Sydney G. James at Jane Lombard Gallery

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Based on her mural that was destroyed by vandals in Miami in 2021, Sydney G. James’ ‘Serving Tee Liberation’ at Jane Lombard Gallery is a painted act of resistance.  Posing with a look of sage calm, James’ friend and frequent model wears a t-shirt that announces and celebrates female autonomy, a riposte to the slogans in red text on white backgrounds which reflect past derogatory comments aimed at the artist.  The painting pays homage to James’ friend Scheherazade W. Parrish, a writer and artist who wears a different text-bearing t-shirt daily during Black History Month.  Via murals, painting, text and video, James’ show expresses resilience and acknowledges the support of family and community that make strength possible. (On view in Tribeca through Feb 17th).

Sydney G. James, Serving Tee Liberation, acrylic, t-shirts, fabric, and gel medium on canvas, 113 x 91 inches, 2023.

El Anatsui, Garnett Puett & Lyne Lapoint at Jack Shainman

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Material generates form in ‘Echoes of Circumstance,’ a visually rich group exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery of work by three artists (El Anatsui, Garnett Puett and Lyne LaPointe) whose work is driven by the non-traditional art materials they employ.  Hawaii-based 4th generation beekeeper Puett partners with bees who create honeycombs around steel structures, resulting in surreal forms.  Also using a (handmade) beehive, Canadian artist Lyne LaPointe’s ‘The Song of the Queen Virgin’ presents a mystical figure shrouded in fabric.  Internationally renowned Ghanaian artist El Anatsui draws inspiration from Kente cloth to make patterned, wall-mounted textiles of aluminum liquor bottle caps stitched together by copper wire.  (On view in Chelsea through March 2nd.)

Garnett Puett, (foreground) Forged Dance; Entropic Subconscious Matris (3), wax, forged steel, 40 ½ x 20 x 20 inches, 2019. … El Anatsui, (background) Skin of Earth, found aluminum and copper wire, 180 x 192 inches, 2006.
Lyne LaPointe, The Song of the Queen Virgin, antique handmade beehive, cotton mesh, ink, paper and varnish on linen in an artist frame, 83 x 44 ½ x 2 ¼ inches, 2022-23.

 

Soi Noma at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art

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This seven-foot painting on canvas by Soi Noma, a collective of female mural artists from the Shipibo-Conibo community in Lima, Peru adds a blast of color to the small but impactful group exhibition ‘The Precious Life of a Liquid Heart’ at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art in Tribeca.  Addressing water crisis in Latin America and the spiritual importance of rivers and water bodies to indigenous communities, the show includes work by artists who decry environmental damage and others who focus on an appreciation of the natural world.  Soi Noma’s ‘Manifesto against Contamination’ mixes both approaches, employing kene, geometric patterns that express world views of the community, and images of animals to picture a come-back from contamination caused by oil companies. (On view through Feb 10th).

Mujeres Muralistas Soi Noma, Manifesto against Contamination, mixed media on canvas, triptych: 86 x 51 x 1/16 inches, 2022.

Tony Matelli in ‘Friends of the Pod’ at Broadway Gallery

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‘Friends of the Pod,’ an enjoyable group exhibition at Broadway Gallery in Tribeca featuring artists linked to a podcast hosted by advisor Benjamin Godsill and Vanity Fair art columnist Nate Freeman opens with this wonderfully weird assemblage by Tony Matelli.  Anyone who knows Matelli’s sculpture knows to mistrust what they see; the master of trompe l’oeil has produced realistic human bodies and floral arrangements that appear to float upside down as well as pieces of what look to be classical statuary that include pieces of fruit and vegetables.  Traditionally understood in European painting as a warning of mortality, perfect fruits and flowers point to the inevitability of what will come next.  Matelli’s veg avoids this fate while triumphing over a human head that no longer stands upright.  (On view through Feb 3rd).

Tony Matelli, Bust (Eggplant and Celery), concrete, painted bronze, 13 x 18 x 12 inches, 2022.

Jung Eun Hye at Ricco/Maresca Gallery

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Jung Eun Hye’s black and white conte crayon drawings of her dog Jiro, now on view at Ricco Maresca Gallery, are a testament to the artist’s appreciation of and love for an animal she rescued nine years ago.  Jiro comes across as spunky, wise, laughing in various iterations.  Jung enhances the dog’s vivacity with lively patterning and flowers and plant life that add interest to each composition. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 17th.)

Jung Eun Hye, Brave Jiro, conte crayon on handmade Hanji paper, 28 x 23 ½ inches, 2023.

James Welling Photographs at David Zwirner Gallery

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Double-takes are the norm at James Welling’s show of recent photographs at David Zwirner Gallery as the iconic West coast artist continues to make images that take time to understand.  In this photograph of rocks and the sea in Prouts Neck, Maine, printed in UV curable ink that adds to the images’ rich color, Welling recalls Winslow Homer’s and subsequently, John Marin’s paintings in this historic spot.  The ocean is placid in Welling’s rendering but the overlaid patches of color that he adds create a visual disturbance that mimics the crashing waves and stormy surf that Homer captured.  Interested in the patterning created as he cleaned off paint rollers on newspaper for another project, Welling started adding these ‘prints’ to his photos, altering areas of color to create complex images that emphasize the malleability of photography (On view in Chelsea through Feb 10th).

James Welling, Prouts Neck near Winslow Homer’s Studio, UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum, 42 x 63 inches, 2015/2023.

Francoise Grossen & Tau Lewis at the Shah Garg Foundation

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Swiss fiber artist Francoise Grossen moved her textiles moved off the loom in the ‘60s, creating bold and colorful sculpture that existed in three dimensions.  This large piece from 1977 is a highlight of the Shah Garg Foundation’s first public exhibition of its museum-quality collection featuring over eighty artists.  Abstract and constructed from manila rope, this sculpture was nevertheless inspired by functional objects including rope bridges, ship lines and the ancient Incan recording device, the quipu.  On the wall beyond Grossen’s piece, a more contemporary textile-based work by Tau Lewis uses recycled fabric to form a head inspired by Yoruban mask drama.  (On view through March 23rd in Chelsea, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Sept ‘24 and Kemper Art Museum, St Louis in Sept ’25).

Francoise Grossen, Contact III, manila rope (abaca), 1977. Tau Lewis, Saint Mozelle in the Aphid Orgy, steel, enamel paint, acrylic paint, acrylic finisher, repurposed leather, repurposed suede, organic cotton twill, and coated nylon thread, 2023.

‘Friends and Lovers’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

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Visitors to Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation encounter a wall of beautiful and colorful portraits by Billy Sullivan made over forty-five years at the entrance to FLAG’s hugely enjoyable group show ‘Friends and Lovers.’  Featuring work by over fifty artists and partly inspired by Alice Neel’s expressive portraits (the show includes her 1952 painting of her son, Hartley), the show is a hotbed of better and lesser-known talent and includes work by artists who have lately shown standout work in New York.  Among many highlights are Jerrell Gibbs’ portrait of a dapper young man in a lively interior sitting before an image of Picasso’s iconic dove and Ruby Sky Stiler’s inclusive grouping of male, female and child models that exist in both 2-D and 3-D.  (On view through Jan 20th).

Ruby Sky Stiler, Rose Bathers, Baltic plywood, paint and hardware, 78 x 95 x 3 inches, 2021.
Jerrell Gibbs, Fly Black Boy, FLY, oil, oil stick on canvas, 72 x 60 ¼ inches, 2020.
Billy Sullivan, Various works, pastel, oil and watercolor on pastel and canvas, various dimensions, 1974 – 2019.

Kay WalkingStick at the New York Historical Society

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Known for its outstanding collection of paintings from the Hudson River School, an early-to-mid 19th century movement that pictured the sublime in the landscape north of New York City, the New York Historical Society’s current exhibition ‘Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School’ invites new perspectives on what is considered the first ‘American’ school of art.  Kay WalkingStick, an artist of Cherokee descent, has for decades researched Native American histories in locations around the country, picturing specific landscapes overlaid with designs from local indigenous communities.  Here, a Haudenosaunee pattern from the New York region indicates Native American presence in the landscape despite an absence of pictured people.  The museum pairs WalkingStick’s depiction of Niagara with one foregrounding the power of the Falls by Louisa David Minot, one of the few female Hudson River artists, who referred to the scene as representative of conflict between Britain, the US and Native Americans around the War of 1812.  (On view on the Upper West Side though April 14th).

Kay WalkingStick, Niagara, oil on panel in two parts, 2022.
Louisa David Minot, Niagara Falls, oil on canvas, 1818.

Stephane Mandelbaum at The Drawing Center

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Near the entrance to the Drawing Center’s retrospective of work by late Belgian artist Stephane Mandelbaum hangs a diverse selection of portraits, arresting in their distortions and expressive immediacy, that signal his complex and conflicted experience of the aftermath of WWII.  A drawing of Francis Bacon, known for painting distorted figures reflecting collective horror at the atrocities of the war, hangs next to a portrait of Bacon’s criminally connected lover, George Dyer, which in turn is close to a portrait of embattled Nazi paramilitary leader Ernst Rohm.  Giving voice to a disturbing constellation of ideas via texts in Yiddish, French, Italian and German and pornographic imagery, the drawings explore the artist’s obsessions with sex and power which extend into his family life.  Under the portrait of Bacon pictured here is an almost totally obscured drawing of Mandelbaum’s father, artist and professor Arie Mandelbaum, visible just as a predella, a platform on which an altar would be placed.  (On view in SoHo through Feb 18th).

Stephane Mandelbaum, Bacon et predella avec portrait d’Arie (Bacon and predella with portrait of Arie), graphite on paper, 1982.

Pipilotti Rist at Hauser & Wirth Gallery and Luhring Augustine Gallery

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Iconic Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist is acutely attuned to the comfort of her audiences.  Visitors to her atrium-filling video installation at MoMA in 2008 might have lounged on a low couch while another level of relaxation – beds – awaited at the artist’s New Museum retrospective in 2016.  Rist’s current show at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Chelsea offers both a bed and assorted furniture, enticing the public into the artwork itself to be bathed in constantly morphing patterns and images.  Rist (seen in this photo conversing with visitors) conceived of Hauser & Wirth’s back gallery space as a living room; her simultaneous show at Luhring Augustine Gallery is a projection-filled back yard.  (On view at Hauser & Wirth through Jan 13th and at Luhring Augustine through Feb 3rd).

Pipilotti Rist, (installation view) Welling Color Island West, video installation with projector skirt, projection on carpet, plants and furniture, silent, unique, dimensions variable, 2023.

Rammellzee in ‘Wild Style’ at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery

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Forty years after the release of the independent film ‘Wild Style,’ a chronicle of the early days of New York hip hop culture, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery celebrates with a star-studded exhibition of writing, painting and sculpture that captures the creativity and energy of emerging urban youth cultures in the late 70s and early 80s.  Rammellzee’s sculpture Gasholear, surrounded by a cloud of spacecraft capable of producing lettering, is an astounding sight at the center of the main gallery.  Grasping a combination guitar/double halberd, this futuristic character is a machine/robot/human force to reckon with. (On view in SoHo through Jan 13th).

Rammellzee, The Gasholear (THE RAMM:ELLl:ZEE), c. 1987-1998, 180 pound exoskeleton of the RAMM:ELLl:ZEE, found objects, wireless sound system, paint and resin), dimensions variable.