The Haas Brothers Exhibition at Marianne Boesky

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Inspired by tree fungus, coral and other structures in the natural world that build up over time, The Haas Brothers’ bronzes at Chelsea’s Marianne Boesky Gallery are typically quirky in form and attractive in their shiny and patinaed bronze surfaces.  Inspired by psychedelic aspects of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 album ‘Innervisions,’ after which the artists titled the show, the works trend towards the hallucinatory. In this piece, tentacle-like forms seem to reach out towards visitors like living extensions of the seed-like form below.  On the wall, patterned paintings formed by squeezing bottles of acrylic paint echo the accretion process used to make the bronzes while adding lush color to the exhibition.  (On view through June 15th).

The Haas Bros, Holden Ball-field, patinated cast bronze, marble base, bronze: 34 x 28 x 13 inches, 2024.

Lubaina Himid at Greene Naftali Gallery

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Water, chickens, talismans and chairs are some of the goods on sale in vibrant and lively paintings of tradesmen and women in Lubaina Himid’s show of new paintings and prints at Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea. Accompanying each merchant is a signboard touting the seller’s wares in phenetic spellings that encouraging visitors to sound out each sales slogan.  Here, a woman selling baskets leans into a breeze while the world behind her manifests as a sturdy woven framework.  Her signboard touts the tight weave of her baskets; on the verso appear the seller’s private thoughts – in this case, an invitation, ‘feel them with your fingertips.’ (On view through June 15th).

Lubaina Himid, Basket Seller, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 72 inches, 2023.
Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska, Baskets Tightly Woven, unique screenprint acrylic paint, and Charbonnel etching ink on Somerset Tub Sized 600 gsm paper (double-sided), 36 5/8 x 29 7/8 inches, 2024.
Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska, Baskets Tightly Woven (verso), 2024.

Maurizio Cattelan at Gagosian Gallery

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“I had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug,” said artist Niki de Saint Phalle of her ‘Shooting Pictures’ from the ‘60s, for which she fired a shotgun at surfaces prepared with bags of paint.  Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Sunday,’ a 71’ wall of gold-plated steel panels marked with holes and bullets on view at Gagosian Gallery, argues something similar, but with the U.S. as the speaker.  Telling the New York Times in a recent interview that “we are completely immersed in violence every day, and we’ve gotten used to it,” Cattelan hired locals at a New York shooting range to create a bullet-riddled gold and steel wall that towers over gallery visitors, confronting us with our own reflections amid the damage. (On view in Chelsea through June 15th).

Maurizio Cattelan, (detail of) Sunday, 24-karat gold plated steel panel shot with different caliber weapons, 854 x 213.5 x 1.5 inches, 2024.

Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz at Sapar Contemporary

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In her 70+ year career, Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz helped pioneer fiber art as fine art, teaching for decades at Drexel University and placing her work in both corporate and public collections.  Two years after she passed away at the age of 94, Pacanosky Bobrowicz’s beautiful and complex sculptural work is on view at Sapar Contemporary in Tribeca.  Created from knotted monofilament which she mixed with fiber and gold leaf, the artist’s signature ‘cosmic energy fields,’ as she called them, express her fascination with physics and philosophy.  (On view through June 1st).

Yvonne Pacanosky Bobrowicz, Cosmic Series Amber, 16 x 14 x 4 inches, monofilament, 2015.

Diedrick Brackens Weavings at Jack Shainman

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LA artist Diedrick Brackens has called his weavings ‘a small healing tribute’ to those who came before him, depicting Black figures in moments of peace but using materials like cotton which have a heavy history in the U.S.  His latest solo show, on view at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea and Tribeca locations, includes the dramatic, ‘if you have ghosts,’ which features a silhouetted figure surrounded by a swirling wind.  Reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s perfect proportions expressed by his Vitruvian Man drawing and including Romanesque architecture, the figure appears to step forth from history to command this supernatural event.  (On view through May 24th in Tribeca and June 1st in Chelsea).

Diedrick Brackens, if you have ghosts, cotton and acrylic yarn, 105 x 105 inches (approx.), 2024.

Teresita Fernandez, Soil Horizon at Lehmann Maupin Gallery

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From the caves of Cuba’s Vinales Valley to the Aurora Borealis, Teresita Fernandez’s elegant sculpture is inspired by the beauty of nature but questions mankind’s relationship with the land.  In ‘Soil Horizon,’ Fernandez’s current solo show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, the artist titles several works – ‘Bardo,’ ‘Sky/Burial’ – after Buddhist concepts relating to the gap between lives.  A 24’ long concrete arch hints at a burial mound while thousands of ceramic cubes installed on the wall speak to a body’s dispersal after death.  A third piece in tiny ceramic tile suggests weather systems or other dynamic forces that create larger or small-scale impact on humans and the planet.  (On view through June 1st).

Teresita Fernandez, installation view of ‘Soil Horizon’ at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, May 2024.

Ernie Barnes at Ortuzar Projects

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Ernie Barnes’ ‘Room Ful’A Sistahs’ at Ortuzar Projects is a painting conveying a moment of joy, a highlight of the artist’s current solo exhibition featuring work from 1966 to 2000.  After a brief career in pro-football, the artist served as the AFL’s official artist and artist of the ’84 Olympic Games while creating iconic artworks like ‘Sugar Shack,’ which appeared as an album cover for Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Want You.’  Sports, dance, church and everyday life provide subject matter for dynamic paintings populated by lithe figures that move through the world with grace and beauty. (On view in Tribeca through June 15th).

Ernie Barnes, Room Ful’A Sistahs, acrylic on canvas, 25 7/8 x 37 ¾ inches, acrylic on canvas, 1994.

Kimsooja at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

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Titled ‘Meta-Painting,’ Korean artist Kimsooja’s exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery questions the essence of painting via an installation of unpainted panels and a light-absorbing black orb.  In one of the gallery’s main spaces, raw linen on stretchers hang from the ceiling while the artist’s signature bottari (a cloth bundle referencing the act of packing one’s belongings in bedclothing) rest nearby.  Kimsooja speaks of both panels and bundles as paintings, though they were not made with paint, much as Deductive Object – a welded steel oblong covered in paint that absorbs ambient light – has presence in its own gallery yet has boundaries that are difficult to perceive.  Linked to the Brahmanda stone of Indian origin, this mysterious object hints at profound mysteries of life. (On view through June 14th).

Kimsooja, Deductive Object, painted welded steel, mirror, wood, 72 x 43 ¼ x 43 ¼ inches, 2016.

Lucas Arruda at David Zwirner Gallery

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Lucas Arruda’s meditative paintings at David Zwirner Gallery fall into the rough categories of seascapes, jungle landscapes and monochromes with hovering rectangles of color.  Though ostensibly representational, landscapes like this untitled painting from the artist’s ongoing Deserto-Modelo series feature fields of hazy form that can bring to mind clouds, mist, fog, or other atmospheric conditions.  This canvas reverses the color arrangement in several of the show’s other paintings, positioning light colors toward the bottom of the composition, as if we’re glimpsing bright skies ahead whilst still under the dark of night or storm.  Peaceful and contemplative, Arruda’s paintings are a tonic for over-stimulated eyes.  (On view through June 15th).

Lucas Arruda, Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), oil on canvas, 9 5/8 x 11 ¾ inches, 2022.

Lucy Puls, Equulus Duo at Nicelle Beauchene

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The Latin words ‘Equulus Duo’ (two horses, in English) might bring an exalted equestrian sculpture to mind, while the designation ‘two horseys’ shrinks the words down to the speech of a small child. Both phrases are included in the title of Lucy Puls’ ‘Equulus Duo (Two Horseys),’ a sculpture of two ‘My Little Pony’ toys encased in resin and now on view in Tribeca in Puls’ mini retrospective at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.  Sculpture from Puls’ ‘In Resin’ series elaborates on the passage of time and the vicissitudes of consumer culture by presenting once sought after consumer items – a mid 80s Mackintosh 512, a stack of vinyl singles – preserved as if in amber.  (On view in Tribeca through May 18th).

Lucy Puls, Equulus Duo (Two Horseys), resin, steel, toy horses, 6 ½h x 12w x 5d inches, 1993.

Claude and Francoise-Xavier Lalanne at Kasmin Gallery

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There’s just one more day to see Kasmin Gallery’s presentation of selected works by the late French husband/wife sculptors Claude and Francoise-Xavier Lalanne, known as Les Lalanne, whose unique, surreal vision of the natural world continues to resonate.  At nearly 10’ long, this huge, mysterious animal with a cat’s head, fish’s tail, cow’s lower body and bird wings serves not just as a creative response to hybrid creatures in classical literature (Lalanne worked as a guard in the Egyptian and Assyrian galleries of the Louvre for a short while), but is opened to serve as a bar cart.  Initially conceived of for a private commission by a French architect and now on view as part of the Lalanne’s eldest daughter’s collection, the piece prompted Francois-Xavier Lalanne to remark that the cat was living all nine of its lives at once.  (On view through May 9th in Chelsea).

Francois-Xavier Lalanne, Grand Chat polymorphe, brass, bronze with stainless steel pin, 72 ¼ x 117 x 25 inches, 1998/2008.

Nora Correas at Institute for Studies on Latin American Art

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Titled after a line in a poem by exiled Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuna about how threads (textiles) connected her to her homeland, ‘Threads to the South’ at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art considers how fiber-based art has alluded to customs from grape harvests to quipus.  Here, Nora Correas’s 1981 undulating virgin wool floor sculpture ‘En carne viva (In the Raw)’ is abstract but evokes living forms; complex textures suggest earth or clay while shapes formed from horizontal lines resemble cocoons. Created as a response to Argentina’s military dictatorship, the piece and Correas’ other fiber-based work from the time is an expression of grief, ‘a scream’ explains the artist in a text alongside the work.  (On view in Tribeca through July 27th).

Nora Correas, En carne viva (In the Raw), virgin wool, 1981.
Nora Correas, En carne viva (In the Raw), virgin wool, 1981.

Beau Dick at Andrew Kreps Gallery

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Late hereditary chief and Kwakwaka’wakw master woodcarver Beau Dick’s current solo show at Andrew Kreps Gallery features carved wooden masks intended to be used in ceremonies as symbols of the spirit world.  Made between 1979 and 2015, the carvings reinvent traditional supernatural figures such as ‘Crooked Beak,’ seen here.  Made for a ceremony revoking the cannibal spirit and reinforcing correct behavior in an initiate, the mask also exists now to allow an appreciation of Kwakwaka’wakw spiritual practice.  (On view through May 11th).

Beau Dick, Kwakwaka’wakw, Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation Crooked Beak, red cedar, cedar bark, acrylic, 12 x 8 x 34 inches, 1994.

Lumin Wakoa at Harper’s Gallery

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Once small-scale and resolutely abstract, New York painter Lumin Wakoa’s latest paintings at Harper’s Gallery have grown explosively in size and dynamic allusion to the natural world.  Branching forms appear in many works, supporting abundant blossoms or snaking between zones of color that suggest the blinding sun, bright flowers or cool, blue oases. Here, intense yellow and orange flowers dematerialize into a mass of pleasurable tones while the work’s title, ‘Briefly Brilliant,’ suggests that there is a time limit on this glorious display. (On view in Chelsea through May 5th).

Lumin Wakoa, Briefly Brilliant, oil on linen, 82 x 70 inches, 2023.