Vik Muniz, American Bison at Sikkema Jenkins

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Known for constructing replica of famous artworks from unlikely materials (a well-known image of Jackson Pollock rendered in drizzled chocolate, junk from a landfill arranged to resemble a Picasso painting), Vik Muniz’s latest exhibition at Chelsea’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co includes new images of American icons constructed from shredded US currency.  Sourced from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the bills are arranged to picture individuals including Harriet Tubman (whose image is scheduled to appear on the $20 bill staring in 2030) and the Lakota chief American Horse as well as images seen as representing the country, like the American eagle and this bison.  Once symbolic of the vast and fertile North American landscape, informed contemporary viewers might now see bison as victims of mass slaughter by European settlers. (On view in Chelsea through April 27th).

Vik Muniz, American Bison, after John James Audubon, Legal Tender, archival inkjet print, 40 x 49 ½ , 2024.
Vik Muniz, (detail) American Bison, after John James Audubon, Legal Tender, archival inkjet print, 40 x 49 ½ , 2024.

 

 

Emilija Skarnulyte at Canal Projects

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Lithuanian artist Emilija Skarnulyte pictures herself swimming between the cold, concrete-colored waters of Brazil’s Rio Solimoes and the warmer darkness of the rainforest fed Rio Negro in an absorbingly fantastical video on view at Canal Projects in SoHo/Tribeca through Saturday.  Wearing a mermaid costume and navigating these two water bodies as they meet but before their distinctive colors, temperatures and chemical makeup merge into the Amazon River, Sharknulyte introduces many viewers to a phenomenon so strange (the waters go for 6km before finally mixing) as to seem unreal.  As the artist swims, pink Amazon River dolphins playfully come near, an interaction which adds to the disbelief and amazement, allowing viewers to appreciate a wonderous ecosystem.  In an unfortunate coda, climate change and fires in the Amazon caused this waterway to dry up after filming, killing many of the area’s famous dolphins.  (On view through March 30th).

Emilija Skarnulyte, detail of Aequalia at Canal Projects, March 2024.
Emilija Skarnulyte, installation view of Aequalia at Canal Projects, March 2024.

Frank Stella at Deitch Projects

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Five works by octogenarian painter and sculptor Frank Stella fill Jeffrey Deitch’s large SoHo space with looping, colorful segments of fiberglass and aluminum, their scale dominating and delighting visitors in equal measure.  The work here, ‘K.144 Large Version’ is part of a series titled after a musicologist who catalogued 18th century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas.  To create his complex and vibrant sculpture, Stella starts with computer models which are 3-D printed, developed, constructed by fabricators in the Netherlands and Belgium and finally finished back in the artist’s Hudson Valley studio.  Trucked down to SoHo on double-wide flatbed trucks, the final products make their presence felt.  (On view through April 20th).

Frank Stella, K.144 Large Version, fiberglass on foam core, 197 x 208 x 150 inches, 2014.

Marie Watt at Print Center New York

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This tower of blankets embodies the memories of individuals, responding to an open call, who donated them to artist Marie Watt during the pandemic.  Now a highlight of Watt’s retrospective, ‘Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt’ at Print Center New York, the stack is reminiscent of mid-century minimalism but favors warm materials and personal associations over cold, fabricated components.  Watt’s stacks are sometimes accompanied by metal I-beams that reference her fellow Seneca citizens’ work in New York’s steel industry, while her use of textiles refer to Native American practice of gifting blankets at important life events.  Watt’s other signature forms (ladders and looping dream catchers) and nods to cultural figures like Marvin Gaye and Jasper Johns broader her own story, celebrating cultural interconnectedness.

Marie Watt, Blanket Stories: Great Grandmother, Pandemic, Daybreak, reclaimed blankets and cedar, 2021.

 

 

Thomas Woodruff at Vito Schnabel Gallery

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As the magnolia start to bloom in New York this week, Thomas Woodruff’s painting of dinosaurs as the Three Graces from Botticelli’s Primavera seems perfectly timed for the season.  One of several paintings in Woodruff’s solo show at Vito Schnabel Gallery that feature dinosaurs, the creatures enjoy their Edenic surroundings apparently unaware of their impending destruction.  Exploding volcanos and incoming meteorites appear in most of the show’s works, announcing an extinction event designed to excite fears about our own fate as the climate changes.  Coming a few years after Woodruff’s retirement from his long-term teaching career at the School of the Visual Arts, the artist explains that his subject matter also alludes to his own aging and suggests that he intends to go out with a bang.  (On view through March 30th).

Thomas Woodruff, The Three Graces, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 inches, 2022.

Sarah Ball at Stephen Friedman Gallery

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At over eight feet high, British artist Sarah Ball’s portrait of Elliot has stunning presence in Stephen Friedman Gallery’s Tribeca space. Drawn to young individuals whose self-fashioning demonstrates their creativity and defies gender norms, Ball meticulously renders details of face, hair and dress in an appreciation of each subject’s unique identity. (On view in Tribeca through March 23rd).

Sarah Ball, Elliot, oil on linen, 100 3/8 x 80 7/8 inches, 2023.

Silas Borsos at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

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‘Green Orchestra’ positions an apple, pear, watermelon and limes like a chorus line, while a mountainous pile of blueberries rises up behind four plums and half an apple in Silas Borsos’ paintings at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Featuring delightfully idiosyncratic arrangements of fruit that suggest table-top performances, Borsos’ paintings depart from traditional histories of still life in fanciful ways.   Here, ‘Orange Peel Pyramid’ presents a sole segment of orange leftover from an orgy of peeling, alongside five blueberries nestled as delicately as robin eggs in discarded pulp. (On view in Tribeca through April 6th).

Silas Borsos, Orange Peel Pyramid, oil on linen, 11h x 14w inches, 2024.

Vija Celmins, Snowfall at Matthew Marks

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Titled ‘Winter,’ Viya Celmins first New York solo show in six years at Matthew Marks Gallery sees out the season with paintings featuring snow against dark backgrounds.  Those familiar with the artist’s signature subject matter may identify the work as a night sky painting for which she is renowned, but what look like stars are in fact flakes of snow.  Celmins has explained in an interview that she aims to wrestle something vast down into the space of the canvas, fixing it there.  The new snow-related paintings suggest she’s taken the universe and transposed it into something positioned right before our eyes.  In a further twist, the piece’s title, ‘Snowfall(coat)’ reveals that the snow is not actually seen in front of the darkness of night but has been pictured instead on a black coat. (On view in Chelsea through April 6th).

Vija Celmins, Snowfall (coat), oil on canvas, 19 5/8 x 13 1/8 inches, 2021 – 23.

Raymond Saunders at Andrew Kreps Gallery and David Zwirner Gallery

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Thought-provoking and pleasurable as it was, Andrew Kreps Gallery’s 2022 exhibition of iconic west coast painter Raymond Saunders’ work turns out to have been just a taster for the artist’s tour de force three-gallery show now on view at Kreps and David Zwirner Gallery, curated by Ebony L. Haynes.  Known for poetic compilations of text, signage, drawing, and materials from everyday life, Saunders’ paintings – mostly from the 80s and 90s – show him making layered allusions to the act of art making.  In this untitled piece from the mid ‘90s, faint drips, frost-like paint marks and a huge white brushstroke bring to mind an artist’s stylistic options.  A monumental fruit at center seems to nod to still life tradition while a page from a text on how to build a flat human figure drawing model, positioned near a text giving instruction on how to play a game, slyly suggests a calculation of artistic success.  (On view through April 5th/6th).

Raymond Saunders, Untitled, acrylic, spray paint, chalk, collage, and mixed media on canvas, 23 ¼ x 20 5/8 inches, 1995.

Mernet Larsen, The Bathers at James Cohan Gallery

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Fascinated for decades by Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne, painter Mernet Larsen applies her own delightfully eccentric perspectival distortions to her French forebear’s iconic imagery in new work at James Cohan Gallery.  Larsen diversifies the cast of characters in ‘The Bathers (after Cezanne)’ adding bikinis to figures more robotic than robust and emphasizing artificiality in the human figures that replace Cezanne’s stabilizing triangle of trees in the original. A diving figure heading into flat waves akin to the slats in Japanese Bunraku puppet theater (which allow figures to move through water) and a woman to the left literally holding up the top of the painting add dynamism and complexity.  By alluding to Cezanne but shifting away from his focus and results, Larsen emphasizes the choices behind a painting’s design and nods to the many iconic painters who have moved beyond inspiration to find their own unique results.  (On view in Tribeca through March 16th).

Mernet Larsen, The Bathers (after Cezanne), acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 59 ¼ x 39 ½ inches, 2023.

Gerald Lovell, Portals (Cala Deia) at PPOW

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Tourist photos of Cala Deia in Mallorca tend to focus on the picturesque geometries of limestone houses rising on the island’s hills.  New York-based painter Gerald Lovell’s on-the-ground version of the age-old village at PPOW Gallery instead ushers viewers up a hilly street.  Embraced between a rocky outcrop on the right and the warm tan colors of the buildings on the left, greenery on one side and characteristic green shutters on the other, a pedestrian might feel the upward pull of the narrow lane toward more discoveries. Lovell’s current solo show features paintings of his friends as well as his recent travels and, he explains, celebrates the life he is getting to live.  (On view in Tribeca through March 9th).

Gerald Lovell, Portals (Cala Deia), oil on pastel, 60 x 48 inches, 2024.

Tuli Mekondjo at Hales Gallery

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Displaced as a child from her native Namibia, Windhoek-based artist Tuli Mekondjo considers her country’s past in textile and photo-based work now on view at Hales Gallery in Chelsea. This piece’s title, ‘Khaxatsus (Gibeon), 1863,’ refers to the original and the colonial names for the hometown of IKhowesin chief Hendrik Witbooi, who is recognized for his military action against German colonizers in the late 19th – early 20thcentury.  Posing in a photograph with his family and surrounded in a frame of lace at the center of this textile piece, Witbooi is pictured as family man as much as national hero.  (On view through March 9th).

Tuli Mekondjo, ‘Khaxatsus (Gibeon), 1863,’ image transfer, silk, linen, sheer fabric, cotton yarn, lace, tracing paper, soil, plants, and rusted enamel cup, 67 ½ x 50 x 2 inches, 2024.

Maureen Gallace at Gladstone Gallery

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Maureen Gallace’s signature small-sized oil paintings, now on view at Gladstone Gallery, are a welcome reprieve from February in New York, her renditions of bright yellow roadside flowers, the sun rising over Long Island Sound and crashing ocean waves promising that winter will eventually end.  Recent life changes find her living in a house by the beach in Connecticut where she takes account of her surroundings in paintings that isolate pleasurable impressions.  (On view through March 9th).

Maureen Gallace, Late August, oil on panel, 9 x 12 inches, 2023.