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).
