Heji Shin at 52 Walker

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Fashion and art photographer Heji Shin’s self-portrait at 52 Walker gives and withholds information, depicting a holographic image of her brain made with a special MRI technique that pictures neural networks in brilliant color.  Though the scans allow us to literally see her brain, more telling about Shin’s thoughts are her studio photos of pigs – their faces full of character – that appear on the surrounding walls. Titled ‘Big Nudes’ after Helmut Newton’s boldly-posed 1981 images of nude women, the images question how both photos and their subjects are consumed. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 7th).

Heji Shin, Untitled, holographic installation; glass, pedestal, and four flat screen TVs, 66 x 68 1/8 x 58 ¼ in, 2023.

Elise Ansel at Miles McEnery Gallery

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Calling Old Master paintings her ‘powerful allies’ yet seeking to ‘shine a light on disparities’ in them, Elise Ansel considers the messages conveyed by iconic art historical works by reworking them as abstractions in new work at Miles McEnery Gallery.  A comparison of specific artworks, in this case, Paolo Veronese’s 16th century Allegory of Virtue and Vice and the similarly composed and colored piece by Ansel titled ‘Virture and Vice III,’ reveals how the colors of the original convey meaning; our eye is drawn to the hero at center, Hercules, as he flees the enticements and electric orange tones of the woman at bottom right for the more sober green color of Virtue.  (On view in Chelsea through Aug 31st).

Elise Ansel, Virtue and Vice III, oil on linen, 2023.

Nina Chanel Abney in ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ at The Brooklyn Museum

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Just around the corner from Picasso’s etchings of muscular minotaurs hovering over vulnerable sleeping nude women in the Brooklyn Museum, Nina Chanel Abney’s ‘Forbidden Fruit’ features very different hybrid characters – some with tenacles coming from their heads, others with horns or hair.  Enjoying a moment of communal relaxation, Abney’s characters adopt a picnicking pose familiar from Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe amongst other iconic artworks, while engaging a different kind of forbidden fruit – a selection of luscious watermelons, made sensitive because of their racist associations.  Both Abney and Picasso’s work feature in ‘It’s Pablo-matic:  Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby,’ a group exhibition which rethinks Picasso’s oeuvre via art by twenty and twenty-first century women artists whose work disrupts traditionally masculine modernism.  (On view through Sept 24th).

Nina Chanel Abney, Forbidden Fruit, acrylic on canvas, 2009 in ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ at the Brooklyn Museum, July 2023.

Rita Mawuena Benissan in ‘Worldmaking’ at Mitchell-Innes and Nash Gallery

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Rita Mawuena Benissan’s royal umbrella is a standout at Mitchell-Innes and Nash Gallery’s summer group exhibition of work by artists who live in Ghana.  At eight by ten feet, Benissan’s large, regal cover – traditionally employed to protect a king or queen and show authority – was crafted with help from professional chief umbrella makers and connects to a tradition of royal use.  At the same time, the artist explains in a statement that she intends viewers to ask questions about how the umbrella might be used today – for royalty?  A community?  Viewers?  Titled ‘The Damsen of Succession,’ damsen refers to the deep, attractive purple color, while the notion of succession prompts consideration of the object in new contexts. (On view through Aug 25th).

Rita Mawuena Benissan, The Damson of Succession, umbrella, fabric and wood, 100” diam. X 120” height, 2023.

Quinci Baker in Title IX at The Hole

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Boxers, golfers, tennis champs, martial arts practitioners and more sporting characters dominate the walls of The Hole Gallery’s two-gallery exhibition ‘Title XI,’ a reference to the 1972 government policy that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education.  Over fifty years later, the impact on women and girls has been profound with the gallery citing an expansion from 300,000 girls involved in high school sports to 3 million.  Quinci Baker’s video ‘The Hindrance,’ revisits Venus Williams’ 1999 match in which falling hair beads resulted in a penalty, while Represent (I), crafted from collaged from hair beads, pays homage to the tennis great. (On view through August 27th in Tribeca and the Lower East Side).

Quinci Baker, Represent (I), inkjet collage, pony beads, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 24 x 30 x 2 inches, 2023.

Alvar Aalto at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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International style architecture and Bauhaus design strongly influenced late Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s influential bent plywood furniture, sourced from his country’s birch and pine forests.  His famous ‘Paimio chair,’ designed for a tuberculosis hospital in Paimio, Finland, and now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the fascinating group exhibition, “Community: The Architecture of Civic Space and Private Domains,” was angled to allow patients to better breathe and cough.  Material choices along with color and other considerations were essential elements in Aalto’s and his wife Aino’s designs, aimed at meeting the needs of individuals.  (Ongoing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side).

Alvar Aalto, ‘Model No. 41’ Lounge Chair for the Paimio Sanatorium, laminated birch, 1931-32.

Patti Warashina in ‘Funk You, Too’ at the Museum of Art and Design

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University of Washington art professor emerita Patti Warashina created this comical collision in 1971 as a commentary on the way in which male ceramic students were challenged to build kilns while the female students were encouraged to practice decorative techniques.  Now a standout in the Museum of Art and Design’s excellent ‘Funk You, Too,’ exhibition, Warashina’s ‘car kiln’ (in which a ‘car’ or ‘deck’ can be directed into a kiln) pioneers a new variety of kiln, one capable of being magically reshaped by the artwork put into it.   As her red car drives into the kiln (complete with an interior full of flames), the kiln itself morphs into Warashina’s vision.  (On view through Aug 27th).

Patti Warashina, Metamorphosis of a Car Kiln, earthenware, glaze and luster, 1971.

Bjorn Friborg at HB381 Gallery

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In defiance of the material’s apparent fragility, Danish glassmaker Bjorn Friborg appears to blast through glass spheres, creating portals that allow us to peer through solid forms at Tribeca’s HB381 Gallery.  A metaphor for ‘exposing and revealing the inner self,’ these apertures are created by adding hot material to blown glass and allowing for melting and further color changes with the application of flame.  (On view through Aug 18th).

Bjorn Friborg, Implosion, hand-blown glass, 21.25” h x 17” dia, 2023.

rafa esparza at Artists Space

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Titled ‘Camino’ or ‘Road,’ LA based performance and exhibition artist rafa esparza’s exhibition at Artists Space creates a pathway through the gallery space using blocks of adobe that connect earthen panels painted with portraits of Black and brown working people.  Interspersed are paintings of the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles, listed in the US National Register of Historic Places as the first freeway in the western United States.  Though esparza’s barefoot subjects literally connect to the land itself, the show considers how individuals and community connections to land have been disrupted by the highways that followed 110 and how customized vehicles (including the bike seen here) have provided a workaround and sense of identity.  (On view in Tribeca through Aug 18th).

rafa esparza, Jaime, acrylic on adobe and powder coated steel, painting: 85.5 x 50 x 3 inches, overall: 89 x 50 x 60 inches, 2023.

Angela Dufresne, Strike Fast, Dance Lightly at FLAG Art

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‘Strike Fast, Dance Lightly:  Artists on Boxing’ at FLAG Art Foundation opens with artworks that avoid actual engagement in the sport – ‘I told you nobody ought never to fight him,’ reads a text painting by Ed Ruscha while Paul Pfeiffer’s video ‘Caryatid (Pacquiao)’ digitally removes one of the fighters in a bout.  Soon enough though, the match is on in a blaze of color in Rosalyn Drexler’s pastel of a lime-green colored athlete against a pink background, Katherine Bradford’s fighters locked in an exhausted or amorous embrace, and Angela Dufresne’s small expressionist oil painting of two circling fighters surrounded by a spray of blue and red paint that conveys the violence and energy of the match.  Engaging with the sport on many levels, FLAG’s show requires no specialty knowledge to appreciate the enjoyably eclectic inclusions, from an ancient Roman oil lamp featuring a boxer to Eadweard Muybridge’s late 19th century photographic studies and much more.  (On view through August 11th).

Angela Dufresne, Fight Scene, oil on canvas, 10 x 14 inches, 2009.

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger in ‘Distribuidx’ at Lisson Gallery

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Inspired by Helio Oiticica’s practice, Lisson Gallery’s lively summer group show ‘Distribuidx’ includes art that sees bodies and spaces as changeable; further, the show’s theme posits that people can be represented by the things around us.  For Mexico-City based artist Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, cars represent the experience of navigating being queer and in this sculptural painting, the contradictions of our relationship to consumption and the planet.  In ‘Hope the Air Conditioning is On While Facing Global Warming (part I),’ a BMW i8 opens its wing-doors to reflect both the flowers blossoming on nearby trees and an inferno of burning buildings beyond the open doors. (On view through Aug 11th).

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Hope the Air Conditioning is On While Facing Global Warming (part I), oil on canvas, overall: 88 x 176 inches, 2017.

Song Dong, Thousand Hands at Pace Gallery

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Well-known in New York for his 2009 installation ‘Waste Not’ at MoMA, in which he displayed all his mother’s 10,000+ accumulated belongings, Chinese avant-garde artist Song Dong morphs discarded objects into intriguing sculpture in his latest work at Pace Gallery.  Using circular forms important in traditional Chinese philosophy, Song created this light sculpture from a discarded object meant to be displayed behind a statue of the Buddha Guanyin; accordingly, the surface is marked a representation of the deity’s one-thousand arms which take on new meaning when viewed from above.  (On view in Chelsea through Aug 18th).

Song Dong, Thousand Hands, glass, crystal, lamp, 15 3/4” x 63”, 2022-23.

Ashley Teamer in ‘We Buy Gold’ at Nicola Vassell Gallery

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In a statement accompanying work from her Yale MFA studies (grad ’22), New-Orleans-based artist Ashley Teamer cites the batture – the constantly shifting land between low tide and the levee along the Mississippi River – as inspiration.  Her dynamic image collage ‘4912 St Bernard Ave’ in the group show ‘We Buy Gold’ at Nicola Vassell Gallery is a highlight of an exhibition described by its curator as being about change, slippage and breakthrough.  A figure in pink shoes and dress (like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) appears to plunge down into a tangle of branches both photographed and drawn while above, among the clouds and in another realm, is another figure with their back to us.  Teamer tempts viewers to ask what will transpire next in this evocative story.  (Curated by Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels. The exhibition is also at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea space through Aug 11th.)

Ashley Teamer, 4912 St Bernard Ave, inkjet print, twine, oil pastel, graphite, 83 x 89 ½ inches, 2021.