swallowed the figure meant to be honored.  Created from extruded plastic material, the piece’s transparent mesh surface allows visitors to see a figure, not displayed in glory but suspended upside down and hidden.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 29th.)

Do Ho Suh, Inverted Monument, PETg, stainless steel, 98.43 x 79.72 x 79.72 inches, 2022.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum at Galerie Lelong

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All is not well in the home that Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum pictures in ‘Front Room,’ an intriguing painting in her debut solo show at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea.  In a recent talk, the artist portrayed domestic space as a place where many emotions, from rage to comfort, can be experienced.  Here, two women (alter egos of the artist) attempt to soothe an upset woman with tenderness and understanding, while a fourth individual stands distracted in the background.  Monumental in their full, beautifully rendered garments, the women’s actions and emotions take on powerful significance. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 22nd).

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Front Room, oil and pencil on linen, 2022.

Luiz Zerbini, Dry River at Sikkema Jenkins & Co

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So large it’s an immersive experience just to stand in front of it, Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini’s painting ‘Dry River’ at Sikkema Jenkins & Co juxtaposes an organizing grid against abundant plant forms.  Drawing inspiration from diverse sources including Brazilian tower blocks and his own personal garden, Zerbini’s practice revels in the abundance of natural design while prompting viewers to consider how human planning does (or does not) coexist harmoniously. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 15th).

Luiz Zerbini, Dry River, acrylic on canvas, triptych: 118 1/8 x 236 ¼ inches, 2022.

Vanessa German at Kasmin Gallery

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Both ‘blue jeans’ and ‘the blues’ are listed as materials in Vanessa German’s towering sculpture ‘Sad Rapper,’ the title piece of her current solo show at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery.  Not only a visual artist but a poet and performer, German creates descriptions of her assembled sculptures that double as poetic reflections on the thought processes behind the work.  Dressed in blue and standing on a platform of red and white stripes, this figure represents a less easily recognized ‘American’ character, one covered in prayer bundles but laden with society’s expectations. (On view through Oct 22nd).

Vanessa German, Sad Rapper, wood, tar, 75 pounds of old blue jeans, the blues, sorrow, cuz in 1983 rappers could be bad but could not be sad— or gay, holiness, salt, a groan, tears, African blue and white cloth, love, meanness, the way that it feels to need to cry but not be able to cry— for an exceptionally long time, convinced of muscle instead of tenderness, grief, yarn, twine, loneliness, old blue bed sheets, heartbreak and lying about it, canvas, prayer beads, shame, black pigment, delusion, love, love, love, you gonna be ok ni$$a, you ain’t alone homie, it’s ok, just go’on ahead and be broken for a little while, shit~ life is hard sometimes, red and white paint, foam, ptsd, glue, plaster, heat, 78 x 48 x 40 inches, 2022.